Thanksgiving Day

I thought that it would be a nice idea to celebrate thanksgiving on New Year's Eve, this year. (Inspired by my friend Pilar who hosted a thanksgiving dinner for her 30th birthday party, a few years ago.) One, to start the year thankful and hopeful, and two, surrounding myself by good friends and good food seemed like an auspicious way to start the year.

Since I have never made hosted a Thanksgiving, it was determined that everyone would bring their favorite side dishes, and I would make the turkey, amongst some other things. We ordered an 18lb turkey from Union Market and it was like the size of a small toddler. Or a large toddler. It was scary and slippery and I was scared to reach inside and pull out the organs. My sister-in-law had to stick her hand in there, and she only found the neck. Apparently the other stuff was still in there, which we did not find out until the turkey was carved. My neighbor had to show me how to cook the bird, since I had no clue other than sticking it into a pan, which was hers, also.

The turkey turned out ok (I find it a rather boring animal to eat), but the best part was the mountain of mashed potatoes that were a collaborative effort to make and mash. Lara brought her mom's thanksgiving green salad, candied sweet potatoes, pumpkin bread AND pumpkin biscotti; Dana brought cornbread pudding; Michelle brought broccoli; and Helen brought a Little Pie Company apple pie. In the end, we had way too much food and the plates were too small to even eat like half of it. However, it was great way to start to 2008 — fat and happy, surrounded by friends and loved ones.

Happy nieces-day

9am: Coloring at Kitchenette.

The baked goods case at Kitchenette. I cannot resist a nice baked goods display.

11am: Times Square, in front of the Toys R Us.

2:30pm: Ice skating at Chelsea Piers.

We bought tickets to take the girls to go see the Grinch Who Stole Christmas on Broadway, for this morning. So we decided to have breakfast at Kitchenette before the show — as it is the only place I can think of that opens at 9am on a Sunday morning. And there was actually a line of parents with children under 5 years old, waiting to get in at 9am. Breakfast took exactly one hour and then we went to the theater early since all three girls had to pee — I think that we spent like half the day going to the bathroom.

After the Grinch, we stupidly took the kids to the giant Toys R Us at Times Square (the one with the ferris wheel), and then we were sort of surprised when they all wanted us to buy them all sorts of junk, this is after we told them absolutely no, they could not go on the ferris wheel. That store is horrible, its like a giant trap to suck parents into buying their kids sub-par toys.

Then it was on to having pizza at Patsy's on 23rd Street, where all three girls were so excited to have Sprites that the server commented on how its amazing how something like Sprite can make kids so happy. We fed them soda and pizza, which is something I am not sure I would feed my own offspring, but then again, my kids would know what whole grain bread is, and I hope would prefer that over pizza. When Victoria saw the whole grain bread at breakfast, her face was priceless. In a I've-never-eaten-fiber-in-my-life kind of way.

After pizza, Emily went home to our house for a nap and I took Allison and Victoria to Chelsea Piers for our annual ice skating date. And it was so amazing, because Allison was skating ALL BY HERSELF by the end of the hour. I was so proud of her! And my back was also overjoyed, because skating around while holding her under her arms, was literally killing my back. Meanwhile, Victoria was lapping us both.

I am so freaking tired...and honestly have no idea how parents with more than one child can cope. Or have a personal life, or let alone read a magazine. Hanging out with the girls all day has not only completely drained me, I am stuffed full of Twizzlers®, Skittles®, stale popcorn, pizza and other garbage.

It's a stuffed Bûche de noël!

I was finally taking the time to read through some of my favorite sites yesterday (Design*Sponge) and came across this marvelous stuffed animal version of a bûche de noël made by Kayte Terry. And as much as I have always wanted one, this is actually the first year I have ever even had a bûche de noël, thanks to Susanna and Mitch who brought us one for Christmas.

Martha Stewart, of course, always seems to have a recipe for one (like here, or here, or here) but I have always been a little too intimidated by the meringue mushrooms and the faux bois chocolate bark (due to the stress induced while making the Spring Shower Almond petits fours with Lara a few years back), which are what actually make it the Yule Log, for me, at least. So perhaps next year, I will try to make to the stuffed version — as it really cannot be any more difficult than baking those stupid petits fours.

June Bug

We went to go see the movie, "Juno," tonight at BAM. I had forgotten that I read a review of this, somewhere, a while ago, and then Susanna and Mitch were telling me how great it was. So I spontaneously decided that we ought to go see it before my family arrived for the weekend. I really loved it, as evidenced by the fact that I actually cried during one part. The part at the end where Juno and Bleecker are singing that song "Anyone else but you" by the Moldy Peaches, just makes me so happy and sad (what is that word?!), simultaneously.

Hello,

So, wow. I am almost totally caught up with my blog. I have been blogging pretty steadily all day for the past three days. The last few entries that I have left are from when I was in Spain, in October. So, click on your RSS feed thing or however you can tell that I have posted new entries, if you want to catch up.

I am so happy that I am up to date.

Seriously, my blog backlog was hanging over my head, like it was actually work that was overdue or something. And while I know that this is supposed to be something pleasurable for me, something happened for awhile during the past few months or so, where the joy of blogging just was not there for me. Blogging became a tedious chore and I sort of resented having to post something happy everyday to my blog — yeah, I know the point was to find something happy to make me happy. And while I did keep track of those happy things as evidenced by the fact that I could actually wade through the backlog and post stuff, I did not feel like spending any time dwelling on those things, until just recently.

So I am back, and I will try to write more regularly, for my own sake. I pray that everyone will have a very wonderful 2008, full of their own very happy things.


Cheers,

Lunching with Juliana and Eitan

Chanterelle menu cover by Robert Indiana, 1990

This afternoon I had lunch with Eitan and Juliana at Chanterelle. And I have to say, it was one of my most delightful eating experiences. Completely different than when we ate in Daniel's kitchen, because this meal was so understated and graceful. It was just absolutely lovely. Good conversation, completely unhurried, perfect service, delicious food — it was the epitome of leisurely lunching.

The wine was chosen by the incredibly kind master sommelier, Roger. He is apparently quite famous, being that he was the 14th master sommelier in the US — which he told us, quite shyly. Eitan told me that the mast sommelier test involves blind tasting wines and having to identify the wine and its region and everything else about it, from just a sip. Wow. Since we all ordered fish, Eitan thought maybe we ought to have a white Burgundy and Roger chose one for us. I never even knew white Burgundies existed (hello, I actually thought they all were burgundy-colored. And yes, I do know that Burgundy is a region in France, but, hell, it is also a color.) — which right there shows everyone the one-dimensionality of my wine knowledge.

Eitan ordered the seafood sausage to start, which is the only item on the menu at Chanterelle that has not changes since 1979. Otherwise, the menu changes every four weeks. The sausage was superlative — sweet, rich, incredible depth of flavor and moistly crumbly. Juliana and I shared one bite, and I could taste the sweetness of the lobster and the creaminess of whatever sauce they served it in, and I can still actually taste the sausage in my memory. Which means it is going to haunt me in my dreams until I go back again and order the $16.50 sausage link myself.

Interestingly enough, all of our food sort of matched the restaurant's peachy-colored interior. I wonder if that was on purpose, or because we happened to order foods that were those colors?

While I was waiting for Juliana and Eitan to arrive, I read the first chapter (soups and stews) of the cookbook, Staff Meals from Chanterelle, which was in the anteroom off the dining area. I was totally hooked (great recipes, nicely laid out design, thoughtful writing) and made a mental note to stick the cookbook on my Amazon wishlist when I got home. However, midway through lunch, Juliana asked if we might buy two of the cookbooks and have them autographed by David Waltuck, the chef and owner (with his wife) of Chanterelle. David had unfortunately just stepped out, so chef Steve signed them for us. I think it was Karen (David's wife) who assured us that chef Steve was really very good. And then she suggested that we ought to have Roger, sign our cookbooks too. Ok, we said sure, that sounds great. And then, David came back from where ever he had gone away to, so he ended up signing our cookbooks as well.

We had a cheese plate that featured some really nice cheeses. The server gave us a very lengthy description of each cheese, which I summed down to:

a mild sort of cheese to start

a sheep's milk cheese made by a guy who got the sheep in his divorce settlement

a cheddar made in Seattle in a basement, from unpasteurized milk in the style of Cabot

a goat cheese that is very "goaty"

a blue cheese made by an 85 year old man whose kids are always off skiing and don't want to take over the cheese making business

and there was one that I forgot. I mainly focused on the cheddar and the blue, as those both were my favorites. The blue was effervescent in the mouth, with an earthy tingliness that tasted wonderful when paired with the fig bread that they brought us. The cheddar tasted sort of like a Gruyère with its crunchy crystals of something, maybe amino acids?

I like this mural

This morning, I woke up bright and early in order to get to J. Crew before the mad rush. (We do not need to go into any deeper explanation of this weird behavior other than to say that I am on vacation.) So as I was walking through a SoHo that was still very much asleep, I came across this mural in Vesuvio Playground (named after Vesuvio Bakery) on Sullivan Street. I wanted to find more about the art in the parks around the city, so I went online when I got home and was surprised to find so many different art installations around the five boroughs. Check it out, here.

Baby of the Day: Eva

This is Eva, who is about six weeks old. She rates pretty high on the cuteness scale.

Pièce de résistance

Before baking, with its salt crust.

After being baked, with its salt crust removed.

While shopping for Christmas day foods at Fairway, we decided on a whim to buy an organic boneless rib roast at $16.99 a pound. Which we had no idea how to cook. Looking up rib roasts in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything cookbook, told us to slather the roast in a salt crust and bake it for 15 minutes per pound. Well, that sounded easy enough. Kenny was in charge of baking the roast, or I guess its called roasting, while I made the other items on the menu. (Cooking animals that had four legs at one time in their lives sort of goes beyond my capabilities in the kitchen.) We all were very impressed with how the roast turned out — nicely medium rare throughout.

Christmas Day!!

My Thirtysomething DVDs arrived!

Finally, like after six weeks of eager anticipation.

A Christmas Eve tradition

For the past three years, I have had Christmas Eve brunch with the same three couples. And each year we have brunched some place different — this year we met at Morandi on Seventh Avenue. It was great to see Olivia, as each year she is getting bigger and more talkative. This year she had the spaghetti with clams, which is pretty classy for a five year old. And Yael is pregnant this year, due to have her baby any moment, literally. Which means that at next year's brunch, she and Aaron will be bringing their baby — who will almost be a year old at that point.

I got a parking ticket during lunch, though. Which means I now owe the city of New York $65. Bummer.

Lidocaine patches

I woke up with a stiff neck, again! and finally realized that it is from working on my laptop, while it is sitting on my lap. Which sort of seems to defeat the whole purpose of having a mobile computer called a...laptop.

It happened while I was in Brazil and also just this past week. And oddly enough, both times happened while I was working on a Thursday evening, and then I woke up both Sundays with a completely stiff neck. For whatever reason, there is a stiffness incubation period of two and a half days.

When we mentioned my sore neck and shoulders to my mother-in-law, she gave me some Lidocaine® patches that she happened to have laying around the house. Apparently you stick them on like giant stickers, and hopefully they are supposed to provide some pain relief. They are sort of nifty, except that the side effects could include colored spots, irritation, itching, flaking of the skin, rash, bruising, swelling, pimple-like raised skin, a cyst containing fluid, pain, burning, or abnormal sensation. Other reactions could include dizziness, headache, and nausea. And probably death, if I stuck on too many patches at one time.

I wore one for a few hours, but I did not really notice any decrease in my neck stiffness. Probably because Lidocaine is typically used for itchy or irritated skin conditions or dental surgery — not a pulled muscle from over laptopping.

Santa came early, it seems

Opening gifts with our nieces.

My new Christmas lamp.

Getting home in 20 minutes

Tonight I went to go visit Sheri, and got lost on the way there. For some reason, driving in the car is much tricky than navigating on a bicycle. I passsed by Bedford Avenue, and did not realize it until I came to Throop Avenue and I was like, "Hmmm, it seems like I went too far." I had to turn around, and retrace my route back to Bedford, and then I got every light from Dekalb Avenue to 21st Street. It took me almost 45 minutes to get to Queens! So on the way home, I took McGuiness Boulevard until to hit the BQE, and hopped onto the BQE for a few minutes. The whole trip was a straight shot and took less than 20 minutes. Normally, we go local, get lost somewhere in Greenpoint, where West Street dead ends at Quay Street and we can see our house practically, through the Navy Yard but we cannot get there. From now on, the BQE is my friend.

Person of the Day: Wai Gen

Tonight we met Wai Gen for dinner at Aburiya Kinnosuke — our favorite Japanese restaurant, that we thought he would enjoy. I have not seen Wai Gen in at least a year, if not two, since last holiday time, I could not meet them for dinner for whatever reason.

Wai Gen is a very interesting guy and I always enjoy listening to him talk about his students and the classes that he teaches — he is a professor of graduate level computer science courses at the University of Chicago. And I am sort of in awe of how someone who seems so approachable and laissez faire, can actually spend their entire work life doing complex, math-like things. How is this possible? Could my brain do math 60 hours a week if I just applied myself? I wonder if grasping math problem sets is totally something that you can just learn, like you learn a new language, or how you learn to drive stick shift. Like, if I wanted to switch careers, could I just choose to become a math person? I mean, that is, if I actually liked math.

Angel Feet

click on the picture to check it out large.

I went to Angel Feet this afternoon for a foot massage, thinking that perhaps it might help me to relax and loosen some of the tightness in my shoulders and neck — I still am having problems turning my head to the left all of the way. And I had recently developed a weird stiffness and pain in the ball of my foot whenever I flexed the toes forward on my right foot. (Is this called, "getting older"?)

For those of you who have never been, Angel Feet is a storefront reflexology "salon", where you can basically get a really nice hour-long foot massage for $115. I know it sounds pricey, but I felt that it was beneficial to my health. Hey, I wonder if I can healthcare spending account it? Anyway, the person who massaged my feet told me at the end of the hour that she could tell from the tension in my feet that my neck and shoulders were incredibly tense. She pointed out the my big toes represent my head, and the toes are my neck, the place where my toes join my feet are my shoulders, and so forth, or something like that. So perhaps that is why my toes were hurting. I wonder if that is really real. Regardless, the massage felt divine and I wanted to continue napping there for like another two hours.

Radio on my cell phone!

This evening, I was cleaning out my closet and came across my Sony Ericsson w200i phone. I thought it would be a good idea to turn off my Blackberry and use a regular phone for a few days. Since I have never even really used this phone yet, I spent an hour or so exploring all of the options — which is why cleaning my closet always takes forever. I realized that the phone has a radio! on it, and when the headset cord is plugged in, it acts as a tuner. I am not that intuitive, so thankfully the phone actually tells you this. But the best part is that it tells you what song is playing on the radio. I have always loved renting cars with stereos that have this feature, and was sort of disappointed that our new car stereo did not come with this. I immediately plugged in and proceeded to listen to the radio the rest of the night while I cleaned my closet.

Trying to text message on this phone is terrible though — how awful is it to go back to those phones with no keyboard, where you have to press the button three times for a Q, etc. It took me like 15 minutes to write a five word message.

My slippers are hot.

Zhen and Stan brought me some slippers back from their vacation in Greece. The entire slipper part is made from woven wool and the interior is the fuzzy part of the sheep's wool. And while I usually have very cold feet, these slippers are like mini toasters. At one point, my bare feet were actually sweating!

Working where no one can find me.

This is what my hidden away work cubicle looks like in my dreams. Except that there would be hard wood walnut flooring, not tile.

At the J+J campus in Skillman, New Jersey, there are these little work cubicles for people who do not have a desk, located off of the South Cafeteria. They are outfitted with Aeron chairs, Tolomeo lamps, ethernet outlets (is outlet even the right word?), and a telephone. It is rather cozy, actually.

And I have started coming into Skillman early on my New Jersey days and working from the innermost cubicle, when I want to get work done — without anyone really knowing where I am. My cell phone gets lousy service in that particular cubicle, which is perfect. I have even considered going there to work on my vacation days, because there are no distractions of a closet wanting to be cleaned or a tupperware container full of yummy cookies that want to be eaten.

Person of the Day: Sheri

This afternoon I went to go visit Sheri. You know there will always be those times when you think to yourself that your girlfriends are really freaking awesome. But then there are those moments when you are so grateful that they are just alive and feeling ok, that you just want to cry. This afternoon was one them.

My favorite song

I absolutely adore this song (Tian Mi Mi — "Sweet Honey") by Teresa Teng — in fact, I think it was the song that Kenny and I danced to at our wedding. About seven years ago, I saw Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Tian Mi Mi is the Chinese name for this movie) and the soundtrack was all Theresa Tang songs. And now every time I hear this song, I almost start to cry because it is such a good song.

Rogaine® is cool.

Ok, I love Ingrid Michaelson's accessories in this video — both her shoes and her glasses are pretty awesome. The clowns are creepy.

When I heard this song this past weekend on the radio, I had to laugh that Ingrid Michaelson sang about Rogaine. As in: "I buy you Rogaine®, when you start losing your hair..." My colleague at work sent me the video, super excited that Rogaine® (one of our brands) has infiltrated the indie music scene.

Maybe I was dreaming?

Today, I had some productive meetings in New Jersey and was on route 287 way before it got all snarled with annoying Jersey traffic. It was so pleasant to be driving somewhere at 3pm on a winter afternoon, when the sun was all golden-y in the sky and good music was on, and the heat was on number 4, and I felt all cozy in the car — like I could keep on driving for ever.

chocolate + bacon + basil

A list was made of 250 food products each with their major flavour components. By comparing the flavour of each food product eg strawberry with the rest of the food and their flavours, new combinations like strawberry with peas can be made. The way to use is, is just to select a food product like strawberries. You will get a plot where you have strawberry in the middle surrounded by other food products. Take one of those other food products and try to make a new recipe by combining those two. The more flavours food products have in common the shorter the distance between the food products.

A food product has a specific flavour because of a combination of different flavours. Like basil taste like basil because of the combination of linalool, estragol, …. So if I want to reconstruct the basil flavour without using any basil, you have to search for a combination of other food products where one contains linalool (like coriander), one contains estragol (like tarragon),... So I can reconstruct basil by combining coriander, tarragon, cloves, laurel. The way to use it is to take from each branch of the plot one product and make a combination of those food products.

Today at work, I learned about a web site called Food Pairing, where you can click on a certain food, for instance, blueberries, and see what other foods would pair well with blueberries, based on their flavanoids. Turns out that blueberries play nicely with artichokes, turnips, coffee, oysters and Camembert cheese. And who would have thought that roast beef went well with licorice, yoghurt and fried soybeans? Peas paired with clams and honey?

I am already imagining the weird and wonderful dinners I can now justify.

Seeing Dragons on Broadway

Just checking to make sure everything is ok in there.

This afternoon, after going to the Craft Fair on East 4th Street with Susanna, I headed down towards the B train on the corner of Broadway and Houston Street. And then I heard the ubiquitous sounds of Chinese New Year, which for me, is symbols clanging in a very dragon-dancy sort of way. I looked across the street, and there was a Chinese dragon walking down the sidewalk. I had to mentally check to see if perhaps Chinese New Year came early this year...but no, it's in February. I had no idea why there was a dragon dancing team dancing down Broadway, until a Chinese guy wearing chainmail gave me a flyer about a cultural program called Holiday Wonders, that was performing at the Beacon Theater.

I found two reviews of the show, one person gave it five stars and the other person gave it one star, which leaves me wondering how the show really was.

I am a platinum member.

bye bye green card.

This evening, I stayed home from TWO holiday parties — one in Connecticut that belonged to my cousin and his wife. And one was in the East Village commemorating the engagement of a friend and his fiancée. I felt crummy and headache-y, and crabby and out of sorts. (This is actually pretty normal, at least the crabby, out of sorts part.)

So, to make myself feel better, I decided to tackle ONE thing on my list. Which was to pay my bills. Or at least to check in on them and make sure that they were paying themselves, via Chase's auto payment online checking. Which led me to call Chase and kindly ask if they could give me a better APR on my Chase credit card, please? Which led me to call American Express to validate the new card that had been sitting on my desk for three months waiting for me to call in and authorize it. Being that I have been an outstanding AmEx card carrier for SEVEN years

(they must have overlooked my previous record from college when I defaulted on my payments for the J.Crew clothes that I bought, and American Express took my card away from me because I could not pay off the $300 worth of striped roll-neck sweaters. Who gives a freaking college student a credit card that you have to pay off in full every month, when the student makes $4.05 an hour at the library, via a work study program?!)

American Express let me know that I qualified for a platinum card. Which, for $450 a year, gives me four FREE companion tickets to anywhere in the US or internationally. And internationally, if I fly business or first class, my partner also gets to fly business. And I think they even get the miles! This is only one of the nice perks of being a platinum member. I am super excited to be in the platinum club...although now I am figuring out how I can get one of the black cards. Perhaps if I buy a small country using my AmEx card, they will upgrade me.

Parakeets, discounted

I saw this sign and it made me wonder about Rick and Liz and how this sign came to be, which I believe went something like this:

Obviously, Rick made the sign first, and then Liz saw it was like, "Dude, we have to point out that it's a double decker cage. I mean, that's the whole selling point!" Rick probably thought that by saying "huge" it meant double decker, but boy was he wrong. So, Liz underlined huge cage and added in "double decker," just to clarify how huge "huge" really meant. And then she was like, "$59.99 is basically $60, which is a lot. That is like $12 a bird, let's make it $55, which sounds like it's a lot less than $60." So she crossed out Rick's price and penned in her own. And that made her realize that if anyone called Rick about the birds, he would sort of fuck up the whole sale on the phone and say that all five birds chirped really loudly at like 5am, or something like that, so she added her number(s), plural with an arrow. And then she added "Like. New" at the bottom, so you definitely want to call, because who in their right mind wouldn't want five "Like.New" parakeets for $55?!

Caroling at Ping's

Gettin' Ribilicious

I ate four, or maybe five?!, deviled eggs.
They are my only 'don't ask, don't tell' mayonnaise dalliance.

Intimate Health hanging with Oral Care.

Wound Care + the Wizard of Oz + Oral Care.

Pulled pork in all of its glory.

Cherith's organic, free range chicken.

For our group holiday party, Elan took us to his most favorite restaurant — Blue Smoke. It was a really nice evening, celebrating the past not-quite-a-year, of Consumer Health Care fun and glory, with my colleagues.

For those of you who have never been there, Blue Smoke is a Danny Meyer restaurant (Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Café, Tabla and Eleven Madison Park); and being that Danny is from St. Louis, the rib recipes are predominately St. Louis style, as is the "rib-consultant." He had to have special gas and apple-wood smokers custom-built (in Missouri), which are attached to chimneys fifteen stories high, because open-pit barbecuing is illegal in Manhattan.

Despite all of the ribi-ness of the place, I went the route of deviled eggs for the appetizer, on which I completely overdosed — they were ridiculously good, and then I barely had room for my giant mound of pulled pork with mayonnaise-free cole slaw (which should really be the only way cole slaw is made, frankly).

Staten Island: a day trip

I decided to call my brother this morning as I drove to New Jersey. Note that I have driven this route to Skillman for the past eight months, and have never missed my exit on Route 278 to get onto Route 440 — towards the Outerbridge Crossing. But today, somehow, I sailed right by my exit and only noticed that I had passed it when I was about to miss the last exit before crossing over the Goethals Bridge. Which is not my bridge.

My brother was like, "um, are you there? You're all quiet..." and I was like, "Shit, I missed my fucking exit. I gotta go." And then I started to quietly get all hot and stressed out that I might miss my 10am meeting, despite it only being 7:30am. I contemplated throwing my phone across the car and wisely decided that breaking my cell phone into little pieces would not actually solve anything.

I called Kenny and he was like, "You see? This is why I tell you to never talk to me while I am driving." Ok, he has a point. Sort of.

Panicked some more. Now I was driving East on Route 278 and realized that I went too far, missing my exit AGAIN, and now was stuck in rush hour city traffic trying to get over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. I had to turn around a SECOND time. And then I was headed in the right direction, and was going to do it right the third time, damn it. And thankfully, I did not miss my exit again.

The amazing thing was that despite missing my exit twice, I got onto Route 287 and there is like absolutely no traffic. Where there is usually backed up miles of cars and trucks from Exits 1 through 12, there was nothing. I made it to Skillman, NJ in a little less than an hour and a half — it usually takes me two hours, plus or minus 15 minutes. So despite getting lost twice, I still made it to work half an hour ahead of time. I have no idea how that is even possible.