Man, I can't believe I let a whole decade of ambivalence separate me from what is now proving to be both my savior and my downfall, the nitrous fuel for the racecar that is myself... red bull. They're small, they're expensive, but if I drink more than two of them in the same afternoon, I'll be up for the next 24 hours.

Whether of not you live in New York City you will find much to learn, share and enjoy from a recently begun food blog called Not Eating Out in New York , by local writer Catharine Erway. In addition to writing on film and other topics, Erway has been spending her time since graduating Emerson college a few years ago working in various administrative jobs and, mainly, cooking. "The blog idea came to me when eating in some restaurant one day and realizing, you have no control over what they're putting in your food," she told me recently in Union Square Park . "They may say the food is organic, but you have no guarantee unless you follow the cook around the kitchen."

Now that McDonald's is displaying proud banners throughout NYC that they have "iced coffee!" you can be sure that the once unusual and eccentric beverage is a trend that's exceeded its critical mass. Isn't Mickey D's the barometer of when trends reach the point where they become totally and forever uncool? In the last few years-in New York City at least-iced coffee was the domain of Starbucks and the assorted bagel shops, bakeries and internet/bookstore boutiques. The perfect blend of thirst quench and caffeine jolt, the iced coffee gives you a lift, then makes your tongue shrink up from dehydration as it pulls all the available moisture out of your body to assist in its chemical conversions within your body, but it does NOT make you all gaseous like soda pop might, so you can walk down the street, jaw set in grim determination, and suck that thing down and never make one illusion-of-togetherness shattering "noise."

No matter who you are, where you're from, or what your taste, a salt shaker lives on your table, your stovetop, or your counter. Perhaps all three. Salt is cheap and readily available. Hardly an item exists in your pantry that doesn't list it as an ingredient.

It's chemical name is "sodium chloride." Common table salt is produced by flooding salt deposits with water. The brine which results is then evaporated and the crystals are refined. Kosher salt is made similarly, though the brine is raked continually during evaporation. Sea salt is (obviously) evaporated from sea water. Certain varieties contain chemical additives that prevent clumping, allowing for free flow from shaker to your steak; iodine may also be added to prevent hypothyroidism in consumers. All salts are nutritionally equivalent, regardless of what type you decide to use.

Recently, I was struck with a rare craving for a bowl of grits, boiled on the stove the way they do in diners below the Mason-Dixon line, with some butter and salt and pepper. Bargain-savvy as I am, I decided to buy the economy-sized tub of Quaker quick grits, rather than the smaller, less cost-effective box. Proud of myself for figuring out such a great deal, I trotted home with grits in tow and cooked myself a bowl.

I had eaten a bowl of grits for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and breakfast again when I realized that I was stuck with the rest of this huge tub, and that there was no way I could stomach any more of the mushy grains. I forgot, I hate grits!

I'm the type of guy who can't throw stuff away so I needed a way to spruce these grits. And who better to consult than my raised-in-the-South assistant, Emily. 

 "Emily... fix my grits?" I pleaded.

July 4th.  Surf and Stillwell Avenues.  The crowd, thousands strong,
bristles in the scorching heat, and the announcer hams it up.

"This, the hot dog, the symbol of patriotism!" he bellows; the crowd cheers.

It's the 91st annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, and I stand in
the throngs to bear witness.  American Joey Chestnut keeps a one-to-two-dog
lead over five-time champion Takeru Kobayashi.  The mood tenses, tight
as a sausage skin.  The minutes tick by.  Kobayashi evens the score.
Then he steps ahead.  The clock winds to zero, and Kobayashi wins by a
dog and three quarters at 53.75.

The 12 minutes of the contest leave me breathless, and I marvel
at the notion of food as a patriotic symbol.  Is a hot dog patriotic? 
Do other foods share the honor?

Summer heat (sans air conditioning) provides a great excuse to lie around the apartment and ponder. Yukari Rymar  feels the sweat bead on her forehead and thinks deep thoughts: "cold showers are great,"  "why hate on freon?" and "I wish it was winter," she murmers  The mercury rises, and deeper she slips, deeper into delirium....

When the sun gets hot in NYC, I board the F train headed south.  the ride is arduous and time-consuming, passing through all the Brooklyn avenues of the alphabet.  I exit the final Stillwell Avenue station, and I smell it immediately.  Sandy bottoms. Salt water.  Freak shows.

A day at Coney Island.

Sure, Coney Island isn't a world class waterfront. Not anymore.  There's broken glass in the sand.  I never see any
surfers on the waves, and the housing projects immediately off the beach are some of the poorest in Brooklyn.  But the city's first luxury hotel opened here in 1879.  In 1884, the world's first roller coaster debuted.  Its famous son, the Cyclone (b. 1927) still stands.  And in 1923, Coney Island built its most legendary feature: the boardwalk. World class or not, this stretch of planked wood is so well known they wrote a song about it. And they have arepas. Arepas!

What Fried How?

"I could really go for some chicken fried chicken right now."

"Huh?"

"You know!  Chicken fried chicken."

I recently had this exchange exact with Hannah Pandolph, a Texan friend of mine.  You can guess who said the incredulous "huh?"  Even us Yankees love and indulge in fried chicken, but chicken fried chicken?  How is a chicken fried any way other than in the manner of a chicken?

"There's also chicken friend steak," Hannah piped.

But what do our cohorts across the Pacific pond think of this?  According to my dear half-Japanese friend Yukari Rymar, it's terrific; she even likes the new sushi we've created here, said California roll implied.  However, all this joy does come with a dark side: Yukari bemoans American ignorance of what she calls "real, down home Japanese cooking."

  "If you ask any American if they like Japanese food, they'll say they love sushi," says Yukari.  "Which is great.  I like sushi too.  But sushi isn't what Japanese people are making everyday at home."

I was talking to tea-dom's own Emily Thomas about how I loved the weird iced tea she'd made, and to explain the difference between it and mere Snapple. Emily did her impression of Dolly Parton as Truvy Jones in Steel Magnolias exclaiming, "Sweet tea! It's the house wine of the South!"  I shrank back in horror, but then realizing her Dolly impression was over, made a gesture for her to please continue.

"When, I look back on any given memory of my childhood in Florence, South Carolina ," she began, "my mother always seems to appear out of nowhere to refill all of our glasses with sweet iced tea. We drank it more than we drank water.

"This did not seem strange to me until I moved to New York. I ordered sweet tea in a restaurant and the waitress gave me a funny look and said, 'We don't have sweet tea. We have tea and we have sugar.'