Pam’s Pictorama Post: I recently bought this photo in one of my jaunts to the Red Bank Antiques recently. It is the kind of quiet photo that catches my eye sometimes and seems fitting for the house here in New Jersey.
This pair has been picking something although hard to say what, my first thought was apples. I don’t know if this a local photo – there’s nothing on the back for date or location. Those wooden buckets could have held peaches or even cherries just as easily. There is a nice rock fence behind them.
The woman’s dress puts this at the 1910’s or there abouts. She looks cool despite her layers of cotton. The man looks a bit warmer in his rolled up shirtsleeves and suspenders. I love the way the sun filters through the leaves. I think it will find its way to our guest room in anticipation of a friend coming at the end of the week.
I wrote a post about picking cherries at my grandmother’s house as a kid. (It can be found here.) Those cherries were cooked down into preserves that we would eat all winter.
Before and…after!
A friend suggested peach picking this summer, but we have not attempted it. The peaches seem a bit off this year and as a result I have taken to cooking them down in an easy recipe shared by a friend.
I take all my overripe fruit and cut it up – today will be peaches, nectarines and blueberries. I sprinkle just a bit of sugar, spoonful (I am using regular but you might want to use brown), lemon juice and most importantly lemon zest. Pop it in a baking dish at 375 for about 45 minutes until bubbly. Yummy hot, but great in yogurt or over ice cream once you have refrigerated.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a bit of a day in the life of post, back to toys tomorrow! As ongoing readers know, a few weeks ago Kim and I packed kitties and a few bags and headed to our house at the Jersey shore for a few weeks. With a new job I don’t have a lot of vacation so I am commuting these first weeks.
My new digs for work are way over on York Avenue and 62nd – an ideal daily commute from our New York apartment and I walk to and from most days. Occasionally I hop on a slow moving bus that wanders up and down York – and then oddly meanders across 57th Street.
Over the river heading to NYC just as the sun is coming up.
I am paying for my being a hop, skip and a jump from work with more than a month of a Jersey commute which is an hour and twenty minute train ride, with another twenty to thirty minutes on the subway and walking on the other end. It is a bit of a shock to the system – being at the mercy of the NJ transit system and back in the clutches of the Q train daily.
On the other hand, as I write this from my deck this Saturday morning I just saw a hummingbird take a long, long drink from a flowering tree and that is part of my summer reward. As I write, I am perched on my deck in full view of some ripening peppers and tomatoes. Cicadas buzz in the background.
My commuter mug, a great gift, but it did turn on my earlier this week.
It may be worth it but there is a cost for my slice of paradise! Our morning, always an early start, is even earlier. Cats (so many cats!) need to be fed, litterboxes cleaned and Blackie needs his shot. Kim tackles much of it but there’s a mad flurry of activity for a bit. The train ride in is an easy one and I get on early so always have a seat. As long as I don’t have an early appointment to make me crazy if the train has a hiccup, it is generally a time for some extra work or reading.
Sunrise on the way into the city – sort of the dividing point where it becomes more urban.
A friend christened my commute with a travel mug for my coffee, which I now fill religiously and think of her as I drink my piping hot coffee on the train. However, the other day in my enthusiasm I filled it too high and the steam popped the top. When I threw my bag onto my shoulder to run out the door hot coffee streamed down my back! Ouch and a pause to change my top layer (and put some soap on it so it wouldn’t stain!) and I was out the door. My back smarted all the way to work and I couldn’t take my jacket off as my tank had a coffee stain on the back! I have learned my lesson and I both allow to cool and don’t fill quite so ambitiously.
Heading into Red Bank station, we slow through these woods and then over the river. I love this few minutes coming home.
This route to and from the city is a well worn one of course and I have been traveling it on and off since reaching adulthood. It was the first and last leg on my trips to and from college for the holidays. Eventually it was the trip I took to visit my folks once I was living in New York, and ultimately to my dad in hospice during his long illness. Aside from the time of the pandemic (I have written about my time taking the ferry here) and just beyond when I indulged in a car to and from my increasingly lengthy visits to mom during her illness, the train was my main conveyance here and back. (I wrote about those trips with a lovely comfort dog, Cash, here.)
Where the view turns urban as we approached NYC the other morning.
The trip on the Jersey side starts out with water and woods. A third or more of the way there, houses start to emerged and are closer together, over some marshland (my mom used to talk about the wildlife in those marshes!) and then it becomes increasingly urban. Before you know it you are in Elizabeth and Newark and then the City is in sight before a ride through a tunnel (used to terrify me as a kid, these tunnels) where my ears pop, and then into Penn Station on the other side.
Mom always talked about the birds and other wildlife in these marshes.
Of course the trip back is the same in reverse going back. Getting to the train is always more stressful in the evening and I struggle with the discipline to get out of the office with enough time to do the reverse path to the train. It is generally boarding when I get there (unless delayed) and I hop on in the nick of time. The evening by necessity is more work filled as I have left things I can deal with on the train for that time and it is largely work time.
Weather permitting a quickly assembled dinner can be had on the deck – twinkling lights on and Radio Dismuke (more about that here) playing popular standards of the 20’s and 30’s. Tempting to stay up, but an early to bed with the early to rise to commute on the horizon again!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: One of my favorite new hobbies is purchasing bits of local memorabilia to decorate the New Jersey house. Having grown up in the area I have always found local history interesting and I am having fun finding ways to celebrate and embrace it as well as my own history there. Along those lines I picked up this postcard recently with the intention of framing it for the house there. This is a bit of a long summer and childhood post so settle in if it appeals. I guess I am kicking off summer officially today.
In a parallel universe I think I bought a tiny wooden house in Highlands on the water and live there. In that world I either live with and/or disregard the constant flooding of the area and I have no idea what I do for a living. There was a moment in this world where I gave serious consideration to such a purchase for a weekend house (affordably due to the aforementioned flooding), but my ever practical minded mother talked me out of it. I lived through enough flooding to hear her talking sense about it. Nonetheless, my heart does remain with the idea of a few rooms in a wooden house, just a few minutes walk from the river and ten or so minutes over the bridge to Sandy Hook beach.
Back in the early days when Bahr’s was still a rooming house and bait and tackle shop.
When I was very young, we had a house – one sold by Sears and Roebuck – on the nearby spit of land in Sea Bright we call the North Beach. I adored that house and did consider making it my home when my parents sold it in my early 20’s. My earliest summer memories are there, with beach access across the (incredibly busy) street and clubs with pools where I would ultimately learn to swim. In recent years, the bridge between the two, Sea Bright and Highlands, has been remade from a simple old fashioned one (up from the glorified foot bridge that would have existed at the time of this postcard) to a very high, super highway version which I guess you can walk over, but seems a bit threatening.
Anyway, Highlands and its kissin’ cousin tucked nearby, Atlantic Highlands, were always there as part of my childhood. It has an interesting mix of real estate, multimillion dollar homes on the steep hilly incline overlooking the water (mom and dad would speculate on how terrible winter driveways and roads they must have) and down to the small, wooden homes near the shoreline. For those of you who followed my nascent ferry adventures to and fro Manhattan, this is where the ferry leaves you, or conversely picks you up. As a child we mostly drove through it as a way of avoiding round trip beach traffic to Sea Bright or a to get out on the highway.
Nearby ferry landing.
One of the fixtures of Highlands is Bahr’s Landing restaurant. It is currently billed as the oldest restaurant in New Jersey, dating back to its earliest incarnation as a seasonal houseboat chowder and boarding house for those working the waterfront in 1917. Boats were rented and on the off season the family went back to their necktie business in Newark.
Eventually the business took off sufficiently in the 40’s to become year round and, according to the article I found, the original houseboat established the existing building today. Oddly, I only learned recently that the family is one I know – I went all through school (kindergarten through high school) with the current generation owner, Jay Cosgrove. Yay Jay!
Undated photo from their site but maybe not too far off from when this postcard was made.
In an unconscious way, Bahr’s played out through my childhood, young adulthood and has come back for me in middle age. As a small child I remember off-season celebratory birthdays there – as year round residents my parents preferred it in any season but summer when the local traffic would increase ten fold overnight. I could be wrong, but they may have introduced oyster crackers into my life which I adored as a child.
Postcard not in my collection shows rickety original bridge between Highlands and Sea Bright to Sandy Hook beach.
As teenagers and on summers home from college we didn’t care and braved the traffic cheerfully. The restaurant proper was too expensive however and we were instead content (very content indeed) to sit next door on benches near the water for services outside until late in the evening, eating lobster rolls and juicy fried clams. There was a movie theater a few blocks away which showed second run and old films for 99 cents and so a reasonably affordable date night was established.
I had not been inside the restaurant for many years when my sister Loren suggested it for a birthday lunch one year, shortly before she died and we celebrated our childhood there. Bittersweet, it was my first and last time there for a number of years as I thought going back would make me sad.
Bars from the water side in an undated photo.
However, in my mother’s final year or so we ordered in food a fair amount and I figured out Doordash from there on a few occasions which we enjoyed. I did it weekly or so until they could no longer find drivers. Mom was a vegan, but there were a few vegetable dishes she liked and everything we ordered from there was delicious and a wonderful change of pace.
In the subsequent year since mom died, a good friend and I have taken it up again as our occasional treat. We generally go at lunchtime during the week, occasionally dinner, when even the summer traffic is more bearable, taking an inland route which spares us some tussle.
Yup, the mug I purchased full of the chowder and some of those oyster crackers from my childhood shown here.
I wish I had copies of the old photos the interior of Bahr’s is decorated with – some go back to the days of it as a houseboat, renting rooms. Others show fishing in the immediate area – I always take time to study them. There was also a time when it had an early life as a ferry stop for cruise ships that would head down to the South from New York City. Ancient majolica oyster plates fill another vitrine. A small gift shop is at the front, near the bar and the oldest part of the building. I recently purchased chowder size mugs, one for the house in NJ and one for 86 Street.
This is the bar area where for some reason I have never eaten. I think we favor the water views. I always like to go and look at the photos and art in it though when I can.
The fare at Bahr’s is the absolute top shelf of what you expect and want from a local seafood restaurant, perched right over the water. Plates groan with ultra fresh local scallops, clams, oysters, lobster and various other kinds of fish. I remain partial to a warm lobster roll which has come to define this item to me, simply lobster chunks with butter on a traditional roll, served with homemade potato chips if I feel decadent. Homemade biscuits are served for starters – this is not diet dining. My friend Suzanne remains largely devoted to a plate of scallops and vegetables. We both occasionally go off script however and in this way I discovered their “original recipe” spicy clam chowder which is stupendous! I am a fan and have begun buying a container for the freezer in NJ each time I go and it makes for a very happy meal subsequently.
Recent image from the parking lot at Bahr’s.
The postcard I have acquired appears to most likely be from the 40’s given what I know and that it is a linen postcard – those were produced in the 30’s and 40’s. As you can see from my recent photo, not much as changed, down to the neon sign which must flash to boats like a beacon. That is Sandy Hook, now a state park, across from it on a tiny spit of land with the ocean beyond. Seen today the immediate surrounding area is a busy dock, as shown in my photos, and Moby’s, the affordably cousin they also own, next door. If you sit outside near the water and the docks, fat seagulls rule while ducks and geese placidly come and go. There is a parking lot where it is just sand here.
Verso of card.
On the back in very neat pencil print it says, The air is wonderful here on river. There are five children here & they have such a good time. Hope everything is well with you. Love Marg. It is addressed to: Mrs. M. Martin, PO Box #137, Gibbstown, New Jersey without a stamp so maybe it went in an envelope or just was never sent. On the back of the card, printed at the top it says, Bahr’s Seafood Restaurant Highlands NJ. Lobster and Fish Dinners. The “Half Moon” Bar and Cocktail Lounge, Charter and Deep Sea Boats for Hire. Est. 1917 – Highland 3-1245.
So Bahr’s has earned its place to be enshrined at our New Jersey residence. With any luck, some old photos will show up to join it and I look forward to treating you to a bit more of that local lore.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: I am writing this, at least starting it, on one of my last day’s commuting to work from New Jersey at the tail end of a rather glorious vacation here. Kim, cats and I will make the trek north on Sunday, perhaps when you are reading this, and reinstall ourselves in our tiny Manhattan abode.
It took all these weeks but Blackie discovered the kitchen on our last day here!
I’m not sure what Blackie will make of the move, over time he has adjusted handsomely to his somewhat more expansive New Jersey life and the existence of five other cats – at least somewhat. He has annexed the east end of the house, taking our room, my mom’s old bedroom and three bathrooms as his territory. He has never seen stairs and has not mastered that concept yet so while he has acquired about half of the downstairs, little does he know that there is a cat warren in my office upstairs.
Kim and Cookie.
Cookie has fared less well and has spent her time behind the chair where Kim prefers to work in our bedroom. She has let her displeasure be known in numerous ways, most notable with some disrespect to said chair and Kim’s clothes there overnight. We hope this too will pass.
Tomatoes still ripening on the deck.
Kim seems rested and is back to work on his book while I commute to the city and back each day, reentry into the madness of fall in Manhattan and the kick off of our season at work upon me like a switch has been flipped!
These dahlias have just kept on keeping on.
I have made trips to the New York apartment and even spent the night there. It seems so empty without Kim and the kitties. I told Kim that the apartment is full of ghost cats which spend the night with me there.
Lettuces, cukes and mums for fall.
Starting next week my schedule becomes such that commuting would become very difficult, dinners and evening appointments are starting to dot the calendar. I will be back and forth to Jersey but gone will be the long quiet nights on the deck with the bats and fireflies – and slugs. I discovered slugs at night there.
Jasmine plant which seems happy and blooming.
I am realizing that this is really my first vacation in years, since before the pandemic easily, although the summer of ’19 was not a relaxed one either. (For posts about that summer, the work trip to California, the kitchen renovation and a long business trip to South Africa you can find them here, here and here.) All the recent years in memory have had me either working around the clock (the pandemic years) or ferrying back and forth to mom and taking care of her.
This summer strung out like glorious pearls and I enjoyed my time with Kim and ALL the cats, my newfound love of gardening and working on the house. I refinished furniture, planted, pruned, cooked and enjoyed long evenings on the deck.
More cucumbers and lettuce.
Saturday night now. The bags are (mostly) packed. Cookie and Blackie are unsuspecting about the trip back to Manhattan tomorrow, but somehow Beau (the other big black cat) knows and he’s very sad and clingy. Today started rainy, a humid sun came out for much of the afternoon before thunderstorms rolled in this evening so it is hard not to feel glum about vacation’s end.
****
We’re back in Manhattan. Tough ride in with the thunderstorms and cats howling! They are considering this cosmic shift in the universe from under the bed. Whew!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: We haven’t had a recipe post in a very long time and I guess today’s pepper post falls roughly in that category. Jumping back a little, ongoing readers know that Kim and I have been spending a long summer vacation in New Jersey. (Some of those recent posts can be found here, here and here.)
Recent night in the porch.
Further back, some folks also know that I lived in this house during the first months of this year with my mom during her final illness, managing a consistent group of two caregivers on every shift during the 24 hours. I have spoken about the extraordinary loving care mom received from this group of women and among them was the major-domo Winsome who remains my New Jersey sister and Chief of Staff now after mom’s passing in late April. (Some of those posts are here and here.)
This strawberry plant wants to take over the world!
Part of my summer vacation project has been maintaining and adding to my mom’s beautiful backyard garden. Mom loved the garden and although unable to go outside, she followed its progress from her window perch and worked ongoing with her long-standing gardener.
My additions have largely been of the vegetable and herb nature. Blueberry and strawberry plants (largely enjoyed by the bunnies and chipmonks), a fig tree, an overflowing herb garden. And peppers. Although my lone bell pepper plant produced precisely two peppers, a couple of scotch bonnet plants brought over by a friend and a random jalapeno plant bought from a damaged shelf have produced prodigiously.
Recent small haul…
Aside from a grilled cheese sporting some chopped jalapenos there was no way I could use (or give away) so many hot peppers before they went bad so Winsome offered to show me how to pickle them. We assembled the bits and Saturday morning we got underway. Winsome hails originally from Jamaica so what follows is a somewhat Jamaican influenced version.
Pimentas are very much like black peppercorns.
First Winsome introduced me to a vegetable called a chayote which seemed to be a cross between a turnip and a pear. Under her instruction I peeled it lightly, cut it open and sliced out the seedy center. Carrots, onions (red and white for a variety of color) and of course the peppers were cut in quarter inch strips, not thinner. Peppercorns she called pimientos were used whole but these are similar if not the same as black peppercorns, we pulled about two dozen out.
Chayote, slice out the middle.
Strap on your gloves if you haven’t already! Also I recommend using all glass dishes (I ruined some plastic containers) and a plastic cutting board or disposable cutting surface. Remember that once you start cutting the peppers you need to be careful not to touch your face or eyes and also that the knife and surfaces will have pepper oil on them. I nibbled a raw piece of chayote and realized that I had cut some more of it with the pepper covered knife! Ouch!
My peppers were supplemented with some W gave me!
Combine salt, white vinegar and the peppercorns and heat for about 5-10 minutes, just to dissolve. At the same time boil the jars and lids. Begin layering the carrots, chayote, and onions and then the pepper slices. Make sure you drop some of the peppercorns into the lower layers, begin spooning the vinegar and salt solution in. Fill to the top and add liquid to cover.
I didn’t use garlic but you certainly could. An easier method of saving and using the peppers would be to freeze them and cut bits off as needed. I will likely do that with my next batch so I will report back!
Heat vinegar and sugar with the peppercorns.
What you need:
Disposable gloves
Chili Peppers
Sugar (teaspoon)
Salt (half teaspoon)
White vinegar (about 1.25 cups to start – you may need more liquid)
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Vacation dawned here in NJ yesterday. Kim and I are officially “off” although I have to report to work one day this week and perhaps another the week after, nonetheless we are kicking up our heels a bit. Pictorama readers who have been following in real time know that although we had some trouble settling in, we have already started to adopt a vacation frame of mind. (Prior posts include ones here, here and here.)
So today, a quick little post devoted to one of a few bits of family art that survived the moves my parents did in the later years of their life. Having gone from a house chock full of art to much smaller digs, sadly not all the art made the moves. (I am most sad about a bronze sculpture of a horse running with a dog along side which my mom gave away.)
The painting I am posting about today was recently pulled out of a closet and hung over our bed. My mom said it was by Carolyn Wyeth (1909-1994), sister to Andrew and daughter of N.C., which is likely because my dad filmed a documentary on her many decades ago. Dad did most of the art buying and he would have found the opportunity like catnip and he held the opinion that she should have been better known.
I can’t find a signature on it but frankly not willing to take it off the wall to see if there’s one on the back. It could probably use at least a light cleaning and perhaps that would reveal a signature on the front. However, stylistically it seems right, especially the trees.
Anyway, I write about it because I have been very enamored of it since it arrived in the house when I was a small child. Although the wintery scene is not the most cheerful, it occupied my imagination for hours on end. I cannot remember what stories I made up about it in my mind, but as soon as I took it out the memory of making up such stories came racing back to me.
The lack of definition in the figures, bundled up against the snow and the cold, bothered me a bit. I guess I had my critical chops as a small child. But the not quite entirely monochromatic nature of it interested me even then. The tiniest bit of red on the figure on the porch was of great interest to me, long before I would have been able to explain why. The texture of the paint is satisfying, even without being thick.
It gave me satisfaction to have it back up and I find myself getting lost in it again, which after all, is what paintings are for.
Bonus photo of Blackie, embracing his Jersey adventure, earlier today.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: It is Fourth of July morning and here in New York we are waking to wet and threatening skies after a night of thunder storms. I was never afraid of them as a child, but have grown to dislike them as an adult, perhaps in sympathy with a general sense of distrust of them among the felines. (Cookie and Blackie will bear up to a point and then, Cookie in particular will migrate to the front door, the innermost spot in the apartment, and look at us like we’re nuts if we remain on the couch by the windows.) Up on the 16th floor the winds howl a bit greater than at ground level, but my dislike is no lesser when in the house in Jersey, with rain pounding on that small structure.
Carl Schurz Park.
Having been caught in the rain while running yesterday and I am watching the fast moving clouds and calculating my opportunity for getting away with an hour of running in a bit. The jury is out as I write, but running is my only real plan for the day which may disintegrate into cleaning and organizing the apartment. In a small space like this it always seems to be a need, the cleaning and organizing.
Recently I wondered if I was neglecting the apartment in favor of work needing to be done, paid for and directed in New Jersey. Still, new carpet pads have been purchased for Deitch Studio and I need to trim them and wrestle them into place. I have replaced an especially tatty rug. I clean and organize, and organize some more!
Recent rug purchase for Deitch Studio.(Washable and largely cat proof.)
I will head out to New Jersey tomorrow and I expect that this entry will be finished there. I look forward to seeing how the garden has grown – the blueberry bushes were laden with their yet to ripen wares when I was last there and I am hoping to beat the critters to at least some of them. I understand that the tomato and pepper plants are performing admirably.
The jasmine plant I wrote about last week seems to grow before my eyes and it is embracing its trellis.
The strawberry plant is young, although it has filled out the strawberry pot I plunked it in, but I am only hoping for a taste there. I still am amazed at the simple act of growing food. It has always seemed a bit magical. The herb garden has already provided for many an omelet and a series of sauces, but somehow vegetables seem to be another story.
In mom’s honor I planted a row of sunflowers along the fence outside of our bedroom. I remember her planting some for us kids when we were very little and our shock and joy at how enormous they grew against our little house, as tall as my towering father. I am hoping to find them sprouted and on their way skyward. A friend and her small child are living at the house and I hope she too will be entertained by them.
*****
It is a week later as I write from New Jersey. Much going on in this small world. The strawberry plant, which I transplanted into this strawberry pot a month or so ago has produced its first strawberry!(Someone, my money is on a chip monk, stole it right out from under my nose however; I have yet to taste this bounty.) Multiple flowers however and a few in an early transitional state lead us to hope it isn’t the last.
One of the pepper plants has coughed up its first progeny, with many more to follow as well I hope.
The first of the bell peppers.
The tomatoes have gone “plumb wild” and are requiring constant staking to help them bear up under the burden of their produce. The tomatoes started out in a sunny back corner of the yard before an enormous bush grew to hide them completely. Luckily it doesn’t block the sun and the tomatoes are growing gloriously.
Initial harvest!
Someone, something, has neatly consumed those sunflower seeds and nary a flower has sprouted. In defiance I purchase two plants that are well underway as replacements.
The bookcases in their before mode, fresh from Suzanne’s basement.
Meanwhile, a good friend answered my appeal for bookcases and dug not one but two out of her basement. A few days have been devoted to giving one a new coat of paint and cleaning up the wood and glass on the other. It has been decades since I have done this kind of work on furniture; I think I was still a kid and doing it under my mom’s supervision. I suspect my muscles will tell me all about it tomorrow. The glass front case is a particular dandy though. I am tempted to use it for toys although it sees better suited for books.
The cleaned up bookcase after considerable elbow grease and help from a friend who had keys made for the locks on the doors which keep them closed.You’ll note the cat proofing on the chairs.
Tonight I pulled the grill out and made a pile of vegetables for dinner. This grill was new last summer. For some reason my mom was insistent that we buy it and that I break it in immediately which I did. However, the heat of the late summer made it a less attractive option than it might be in the cooler weather and I admittedly never really got the hang of it. Luckily however I taped my introductory lesson from a friend and manage to get it started and pull off a fairly credible dinner of grilled vegetables.
*****
Another raging thunderstorm woke me up early and the Jersey cat crew took advantage and got me up early to feed them. I don’t like thunderstorms any better when residing in the house in New Jersey and my real inclination is to burrow back under the blankets. These cats seem entirely unfazed.
This little fellow has camouflaged himself nicely, near one of mom’s many bunny garden statues.
When the sun comes burning out a couple of hours later I witness multiple bunnies (all different sizes!) having an absolute wild rabbit romp in the yard. They chase each other, run and jump high. Later in the day someone tells me they are eating the clover in the yard. I am sorry I don’t have a chance to film it.
Citronella growing like topsy on the deck (and doing nothing for the mosquitoes!) and an injured catnip plant I just rescued is in front of the strawberry pot. Let’s see what the kits make of that!
Despite bug spray and the presence of some lovely citronella plants, mosquitoes abound and feast on me. When I was a kid these bits would balloon up and practically take over whole limbs. Now they are just an annoying itching reminder which I will take back to New York City with me.
The next New Jersey post will likely be after Deitch Studio moves down – part and parcel, Kim, kits and art supplies in August for the remainder of the summer. Stay tuned.
Pam's Pictorama 