After getting some pie, Donny and I went to check out the relatively new bar Mission Dolores. We had the same problems with it that many others do: it was way too crowded and WAY too loud. After our friends Matt and Phaedra joined us for a drink, we moved next door to the beautiful and quiet Rock Shop, where we could actually relax. After a while we got hungry, so a couple of us ran across the street to Oaxaca Taqueria to get some takeout.

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After eating at Sheep Station, my friends Jess and Garrett recommended that we get a slice of pie at Four and Twenty Blackbirds. They both raved about it, particularly about the salted caramel apple pie. To our dismay we found the shop closed, and we continued on our way. I mentioned it to Donny, and we decided to go there one day. A few days later I was at Prospect Park when I got a text message from Donny: “Pie at black birds?” By the time I got there, though, one of the servers was crossing out the flavors of pie that were no longer available. In fact she was crossing out ALL of the pies, including “and more’ except one: buttermilk chess pie.

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Due to work, I have to miss Saturday morning’s Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza. So instead, I went into Manhattan to the Union Square Greenmarket yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised to see long beans. I’ve cooked with long beans before, but I got them from a vendor in Chinatown, who didn’t have this purple variety. I’ve never seen long beans at the Grand Army Plaza market, so I just had to pick some up. Any suggestions on what to do with them?

As the New York Times pointed out yesterday, “New York’s pizza moment is stretching into a pizza era.” Case in point: Olio, a new Neapolitan-style pizzeria in the West Village, which barely got any press when it opened. What press there has been has been mixed — my friend Jess (of We Heart New York) said there major flaws with the pizza, and yet she couldn’t wait to go back. We met for lunch there last week, and they must have been having a good day because my margherita was excellent.

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Way back when I did my tasting of pizza along the L train, I had a really good Neapolitan-style pizza at Fornino in Williamsburg. I was excited to hear that there was a Fornino opening near me, in Park Slope, a few months ago, and on a recent Friday night I met up with my friends Jeff & Eva to check it out.

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A lot of attention is given to heirloom tomatoes at summer Greenmarkets, and I can understand why. They’re seasonal, beautiful, tasty, etc. It bears mentioning, however, that there are heirloom varieties of other vegetables as well. If you’ve thought about okra at all you’ve probably thought about the long, icicle-looking okra that is seen most often. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see these plump, curly, purple streaked pods at the Grand Army Plaza market. Some people say they don’t like okra because it’s slimy, but that’s precisely why I like it. Lately I’ve been stewing it with tomatoes, cooking it down to mush so that the entire thing is slimy and delicious.