Lifestyle

by Lisa Barlow

ShopsinsL93 (2) One of the things I love most about living over the F train in Brooklyn is that I am never hungry for very long. All I have to do is think about lunch and in the space of 15 minutes, I might have traveled from my quiet kitchen to the cacophonous din of the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side where I will be sitting at the counter at Shopsins eating the best chicken soup of my life.

Kenny Shopsin is legendary in New York. With his big girth and wild look, he is half culinary wizard and half troll under the bridge. For years he bellicosely presided over a storefront on Bedford Street in Greenwich Village that simply said “GROCERY” over the door, but everyone referred to as Kenny’s or Shopsins.

In my twenties, eating lunch at Shopsins became something of a regular occurrence. The restaurant was originally a real grocery store, but it had morphed one day into a grocery store that served food. There were a few tables next to the shelves of canned goods, a window booth, stools along the counter and an upright piano where it wasn’t uncommon to see one of the Shopsins' 5 kids or a customer banging at the keys. Kenny was behind the counter tossing ingredients into pans and onto plates. His wife, Eve, was alternately bussing dishes and hoisting a baby onto her hip as she served a burger. There would also be a fair amount of yelling, which was fine unless it was directed at you. And if there wasn’t yelling, there was bound to be something else to shock.

Awareness into Action: Galamsey David Byars and Jenny Jacobi left last year's Mountainfilm with the same inspiration and desire to do good that many take away from Telluride's film and philanthropy festival. Not wanting to lose this feeling, they began a serious campaign to...

[click "Play" to hear Ashley's take on big jewelry]   Telluride's weather changes at least as quickly as the mood of our country's electorate. Quicker. So we have all become accustomed to the concept of layering. But Ashley Deppen of Telluride's ever popular Two...

Editor's note: For eight years, Telluride local/mountaineer Ben Clark and a few friends/professional colleagues have made Spring treks to the majestic Himalayas. Follow his adventures on Telluride Inside... and Out, including links to his regular podcasts. If you have missed any of Ben's posts, just type "Ben Clark" into Lijit Search to find them all.

-2 We made it, we skied it, we are done in under two weeks with one ascent and one amazing descent. Our goal, to follow our noses to some of the best snow in Nepal, has been a success. Our summit day on Thorung peak occurred four days ago and we now sit in the comfort of Pokhara Nepal, 19,000 feet lower.

 

by Lisa Barlow

Tomato PIes2 My favorite all time surprise present wasn’t a big fat check or anything shiny under the Christmas tree. It was a pizza…a large clam pizza that had traveled 75 miles in the trunk of a car to reach me, stiff and cold in a grease-stained box. I couldn’t have been more happily startled than if it had been a bouquet of roses or a string of pearls. My dad, the inspired giver, knew exactly how to cheer up a housebound new mother with a colicky infant.
 
Pepe’s Pizza, for those of you who have never been to New Haven, CT, is the Holy Grail of tomato pies. That’s arguable, of course, and I’ve had many a heated discussion while rooting for my team pie. In fact, in the old days when I was a student in New Haven, one of the great distinguishers was “Sally’s or a Pepe’s?” I was a Sally’s girl then, with a favorite booth and a favorite Frank song on the jukebox. Sinatra had his favorite booth there too. Though I never saw him in the restaurant, a laminated photo of Ol’ Blue Eyes was framed above the seat closest to the cash register.

(Ed. note: Susan and Clint are now back at their desks in Telluride. This is a delayed post)

IMGP1997 Telluride Inside... and Out returned from Greece last night  but there are still a few loose ends to tie up regarding our three memorable weeks on the road. For those who might be considering following more or less in our footsteps all the way through the doors of our hotels, here's the bottom line: There were places to rest and places to nest, all hits, no misses and a few homeruns.

The places to rest were mostly boutiquey, (read relatively small, including several family hotels our driver,  Nikolas, on the mainland found for us) very good, with comfortable rooms, high speed(ish) Internet and helpful, courteous service from a caring staff (or owners in the case of the family-owned places).

IMGP2351 I woke up in my own bed in Telluride this morning, wondering where I was, taking a few moments to calculate the best way to the bathroom. Susan and I left Athens November 5, the end of three fascinating  weeks on mainland Greece and Crete. We have stories, photos, memories of beautiful places and a number of new friends. (Also a few more wrap up posts.)

IMGP2352 Our last night in Greece was in Glyfada, now an upscale suburb of Athens. I remember Glyfada as a quiet seaside village from my time living there while on temporary assignment flying with Olympic Airways in 1972. I tried unsuccessfully to find the street where we lived; the small houses set in spacious yards with grape arbors and lemon trees have been replaced by blocks of new apartment buildings. The one small harbor with a few sailboats and mostly wooden fishing craft has morphed into three marinas with mostly pleasure craft. Time marches on, and it had been 38 years since I lived there. The morning of our departure our driver, Nikolas, seemed genuinely sad to see us go.

IMGP2325 (Ed. note: Susan and Clint are back in the US and will be at our desks in Telluride starting November 7.)

It's Sunday. Since Sunday is the traditional day of worship in America, Telluride Inside... and Out thought it might be a good day to write about a place of worship.

The place is not one of Greece's many awe-inspiring monasteries, including the majestic sextet we viewed at Meteora. It is not a church, such as the 10th-century Church of Dormition in Kalabaka, a quick stop, thanks to our driver Nikolas Vogiatzakis' local knowledge about hidden gems. The little church was built on the back of a former temple to Apollo, which was  torched by the Nazis in revenge for Greece's very brave and stubborn resistance during WWII. (The Nazis' thumbprint remains in the blackened frescoes on the church walls.)

Deboned birdsBy Lisa Barlow

Why did the turducken cross the road? Probably to outrun its reputation. Just saying “turducken” out loud has me smirking. And recollecting “The Daily Show” a while back when it was suggested that the Kurds, Iraq and Turkey should gather together to form a new nation called Turducken.

Picture the turducken and you imagine a mythical creature that might resemble a cross between the Harry Potter hippogryph and the hapless dodo, a bird that lumbers around not really sure of what it is.

IMGP2223 (Editor's note: Susan & Clint arrived back in the US November 3 and will be home in Telluride later this week)

After two wonderful weeks on Crete, Telluride Inside... and Out was back on the Greek mainland. Our driver, Nikolas Vogiatzakis, picked us up at the Athens airport early Sunday morning and we headed north, bound for Meteora.

What you first need to know about Meteora is that the region once hosted about 20 monasteries, each perched on top of its own rock monolith. There are now six monasteries one can visit, and as we look at them from below, one question comes to mind: "How did they do it?"