Update 12-09-08

Hi,

Some sad news to start, and some food news to finish.

First, from Danny Stellebotte:  I have some updates, one sad and one happy.
        One of our graduating class of 1965 has passed away:  Robert Rossi was stricken with cancer and died on November 30, 2008.  I was married to his sister Joanne for about twelve years.
        On a happier note, my son Daniel and his wife Angela had a baby boy on November 19, 2008.  His name is Francis Dean, and all are doing well.  That makes a total of four grandchildren for me.  Daniel has two girls and one boy, and my daughter Lisa has one boy.
   
    [Rich -- Obviously, I'm sad to hear about Robert, as I suspect we all are, and happy to hear about Francis Dean.  I asked Danny to pass on appropriate thoughts from all of us to Robert's family and to Danny's son and daughter-in-law.
        Also, I suspect I don't need to point out that the '50s and '60s folk singer Odetta just died, as did the actresses Nina Foch and Beverly Garland.  I'm sure you all know how to read obituaries as well as I do.]
   
    Next, stage advice from Barbara Blitfield Pech:  Note to Paul Zegler...maybe you should extend your talents and rewrite your "really living it" into a three-act play of your own...there isn't enough original comedy being staged these days...sounds like you have the plot, script, and characters waiting in the wings for a cue to go on...I'd suggest you "break a leg," but under the circumstances...it sounds like it could happen...
   
    [Rich -- In a related note, I passed Paul's story on to a friend of mine, who passed it on to several other people, perhaps notably the playwright John Guare.  That would complete, as the name off his well-known play and movie suggest, the Six Degrees of Separation.]
   
    Also from Barbara, by way of New York magazine:  For all of us displaced New Yorkers looking for a gift or just a bit of memorabilia, check out:  www.newyorkfirst.com
   
    A Los Angeles social note from Amy Lieberman:  Hi.  G
    uess who's going to be at Shutters on New Year's Eve?  Yep, you guessed right -- Billy Valentine and the Stuart Elster Trio.
        The details:  Shutters Hotel, 1 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica, California.  Phone:  310-458-0030
        Billy will be playing in the lounge from 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM.  The hotel will serve drinks and munchies and will probably provide a hat and balloons though I might be making that part up.  I know -- who wants to go out on New Year's Eve?  Well, if you do, come join us.  Meanwhile, all the best to you and yours.
   
    Economic notes from Marc Jonas, who sent an early 1950s brochure from the Green Acres house his parents eventually bought.  It includes the information that the monthly mortgage payment for non-veterans was $116.00, and the monthly mortgage payment for veterans was $106.23.  The original cost of the house was $18,790.  Non-veterans had to put down $4790 of that while veterans only had to put down $2290.  The brochure is illustrated with a photo and ground plan of the house, and a Picasso-like pencil sketch of a woman, which Marc attributes to his sister Susan.
        Marc adds, "I also have the sales invoice for my parents' 1948 Studebaker 7G, purchased from Flatbush Motors for the grand sum of $1,995.11, including $267.45 worth of options -- a fender ornament, a "Climatizer" (?), a six-tube radio, and a grill guard."
   
    [Rich -- And here, to distract us while we ponder what a "Climatizer" is, I was about to include highlights from the June Alumni Association meeting.  The minutes, if you remember, have to be approved at the following meeting, so these were approved in September, and Emily Kleinman Schreiber mentioned they were posted on the Alumni Association web site.  Only when I went to edit them, I discovered though were labeled June 2008, they were actually minutes from June 2007.  Very familiar old news.]
   
    Finally, the start of an article on Jerry Bittman's cousin, Mark, written by Jesse Wegman and published in The New York Observer on November 25th:  Mark Bittman, The New York Times food columnist and best-selling cookbook author, was ambling unnoticed through the tight aisles of the Fairway at 74th Street and Broadway on a mild Friday evening earlier this month, shopping for dinner. He nosed briefly around the fish counter before settling on a two-pound slab of monkfish. He had some Savoy cabbage at home, but he wasn’t sure what else. This seemed to fortify rather than trouble him. “If you can go get whatever you want,” he said, “there’s no challenge left at all.”
        It was a quick cab ride 25 blocks north to his kitchen, which, as Times health blogger Tara Parker-Pope noted recently, is exceptionally small: 7 feet by 8 feet, Mr. Bittman claimed, but this seemed generous.
    Lanky and loose-framed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt (he has lost 30 pounds over the past couple of years), he rooted through his refrigerator and tossed, among other things, a Ziploc bag full of roasted vegetables on the counter. He had cooked them that morning with Meredith Vieira on "The Today Show," where he is a regular guest.
        “I have chestnuts!” Mr. Bittman said from halfway inside the fridge. “That’s interesting.”  He emerged and considered for a moment the pile of food on his counter. “I think actually we should … sauté the Savoy cabbage, make it taste good, stuff the monkfish with some stuff, put the monkfish on top of the Savoy cabbage, cook a grain with some chestnuts.”
        And there it was. Dinner in three parts, with almost no planning, from the man who has become, like The Joy of Cooking’s Irma Rombauer before him, America’s foremost home cook, the go-to authority on everything from braised spareribs to paratha to pad thai to spaghetti with butter and Parmesan.
    With his next book, Food Matters, due from Simon & Schuster in January, he’d like to change the world. But for the moment, some simpler accolades.
        “I use him for everything from pancakes (he’s great on pancakes) to grilled fish to things like his great recipe for baby artichokes with olives and tomatoes,” wrote Times executive editor Bill Keller in an e-mail, adding that his old yellow edition of Mr. Bittman’s breakthrough book, How to Cook Everything—which has supplanted Joy on many New Yorkers’ countertops—“is all gravy dribbles, wine rings and sauce stains.”
    “It’s the dirtiest cookbook in our kitchen,” said Babbo chef Mario Batali, with whom Mr. Bittman has been gallivanting this fall, along with actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Claudia Bassols, on the PBS food-porn show "Spain … on the Road Again."
        The commenters on Ms. Parker-Pope’s blog seemed more interested in what’s between the lines. “Mark Bittman rules!” … “Mr. Bittman looked so cute” … “I have a major crush on Bittman. Is he married?”
    Answer: Yes. To Kelly Doe, an art director at The Times. Back in the one-bedroom apartment he shares with her, which is decorated in orthodox Upper West Side (floor to ceiling bookshelves, enormous cactus), Mr. Bittman put a pot of water on the stove. His gray hair was shaved close and his round wire-rimmed glasses sat askew on his nose, giving him an air of persistent skepticism.
        The complete article at:  http://www.observer.com/2008/o2/making-minimalist