In a pickle? Have some pop psych with your pandemic pickle sandwich!

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The Perfect Sandwich

I used to go home with Patty Delewski most days after high school and eat peanut butter and pickles on Saltine crackers. Patty’s Polish father grew his own cucumbers in their back garden and made his own bread and butter pickles. Who knew they would go great with Skippys? I then asked my mother to put pickles in almost all my brown bag sandwiches. Baloney, mayo and pickles on toasted white bread rubbed with garlic was a favorite.

 My penchant for pickles earned me the nickname “Picklenose” at the H.S. lunch table and on swim team and for the latter, I leaned into the fetish and bought a Speedo suit that had a green pickle-ish pattern. Turns out I was years before the curve, with artisanal pickles and kimchi at every market and hipsters now pickling everything, especially for quarantine lockdown projects.

So you can imagine how pleased I was to see that Daniel Pink’s “perfect pandemic lunch”, as broadcast on his “Pinkcast,” was a simple sandwich of sliced bread, peanut butter, bread and butter pickles and Sriracha! He’s absolutely right that the combo has a Thai taste, and he’s absolutely right that it has to bread and butter pickles. No dill or sour! But you could spice things up by putting in PickleLicious’s crisp and hot sweet horseradish pickles. Also, I’ll add my own personal advice. Don’t, under any circumstance, use a runny, oily “natural” peanut butter, but only a Skippy or Jif creamy one. After trying both, I realized you need the heft of a commercial peanut butter to keep pickle juice from soggying your sandwich. And I’d even say use crisp bread and butter slices instead of the thinly sliced ones I had purchased from the Amish vendor at our local Farmer’s Market (which I have to squeeze with a paper towel to get them dry enough for the sandwich).

 Anyway, try Daniel Pink’s pandemic sandwich. It wins a place in my pantheon of “perfect sandwiches.” What’s more, try Daniel Pink. I not only have a penchant for pickles, but I also like self-help and pop psych in easily digestible portions. We all could use some pick-me-ups or what everyone calls “hacks” to get through this tough time. Here are some people I listen to or read.

 Daniel Pink – Loveably nerdy and, I think, the “King of Concise, Daniel Pink is the author of several bestselling books on business, work, creativity and human behavior. Subscribe to his pithy “Pinkcasts”for quick insights or fixes (or even an occasional sandwich recipe!).

Ozon Varol - I first heard this former Turkish rocket scientist turned lawyer turned contrarian thinker on Gretchen Rubin’s Happier podcast, (more on the mother of all "happiness hacks” later!). I was so impressed and motivated by the ways he talked about dreaming big and re-imaginging the status quo that I bought his book, Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life.

Smarter Living - While this section of the New York Times seems geared toward millennials, I occasionally find articles that are insightful and downright helpful. I often mail them to millennial and GenX son and daughter! The one I found most useful is on the importance of what sociologist Mark Granovetter calls “weak ties,” the neighbor you say hi to in the lobby, the person you see at the dog run or some of the outer fringe of your Facebook friends. Realizing the importance of weak ties to one’s well being and to network for new jobs or even love relationships also makes one more kind. We’re all so very interconnected, even if “virtually” at this time.

Before Breakfast - A friend told me about this quickie (5 minute) podcast that offers productivity tips concisely and, hopefully, before breakfast, to give us the little kick in the butt we need during these pandemic blurred days. While I like host Laura Vanderkam’s nuggets of advice—like using BLUF for emails (Bottom Line Up Front)—I seriously do not like her voice, which is stilted and almost robotic. So I put music on and listen to it while I do my morning yoga. It’s only 5 minutes, after all!

The Daily Calm - Now, I DO like…no I’m addicted to the voice of Tamara Leavitt who narrates all The Daily Calm guided meditations for the Calm app. This is not technically a hack, but I find this app, which is $59/year, invaluable for when I need soothing guidance. I love the panic SOS guided meditation that helps you calm down through breathing exercises.

Happier - I am both comforted and irritated by Gretchen Rubin, who has made her pursuit of happiness a small industry with her books, blogs, courses, and her Happier podcast. I have to say I love the comfortable banter between “upholder” do-gooder Gretchen and her more lax, “obliger” sister, Liz Craft. If you don’t know what an upholder and obliger is, you can take GR’s “Four Tendencies” quiz here. It genuinely is enlightening. While I’m irritated by GR’s endless promotion of herself and her brand or her devotion to topics like “A Deep Dive into Ways to Display Your Favorite Quotations,” I like her quirky intelligence, her enthusiasm for and knowledge of what she loves. I’m inspired by her dedication to her readers and listeners and sheer productivity. And on top of this, she’s a voracious reader; and I’m always intrigued (and cowed) to see the book spines in her weekly #gretchenrubinreads Instagram posts.

Our Reimagined Dining Scene Thrives in Astoria—For Now!

The pop-up restaurants leaning into the avenues and side streets of New York City have been bright spots in this dark time of the coronavirus pandemic, often brimming with so much greenery that we are happy at least florists are doing a brisk business. They are jerry-rigged, built of recycled boards, painted in haste, festooned with party lights, and contain little knots of humans, un-distanced, clustered around each table remind me of New York. Remember, New York? How we’d unthinkingly brush up against each other in the subway, crowd eight around one restaurant table for four. It hurts, doesn’t it? Remembering New York.

That’s why we must be faithful to this new, reimagined, hopefully temporary, New York. To the pop-up restaurants that may not even last through the nippy weather of fall, to the wait for one of the scant tables in the 25% capacity seating inside, to the long line for apples and eggs, snaking around the block at your local Farmer’s Market, to the many parks showing us that nature was never on lockdown. We saw a Northern flicker in Prospect Park. Using iNaturalist, the Chef has become an amateur naturalist, with a specialty in weeds…knotweed, pokeberry, purple loosestrife, and prickly sowthistle.

But I’m losing the thread, which leads to Astoria, where we went one warm September weekend to meet my friend, Johanna, from my Scandinavia House Knitting Group, which has been my lifeline, via Zoom, during these dark months. We met at Astoria Bier and Cheese (Broadway), bypassing the pop-up tented seating in front for the sweet hidden garden in back. We started with a big soft pretzel and luscious housemade orange bier cheese ($7). I never know what’s in beer cheese; it reminds me of a hipster version of my mom’s 60’s staple, Velveeta, but it’s yummy. And a pickle plate, too with lip-puckering tomatoes and peppers in the mix.

Amply and imaginatively filled, AB&C’s sandwiches are a true NYC Snack Attack. I had a grilled cheese, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” ($10). The sweet berry jam and the raisins in the sturdy oat/pecan/raisin bread were a wonderful complement to the tang of the young Manchego, goat cheddar and chėvre. The Chef’s “Broadway Goddess,” ($10.00) another vegetarian option, was packed with an unlikely but perfect combo of melted gruyere, spicy pickle chips, red onion, tomato, arugula and honey mustard. Pickles make every sandwich better (more on which in a coming post)! Johanna, alas, was disappointed with her “Ham and Brie Pretzelwich” ($10). I mean, c’mon, you can’t call a sandwich a “pretzelwich” but be out of pretzel bread! Still Johanna was a good sport and tucked into her Ciabatta clad city ham, brie fermier, mustard and cornichon with gusto. And of course we had “bier,” too. The Chef’s quaff: a Von Trapp pilsner.

Note: I couldn’t leave AB&C without visiting Kim Jong-il and you shouldn’t either. In the bathroom there is a wall sized painting of the late dictator milking a cow by Caryn Cast, AB&C’s resident artist who does their humorous chalkboards. When I saw her Instagram handle on that mural I became an ardent follower, even buying her wonderful “Fuck Kale” print to put at the entry to our kitchen!

 After our repast, we had fun tootling around Astoria. Being largely confined to Morningside Heights, which is a shadow of itself without the throngs of Columbia and Barnard students, it was great to see Astoria’s vibrancy. Years ago, I only thought of Astoria as the place to go for Greek food. Yet, now this nabe boasts restaurants from as many nations as are represented in its something-for-everyone Euro Market.  There’s Moroccan food at Merzouka (where I can find my beloved m’smen bread), tons of Egyptian hookah bars and Egyptian clay pot cookery at Mombar and Balkan bureks at Djerdan. Pete Wells gave one star to Freakin Rican, a Puerto Rican venue famous for its bacaolitos, mofungo and pernil. Johanna gave her own star to Bund, which specializes in “Shanghainese” dumplings and noodles. Not only are the restaurants so varied, but they also have put more oomph into their pop-ups than in our neighborhood or the Upper West Side.

As I write this, I know the time for these pop-up restaurants is limited. Some restaurants on the Upper West Side, like Café du Soleil*, have put in “Space Bubbles,” like large see-through tents for diners.*  Predictably, the lovable curmudgeons and yentas who populate the comments section of the West Side Rag —with handles like ishkibbible, matzohmama or crankypants—are already complaining about them taking up too much space, being possibly unsanitary or like “being inside a condom.” Others beg to differ, saying, “C’mon. These restaurants have to make a living!” For now, I’m in awe of their spirit and ingenuity. If you can dine out safely and warmly, you’ll be helping New York become the New York we remember.

*Every Thursday Cafe du Soleil has an amazing special: three course dinners for two with a bottle of house wine (we had a great Côte-du-Rhone) for only $79!!

Astoria Bier & Cheese (Broadway)
3414 Broadway, Astoria
(718) 545-5588

Astoria Bier & Cheese (Ditmars)
35-11 Ditmars Blvd., Astoria
(718) 255-6982