Let's Talk About Food (Seventh Leg)

It's about time that I connected the dots to the name of this blog ... "Will Walk For Food..."

As anyone who knows Nature Girl and me, we will do (practically) anything for food. Now we're talking about my "real sport" ... great eating! Sure, recent medical issues have narrowed the scope of my actual intake (most of the time), but my mind is as filled with delicious thoughts of the next meal, and the one after that, and the one next Tuesday, and the ones during our next vacation...I can't remember the name of someone I met two minutes ago, but can tell you the name of the street in any given city where one of my favorite restaurants resides. What can I say...I love eating and especially eating out!

Aside from the burning question that informed this stroll -- can you actually walk from the top to the bottom of Manhattan along the Hudson River without losing sight of the river -- the second, and possibly stronger, motive had to do with an article I read at the beginning of the summer that talked about alfresco food stands and cafes near Inwood Park and down through West Harlem that seemed close to the river. Rather than just drive to each of them, I opted for a good way to keep the calorie count down, even if some of the dishes consumed were a tad on the heavy or fat-laden side.

I believe it was just after noon as we arrived in a picnic area around 155th Street (one of the sites you can see from the West Side Highway, usually full-to-bursting with cars and people, clustered around the few picnic tables or set up around a grill with all manner of coolers and cookout accoutrement's...competing Latino music blasting from speakers at nearly every site.Hunger pangs were starting to become an issue (as I said earlier, I ate very little breakfast, which was a definite mistake) and the heat was beginning to deplete what inner resources I had stored up from last night's dinner (at a good seafood restaurant in Irvington, Westchester County, called River City Grille). It was then that we realized that we actually hadn't seen any stand or cafe at along the trek -- not even the ubiquitous city hot dog carts (my dad's favorite "dirty water dogs")! Would this mean that we'd have to "beg for food" from one of the many barbecues and picnics we were passing? Or, take a detour from the "straight and narrow" and break our own rule of losing sight of the river for some vittles on Broadway?

Just as I was calculating how much 'cue I could get from nearby happy campers in a trade for NG's services, a wonderful mirage appeared on the horizon...in the form of a food truck! Oh joy...oh rapture...oh salvation from certain starvation! As we got closer, it got even better...Though, by this time, I would have lived with cold, miserable gruel, the woman was serving what looked like manna from heaven. Puerto Rican fare...something akin to chicken empanadas, fried pork, non-sweet plantains -- and cold sodas and water. Could life be more perfect? We stopped salivating long enough to give her our orders,

took the food to nearby benches overlooking the Hudson...let the eating begin!

With a huge squirt or three of lime, that pork was singing...and doing a "happy dance" in my mouth. The pork had just the right amount of fat to keep the meat moist...and the plantains helped offset the fat with their starchy texture and almost no real flavor. Visions of a sugar rush danced in my head...but hoped the exercise from the walking would offset it a bit. Time to throw in a commercial message from the people who help keep my body and soul together. A great wine for this meal would easily have been Valentin Bianchi's Elsa or Famiglia Bianchi Malbecs...two great and inexpensive examples of this extremely "garlic and meat-friendly" red wine (so now everyone knows what I do for a living -- publicize wine). But, all promotion aside, the pork and Argentine Malbec would be a terrific pairing (so would Syrah and probably South African Pinotage, like those from Simonsig). Of course, with the temperature certainly around 90 by this time, cold water seemed more in order.

We sat there, happily munching away, and feasting on this view:

After about 15 minutes, we were fortified and back on our feet for what would soon be our next surprising discovery on the stroll...