Good Wednesday morning.
It’s another day for celebrating carbohydrates, specifically a special sort of carb that appeals to a subset of the population – maybe grandmas? And me, for the record, I am a big fan.
Of melba toast, that is.
What IS melba toast, exactly? It’s somewhere between toast and a cracker, and was once a pillar of the Weight Watchers diet because, well, it’s not terribly high in calories (or nutrients, for that matter).
It’s sliced thin and toasted until crispy. It often accompanies soup or salad or is used as a vehicle for dips and spreads. I like it with cottage cheese, which I know is another divisive foodstuff. We’ll leave that one for another day.
Apparently, one of the main manufacturers of melba toast, Old London Foods, used to be headquartered in the Bronx. (It also used to be called the King Kone Corporation, which also created both Cheez Doodles and Dipsy Doodles corn chips, of which I am a VERY big fan and are so much better than Fritos, but changed its name in 1960).
Like so many other production-related businesses, it uprooted itself and moved south.
Anyway, back to melba toast, which we are celebrating at the national level today.
It dates back to 1897, when, legend has it, when Dame Nellie Melba (AKA Australian opera singer Helen Porter Mitchell) who was either sick or concerned about her figure (the interwebs can’t seem to agree on this) and complained to chef Auguste Escoffier that her toasted bread was too thick.
The great chef responded by presenting her with bread that had been sliced extremely thin and toasted. I guess it must have been a hit, because hotel proprietor César Ritz named it after her. And the rest, as they say, is history.
(And yes, in case you’re wondering, Escoffier also created the peach melba dessert, which features sliced peaches, raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream, for the same finicky singer).
Melba toast was popularized in 1925 by the Mayo Brothers who prescribed it as part of the “Eighteen Day Reducing Diet” to actress Ethel Barrymore. Old London began mass producing it in 1932 after installing a special Melba oven – I could not find much information on what that is, must be pretty cool, though.
It will be mostly cloudy with temperatures in the low 50s (again) today.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden departs today on one of the highest-stakes presidential trips in recent memory, a moment for the US President to assume leadership of a newly united West.
The four-day trip that will test his ability to navigate the continent’s worst crisis since World War II.
Emergency summits in Brussels, Belgium, of NATO, the European Union and the G7 will focus on displays of cooperation in punishing Russia and providing support to Ukraine as it comes under fire.
A stop afterward in Poland is meant to highlight the massive refugee crisis that’s followed Russia’s invasion as well as to reassure allies on NATO’s eastern edge.
Biden plans to announce new sanctions against Russia tomorrow while in Brussels for meetings with NATO and European allies, according to a top national security aide.
The Biden administration is preparing to unveil as early as this week a plan to expedite and streamline the resettlement of some Ukrainian refugees in the U.S., three sources familiar with the plan said.
The conviction of Russian opposition figure and Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny on “new trumped-up charges” shows Moscow is intensifying its crackdown on dissent at home while it fights its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Human Rights Watch said.
The Russian military has lost more than 10% of the combat force that President Vladimir Putin sent to invade Ukraine, a senior Pentagon official said.
Ukrainian forces claimed to have retaken control of a strategically important town outside of Kyiv, a nascent sign they could be beating back Russia’s brutal, weeks-long effort to seize the capital as the Kremlin intensifies its attacks across the country.
The United Nations will face three resolutions today on the worsening humanitarian situation in Ukraine after Russia decided to call for a vote on its Security Council resolution that makes no mention of its attack on its smaller neighbor.
U.S. officials are telling business leaders to get prepared for potential Russian cyberattacks, and Gov. Kathy Hochul is reminding New Yorkers how to stay safe online and avoid charity scams.
First Lady Jill Biden complained about her husband’s choice of Kamala Harris as running mate and now vice-president, according to a new book, asking: “There are millions of people in the United States. Why…do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe?”
Excerpts from the forthcoming book shed new light on tensions between Harris and other members of the Biden administration and on her own frustration with her role.
A private school in Southern California has issued an apology after a video surfaced of a preschool teacher leading her students in a chant denouncing Biden.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson opened the second day of her confirmation hearing with a forceful defense of her record of sentencing child pornography offenders, pushing back against a recurring Republican attack line leveled against her.
Democrats largely praised Jackson’s record, while Republicans focused their attacks on her history as a public defender. Questioning will resume today.
One word Jackson repeatedly returned to was “impartiality” as she discussed her method of ruling on cases as a judge.
Jackson said repeatedly that she understood the narrow role that judges played in American government and refused to be drawn into political fights such as whether seats should be added to the Supreme Court.
After a dispute over terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stormed out of the Senate hearing for Jackson.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced yesterday that she has tested positive for Covid-19 for a second time and is experiencing mild symptoms, less than one day before Biden is scheduled to depart for his trip to Brussels and Warsaw.
As a result, Psaki, who said she has mild symptoms of COVID-19, will not be traveling with Biden, who tested negative.
“I had two socially-distanced meetings with the President yesterday, and the President is not considered a close contact as defined by CDC guidance,” Psaki said in a statement.
Hillary Clinton has tested positive for COVID-19, she tweeted yesterday. The 74-year-old former secretary of state said that she is experiencing “some mild cold symptoms” but said she is “feeling fine.”
Former President Bill Clinton, she said, has tested negative and is feeling fine, but both are quarantining.
Air travel has been one of the last holdouts for strict pandemic mask requirements. In the United States, for example, the mask mandate — which was recently extended to April 18, when it comes up for review again — is still enforced.
A subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, is leading to a new wave of Covid-19 infections across Europe. Cases in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries are going up, driven by this very contagious coronavirus strain.
Daily reports of new coronavirus cases are increasing in 18 European countries, including Britain, France, Germany and Italy, because the authorities are relaxing pandemic restrictions too quickly, a senior WHO official in the region said.
Jenny Rivera, a judge on New York State’s highest court, could face removal from the bench for failing to comply with the state’s Covid vaccination mandate, according to court guidelines and state officials.
Rivera, nominated to sit on the state’s highest court by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2013, is among four judges still refusing to get the jab.
More than 150 New York state court employees face getting fired in fewer than two weeks if they don’t get the COVID-19 vaccine.
New York City plans to end a school mask mandate for children under the age of 5 on April 4, Mayor Eric Adams announced.
“If the numbers continue to show a low level of risk, masks will be optional for 2- to 4-year-old students in schools and day care,” he told reporters at City Hall. “We want to see our babies’ faces. Now it’s time to peel back another layer.”
Adams said professional sports teams will have to wait longer before the city will rollback vaccine mandates.
“When this is all said and done, people are going to realize this is a thoughtful administration and we got it right,” Adams said. “So baseball, basketball, businesses, all of those things, they have to wait until that layer comes.”
A Staten Island pastor who once equated homosexuality to pedophilia was removed from Adams’ education policy panel within hours of being hired after the Daily News exposed her anti-gay track record.
Adams appointed a top charter school administrator and a slew of close allies to the Department of Education’s oversight board to a mixed response.
Powerful city lawmakers demanded that Adams take quick action to fill the roughly 2,500 empty city apartments for homeless New Yorkers, after The NY Post revealed how a bureaucratic ‘nightmare’ left them unoccupied.
Experts say time and money constraints, as well as a segregated food system, make it difficult for the poorest New Yorkers to eat the kind of diet that helped Adams himself manage his Type 2 diabetes, a chronic disease afflicting close to 1 million city residents.
New York City’s top transit advocates are warning Hochul to steer clear of proposed transit connections to LaGuardia Airport that mimic the costly, “bespoke” JFK AirTrain, which requires travelers to transfer from the subway and pay an extra fare.
The Legislature and Hochul are poised for a showdown over how to respond to the state’s poor roll out of the Raise the Age statute, which launched three years ago but has failed to provide many adolescent offenders with promised support services.
Hochul announced New York has become the top community solar market in the United States with more than one gigawatt of community solar installed and operational – enough to serve 209,000 homes across the state.
Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin talked about the Hochul administration’s bail reform plan after apologizing for dodging reporters’ questions at two different events.
“We believe bail reform is a good thing,” Benjamin said, hours after he had initially declined to answer questions on the topic. “We also believe, given what we’re seeing, there are some amendments that should be a part of it.”
Making changes to New York’s bail law is proving to be an increasingly difficult knot to untie in the state Legislature, where top Democrats are yet to embrace any proposals that Hochul wants included in the state budget.
Rep. Tom Suozzi blasted his Democratic primary opponent Hochul over her new public safety plan, labeling it “phony” because it doesn’t include a measure giving judges power to lock up defendants they deem dangerous before trial.
Two new super PACs plan to spend $4 million promoting law-and-order candidates for the state Legislature in the June primary elections — and even some Democrats are warning that it could cost progressives dearly.
State prosecutors say scores of criminal cases are being tossed thanks to a stringent 2019 “reform” statute that sets tight deadlines on producing evidence — and frustrated staffers are quitting left and right.
A progressive advocacy organization, FWD.us, announced plans to launch a six-figure ad campaign to oppose changes to New York’s law that largely ended cash bail requirements for many criminal charges.
Apple, the maker of the iPhone, has lobbied state officials about the creation of a “mobile driver’s license” that would be stored on cellphones.
More Democratic lawmakers are looking to cancel Mario Cuomo — at least the former three-term governor’s name from the Hudson River span that replaced the old Tappan Zee Bridge.
Lauren Pazienza, 26, turned herself in and was charged with manslaughter in the death of Broadway singing coach Barbara Maier Gustern, 87.
Pazienza turned herself into police yesterday after 12 days on the run where she fled her Astoria apartment and hid out in her parents’ Long Island home, authorities said.
The homeless man who confessed to pushing Manhattan consultant Michelle Go to her death in front of a Times Square subway car has been deemed unfit to stand trial by a court-appointed psychiatrist.
The city’s five borough presidents are calling for a permanent state law allowing for a remote option to attend community board meetings — a move critics charge would curtail essential neighborhood face-to-face democracy.
Workers at an Astoria Starbucks announced they’re the latest in the national chain to join a unionization effort.
U.S. Housing Secretary Marcia Fudge unveiled the release of more than $187 million to New York City and $41 million to New York State, saying the money would help “strengthen recovery efforts” and help foster “long-term, inclusive resilience.”
Interactive online fantasy sports games offered by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings were declared constitutional in New York by the state’s highest court.
A state Supreme Court judge officially dropped billionaire Pakistani developer Malik Riaz Hussain as a defendant in lawsuits the families of the victims of the 2018 limousine crash in Schoharie filed against his brother and the company that owned the limo.
Republican state Sen. Jim Tedisco filed an open records request in order to compel the release of any information related to the state inspector general’s report on the 2018 limousine crash in Schoharie that killed 20 people.
After two years of being canceled or sharply limited by the pandemic, the timesunion.com/Table Hopping Mac-n-Cheese Bowl returns Saturday for what is expected to be a record turnout when the fundraiser is held for the first time as an outdoor event.
Lawyers for Crossgates Mall and Save the Pine Bush are scheduled to square off today at a mid-level appeals court over the second attempt in recent years to halt construction of a Costco Wholesale store next to the mall.
A reservation system tested last year at the Adirondack Mountain Reserve in Keene will resume May 1 with no changes, state officials announced. Free reservations can be made up to two weeks in advance and at minimum 12 hours the day before.
Orange County legislators are calling on the board of directors of the Catskill Regional Off-Track Betting Corporation to replace the OTB’s longtime president, Donald Groth, after an IG report exposed his alleged mismanagement of the public corporation.
Author and billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave a record $436 million to Habitat for Humanity, the housing organization announced.
Broadway has a new box office leader: A starry revival of “The Music Man” grossed $3.5 million last week, the most of any show since theaters reopened after the long pandemic shutdown.
Billie Eilish and brother Finneas O’Connell, Beyoncé, Reba McEntire and Sebastián Yatra will all be performing songs that have been nominated for the Oscars’ “Original Song” category at the awards ceremony on Sunday.
Ash Barty surprisingly retired from tennis at age 25 while ranked No. 1 and less than two months after winning the Australian Open for her third Grand Slam singles title.
