Dinner c/o Orchard Market & Cafe

After we said our goodbyes to B. and D. we gathered ourselves up and went to Orchard Market & Cafe for a nice Persian meal. The place is BYO, so Dad brought a white wine that particularly lovely. 

We shared their hummus and an eggplant and artichoke dish, which was described as: layers of eggplant and artichokes & Bulgarian feta cheese smothered in a tangy-sweet dill dijon mustard sauce. It was quite sweet. Surprisingly so. Interesting.

I also ordered the salad shirazi, which I was happy to enjoy. Gotta love sumac.

I chose the combo kabob for my main meal, which was way more food than I could actually deal with. Chicken, koobiedeh, and a half skewer of filet mignon. Tasty stuff. The onion was really spicy, like shockingly so.

Preakness Day

I am way behind on this here blog. Just last night I had a barbeque, from which there are many a photograph of food and revelry I'd like to share. But last weekend I went to Cayuga Lake, and have many a beautiful picture from that trip that I"d like to properly share with the internet. But first we have to wade through the remaining meals and images of the weekend before that. So here we go. The day of the Preakness was a beautiful one. Warm but not unbearably so. Throughout the day I made a number of small bets that generally returned my investment...bet $6, get about $6. So I wasn't a high roller but I was happy to at least have winning tickets from time to time.

The staff and the track work hard and seem rather unimpressed by the whole thing. The ladies in the bathroom told me that they don't get breaks, they're cleaning and filling soap dispensers for the length of the event. That sounded pretty much miserable, so I was kind of amazed by how friendly they were to the masses of women rolling in and out.

This time I wore the fascinator that J. gave me this past November. Dad wore his hat this way just for the silliness of the photograph.

Running.

Flying.

Landing.

This lady checked each horse's mouth. I assumed because they have an identifying tattoo there so she could be sure that each horse was supposed to be where it was?

We were not absolutely nearby Bob Baffert and his crew...but we weren't totally far away either. You can make him out in the yellow tie, sitting next to his son Bode, for which Bodemeister (came in second at both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness) is named. Bode Miller, who is the reason the son has the name was also there.

I thought this was a pretty neat photo. Lighting isn't perfect, but you do what you can with what you have.

Mike Smith slightly removed from the hoopla behind him.

Mike Smith, Baffert and Bode, all part of the crowd.

Yup.

People looking at things.

The parade.

Such good posture.

This lady does the awkward 'ride up to the winning horse just after the race in order to get the jockey's first thoughts and reactions' interview.

I'll Have Another...had another win.

Creative Cause was a little frisky.

And somehow I have no decent photographs of the race itself. I tried taking a video and I think that was probably a mistake and a misplacement of my energies. This was a good day at the races, but I was ready to go after the Preakness. The parking lot after the main even was just a crazy mess of humanity and honking and buses making incredibly daring angles and drunk women crying and drunk women stumbling and drunk women in golf carts. Thanks to my father for the two day experience, which was quite fun. 

Crabs! Crabs! Crabs! c/o The Crackpot

After our first day of races, my father had long hoped we would go get crabs. In fact, our cousin V. had made a reservation at one place for that explicit purpose. But then my father read about another place and we made a slight change to the location and ended up at The Crackpot. There was a bit of confusion upon our arrival in as far as they didn't have any record of our reservation, but they quickly put a table together and we got down to the business at hand. Our server was a friendly dude generally undaunted by our myriad requests. Most all of us enjoyed half cream of crab, half Maryland crab soup. The overall opinion was that it was good to do the half and half. I love me cream and fat, that's no lie, but a full cup of the cream of crab might have been overdoing it, even for me. But the mix between the cream-based soup and the more tomato-based version, well, it worked and evened out nicely.

Then we got down to crabs. I think we ordered a few dozen? I can't really remember the last time I sat at a table with others and just ripped into a pile of crabs, though I'd imagine it would have been in Maryland in my backyard or the backyard of D. and B.  CP and I enjoyed the 'dumps' at Oyster House, but that was a negligible amount of crab compared to this. I feared I wouldn't remember how to get to the gold mine of crab in the carapace (correct word?) of the crab...but that was a fear quickly unfounded by the dexterity and audacity of my fingers.

Of course there are no photographs of this efficiency due to the fact that my fingers were absolutely crusted with Old Bay, making it difficult to pick up a camera without accidentally giving it the look of a crab...and I certainly didn't want anyone to mistakenly take a mallet to my camera.

These crabs weren't from Maryland. They were from the Gulf. Still entirely tasty and enjoyable. I was almost as taken with the detritus and remnants of our feast as I was of the actual crabs. We also had corn, which honestly was a little lacking as far as taste and look. Anemic corn.

My pile.

A lovely and fun meal. Thanks goes to my father!

Black Eyed Susan Day At Pimlico Racetrack, In Reverse

This year's immediate group of Preakness attendees included me, my father, D an B, V and M (first cousins of my father) and L., M.'s friend and fellow horse enthusiast. These are photographs I took on Black Eyed Susan Day, in reverse because Blogger is being funny. 

I got a pretty big kick out of this.

My father did quite well for himself the first day at the track and his knowing smile is a reflection of that.

We were in the lower grandstand with assigned seats. Front row, just a smidge away from the finish line, significantly closer than we were last year. The sun was pretty powerful for the first few hours of our day, but once the upper grandstand's shadow crept to us, the seats and weather were pretty ideal.

This looks like a race to the finish, but these horses actually started a scant distance from the finish line and then would wrap all the way back around. I doubt that this 4 horse lasted the whole way through.

But it looks good at the moment.

 Another view of our seats. We were seven, with six seats that you can see right here and an additional seat within the same area but farther back. B. spent a fair amount of time in that odd seat out, getting to know the older gentleman next to her who had come all the way from Texas. 

Me and a hat and lipstick.

On non-special crazy event race days, I would make it down the the paddock to take a look at the horses far more often than I do on the Preakness weekend. First off, Pimlico's paddock isn't the best as far as viewing options, and factor in the larger crowds and it can become a nightmare...this is, I imagine, one big reason they saddle the actual Preakness horses on the grass outside. That and the pageantry of it. But I did make it to the paddock for one race, thinking that would help my betting. It didn't. I'm a terrible bettor. I simply go by look and name and have never quite been able to take in and process the additional information that a race program can give me. In any case, look a this horse's ears, all perked up and interested in what's going on outside. 

The track, stripped away of some of its momentary glamor.

The view from another direction.

Totally out of order. I found this horse particularly beautiful, but I'm pretty sure it didn't win, place or show.

Legend lady jockey. Each year they have one race where women jockeys - most of whom are retired - come out and race. I think this woman may have come in second or third. Or maybe she's just smiling because it's good to gallop?

Pretty sure this is the winner.

B. was kind enough to make us all sandwiches.

Yup, this is the winning lady legend horse.

This woman was particularly pleased about it.