Living Large in Lambertville New Jersey at El Tule Restaurant

me and my tacutacu at El Tule

For a town of around 4,000 souls, Lambertville, New Jersey has a  lot of restaurants, thirty six to be exact.  From luncheonettes to four star palaces of gustatory delight, Lambertville has it all, and as you can imagine, the competition is fierce.  Did I mention that Lambertville is where I live and that I like to eat out?  Oh well, you get the picture.

 In the twelve years that I have lived in Lambertville, what is now El Tule  Mexican Peruvian Restaurant has had at least three incarnations,  El Tule is just the latest, and for my money it is absolutely the best.  It has quickly become a town institution and a destination for visiting foodies from New York and Philadelphia.

 I've been going there almost since it opened about two years ago.  Peruvian cuisine is a whole new world for me and at El Tule, where the food is great and the friendly staff even better, I get to explore it at leisure.   In summer I eat outside, usually with a group of friends,  in  a cozy patio,  under the protection of a big umbrella. At night there are twinkling lights and often a cool river breeze. But, indoors or out, summer or winter, there is a wonderful, informality and welcoming feeling projected by the family that owns and runs El Tule.  They clearly love what they are doing.  There is both a Mexican chef and a Peruvian chef. Both are excellent, but dine at El Tule one or two times and you will see that  these two Latin cuisines are as different from each other as, let's say,  French and Greek cooking.  Learning about both cultures and cuisines at El Tule is like being invited into a family home for dinner.  It's a marvelous experience.

  I find it hypnotic. I'm fascinated by tacu tacu and ceviche and the use of unfamiliar and delicious varieties of corn, peppers and delicate herbs in the Peruvian dishes.  I love the robust, more familiar flavors of the Mexican platters as well.  They bring back wonderful memories of visits south of the border.

A couple of months ago I met a friend there on a Wednesday night for an early dinner.  The place was packed as usual and there was a guy with a wildly professional looking camera walking around videotaping the place.   What's up?  I asked the owner.  Turned out they were from Wildemedia TV News  doing a segment for a feature of theirs called  Latin Flare  and guess what, they ended up interviewing me and my friend Karen, the foodie, for the segment.  I'm in heaven. I finally got my big 15 minutes on  YouTube.

 What more could a girl want.  THIS is living large in Lambertville, for sure

The House that Eat,Pray,Love Built

source: NJ.com

A couple of weeks ago I met Liz Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love-- yes I really did.  I was in Frenchtown with a friend, had brunch in a great organic restaurant called The Lovin Oven and then wandered next door to Two Buttons, a cavernous warehouse full of beautiful and exotic goodies owned by best selling author, Liz Gilbert. With characteristic humor she refers to the place as " the house that Eat, Pray, Love built.

Guess who was in Two Buttons?  Yup-- Liz.  She stuck out her hand, smiled and said " Hi, I"m Liz"  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  We talked for all of about two minutes and then went our separate ways but here's my impression of the woman who became a global phenom for writing the book that has just become a movie starring Julia Roberts.

  Now, wouldn't it turn your head to have Julia Roberts play you on the silver screen?  Not Liz She really is something special.Not a movie star-- not a trace of narcissism or insecurity--no hunger for fame-- instead she exudes a down to earth serenity and if there is any hunger in her energy, it is for life itself.  She seems greedy for new experiences and nothing else.

She carries a lot of energy around her and a definite sense of having her values on straight.  She knows who she is, what she wants and where she is going.  It's a rare and refreshing quality.  No wonder the book is a best seller.

 She was a delight and so is Two Buttons. It is chock full of everything from statues and silks to tiny trinkets and childrens toys.  There's no slick marketing plan here and clearly money is not the major emphasis. This is clearly a joyful, personal, people to people effort reflecting the taste of the owners and the work of people they know.  Nobody tries to sell you anything and you are free to wander the aisles, touching, feeling, looking and just enjoying the sometimes oddball collection of objects.

You might be offered a complimentary bag of fresh hot popcorn or a cup of coffee to keep you happy, but nobody will apply a hard sell or bother you in any way.   Friends and neighbors drop by and the whole ambiance is like a cross between a Buddhist monastery and an old fashioned general store.  Eat, Pray, Love has definitely built a magical emporium by the banks of the Delaware River.

It is definitely worth a visit and maybe, if you are lucky, you too will meet Liz Gilbert.

Strawberry Time in New Jersey

It's Strawberry time here in Central New Jersey--the time of year when I really know why they call us the "Garden State" For a brief shining moment, my local farm market will have small succulent, flavorful, fresh picked local strawberries for sale and I will be gorging on them every day until the season is over ( which, sadly, will be soon)

Yes, I can buy strawberries all year long at the super market, but I don't bother. I don't like the cardboard taste of those huge, over fertilized, under ripened things that are flown in off season from California Mexico or even Chile and Argentina. No taste and too many food miles for me. I just wait until June every year and go wild.

And now a plug for my local farm market. The Homestead Farm Market in Lambertville, NJ. Right now they not only have baskets of yummy locally grown strawberries, but a home baked strawberry rhubarb pie that is to die for. Stop by and pick one up if you're in the neighborhood.

photo by http://www.ferdas.com/ Thanks

Flying the Friendly Streets of New Jersey

What have we here? It's a jet plane coming around a friendly corner in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It's the remains of US Airways ill-fated flight 1549 and I don't know where they are going with it, but they obviously took the scenic route to avoid traffic. I think next time they should consider using the Turnpike, don't you? That is one sharp turn.

The skies weren't so friendly to US Airways flight 1549 back in January. You probably remember. The whole world watched as Capt Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landed a jet plane in the middle of the Hudson River without the loss of one human life. It was a miracle and it was captured while it was happening on cellphone cameras and in twitter updates. It was relayed around the world in seconds in an amazing interactive demonstration of the power of the new media. The print and TV crowd did their thing too, interviewing survivors and covering the well deserved honors heaped on Capt. Sullenberger by a grateful nation for weeks afterward. Not a day went by without a mention of some kind.

Then suddenly it was over. Everyone moved on to the next big thing and the "miracle on the Hudson" just wasn't news anymore. Meanwhile, the wreckage of the Airbus 320 was towed to Battery Park City and moored to a bulkhead just north of the World Financial Center where investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board spent weeks giving it a thorough going over.

Once the inspection was done, the damaged plane had to be taken somewhere and here it is on its way. A friend emailed me this picture of it passing unheralded by the press, through East Rutherford, New Jersey. Just a footnote to history. I'm not even sure how recently this happened since there was zero press coverage. Even celebrity jet planes only get 15 minutes of fame these days, it seems.

photo credit: Beverly Leavell