anyone try to make the cookies from levain bakery (NYC UWS) at home? I think they are basically chocolate chip cookie dough, underbaked, extra large, with lots of melted chocolate and cocoa. But maybe more egg, less leveaning??

mini twix-like bars: first make a pan of shortbread, then make a batch of caramel (with cream-- cook until firm ball stage) and pour over shortbread. When firm (ok to use fridge to speed it up) cut into bars about and inch long and coat in milk chocolate. They were a bit time -consuming, but very satisfying to make and eat. I use callebut chocolate.

My son was born in 2005, and since we all like to drink wine and it was a good year I bought futures. (We cook at home a lot, dad is Italian, we generally drink wine -- Fr or It mostly -- with dinner and don't have the income to spend much on it -- around $11 bottle on average in well-priced NYC stores). So I went out and dropped a good bit on four cases. I figured it will be nice to drink from his birth year in the years to come, and I tried to select wines that were likely to last a long while.
I used the wine books I had along with the sparse notes that the merchant (sherry lehman) provided and price to guide me. Anyone want to educate me about how I could have chosen more wisely?
Many thanks.

Sahadis is a wonderful, middle eastern originally, grocer on Atlantic avenue in Brooklyn. They have great vanilla beans at very fair prices.

I'm not an expert in empanadas, but I'm also not easily impressed and as it happens, last weekend I had a delicious beef empanada at the ball fields in Red Hook. Pretty much at the end of the line of vendors (just past some slightly pricey (for the venue) tasty, tomatoey, shrimp ceviche). This empanada was about the size of a my (woman's) fist, really nice, tasty, flakey dough, spiced cubes of tender meat, egg, maybe onion, maybe raisins -- can't remember. Seriously good. The vendors just got a pass into October, so there is still time to get one if you are in red hook instead of williamsburg.