First Snow of the year!!!

Saturday, January 21st, 2012
Central Park East - 8:15am

First snow of the year!!!  It was magical and beautiful in Central Park.  A few people were out early with their dogs but it was actually still snowing pretty hard (you can't tell from the pictures) so it wasn't exactly conducive to walks yet.  The dogs that were out were going NUTS playing and running around in the snow.  Sofie was very, very rambunctious and loved the snow.  It was her first snow, too.  On the walk back, her paws got a little cold and she was lifting them up and running 3 legged.  Brian picked her up and carried her until her paws got warmed up and then she was fine.

There were already lots of people out sledding.  We bought some extra good sausage from the Brooklyn Kitchen last night and so the next step on the morning to-do list is to make scrambled eggs with sausage and a big pot of coffee :)  Delicious.

Our trip to the Brooklyn Kitchen last night was a great success!  It was easy to get there.  The F train downtown to 14th and Union Sq.  Then took the L a few stops over into Brooklyn and walked about 5 blocks (mind you - Brooklyn blocks are A LOT smaller than Manhattan blocks).  The Brooklyn kitchen prides itself on using only NY state meat that has been raised on small farms and that adhere to a strict philosophy on human treatment of their animals.  They also are artisan sausage makers, carry all sorts of incredible cheeses, coffee, and grow their own herbs on the premecies.  They have everything you need to take on any kind of cooking adventure - cheesemaking, pickling, sausage-making, you name it. 

So we got there and went into a separate room for the cooking class.  It was like a big barn with exposed brick on all sides.  There was a huge chalkboard up on one wall with all of the classes for the month listed (from pickling to pretzel making to Italian cooking, to pig butchering).  Then there were metal snowflakes in the shapes of cooking utensils all over the other wall.  In the middle of the room was a long table for everyone to eat at - with sparkling water and about 10 bottles of red wine.  Against the other wall was where the cooking was done. We were there for the Tour d' Italia class as were about 5 or 6 additional couples around Brian and my ages.  The instructor is Italian and teaches every other month.  She picks traditional recipes from different regions of Italy for each class.  This class featured a traditional meal from Milan.  We made pork tenderloin wrapped in pancetta - braised with rosemary, olive oil, and stock.  For our other dish we had Risotto a la Milanese.  To make this, we used butter, white wine, stock, and...the secret ingredient that really grossed me out at first.....bone marrow!  It really irked me scraping the marrow out of the bone, but when it went into the hot pan it dissolved like butter.  To finish off the risotto we added a bunch of fresh parmiggiano cheese and Saffron to make it turn yellow.  It was freaking amazing.  Seriously.  I forgot all about the marrow once I was eating it.  Then we had a big spinach & arugula salad on the side with mustard dijonettte.  Then we all sat down together and had this fantastic meal and drank every bottle of wine. 

We brought home some 2 year aged Vermont cheddar, some breakfast pork sausage, a little porcelain cream container in the shape of a dinosaur, and a home-dried rawhide for Sofie.  (She ate it in about 2 minutes). 

Have a wonderful day!!