After the grueling hike up the mountain on Friday morning, we visited a winery for wine tasting and lunch. Because we’re not allowed to be indoors due to COVID-19, the winery has set up lots of outdoor tables for wine tastings as well as lunch (provided by seemingly another local restaurant with wood-fired ovens just steps away). The seating overlooks vineyards as well as the water. While we did our wine tasting outdoors, ate the local pizza and enjoyed a cheese plate, I thought a lot about all the travel that we had to give up this year: Hawaii, Cabo San Lucas, Ecuador, Kerala, Sri Lanka…. and I thought, well, none of those places are going anywhere. They all have their own COVID-19 restrictions. Everyone is trying to manage with this virus in every way they can. So if that means we need to explore more locally and enjoy what’s in our backyard like beautiful places like this, then that’s not a problem. These are the new local pleasures we will have to pursue until the world opens up to us.

When we planned our trip to the Hudson River Valley for the day yesterday, one of the things I really wanted to do was pick up some fresh, local produce grown in the area. Since it’s summer time, stone fruit, berries, and tomatoes would be at their peak, and I was hoping we’d stop by a stand or two. We drove by a spot that had a good variety of produce, but the local fruit was the cheapest and juiciest: I don’t even know how many pounds each basket was, but we got at least 5-6 lb. each of “drip down your arms” peaches and perfume-like, deep red tomatoes for $5 per basket, and they were some of the juiciest and most fragrant fruit we’d ever bought. The sheer amount was hilarious, as we’d never purchased this much fruit before. Chris looked at the fruit, puzzled over what I’d do with it. “What are you going to do with all these?” he asked.

“Lots of things!” I exclaimed back. “For tomatoes, we can just eat them! Put them in salads! Make fresh tomato sauce! Tomato onion masala! And for the peaches, eat them! Make peach syrup and soda! Smoothies!”

There’s something about fresh, local, (and cheap!) produce that makes me so excited and happy. Even if I have no idea what I’m going to be doing with all of them, I will find uses for them since no food goes to waste in our home.

After sucking up the fact that we’re likely not going to be doing any travel out of the state or country this year due to COVID-19, we decided to rent a car today for a day trip to the Hudson River Valley for some hiking, nature, local fruit, and local wineries and distilleries. We started the day with a short hike up Mount Beacon, the highest peak in the Hudson Highlands and the highest point between the Catskills and the Atlantic coast. Although the description said the hike was only 1 mile each way, what it doesn’t tell you is exactly how steep that one mile is and how you better get ready for a truly uphill climb. After only about five minutes climbing up on a very rocky, uneven surface, I could already feel myself huffing and puffing. How much longer to go? Although I’d been doing HIIT workouts that are intensive with cardio as well as plenty of strength training on my mat in my room given COVID-19 no-gym conditions, clearly I was unprepared for this extreme uphill hike, as my breathing kept getting heavier and I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest at any point. Stopping didn’t even help, as it just made me feel like the air was heavier. Why do I feel so out of shape?!

We finally got to the top after what felt like forever, but my Garmin said we had hiked up only about 5,000 steps (could have fooled me). The view was worth the hike, though, as well as the odd ruins up top. It also felt so good to breathe in really fresh air amidst all the green and woods. These are the moments that make it worth it to leave the concrete jungle of New York City… but also make me miss traveling further away…. Hopefully, that will happen in a distant future for us.

When I went to see my dentists at their Yonkers location yesterday, it was actually my very first time ever on Metro North. I’d been to Grand Central Station so many times taking the east side trains and also just as a tourist stop for photos, but never to actually take a train out of the city until yesterday. It was… completely underwhelming. Just to take an old, crappy train to a destination that would take about 20 minutes to drive out of the city, it cost me $17.50 for the round-trip ticket. Yonkers really isn’t that far away; if I were to go during peak hours when the trains would have limited stops, it could take as little as 15 minutes from Grand Central. Not to mention that because I went early in the afternoon during “non-peak” hours, the trains were running only once each hour, so if I were to miss a train, I’d have to wait an entire 60 minutes for the next one to leave, which is pretty terrible.

This evening, we had a family chat with Chris’s parents and brother, and his dad said that they had seen my Instagram stories noting that I visited Yonkers the previous day. So they asked what the highlights were. Well, I got picked up and dropped off right at the Yonkers train station, and the area where it was… I wouldn’t even say it was a real town. There was nothing even remotely exciting about the area. It just seemed like an average, working class town. There were a couple of chain restaurants, a local library, two banks, a few shops, and that was really it. Even though my dentists have an office they actually own in Yonkers, they themselves have never really explored the town at all; they even got lost on their way back to the office from the train station picking me up, and they’ve owned this office for nearly two decades! If they don’t even care to explore it after all this time, I guess that means I’ll never really see it myself, either.

In the U.S., it’s not uncommon to hear about people griping about their dentists — the out-of-pocket costs for this, the pain from that; why so many recommended procedures? Is this suggested treatment really necessary? And it’s all with some warranted suspicion: dentists are known in the U.S. to try to get every last dollar out of their patients and their dental insurance plans as possible. That’s why some even force you to get X-Rays or CT scans just to get a basic dental cleaning; hey, that’s another line item to bill your insurance for, so why not “require” it?

It’s easy to not feel sorry for them during the pandemic, as it’s pretty likely your dentist has been screwing you (and/or your dental insurance) for as long as they could. But today, for a moment, I actually did: after about 9 months of not seeing my dentist, I texted them a week ago to see if they were open now and if I could come in for a cleaning and to get a new mouth guard. They called me, explaining that their Manhattan office actually had to close, as they could not renew their lease under the current circumstances, and once the city had opened more, they would then look into a new Manhattan lease. In the meantime, they were operating out of their Yonkers dental office, which they own, and so they asked if I could come see them there. They would even pick me up and drop me back off at the train station! I hesitated, thinking about how atrocious it would be to find a new dentist who would probably force me into treatments I didn’t need or convince me I needed jaw surgery, another coat of braces, or even root canals…. fine. I’d go. So I went today and made a half-day trip of it.

For months, no dental office could operate here. They received warnings that randomized inspections would occur, and if they were caught working, their license to operate could be permanently taken away. And when they received word of “essential” treatments they could operate for, it was a very narrow list that was extremely restrictive: gum bleeding, multiple abscesses (yes, multiple, not just one!), implant replacement for rupture (not usually done by a regular dentist), and emergency oral surgery (they’re dentists, not oral surgeons). Nothing else. Wait, what – that’s it? That explains why my colleague told me that she chipped her tooth about a month ago, and when she called her dentist, the dentist said she couldn’t see her because repairing a chipped tooth wasn’t “essential service.”

I felt bad.. for my colleague, the dentists, the dental industry in general, as weird as that sounds. If no patient visits happen, they don’t see any money at all. No money means no income, which means nothing to pay rent with other than savings, so it’s no wonder they shut down their Manhattan operation. The Manhattan office was actually shared by other dentists, and those dentists also did not renew their leases, either. And what’s worse is that the entire building they were operating in had shut down during quarantine, so the landlord shut down all gas and electricity! My dentist even said that many of the labs he relied on shut down operation completely, so even something like a mouth guard or X-rays could not be created or processed. He ended up buying his own machine during this time since mouth guards are in high demand, and I waited to have mine made, finished, and fitted.

Everyone was hit by the pandemic, even those who we think have glitzy lives and endless money coming in.

We spent our Saturday afternoon wandering through Astoria today, creating a mini food-tour of sorts with stops at Venezuelan, Vietnamese, and Chinese-ish spots. It’s crazy to see how much this neighborhood had changed since the last time I had visited; a corner produce market that I remember buying vegetables at had changed quite a bit. Its prices had risen, and the clientele was completely different. The area overall has become a lot more trendy and… well, White for lack of better words. The area used to have lots of Greeks, Egyptians, Middle Eastern restaurants, bakeries, delis, and grocery stores. They still exist, but it seems like their influence is less obvious now. Now, it’s a lot more brunch, fusion, and expensive bars and eateries with flashy signs, single menus that have a mind-boggling variety of dishes from bibimbap to al pastor tacos to grain bowls (talk about trying to appeal to EVERYONE), and brand-new condo buildings.

It’s not all necessarily a bad thing. There are a number of great places that have opened in this area. The arepas we enjoyed were hearty and delicious, and the Vietnamese place that was on my list had the most unique and creative version of pho I’d ever tasted. On the menu, it was called herb and wood-smoked brisket pho. When it came to the table, it was piping hot, revealing a crystal clear, pristine broth that my mom would have been proud to drink (she hates the floating fat that is oftentimes found in broths served at restaurants and assiduously removes them all before digging in). The first thing I always do when I am ordering a noodle soup at any restaurant is to take a taste of the broth. I took my soup soon, dipped it into the soup, and slurped. And inhaled it. It was exactly what the description said: it tasted herby, smokey, woody, in addition to all the complexities you expect when you have a truly delicious, multifaceted beef-based pho: beef, coriander, charred onions, star anise, cloves, LOVE. And the cuts of brisket were like the brisket you’d get at the most delicious barbecue house, just with a hint of Vietnamese flair. Every last bit of that bowl, we devoured until we couldn’t stomach any more liquid. It was so delicious.

If more places like this opened in Astoria, or in any neighborhood for that matter, I’d be really excited about it and happy to support them. It’s the generic places that try to cater themselves to yupsters and Gen Z people that I cannot stand — the ones that want to have Korean AND Thai AND Japanese AND Chinese AND… hey, let’s throw in some fish tacos, too! Those are the ones I despise and want to leave. Specialize in a certain area and go with it. Don’t be a generalist with food at a restaurant — it just makes you forgettable.