Larry's Fish Truck

OK, so its not a restaurant. But it IS in the North Country This Week every week, as a little advertisement for "Fresh Seafood Thursdays". Larry's Fish Truck is "at the park" from 9:30am-1pm in Canton and parked at the corner of the Market Street bypass in Potsdam, NY from 2-5:15pm every Thursday. The bypass is a road bridge that parallels the railroad bridge over the Racquette River for traffic to go around the downtown area of the tiny village of Potsdam. Going through the historic downtown or going over the river is a quaint experience, but either way, you can get to Larry's on Thursday afternoon. Well, you have to go over the river even if you go through the historic downtown, just a different bridge (two actually, but not through the woods to grandmother's house).

The Julie/Mom Project was inspired by the Julie & Julia movie, a favorite scene of which is the cooking of the live lobsters. We also watched many episodes of the original French Chef With Julia Child and a favorite is "The Lobster Show". My daughter Julie (of this blog) and her sister MJ have both been wanting to try lobster ever since. There is the "Lobster House" just three miles away from us that is in our Spring Restaurant Guide, but I have hesitated to go there any time soon, knowing how particualry expensive lobster is in a restaurant and also knowing how particularly finicky miss Maryjane is about all sorts of foods. We may get there some day.

But in the meantime, I got a better idea while noting that "live lobsters", with a cute painting of a lobster, are advertised on the side of Larry's truck along with "fresh seafood". Its still expensive, of course, but this is a very special thing to do for our blog. Larry's Fish Truck business is up for sale, too. Don't know if it will be around much longer if nobody buys it and it is very cool to be able to get our own lobsters, support a small business and do a Julia Child thing all at the same time. I hope to go down to Larry's again before I believe he stops for the season because there are all kinds of yummy things there and Julie and Mom do loooove fish! The smoked trout pate looked especially appealing, but we are partial to salmon as well. He also has oysters and just lots of stuff. I love cod which is available, though it is ironically rare in modern times as these fisheries have collapsed.

In the past, it was believed to be impossible to over-fish cod, a staple food resource for many societies and a basic for feeding slaves in the Caribbean. The science of the day did not predict the exponential effect of human population rise and technology advancements in fishing that ultimately led to exactly that outcome. Now, even with moratoriums in the Atlantic, it appears that cod may never come back to meaningful levels. The entire ecosystem has been altered too greatly by the overkill. And I've heard that lobsters used to regularly grow quite large... like up to five feet long. I've also heard that the original pilgrims that first came to America would not have come so close to starving in the winter if their cultural food avoidance prejudices did not cause them to shun lobster! But I digress...

We watched "The Lobster Show" again on Youtube and accordingly for the simple "recipe" she did, Julie and I went down and got two 1 1/2 pound lobsters. The recipe that the Julie Powell character did in the movie appeared to be Lobster Thermidor, though, after reading the recipe, it was depicted incorrectly as the lobsters for that have to be cut in half while still alive, then baked. It is a very complex recipe and, after all, this is a restaurant blog, not a cooking blog! Its also a "no rules" blog, which allows us to take this little divergence.

We boiled a big pot of water. That took a looong time. I chased the girls around the house with the live lobsters. I felt a bit guilty for that, but considering their ultimate bondage (uh, the lobsters'), it seemed pretty harmless. They really are insects of the sea... like huge cockroaches that happen to live in the ocean. But there they are... their beady little eyes looking at you. How is this different from seeing a pig in the face before you eat your bacon or seeing a cow in the eye before your tasty burger? Hmmmm? As per Julia Child's lesson, we checked to see if they were male or female. They were both males and disturbingly enough, my girls decided that this was justification enough to kill them as individuals! Shit you not. And, yes, I DID question this concept with them!

We plunged them in head first, or as Julia Child said, where all their thoughts and feelings are, so they die immediately, which we all know they do not. Their cold bodies immediately cool the rolling boiling water to less than boiling and they stay alive just a bit until the water comes back to full boil, which Julia never mentions how long will take, which is actually some time. They kick a bit... or is that just the boiling water (oh, its not boiling though)... or "nerves"? Yeah. I'd have some "nerves" if I was being boiled alive.

We took one of the lobsters to eat immediately and cooled and put the other in the refrigerator. Following "The Lobster Show" we cut the thing in half with scisssors. We had cooled it a bit anyway, so we scooped out the greenish guts for the "sauce" and the removed the leg and thoracic cavity meat. The guts get mixed with mayonnaise, dijon mustard and green onions (fresh from grandma's garden) as sauce to the rest of the meat. I find that sauce goes best with the thoracic cavity meat, that still has some guts clinging to it. I dip the tail and pitiful but delicisous leg meat into melted butter and also the huge bounty of big claw meat... possibly more delicious than the tail meat.

It was all delicious... MJ hated it. Julie and I savored it over the course of that night and a few evenings later when we did the same to the other chilled, cooked cockroach... I mean lobster. Yum.

Post Script: Julia Child's Lobster Show included a segment where you remove the "sand sack"... the stomach... of the lobster after you cut it in half. This is one of the things you doooo when you follow a Julia Child show. The firsrt (male) lobster we executed on his death row had a piece of rubber in his sac we could see before we cut the transparent stomach open. I speculate this is something that happens in lobster tankes where the only thing you might eat is a bit of rubber band off your fellow mate's claws as you starve yourself (?) cleaning out your intestinal tract much like a human awaiting their colonoscopy... don't want folks seeing the filled GIT... or culinary gods forbid... EATING a filled GI tube?!?! Anyway... after you cut open the stomach, you can see an image of a "madonna".. a woman's dressed figure with the transparent/translucent stomach lining as a gown... awe-inspiring.

Julian's

On Easter Sunday we had no special plans after the Easter-basket-loaded, chocolate, candy, gum, smorgasbord of the all-too-early morning. Julie and I (Mom) blobbed around uselessly all day and then decided late afternoon to go out and take pictures for our Thai Cuisine blog entry.

We rode scooters this time instead of bikes (I can't recall why, might've been my idea). Julie took hers, I took MJ's. We put on our bike helmets, which I was quite glad for later as I went head over heels on an uneven gap in the sidewalk and landed right on my head. Low speed, but still would've been a ridiculous injury for such a flimsy small vehicle. I have to say now what an absurd piece of transport a scooter is. Skates make more sense, but unless your riding surface is nice and smooth the whole trip, a bicylce make the most sense. WALKING is a better option than a scooter, as was the way I played out most of our little excursion this day.

Sun was fading and I was hungry and suggested to Julie that we knock off one of our restaurants for our blog. Julie suggested any of the downtown pizza places, but I wanted to save those for times when the whole family might go there. It was evening Easter Sunday so many places were closed anyway. We spied Julian's at 38 Market Street, Potsdam, NY. Julie had eaten here before with her grandmother, but I had never been. They had advertised an Easter buffet and were known for their Sunday breakfast buffet. We were going in late, like 7:30 pm, a half hour before "closing". Boldly and brazenly, we went in anyway. I figured it looked pretty empty and it wasn't the type of place we would likely take MJ or my husband to.

The waitress was kind and friendly explaining that the buffet was over, they were closing soon, but they still had a limited Easter Dinner menu. I can't recall the other options, though there were only a few. We ordered the Roast Duck and Shrimp Cocktail appetizer to split (budget-minded us). Julie got a lemonade. She was very thirsty from scootering around town, as was I who downed several glasses of ice water.

The appetizer consisted of three large shrimp arranged around the edge of a martini glass filled with more cocktail sauce than needed even for all three large shrimp. Also provided was a rather large portion of herbed oil (again too much for the three shrimp, despite their large size) and a tiny cup of solid whipped butter, which I found most peculiar. It was perfectly adequate. Julie and I (Mom) split the three shrimp this way: I ate all the tails (I loooove shrimp tails) and the body of one and a third of the shrimp. We dipped each bite generously into the sauces, fingers and all.

The duck was delicious. I have to say, mostly the only time I have ever eaten duck (with one rare exception) is the kind you get at the Chinese restaurant in a heavily fried and/or battered condition. We have occasionally done Cornish Game Hens for Thanksgiving, but other than so-called "turkey", so-called "chicken" is the extent of Julie's poultry experience.

This was actually a half-duck, properly "billed" as such on the menu description. Julie and I split it between us by me using a fork and butter knife to remove the largest pices of meat and put them on Julie's plate along with a fair share of the yummy roasted potato wedges and sauteed zucchini that were soaking in the brown, sweetish sauce of the basted duck.

And here we draw a flashback to our blog inspiration, the movie "Julie & Julia". "Do you know how to de-bone a duck?" We now understand why a duck is so much more delicious if someone goes through the process of removing the freaking bones and stuffing it. I ended up sucking the meat off the remaining carcass. Oh well, it's Easter. It's Ironic.

Disclaimer: This blog is not a restaurant review or a food critique. It is a personal experience, molded by the parameters of its subjectivity.

Hot Tamale!

Our first destination in the North Country This Week's Spring Restaurant Guide, as mentioned in our first post, was the "Hot Tamale". We hatched our little idea to blog about all the restaurants in the guide after already stopping here for lunch while out for a bike ride in downtown Potsdam, NY. There is also a "Hot Tamale" in the village of Canton 10 miles to the east. The one in Potsdam is in the heart of downtown at 34 Market Street.

Julie had eaten here a few times before with her father, but I had never been. It is a fast-food, assembly line style place where you order at the counter and watch as your meal is prepared. It is very clean, the ingredients are fresh and the prices kept reasonably low due to the informal dining setting.

Though I was tempted to try the namesake, the tamales are an appetizer and I was quite hungry. I went for the "Sizzling 'Stoners" Fajita Burrito", which was billed as a much more suitable option for my appetite at the time. I chose the steak as my meat, which was "sizzled" ahead of time and not put on a fajita pan in front of me as is the traditional and more expensive way to do it. The meat was seasoned with my choice of a barbecue sauce and put into a flour tortilla with rice, my choice of pepper jack cheese, lettuce, pico de gallo, grilled onions and peppers and sour cream. It was very large and hit the spot deliciously.

Julie went with her old standby, the Kid's Meal. She chose the chicken and cheese quesadilla, and sort of changed it up a bit as she has always gotten just cheese quesadilla in the past. It comes with a small drink (diet Coke) and a choice of brownie or small pre-packaged ice cream treat. Julie chose the Chocolate Sundae Bar.

We like this place as a fast, good and inexpensive option. It is open very late on Friday and Saturday nights to accomodate the late night college crowd.

The Beginning

So, after watching the movie "Julie and Julia" obsessively for the past two weeks, my 9 year old daughter and I took a break. It's been over 36 hours since our last viewing. We had to make a conscious effort to not watch. Its a Netflix DVD, so we will have to return it at some point, but I've been waiting for the inspiration to hit me before I can give it up.

Today, Julie (my 9 year old daughter) and I took a bicycle ride downtown to check out the used clothing stores, which I knew would be closed, but we had to get out of the house. We have been sitting around during her spring break from school, watching "Julie and Julia" on almost continuous loop all week. It makes you hungry, so we have been eating along with it. We had to get out of the house.

Downtown for us is the small village of Potsdam in the North Country upstate New York. It was a chilly wind, but we bundled up to stay warm. While we were stopped, looking at the rushing water of the Racquette River going over the hydroelectric power dams, I decided I was hungry. Julie is a big fan of eating out, as am I. Well, we are big fans of eating in general and also share a laziness for preparing our own food. Being the tough economic times that they are, however, we have been trying to be very frugal. My husband, Julie's father, is the cook of the house and does a remarkable job feeding us and fixing a proper dinner nearly every night.

So we ate at "Hot Tamale" because I had never been there, and I decided to treat Julie since her sister had been to a concert the night before and was still away at a fun sleepover at her friend's house. Then it hit me. We could eat our way through the North Country THIS WEEK's Spring Restaurant Guide I had been looking through the night before... and blog about it!

Oh sure, it's not really like "The Julie/Julia Project". It's not going to make us better people. It's not going to teach us any real discipline. But it is something to do and it will be fun. Maybe it will allow us to eventually return the movie DVD to Netflix... now having our own culinary obsession to occupy us. Maybe it will force us to write something regularly, which is an accomplishment in itself.

Anyway, no rules and no goals. No time frames. It is what it is. There are 66 restaurants listed in the Guide, including places such as McDonald's and an asian food market I've never been into to know if there are even prepared foods for take-out. There are also places we have been to several times. Maybe we will go to them, maybe we won't, but we will write about every place and at least why we did not or could not go.

Some are a bit of a drive so we will try to hit those as they are along the way in other travels around the county. We must try to budget the adventure as best we can. The main goal is to write regularly, so we will write up our visits every few days... Hot Tamale and Thai Cuisine Restaurant already down and coming up soon. But now, another viewing of "Julie and Julia" is in order. Bon appetit!