Red Hook, Brooklyn

Red Hook Park, which abutts an abandoned grain factory, bustled today (as it does every summer weekend) with baseball and soccer games, picnics, and food vendors.

Lines are long at the most popular vendors.

Only when I got home did I learn (via Google) that Fernando and Yolanda Martinez, the owners of the Country Boys taco truck, where I ordered huaraches, were named the city's best vendors last year at the Vendy Awards. A constant flow of customers kept everyone on the truck, (in three above photos), very busy.

We took the Ikea ferry to Red Hook, at the wise suggestion of our friend Carolien after nixing plans to visit Governors Island (the line for that ferry was blocks long!) While we waited at South Street Seaport, we tossed coins onto metal faces suspended over the water. Most of the pennies disappeared into the deep but Sammy nailed this one on a face that we agreed looks vaguely like Obama's.

After returning to Manhattan, we came across this photo op. I thought the image above was interesting, not because this couple looked so pleased to be photographed on the site of George Washington's inauguration but because they seemed to have no idea that a dude in a pharaoh headdress was watching them.

Things Your Parents Never Told You to Do with Flowers

I heard someone on the radio (NPR, of course) talking about cooking zucchini flowers. A couple weeks later, I saw zucchini flowers for sale at the Union Square Greenmarket. I bought them, cleaned them, stuffed them with cheese, baked them, snapshotted them and, with help from my family, ate them. Conclusion: They taste about as good as they look--that is, kind of pretty, kind of interesting, kind of weird.