And then it snowed

Quite the snowstorm to begin the weekend.

But with the help of a neighbor who generously intervened with his snowblower while we dug out we were done in an hour less — a few hours rather than several. It wasn't so funny for the people who got stuck in snowdrifts on the roads coming home from work Friday.

Here, we were lucky only; 12-15 inches of snow. Further East on the Island and in Massachusetts, it reached 30-40 inches as the winds cranked to up to 60 mph.

Nevertheless, by Sunday, the sun was back in full force shrinking the piled up snow, and allowing for a good outdoors day.

First order of Business was to take Robby up to the Community Chest where he had an interview on a special project. I regrouped at the town dock overlooking Manhasset Bay. Amazingly the dock had been well cleared and was quite walkable.

After picking Robby up, he, Marg were at a loose end for food so decided to give a first try to a new local central asian/Uzbek restaurant named 'Kazan.' It's gotten some good press reviews but having a tough time on Yelp from some very poor reviews.

Some gems here if you stick to the vegetarian fare, such as salad Kazan (great, and reminiscent of caponata, but satisfying as a salad option with some pita, or bread, sold separately), the shepherd salad (great), hummus (seems homemade and great).

We appreciate that and hope it sticks around, because finding restaurants (especially since Mama's Korean restaurant closed) that also serve tasty and authentic vegetarian options here, that cater to those customers, remains a challenge, in particular for my vegetarian wife.

The meat, however was not so great, a little cold, but passable for the price. The home made seasoning redeems it, and is very well done and unique, and the accompanying onion-based salad is a welcome complement.

We went back for a second round the next week, and overall, it's a good choice for the diet conscious if you go the route of grilled meats, shepherd salad, salad kazan, and other vegetable-based side orders, with maybe a little pita or bread on the side.

Small portions and some reasonable prices on appetizers allow you to build a variety of servings to share or taste, if you have a group. Samsa (think samosa in phyllo dough) was very tasty but greasy, and the fried dough crescents with meat — again tasty, inexpensive but, as to be expected perhaps, extremely greasy, and leave a residual greasy taste in your mouth. The salmon kebab was a little more expensive; tasty but a tad fishy. K-dog rated the few leftovers extremely highly. Both my sons enjoyed and would get takeout again. I am not a fan of the texture of the chicken kebab, personally. It had the softness that I'd associate with being smoked over low heat. Looked nice but could have used more of a sear. The lamb kebab was tasty but a little chewy.

Just enough calories in the bank for sawing and splitting some firewood rounds I still had sitting, certainly no excess calories — until I tried the samsa and the dough crescents the next week.

K-dog enjoyed the fruits of the storm the most perhaps, just laying in the snow for the duration of the aftenoon, supervising my work.