However, the highlight of our visit was a live, probably unsactioned, iPhone “Will it Blend” demonstration.  The phone, limonata and bananas blended just fine, until something in the phone violently exploded and misted everyone with iphone flavored smoothie.  That was the end of that. 

I was mildly worried about whatever we were misted with, after having chemically burned my face in an o-chem lab accident many years ago. Greenpeace says that the phone contains some environmentally harmful stuff, but nothing about the immediate harzards of skin contact or inhalation (of the phone). Maybe the iPhone needs a MSDS.

Here’s the video:

I flew down to Del Mar on Thanksgiving Thursday morning and spent a relaxing day at Rand’s.  Here’s a turkey:

And here’s some homemade cranberry sauce (no canned stuff) in some sunlight.

On Sunday, I made an 18lb turkey and a pumpkin pie from a recent Cook’s Illustrated recipe.

I’m flying down to San Diego tomorrow for Thanksgiving, part 2.5.

Here’s a little snap shot from seat 17A of Jamaica Bay on Saturday morning, taken with the new (replacement) point and shoot.

One day I got onto the train as usual…except something smelled funny. We’ve all been on a trains where something smelled bad-funny (pee in the corner, homeless guy sleeping at one end of the car, someone eating on the train). However this smell was peculiar…it was the new train smell! I can only describe it as being as refreshing (or manufacturing-y) as “new car smell.” As if that wasn’t enough to make my morning, I had the whole car to myself!

Update: The MTA announced that the W line would be shut down as a result of impending economic doom.

This video is from a recent trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium: quite possibly the most awesome aquarium on the planet.  These bluefin are in the aquarium’s ‘outer bay’ exhibit, a jaw dropping multi-story, 1 million gallon goldfish bowl.

Here’s a photo from a visit in 2004.  (photo is with the original digital rebel)

(Update: One commenter mentioned that bluefin is becoming increasingly endangered, which is very true.  The Monterey Bay Aqaurium has some excellent guides on how to eat sushi and fish in a sustainable manner.  Bluefin is unfortunately on the “avoid” list.)

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Here is the tuna.  It’s a 700lb bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Malta in the Mediterranean.  After being cleaned, the carcass weighed about 500 lbs.  The performance was very crowded…4 to 5 people deep around the demonstration pit.

No trip (… a 35 minute trek from the East Village to Port Authority, 20 minutes waiting for the shuttle in bus exhaust and 30 minutes on a crowded shuttle ride to Jersey) to Mitsuwa is complete without having a meal or two at the food court.

Uber sushi chef Nobuyoshi-san positions himself for the first cut.

With the “loin” removed.

The remaining meat on the ribs was scraped off with a spoon and packaged for sale.  Very little of the fish went to waste.  The quality of the scrapings isn’t sashimi grade, but we speculated that it might be good broiled, in a soup or as burger patties.

This is chu-toro, or loin.  We ended up getting a combination of chu-toro and o-toro.  O-toro is belly or fatty meat.  It was the most decadent, oily toro I’ve ever had.  It was awesome…and at $62/lb (event sale price), you better believe it was awesome.

Removing the back bone.

We made friends with one of the nice fellows who was packaging up trays of toro.  He first hooked us up with increasingly better pieces of o-toro, swapping our inferior pieces out with nicer ones as he saw them go by.  Then he asks, “hey, you want the bone?”  “Uhhhh….sure…”  “Five dollars,” he says.  Wait five dollars a pound?  That thing is probably pretty heavy–no thanks.  “Two dollars!” he says…for the whole thing!  Sold!  We’ll take it!

We ended up buying the vertebrae of the 700lb fish for $2.  They hacked it apart with a cleaver and mallet into one foot sections and triple bagged it in black garbage bags. We picked up other accoutrement like fresh wasabi root, soy sauce and tsukemono.

On the way out, the sky was an eerie purplish-pink hue–like the light of a really great sunset defused through a layer of storm clouds.

Back at the apartment, we took pictures with our bounty and Tam did some Nate Hill poses.

Al broiled a section of the vertebrae then broke it down and made a simple soup from it.  In between each vertebrae there was a golf ball sized amount of synovial or spinal fluid ripe for the takin’ (the white stuff in the middle).  The fluid wasn’t very tasty.

We gorged ourselves on o-toro, rice, picked stuff and soup.  Mmmmm! I love food adventures…this kinda reminds me ‘eating a still-beating cobra heart.’

Here’s a follow up post with some alive tuna.

I watched the pro men and women finish, who where nothing but a blur standing on the corner of 5th(ish) and Central Park South. I was standing next to an Italian couple and the wife would shout “Bravo! Bravo!”  It was quaint.  I’m going to incorporate “Bravo!” in my vocabulary.

I just finished What I Talk about When I Talk about Running and I was really hoping to see Haruki Murakami running but after the pro’s finished, it became a sea of runners passing by.

Waiting for the first runners:

Other purchases: honeycrisp apples (my current fave), arugula, cornbread and Vermont maple syrup (for impending pumpkin pancakes).