Food, glorious food!

Everyone has their vices, agreed? I don't drink...I gave that up nearly 20 years ago. I don't smoke, or do recreational drugs. I don't gamble, I don't play video games. Sometimes shopping is an issue, but I have two adorable (I think) little girls...who wouldn't want to dress them up? And a lot of my friends are impressed with my ability to hunt down a fantastic bargain. But my real vice is food. I love me my food! I love food fests, I love good restaurants, I love snacks. I will try almost anything. I have been known to get cravings that can only be satiated by the food I'm drooling over. And sometimes I'll find something I like and eat so much of it, I start to not like it. Whatever, there's plenty more out there to love.
This weekend proved to be a banner weekend for foods, old and new. It began on Friday night. Some of my college friends and I attended an event sponsored by our alma mater. We paid $20 for a cruise up and down the Hudson River. I knew $20 wouldn't get me anything fancy...maybe a few hors d'oeuvres, finger foods, snacks. I raced around like maniac just before the boat boarded. I had to meet my husband to transfer the kids to him, so he could get them to a pool party, which was earlier than the time I needed to be at the boat. I decided that my time alone was best spent running errands. It is so much easier to get in and out of a store when you don't have two children in car seats to buckle and unbuckle, a toddler to strap into a cart, and a preschooler who wants to walk through the store, generally at a much slower pace than I'd prefer. I accomplished my errands, but not after adding an extra stop and a couple of traffic jams. I made it to the boat just in time, and boarded with my friends. We had tickets for free drinks (not all that valuable to a non-drinker) but there was no food. Not a crumb. Anywhere. And because this was a boat ride, we were stuck for the whole 3 plus hours. Without food. I'd had no dinner. ACK! Anyway, afterwards we decided we needed to eat, and a friend directed us to a fantastic pizza place, not all too far from my house. The chicken marsala pizza was highly recommended, so I had a slice of that and a slice of deep dish shrimp marsala. Let me tell you, this pizza (both kinds) was to die for! Having grown up just outside of Manhattan, I can be pretty critical when it comes to pizza. Let me tell you, this pizza was heaven!! I though about it all weekend unintl I finally decided on Sun. night that we were getting whole chicken marsala pie for dinner. Sheer bliss, with enough leftover for a few lunches! It's not as greasy as NYC pizza, but it makes up for it with the ricotta cheese, mozarella, mushroom, chicken mixture they spread over the crust prior to baking. Heaven...pure pizza heaven.
Saturday, after our x-biking class, my husband and I decided to divide and conquer. Hed run errand with the big kid, I'd take the little one home for a nap. I detoured to a deli that is even close to my house than the pizzeria, and ordered what was surely a tasty and huge sub. Yum. My only regret was not seeing Tiger sauce listed on the condiment list until it was too late. But never fear, I'm stopping there tonight to pick up dinner for a friend and me before our volunteer shift at the hospital. But the sub wasn't even the best of it. As I stood waiting for my order, I spotted, right in front of my face, a display of Linden cookies. Linden cookies, if they are chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin or peanut butter, don't inspire much excitement from me; it is specifically Linden's Butter Crunch cookies. I haven't had these cookies in years. And since moving upstate almost twenty years ago, have rarely seen them. I think maybe once in a run-down convenience store in the ghetto, and they turned out to be stale. But there folks, in the really-good-deli-only-a-mile-from-my-house, were three-pack after three-pack of Linden's Butter Crunch cookies.
Usually it takes chocolate to get me that excited. But not this day. I will not tell you how many I bought, or how many I ate (which is actually the same number as what I bought). But rest assured, it was worth all those years of waiting. And it was a really, really good weekend.