Enjoy the here and now

Tonight, as I was making a cup of tea (to soothe my stomach ache and and my stuffy head) while trying to figure out what I want to do for New Year's Eve, I happened to pull this particular tea bag from a new box of peppermint Yogi Tea. I think it is a marvelous sentiment to bring in the new year. And while I had been contemplating a midnight yoga class, I could not find one at any of the yoga studios that I frequent. Which is a shame, given that it is a full moon tonight and yoga would have been a very satisfying way to celebrate the full moon and the new year, together.

Instead, I am going to drink my peppermint tea, enjoy the happiness of the moment, and if I don't go to my friend's party, perhaps I will watch a marathon a Weeds season 5. Which well it is no midnight yoga, but could potentially be just as satisfying.

Snow falling

Ladan texted me this morning at 8:42am to tell me that it was snowing. It really lovely to be on vacation, laying in bed in my pajamas, watching the snow fall...happy that I do not have to go outside all day, if I don't want to.

A lazy day spent watching movies

...Blow, Traffic, Public Enemy Number 1, and Azumi. Wishing to watch Crash, to top it off, but we did not have it on hand.

I ♥ Mike's Diner

I went to Mike's Diner, on the corner of DeKalb and Hall, today for breakfast. And I have decided that this is going to be my new breakfast spot. Not only were the poached eggs cooked the right amount so that the yolks were still golden and gooshy, the fries were perfectly crispy, the best part was that the entire bill came to $10.92, for two people —$13 with tip.

Desperate for Macaroons

I stopped by Starbucks to get a soy milk hot cocoa this afternoon, and spotted these: macaroons created specifically for Starbucks. And while I am not anticipating anything spectacular, whatsoever...I mean, I know they are not going to be anything like Pierre Hermé or Laudrée, I have been craving them ever since I went to Paris two weeks ago and did not get the chance to buy any while I was there. Which means, at this point, I am willing to settle for Starbucks macaroons, or else I might have to buy the frozen ones at Trader Joe's. I could just go into Manhattan if I want good ones, but I am feeling very, very lazy whilst on vacation.

Lilies, part 4

In Memoriam: Dennis Brutus

Reading the New York Times this morning, I found out that one of my professors from college, Dennis Brutus, died today at the age of 85, in his home in Cape Town, South Africa. He taught History of the African Novel, amongst other classes, and I actually took all of the African literature classes that he taught, thanks to the reciprocal program between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.

One time he had to break up a fight between myself and another guy in class who was picking on me for being the only white person in the class. And another time, it was the end of the fall semester, and if you know Pittsburgh, it was cold and dark by 3pm. I could not muster up the energy to walk to Pitt to turn in my term paper, so I called Professor Brutus to see if I could fax it in, instead. He told me that I had to turn it in, in person, otherwise, he would lower my grade from an A to a B. I debated whether I should walk the two miles in the snow, and decided that it was worth a B to fax it. Because you know, kids still are pretty much idiots until they are like 25 years old or so. He was so disappointed in me for doing that. As was, I am sure, my mother.

Anyway, I learned a lot from Professor Brutus, and he was my inspiration for spending my spring semester in South Africa, my senior year in college. His tormented love for his home country was very evident in everything that he taught and I decided that I needed to visit this amazing, yet conflicted (to put it mildly), country, to see it's wonderfulness for myself. I am very grateful to have had the experience of being one of his students and will never forget his passion for literature and poetry, and for South Africa.

Up in the Air

Being Christmas and all, I decided to go see a quasi-depressing movie, which is my new Christmas Day tradition. Last year it was Slum Dog Millionaire, and this year it was Up in the Air. I had a particular interest in this movie though, as American Airlines (together with Hilton) was prominently featured. Since I fly a great deal, and most of my miles are on American Airlines, I was curious to see what happens when you hit the 10,000,000 mile marker. Albeit, I am nowhere near that range of mileage, thank god. However, when the all too familiar American Airlines music came on at one point during the movie, it was oddly comforting in a strange way.

Yogi Tea tea bag wishes

Each morning when I make a cup of tea, I always eagerly read the quote on my tea bag (perhaps this is the 21st century version of reading one's tea leaves...?). Today's in particular was quite uplifting, because there are moments when I feel rather dark and twisty, to quote Meredith Grey. And I don't always feel especially joyful and full of positivity. And yet, I know that inherently, I am meant to be a happy person. Unlike some people, who are just born to be tormented by life's injustices. My friend Larry calls me Amy Joy, despite that not being how you spell my name, because he knows that I am that happy, sunshiny person. And I want to make sure that I feel like I am that person, all the time, too. Cheesy as it is, my tea bag was a good reminder of how I want to go through life. Lightly and simply, spreading love and positivity. I am not sure I can do anything simply, but I am going to at least try. Or at least I am going to try to be full of light, despite my nature to be more intense and complicated than necessary.

Ice Skating in Prospect Park

Today I met up with Marcos and two of his daughters (Demi and Kai), so that we could go ice skating in the park. I had been looking forward to skating with them all week, and despite the cold, it was a perfect day for skating. Oddly enough, the rink was playing Christmas Carols, instead of the prerequisite pop songs that I have come to associate with the sounds of skate blades cutting through ice that needs a good zamboni-ing. The girls made fun of my ice skates, asking me if I had just bought them. They admittedly don't get enough usage, despite being five years old, but it is hard to convince people to go ice skating with me. If I had my way, and a willing friend, I would skate at least once a week.

Blueberry muffins on a Wednesday morning

This morning, while still laying in bed, I googled recipes for blueberry muffins on epicurious.com, on my Blackberry. I found the above recipe, which I modified, as I don't particularly love cinnamon with blueberries (so I removed it and added in vanilla) and I substituted unsweetened soy milk for whole milk from a cow. Although, I would have used goat's milk, if I had some in the fridge. I also used frozen (little, wild ones from Maine) blueberries from Trader Joe's because I did not pick any this summer in New Jersey, because..I am lazy?

That being said, I decided to make this particular recipe because it was incredibly easy. Pretty much mix the wet ingredients plus sugar, with the dry ingredients plus the berries and bake them. The other reason was because it called for brown sugar instead of regular white sugar. Brown sugar adds a nice crunchiness, and moistness, without it being overly sweet or too dry and boring, as some muffins are wont to be. The batter made exactly 12 muffins, which also was very appreciated, because I hate it when the recipe says it makes 12, and yet you either don't have enough batter and end up with only 10 muffins, or it makes too much batter and you have to throw the rest of the batter down the drain and then feel sort of guilty. Like, if you were more intrepid, you might have made a mini loaf in addition to the muffins, or something.

Zen Mind

Tonight, I went with Ladan to a Buddhist meditation class at the Tibet House on 15th Street. I have actually been wanting to go for many years, as another friend used to go all the time and she was such a kind, well-balanced, all around special and amazing person that I contributed some tiny little bit of it to her Buddhist practice. We arrived late because we went to the gym first, and I was already worrying about whether anyone was going to steal my boots because they had to stay outside in the communal hallway. This is a very non-Buddhist thought, worrying that some fellow meditationer might snatch your Prada boots. (Which I did not even buy, mind you, because I don't normally wear anything other than clogs.) I should have known right then, that this was not going to work for me, but instead we went inside and sat on some folding chairs, in our stockinged feet. We missed the introduction part, and pretty much went straight into a 20 minute meditation. I tried to imagine, starting from the very top of my head and working downwards, that every single cell in my body was smiling. So I focused on making my scalp happy, and even the cells in my hair, despite them already being dead. My eyes, and my forehead, and my nose, lips and tongue. And suddenly, I felt this amazing sense of radiance sparking from the tip of my head. In my mind, my brain was glowing, giving off this golden sparkly light, and then my eyes, and cheeks and mouth all were golden and sparkling. And it was like my brain was having an orgasm, I felt this amazing sense of openess and freeness and energy and peace and nothing and everything all at one time.

So of course, I cannot just let the meditation continue to my neck, and shoulders and knees and toes...no. And this is where I know that I have a long way to go, and perhaps should consider a daily practice. Because I then started marveling over how amazing it was that I was actually meditating (I can do this!) and feeling this rush of nothing/everything envelop me, and I started to ruminate on that and how I wish I could document the amazingness, like, could there be a CAT scan capturing this on video? Which somehow led me to think about Christmas, and gifts!, and then I thought about what I might make for dinner. And a few more thoughts crowded into that space of delicious light and totally obliterated it into nothing. Then my feet started to hurt because I could not really touch the floor, and I was getting ancy, because I wanted to go back to the golden light place, not sit around listening to other people talk about their meditation issues. So I sat in my uncomfortable folding chair eating TicTacs until the break time when I told Ladan that I had to go home. Maybe next time, I will be able to stay the whole two hours, and slowly I can work myself up to a five day Buddhist retreat, where they hit you with a stick if you have bad posture.

Cookies from Marks + Spencer

I saw this Swiss Biscuits tin for Marks + Spencer on Lovely Package today, and it was just so endearing...perhaps because I have a particular fondness for Sanna Annukka's illustrations, or all things Finnish, or both. Wish that I lived in London, so that I could pop on over and pick up a package of these adorable cookies. I would store colored pencils in the tin when I was finished eating all the cookies. (Which I would, of course, share with friends over tea.)

Red Egg

I met Juliana, Eitan and Shai for brunch this morning at Red Egg on Centre Street. We ordered two orders of the tofu with bok choi dish, because everyone loves it so much...especially Shai. (He also wanted to eat the flowers-made-from-carrot-garnish, but we all said no. After my friend William told me his brother got food poisoning in Hong Kong from eating the garnish, because they reuse them in restaurants, I have been very anti-eating of the garnish.) We are convinced that they must soak the tofu in butter, to get it so soft, buttery and golden. There must be a bad reason as to why it tastes so good.

Tempura'd

I took a Japanese street food class a few months ago, and have been wanting to make shrimp tempura for awhile now. The thought of deep frying seafood in my apartment was sort of filling me with dread though, as I hate the smell of fried fish, and my apartment is like a sieve of smells; it captures stuff forever in its little nooks + crannies. The smell of pumpkin bread I don't mind wafting around for weeks, but fried shrimp is another story. However, for whatever reason, I bought 10 jumbo shrimp at Fishtales on Court Street, and decided to get over my stinky apartment hang-up.

According to my Japanese cooking teacher, tempura is easy if you remember one thing. Always mix the egg (1) with the cold water (1 cup) before you add it to the cake flour (1 cup). Otherwise, if you don't, you will have gluey, icky tempura. Easy enough thing to remember. I also had some haricots verts in the fridge and decided to tempura those as well.

This is the first time in my life that I have purchased shrimp with its clothes still on, feet attached, with the purpose of deveining them on my very own. It was highly disgusting, and some of my shrimp had eaten a very large dinner before they died, because their little intestines were full of the grossest looking glop I have ever seen. But I soldiered on, only because I had visions of fried foods dancing around in my head.

After adding the half bottle of canola oil that I had in the cupboard to the pot, I read that the instructions called for 4 inches of oil for a proper fry. I only had 1 inch. I debated whether I really needed those other 3 inches and then determined, yes...I really didn't want to mess it all up after dealing with shrimp guts. So despite the blizzard outside, I ran across the street and bought two more bottles of cooking oil.

And it was so easy. I dredged the shrimp (after cross hatching the inside of each one, so that they would not curl up, but rather lay flat like mini corn dogs) in cake flour, dipped them in the tempura batter and dropped them into the hot oil. And they immediately puffed up like fluffy pillows. After I cooked all ten shrimp, I did the same thing with a giant handful of the green beans. And I have to say, the shrimp looked perfect and even tasted nice (crunchy and puffy, but a little oily), but the green beans were the piéce de résistance. Perfectly crunchy and then crisp cooked on the inside. Honestly, they were better than Red Cat's. I was shocked that I was able to pull it off. Moving forward, I am going to experiment with all sorts of stuff in the tempura batter. Green pea tempura is next.

A good day

Paris, France

6:00am — Caught the Air France airport bus outside of the Hotel Le Meridien Etoile. Thankfully, this was the hotel where I was staying, because it snowing and there were no taxis, because Parisians cannot handle snow.

7:00am — Checked in at the Lufthansa desk, where I decided against checking my duffel bag. This was the smart decision #1. I was scheduled on the 9:40am flight, and decided to go to the gate and see if I could catch the earlier flight to Frankfurt, which had been delayed.

7:30am — The 6:40 was still delayed so I went to go find a pain au chocolat for sustenance, and a bottle of Evian. After finding snacks, I went to the gate and decided to inquire about getting a seat on the earlier flight, as it was now boarding. Somehow I managed to get the last seat on the plane...1C.

8:00am — Immediately went to sleep and only woke up when the plane touched the ground in Germany.

Frankfurt, Germany

10:00am — The pilot handed a note to the stewardess, who spoke to the guy in the seat behind me. "Mr. Agassi? There will be a Porsche 911 waiting for you when you disembark, to take you to your connecting flight." Unfortunately, I had to take the shuttle bus to the terminal. And then walk approximately two miles from terminal A to terminal C, hoping to make it onto the 11am flight to JFK, despite being booked on the 4:40pm flight. This was smart decision #2.

10:35am — After schlepping all my stuff to the furthest most gate from where I initially landed, I was told that there more seats on the 11am flight. Thankfully, I expressed my disbelief at this and made it clear that I was not going to take no for an answer. Smart decision #3. The women at the gate worked a little magic and they found a seat for me, in business class.

11:00am — Noticed that my initial 9:40am flight from Paris to Frankfurt was delayed until 12:25pm. Settled into my seat as the plane headed towards JFK. I proceeded to watch back to back movies: "I Love You, Man," "Love, Actually," "500 Days of Summer," and "Pandamonium on Discovery Channel," until we landed.

Brooklyn, New York

2:00pm — Was in a cab checking my email on my computer via my AT+T USB wireless connection thing. Bought a jacket online, and then was already at my apartment.

3:00pm — Wrapped the Christmas gifts that I bought in Paris.

4:00pm — Went to Element for a manicure, pedicure and a massage. Spent at least two hours just relaxing.

6:00pm — Bought a veggie hot dog at Bark on Bergen Street, and also bought some Mast Brothers Chocolates and two cookies at Brooklyn Larder, right around the corner while my veggie dog was being made. Ate my dog and then walked over to BAM.

7:00pm — On the way, my phone died, so I went to Radio Shack to buy a cell phone battery booster thing, in case I needed to connect with Michelle. Smart decision #4. As soon as my phone came back to life, I got a text from her asking me to leave her ticket at the box office because she was running late.

7:30pm — Watched "A Good Dance" at BAM together with Michelle.

9:15pm — Met up Ladan, who drove me home because it was so cold outside. At home, I did two loads of laundry, changed my bed sheets, and took a shower.

11:45pm — Ate half of a ginger cookie and went to bed.

Lilies, part 3

Location: Paris, France

Today, I am in Paris, and it is the first day it has snowed in perhaps, oh, maybe forever. Coupled with a subway strike, it is virtually impossible to go anywhere, unless it is à pied. The Vélib bikes are out of the question, because the roads are super slushy, and a car might run me over, because no one can drive in the snow here. And the taxi companies will not even take reservations; it is first come, first serve. (I might have to just walk to the airport tomorrow morning. haha.) We had to stalk a taxi today, in order for my colleague to catch his flight back to London. That being said, there was something rather magical about walking from The Arc D' Triomphe, back to my hotel this evening as night time fell. The snow was falling very loudly, and I was walking rather slowly, not fully certain of exactly where I was headed. A thick crust of snowflakes collected on my scarf, and I realized that I really had no place to be, at any certain time. And I only wished that I was carrying a little box of Pierre Hermé macarons to eat later on in the evening, but nothing can be 100% perfect.

Grocery Store: Auchan

To see what our products look like on the shelves of major retailers in France, my colleague drove my boss and I to Auchan, one of the local hypermarkets in Paris, that was close by to her office. The sanitary protection aisle was fairly boring, but the rest of the store was great. I was particularly fascinated by Auchan's store brand, which featured its little bird logo...on everything. So cute. I bought a box of butter biscuits, two packages of DIY plant watering kits, three things of Nivea deoderant, and some Nivea SOS Handcream (neither of which I can buy at home).

Loft Design By...

As I was walking back to my hotel tonight, I stumbled upon the cutest little shop at 22, avenue de la Grand Armée. Called Loft Design By..., it featured cozy clothes (mainly sweaters in wool and cashmere that were only in shades of black, navy blue and gray and dark jeans — for both men and women). Oddly enough, it was tucked in the midst of a series of scooter shops. I had been plodding along in a rather sad sort of manner, partly because it is freezing cold, snowing and the sidewalks are full of gray slush. And then I almost passed it, but the script-y typeface caught my eye, and so I had to stop in. I ended up buying a gray sweater jacket thing, that I might just wear every day until next April. Oh, and the nicest part was that they even had a pitcher of fresh orange juice and some madelines for their guests to nibble on while they shopped.

Lufthansa Lounge

After my Air France flight was canceled last night, I had to rebook onto Lufthansa for this afternoon, flying out of Newark. The Lufthanasa Lounge in Newark shares space with SAS. Consequently, I am eating wedges of crisp bread, cheese, and cucumbers on my dream dishes — Teema by Iitala — and drinking water from a Kaj Franck tumbler that I have in my own cupboard at home. Needless to say, this lounge more than makes up for the fact that I am flying from Newark.

A Brooklyn box

I went to go buy a box today at the UPS store so I could mail holiday gifts to my brother, and this was printed on the bottom. It's all about buying local... J

Campari Chandelier

Ingo Maurer's Campari Chandelier,

at Il Trulli on 27th Street.

a CMU mini-reunion

Judy + Lily

Tonight I met Judy, Hafeez and Lily for dinner at Zampa, after my company holiday party. We all had not gotten together in maybe a year? Which seems like such a long time, I guess, because it is.

Lilies, part 2

Pumpkin Pancakes

I have been craving pancakes for about three months now, and finally got around to getting the ingredients to make them. Well, actually, I saw a mix for pumpkin pancakes while waiting in the check out line at Trader Joe's and bought it. Regardless, I read the ingredients and there was nothing not real in there, so I felt like it was not so bad, despite it still being totally cheating with regards to making them from scratch. Anyway, I whipped some up this morning for my breakfast, despite my plans to meet Susanna at Ici for lunch in two hours.

Location: Corner of Vanderbilt + DeKalb Avenue

My Christmas Tree...

is a potted bamboo plant.