City Hall News Ranks Council Members

Who’s the most powerful City Council member representing the Bronx? It’s Annabel Palma, according to a list ranked by City Hall News that came out last month. Palma was number 3 on a list of 50 city reps (Christine Quinn was not included, since as Council Speaker she was automatically ranked the most powerful member).The bi-monthly political paper based their choices on a formula that considered five factors: the number of bills the Council Member has passed, the number of bills they’ve introduced, the number of committee hearings they’ve chaired this year, how significant those committees are, and the amount of member item money they’ve scored.Here are the complete (Bronx) rankings. The full list of all 50 Council members and how they fared was in the July 28 edition of

Edible Garden at NYBG

Sunday was a lovely day at the New York Botanical Garden’s Edible Garden Exhibition which goes through Oct. 17. My wife and daughter and I got there in time for a cooking exhibition by the blogger/author Cathy Erway (photo in slideshow) who spent two years blogging about her experience NOT eating out at a single restaurant. For her demo she roasted different varieties of eggplant, whipped up a couple of sauces – east-west she called them (one was a pesto and another a sesame paste like the kind you put on Chinese sesame noodles) and served them up to the audience. Mmmmmm.