Saturdays at Coney Island!

This past weekend we had a waft of heat hit us in the tri-state area ... more specifically, Broooooklyn!!! which is where I now live and love so much. I mean I live 7 train stops from the beach!!! Not just any beach, Coney Island! I grew up seeing hints of the Wonder Wheel or the Cyclone in various TV shows and movies. Then, when I moved to brooklyn a coupla years ago, I caught a documentary about Coney Island and came to understand it's history more. Every year it threatens to shut down and every year it get's bailed out. I don't think it's goin' anywhere, but there are changes happening slowly that some locals fight about, I ain't in to fightin' about it, I'm into enjoying it while it's here (forever, i tell ya).

One of the great things about Coney Island is it has some personal significance for many generations of New Yorkers and visitors all the same. People fall in love there, go on first dates there, skip school and hang out there :-), enjoy family time there. Me and my dude, we fall in that category without giving away too much of our biz teeheehee, so we've talked about waiting for the weather to break to go back to one of our special places we share with millions of others. Finally, we got some beach and boardwalk weather predictions and allll week we talked about going ... when we'd get up, what we'd wear, how to clear our schedules and most importantly we plotted out our plan of destruction re: the food!!!! plus, I had a week of traveling ahead and boy do we enjoy our time together, so we had to get in some quality time. Everything that has happened with work for me has been a bit all at once, so it's nice to still take time for personal happiness, something that eluded me in my previous radio career. I'm sure plenty of chicks have done it, career first and boys 2nd lol ... finally I'm working on both equally and boy does it feel good when you have the right match. ok, lemme get off the mushy mushy ....

The food!!!
Ok, first I had to get some funnel cake ... I'd show ya a pic, but 1. it was gone in a hurry and 2. it wasn't the creme de la creme of Coney Island funnel cakes. There are about 5 vendors that make it, an unofficial count, but really there's only like 2 places that make it fresh. yeah, I bet you are like what kind of "not-fresh" funnel cake is there??? Well, it was fresh at one point, it's premade there I presume in bulk and then they put my precious cake in an oven meant to reheat pizza, right next to a slice!!! ... anyway, as soon as I saw the set up and couldn't see a deep fryer in sight behind the counter, I got a little anxious about the taste. Let's say it was ok, but not a winner, I still ate it :-).

Then we headed to Nathan's, of course! I wanted a corn dog and cheese fries. I'd get the chili on the fries too, but I'm a no bean person and Nathan's rocks the beans. Lemme tell ya, that cheese sauce was sooooo hot, I burned my tongue and didn't notice until much later. Ok, no picture of that as well cuz my cheese sauce rendered my fingers inoperable. the hardest thing about Coney Island and the Nathan's on the boardwalk is -- where do ya sit???? I always get a bit anxious when in line, I'm lookin over my shoulder at the benches wondering where I'll be able to plop down and massacre my food. I always get a bit panicked after I make the purchase ..... it's kinda funny in hind-sight how anxious I get about it. All I can say is my dude is an excellent bench spotter. Found one about 1 second before I was just gonna sit right down on the ground and eat ... I mean cheese sauce has a few minutes before it is more like a cheese cloak than a sauce. Hey Nathan's, c'mon get us some more benches!! lol .... aww heck, there is a whole sandy beach out there to chill on, who am I to complain? Here's me pre-cheese sauce, corn dog & beer, post-funnel cake ....



Then we took a trip on the ol Wonder Wheel .. what a ride!! We got on a swinging one, there's a choice between still and swinging ... same ride, two different experiences. I'd say, don't swing if you just ate and you have a light tummy. Basically, the swinging baskets have a track they run on and when the wheel turns and the right angle or height is reached, the weight of the basket makes it follow the tracks and "swing" in mid-air ... the other baskets are a normal ride. Here's a pic from up top ... 



What a hot day it was. Then on the boardwalk we saw this lady with two dudes making something and stopped. Turns out the lady had the two guys dunking strawberries in hot melted chocolate fondue style. I mean brand new fondue sets, boxes freshly discarded in the trash next to her kiosk. I was alllll ready to buy one when she snapped and told me we had to wait for them to "cool" ... COOL??? lol it was 80+ degrees out there and she thought the chocolate was gonna go rock-hard like a chocolate covered strawberry ... she also had marshmallows as well. So, anyway, not to educate her about chocolate we just kept it movin', but walking past her again we saw others just like us wanting the gloppy hot mess of chocolate on the berries, but she was shooing them all away ... I wonder if she ever made a buck Saturday. I mean it was hot, no way that chocolate was gonna chill ... she had it in the shade too, like that was helping and it wasn't ... so when we got home, courtesy of my shopping earlier in the week, we already had strawberries (nostalgia shopping after the strawberry story in cali, i guess) and my pantry always has chocolate of various flavors and forms .... so here we have some homemade chocolate covered strawberries ... 



I used semi-sweet ... after a quick chill in the fridge we tore em up in like saaaaay 15 minutes??? Prosecco and juice to accompany ... okay, I just landed in Hawaii ... yup, tha big island ... I'm not here for a tan though ... born with that :-) ... I'm here for more How'd That Get On My Plate? work ... this time, I'm focusing on honey and and speaking of chocolate? Cocoa. They harvest both here. I'll take pics and post when I can ... here for 4 days and already got a taste of some local "VOG" ... fog that is not fog, it's really volcanic dust that looks foggy ...