bagels and roses

[redbird]

I spent last night at adrian's. Her building's hot water stopped working sometime yesterday, and there was still no hot water this morning. She very much wanted a shower, so instead of having lunch there (as we normally would have), we pulled on clothes and came over to my apartment.

We stopped on the way to get bagels at Bagelsaurus: got off the 77 bus at Porter Square and walked down Mass Ave to the bagel place. I took my mask off briefly, so I could smell the rugosa roses that had just started to bloom alongside Mass Ave. This is early for those roses (at least, I think it is, to the extent that means anything anymore), but I missed them entirely last year: I saw some through bus windows, but didn't think to get out, visit the flowers, and get on the next bus, and then the season was over.

I wouldn't have stopped at Bagelsaurus on a Sunday on my own, because the line on weekends stretches well outside the door, and the inside of the shop is crowded then, but Adrian was comfortable going in there masked, and I'm comfortable with her doing so, for something that brief. We then walked to the next bus stop inbound, and got a 96 to the end of the line, half a block from the farmers market. So we bought smoked salmon ("nova lox" and steelhead trout pate from the Boston Fish Company), plus frozen ravioli, peach jam, and apple cider, brought them home to Belmont, and had an excellent lunch.

The 71 and 73 were rerouted for a street fair, which is part of why we wound up at the farmers market; I'd been going to go back out after lunch and buy ice cream, and then I thought about a warm Sunday afternoon, and a street fair, and decided this would not be a good day for me to go to a small ice cream shop a block from Harvard Square. The farmers market is twice a week; Lizzy's is now open every afternoon and evening.

Comments

[sine_nomine]

All sounds lovely, and tasty, too!

As a former New Yorker, I presume you know that nova lox and smoked salmon are different things entirely (though, of course, both salmon products).

[redbird]

This was what we called novy back home, "nova lox" is what the people selling it here call it. Belly lox is too salty for me; I can't remember whether that was always true, because what I remember being eager for as a kid was the "lox wings," as the smoked fish place in Maspeth called the fins. That store was mostly a wholesaler, but would sell in retail quantities on the weekend. It wasn't really accessible by transit, so I haven't been there since I lived with my parents, who would drive there from Briarwood*.

*Maspeth and Briarwood are both neighborhoods in Queens, as you likely know but other readers may not.

[sine_nomine]

Well right novy because, in NY speak, final a usually turns into a y or an er; my uncle (z'l) always referred to his wife as Linder. My father (z'l) always noted that nova wasn't actually lox, because it was prepared differently. Totally different texture, also, and it's rare (but not impossible) to get hand-cut.

People's tastes change, of course, so maybe not always too salty for you, though I don't know that the fins were only belly lox... certainly they, the jaws, and anything else that the cutters at Zabar's tossed into the scraps were what my mother (z'l) went after whole hog, so to speak.

I certainly know of the place in Maspeth but, with Mom from the UWS and Dad (and my uncle and grandfather (z'l) from Brooklyn and then the Island, we never went. I envy your shopping experience!

[redbird]

On the other hand, I think I was already an adult and living with cattitude in Manhattan the first time I went to Zabar's. I know I found Russ and Daughters, down on the Lower East Side, on my own. We got lox or novy there occasionally, smoked whitefish more often. After my grandfather died, I went there and got a smoked whitefish to take to my aunt's house, where my grandmother was sitting shiva.

[sine_nomine]

Ah Russ and Daughters!!!

And oh I love smoked whitefish.