New York State Dinner

Buffalo chicken wings
Brooklyn bialys
Delmonico potatoes
Waldorf salad
New York egg cream
New York cheesecake

This has been a fun way to get the kids to try new foods. Our oldest likes new food but the younger three can be rather resistant to change! Tonight's dinner was hit and miss. I let the younger ones try the buffalo wings but they preferred the wings with no hot sauce. My older son thought they were hot but ate a bunch anyway because he said they were so good. The kids all loved the bialys. Only my husband liked the potatoes. That surprised me. Who wouldn't like potatoes in a creamy sauce topped with cheese? I guess since my kids have never liked scalloped potatoes, I shouldn't have been surprised. Everyone liked the Waldorf salad. I went the traditional route and made it with only apples and celery with mayo. The egg cream drink was a miss with everyone. It is a little strange--club soda with a little whole milk and chocolate sauce. Cheesecake is always well liked! I had to use a regular pie pan since my springform pan is back in Oregon.

The Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, serves over 70,000 pounds of chicken wings per month. Bialys orginiated in Bialystok, Poland. In the early 1900s, many east European Jews settled in New York City. Manhattan's Lower East Side is famous for its bialy bakeries. Delmonico potatoes originated at Delmonico's Restaurant in NYC around 1830. The Waldorf salad was created at the famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC in 1896. According to Elliot Willensky, author of When Brooklyn Was the World: 1920-1957, "a candy store minus and egg cream, in Brooklyn at least, was as difficult to conceive of as the Earth without gravity." Historians believe cheesecake was served as long ago as the first Olympic games, 776 B.C. A dairyman in upstate New York made cream cheese on accident while trying to recreated the French cheese Neufchatel. A true New York-style cheesecake is made with pure cream cheese, cream, sugar and eggs.