The Yum Yum Factor

Okay, it's now officially fall and my kid wore his parka to school today so it's time to start up my Friday soup extravaganza. Since I already made my soup of the week and I posted it as my dinner on my other blog, no reEATS  I am kind of cheating by reposting it but I am not making soup again today since I am busy making cardamom dark chocolate truffles. I don't think anyone would begrudge me that pleasure just so I can squeeze in another soup which would only be a resentful pot of soup anyway. I will repost my soup here to get the ball rolling plus and this will bring me back to this blog in a regular way again. On no reEATS,  I have been dedicated to never repeating a dinner recipe for this entire year and I have to be honest, I have been struggling. That task has been so daunting at times that it has been all I can do to make sure that I make something photo worthy twice a week (three times a week every third week) that I have been woefully neglecting The Yum Yum Factor...

We woke up bright and early, got dressed and got out onto the street by 7:45 am.  The one nice thing about waking up that early is that we were greeted with the most beautiful sunrise, reflected in the glass of the new tower, 1WTC, that is being built  in the northwest corner of the World Trade Center site. We sat and looked at that for a while but neither of us wanted to miss one minute of precious time on our first full day exploring the city so we left in search of coffee and too see where the Wall Street Occupiers were camped out. As it turns out, they were basically right beside our hotel so we didn't have to look far. At that point there were only enough protesters to fill the small parkette with little spill over and it didn't seem like a big deal at all. They were all just waking up themselves so it looked like a sea of marathoners taking naps, wrapped in their metallic space blankets. The first thing I wanted to do was go to see the statue of Liberty because ...

I used to go to New York quite a bit in my younger years but it has been at least 20 years since my last visit and Shack had never been. We have kind of entertained the idea of going from time to time but we always ended up going somewhere else. We almost went last summer on our road trip to Newport but decided on Boston instead and then last Xmas, it was on the short list but New Orleans won out. This seemed like the perfect time to go. The fall weather is remarkable right now- New York can be really stinky and humid and terrible in the summer. The kid is old enough to leave home in the care of The Neighbours so we could actually go on our own which is something we have not done in the 12 1/2 years he has been in our possession and seeing that I barely saw Shack all summer due to his crazy work schedule, we jumped at the chance to get away. You don't know Shack but if you did you would understand that driving was the only acceptable way to get there. The car to Shack is what...