Friday 5ive- January 8, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. I'm not going to include the ugly event at the Capitol this Wednesday, as I think that captured everyone's attention. Let's hope we can turn a page on January 20th.

1)  I get up at 6:30am and head to the laundry room in our apartment building twice a week. I'm usually the only one down there, so it's a good time to do laundry. When I got up this morning, I saw this beautiful sky over the East River, just as the sun was coming up. It was a very vivid sight to start the day.

2)  My friend from back home Barbara called me this week and cryptically asked if I was home. When I said I was, she said that I was going to get a delivery today, a surprise. A few hours later, an Instacart delivery person rang my door with all the ingredients to make Barbara's famous meatballs and sauce- along with Italian bread and salad. What a thoughtful, lovely gift! She sent me directions on how to make it, and it was the best meatballs and sauce I've ever made. We had it for two nights and put the rest in the freezer. Sometimes I just open the freezer to look wistfully at it. I love this idea, I hope it catches on.

3) I received my medal from my latest virtual bike ride. I have been riding the Ring of Kerry in Ireland, a 124.3 mile journey. I love that I get "postcards" along the way, describing interesting sights along the way. Next up, I'm riding St. Francis Way, a journey from Florence to Rome in Italy. 

4)  My husband and I starting watching Homeland on Hulu (originally on Showtime). Damian Lewis plays a Marine who is rescued after being missing and presumed dead for eight years and held prisoner by Al-Queda. His homecoming is difficult for his family, his fellow soldiers, and a CIA operative played by Clare Danes who has questions about what happened to him while in captivity. We're into season two, and the acting by Lewis, Danes and the great Mandy Patinkin, as Clares Danes' boss, is fantastic. 

5) I'm back in the groove with my reading. I read Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke's latest collaboration, Piece of My Heart, while watching a New Year's Day Odd Couple marathon. The fast-paced novel quickly captured my full attention as I was drawn into the story of a young boy missing from a beach. It's one of a series of books about Laurie Moran, a producer of a true crime TV show (like 48 Hours or Dateline), but you don't to have had read any of the other books to understand this one. I couldn't put it down and it kept me guessing right up until the end.

Gabriel Bump's coming of age novel, Everywhere You Don't Belong was on the New York Times list of the Most Notable Books of 2020. He tells the story of Claude, a young Black boy growing up on the South Side of Chicago with his Grandma and her friend Paul. Good books put the reader into the mind and shoes of their character, and Bump does an amazing job at getting us to understand Claude's life. My full review publishes on Monday. Fans of Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give have their next read.

Julia Claiborne Johnson takes us to a 1938 dude ranch in Reno, Nevada where wealthy women stayed for  while they waited out their six week residency requirement to get a divorce in her delightful novel Better Luck Next Time. It's witty and had me laughing out loud more than once. 

Stay safe, socially distant, wash your hands, wear a mask, and get a vaccine when it's your turn and we'll make it through this.

Weekend Cooking- Food On TV

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.

With the unfortunate turn of weather recently, I have been inside a little more and able to catch some great food segments on TV.

First up, March 9th was National Meatball Day, and we are lucky enough to live near The Meatball Shop, a restaurant that I love to take visitors to for their delicious variety of meatballs.

Local TV show New York Live had a segment on places to get great meatballs, and the three that correspondent Lauren Scala visited are new to me. They all looked good, from the old school spaghetti and meatballs at Emilio's Ballato in NoLita, a place popular with celebrities like Leo DiCaprio and Lenny Kravitz, to Adoro Lei, a Hudson Street eatery that serves an off-menu Meatball Flambe that looks amazing to White Gold Butchers, a new Upper West Side restaurant where you can get a tasty meatball sandwich that will fill you up. Click on the link below to see the segment.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/on-air/as-seen-on/National-Meatball-Day_New-York-415796513.html?t=170

Daphne Oz from ABC's The Chew visited Do, a little place that has hit on a great concept- they sell different flavors of cookie dough that you can eat raw or buy baked goods made from their cookie dough.

Do has a long line waiting outside, and they even have rules for the line listed on their website. They have become so popular that they no longer can sell their product online. The most popular flavors are Cookie Dough and Cake Batter, and if you are like me and can't resist eating cookie dough right out of the freezer, this is a no-brainer. I will be visiting Do.

Here is the link to The Chew story.

The Today Show ran a segment this week with Meredith Rollins from Redbook magazine on the best new grab-and-go snacks. I bring my lunch to work at the Book Cellar (yogurt and a snack), so I'm always looking for new snack ideas.

One of my new favorites, Sargento Balanced Breaks, which my Pittsburgh sister-in-law turned me on to, made the list and another, Sun Chips Harvest Cheddar Chips, used to be a family favorite when my sons were younger. I'm going to try some of the others to mix my lunch treats up a bit.

The link to the segment is here.

Have you seen any interesting food segements on TV lately? Share them in the Comments section below.