Some random things I am feeling right now.

Bacon jam from Seattle's Skillet Street Food.
Yes. Bacon... Jam. Feels so wrong, tastes so right.
You can mail order it through their eBay store.

The new Cancer Rising album.
The jam that originally got me hooked (um, the proverbial bacon jam of the record) is "Let's Start Some Shit"—but now I have "Perseverance" on eternal repeat. A ton of variety and really solid throughout. Check out clips on their myspace page, and get the EP from CDBaby or iTunes.

Gold's Cocktail Sauce.
It is superior because it has a ton of horseradish in it. Gold's also makes horseradish, so it's win-win for both their horseradish division and the consumer.

Campana Brothers Select at the
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
The Cooper-Hewitt has this ongoing series in which a prominent designer chooses items from the permanent collection to display in the room adjacent to the front desk. Of the various things selected by the Campana Brothers, I thought these plates from a 1927 French book called Insectes were some of the coolest. Click to enlarge.

Brunch at Tartine.
With all the Brooklyn brunch talk of my Saturday post, it may seem odd that we would then go have brunch in the West Village. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. The weather was beautiful and they have sidewalk seating. All of their Hollandaise family of egg dishes are delicious (Norwegian, Florentine...), and their homefries made Emily reconsider her deep-seated anger that it's almost impossible to find regular hashbrowns on the East Coast.

Filson Boots
Everyone's all metro over their luggage these days (Design Within Reach even sells it) but I remember in high school my brother and I would go into the Army Surplus store on First Avenue in Seattle and wish we could get a Filson oilcloth coat. It's just a good company through and through. I got these boots about a year ago, and they still feel brand new. It is weird and oddly comforting to know that you will probably never have to buy another pair of boots in your life.

68 Jay Street Bar in Dumbo.
It is bare-bones and they do not have Six Point on tap, but I have never had a better pint of Brooklyn Lager in my life. It's like they clean the taps every day, and the temperature is perfect. Incidentally, another good pint of Brooklyn can be found at Grassroots tavern on St. Mark's. In my experience, dive bars often have cleaner taps than fancy bars, because they tend to know how to run the place. (They get run down when they stay in business for a long time.) It's not always true but that's why I said it is often true.

Mr. Littlejeans (aka Mr. Science; Fang).
The best cat ever celebrated his ninth birthday last week. Littlejeans was born in the Bronx; his original owner got him as a kitten, named him Oscar, and then promptly died. His body was not discovered for a full week, and when it was removed, they just left the poor 3-month-old kitten in the apartment by himself. After another week, a neighbor heard meowing and got the super to let her in. It turned out she worked at an animal shelter in Hell's Kitchen, down the street from our first apartment, so she kept him there for about six months. When we decided to get a cat, we went to the shelter, and right away we knew he was the one for us. He has some stomach problems, probably the result of his traumatic experience as a kitten, and to this day he still leaves one or two kibbles in his bowl until the next feeding time, just in case. His diet food and very regimented feeding schedule has not stopped him from ballooning up to a massive girth (it's glandular) but he is very happy and surprisingly agile. He is dog-like in his steadfast loyalty, and one of the smartest cats I have ever known.* Thank you, Mr. Littlejeans, for nine great years.

*For example: he kicks the computer mouse and watches the arrow move around the screen. Also, if we say "sleep like a little man" he will lay down on the bed with his head on the pillow. His hyper intelligence led to the nickname Mr. Science.