Another Fine Time

Dear Sue,


It took too long for you to come back to Buffalo. Drag that we didn't find any art at the "women's arts, music and craft fair" at Asbury Hall, but I did get those old spoons that have been sawed off and engraved into cheese identifiers! Seriously, I love old spoons. Ask Grace for whom I once got one (for her birthday) on Ebay that was already engraved with her name. She was like, eight, and she didn't love it. But it was a gift of a lasting joke about bad presents. And then it got chewed up in the garbage disposal.

I'm glad we got to Betty's for lunch. Clare and I were so happy when we found it last summer. Sometimes I make us all walk there, act like we still do that sometimes...walk. I love this picture you took in Delaware Park when we did that walk.


Dropped Happy and Leonard at Waynewood Kennels this morning on account of our Thanksgiving travel and there was a guy leaving his dog and among other things: a picture of himself for the "suite" wall, and a camera for the staff to take pictures of the dog while it was holidaying there. The girls and I left our dogs with a couple of peanut butter Kongs.


Love, Erin

Shakespeare in the Park - Buffalo Style

Dear Sue, 


The New York Times published a summer theater list that did not include Buffalo's Shakespeare in Delaware Park. They're doing "The Merchant of Venice" from June 16 to July 10 and then "As You Like It" from July 21 to August 14. 



According to the Shakespeare in Delaware Park website, it one of the country's largest and most successful outdoor Shakespeare festival in terms of audience, attracting an average of more than 40,000 patrons each summer. Only New York City draws more attendance for a FREE Shakespeare festival. "Our festival takes place in a historic park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, father of landscape architecture, and the nation's foremost parkmaker. Behind the Park's rose garden stands our grand Tudor-Style stage on a sweeping hill of green." 


I'm going. Come too. We'll sit in the grass of Olmsted's park and drink wine together. And feel super cultured.


One of the reasons on the pro side of the move to Buffalo list was proximity and the easy possibility of going to Ontario for the Shaw or Stratford festivals. I'll meet you there or at something groovy in Toronto.


Love, Erin

Nickel City Chef

Dear Sue,

Clare and I went to a Nickel City Chef contest on Sunday. The secret ingredient was duck eggs. Clare wasn't up for duck eggs so we bought some chicken eggs from the egg farmer, who was there. When I was growing up we gathered duck eggs with the chicken eggs, we had no feeling for their specialness, just their size - big - which was better. Never noticed they cooked any differently as the Nickel City chefs talked about and which I guess everybody but me knows.

But I digress. We thought the challenger Louis Zanghi of The Delaware was cute, funny, a good talker and a good cooker. He didn't win but we're going to seek his food out.  Maybe he can marry Grace, we were also thinking. She was at home working through her imported fancy French stomach flu, so she couldn't judge for herself.

Nickel City Chef is cool. I'd go again. And I like the writing of Regina Schrambling who was one of the judges. A million years ago, when I was working on a cookbook for Saveur magazine I came across a story of hers about parsley, the most underrated herb (we both agree, I love when that happens) which is memorable. I will look for it and link it here - in the meantime, she has a blog so you can look too. And she's married to a Buffalonian, but the kind who doesn't live here.

Love, Erin

Twilight concerts in the vineyard

Erin a great place to meet this summer is at the Jackson Trigg Vineyards (for obvious reasons) to attend the Twilight in the Vineyard summer outdoor concert series. The Niagara estate concerts boast a great line up of Canadian artists and the concerts are performed in their vineyard in one of the most intimate beautiful settings I have ever seen. Performances in 2009/10 included David Usher, Sarah Harmer, Rufus Wainright, Chantal Kreviazuj and Tom Cocherane . Tickets can be purchased with or without dinner and of course wine is everywhere. 2011 concerts will be published soon.

Road Between Our Cities

We loved visiting Buffalo - who knew there was so much to do in 24 hours.

I am convinced that there are some exciting things going on across the border and if anyone can find them, Erin you can.

Looking forward to discovering the road between us.

P.S. Saffron is still haunted by the massive perching Owl with the X eyes that glow in the dark.

Lil Wayne and the Upside is the Downside

Dear Sue,

Tonight Grace has tickets and is very excited about going to Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj at the HSBC Arena. The ticket has been lost, stolen, returned, ripped in half- it's been a long and tumultuous lead-up. She's never been to an arena show without an adult - it's a rite of passage! My first was the Beach Boys at the Montreal Forum on a Labor Day weekend a million years ago. My mother had taken me to shows before then, I remember my siblings sleeping on the dark sticky floor of the Forum at an Eagles concert... But I digress.

Grace was going to take the Buffalo subway which stops one block away from us and on event nights goes directly to the HSBC. Then she was going to take it home again. We took it Cirque de Soleil (we'd of paid extra for no clowns show) and a Sabres game this winter. And to a Bisons baseball game when we first moved here. I wasn't anxious those times but perhaps we're naive New Yorkers? Here's a difference between NYC and Buffalo: it turns out that public transport including taxis is considered sketchy.

Does the crowd maraude after a show? Is the train particularly unsafe after a concert? All will be revealed in the fullness of time (or tomorrow's Buffalo News). What has been revealed is that kids are dependent here until they can drive themselves - a whole other topic. One of the things that's been beautiful about Buffalo is that it turned back the clock on Grace's fast track to adulthood - the downside is I'll be in the car at midnight.

Love, Erin

Bloomberg is Small

Dear Sue,


The mayor of New York City has exhibited himself to be a most paradoxical creature: the provincially minded snob.


"Buffalo would love to have our problems. There's an awful lot of free space in Buffalo, New York, if you want to go there. I don't think you do." New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, yesterday. 


While its unimaginable to Bloomberg, there are lots of us up here living nice full lives. Ex New Yorkers, no less.  By choice. Not by horrible happenstance. The mayor of Buffalo is from... Queens. 


Buffalo still has a middle class. NYC is great if you're really really rich. Like Bloomberg.