Marching with the Bloggers, A Broken Oven and Dinner for 15

Yesterday was gay pride here in NYC, the annual parade and celebration of the Stonewall Riots which happened 41 years ago, kick starting the LGBT movement.

Over the years I've gone from being very involved (the ACT UP days) to being totally disinterested. This year when I saw that there was going to be a gay bloggers group marching that it would be a good opportunity to meet some fellow bloggers so I had an Urbanfoodguy
t-shirt made up and off I went. Not, I have to admit, without a little bit of trepidation. I'm horribly self-conscious and oddly awkward in situations where I don't know anyone and am walking down Fifth Avenue with thousands of people all around cheering. As it turned out my anxiety was for naught, it was a friendly group of people and by the half way point I was even helping hold the banner. It was a lot of fun and I was particularly thrilled to be able to chat with Joe Jervis whose blog JoeMyGod is an inspiration to me and a daily read in our house.

The gay rugby team walked in front of us.

The scene below the Empire State building.

Joe Jervis.
Christopher street.


There is a great missed food opportunity here, at the end of the parade everyone is thirsty and peckish, but there isn't really any good food. Sure there are the usual street vendors selling water, ice cream and mystery meat, but it seems to me to be a perfect opportunity to have some more interesting, local foods, like maybe: People's Pops or a MIL Kimchee and Cheese Curd Sandwiches on Ciabatta from Saxelby Cheese or maybe a little Porcetta on a bun or a Lukes Lobster Roll? At the very least couldn't we have interesting, humanely raised, local, farmed meat sausages and hot dogs from the Meat Hook? Just a thought.

So after my exhilarating walk down Fifth Avenue I got home and was busily doing all the last minute preparations when I turn the oven on to toast some sesame seeds, about 5 minutes later I check the temperature on the stove and see it's not getting hotter. I wait and I wait only to come to the panicked realized that our fancy ass Bosch stove is broken.

Excuse me while I sound my age and go on a brief rant about built in obsolescence.

Never in my life have I ever lived anywhere or heard of anyone who stove broke. Our neighbors who saved the day by letting me use their stove have the original basic non electric, small, cheap stove that the unit came with and was installed in 1959, it works just fine, it doesn't have n interior light or even something that tells you the temperature, but you know what? It works and works and continues to work because it's not dependent on anything other than the gas connection and the pilot light to work. So my recommendation to any of you out there who think you want to get the fancy ass stove with all the bells, whistles, computerized electric doo hingy's? Don't waste your money, buy an non computerized basic stove.

OK thanks for putting up with that.

All in all it was a great day and I have two new recipes to post, a spinach pizza that is all creamy bechamel and local cheesey melted goodness and a sour cherry crumble that's served with chocolate sauce! Yummy.