101 little things that probably won't change the world

This week in pictures: Sept 10 to 16 2010 (week 2/26)

2010-09-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

Summer is slowly winding down, but that doesn't stop the shenanigans.... Week number 2, 7 pictures taken, but 1 is stuck in my cell phone... I need to figure out how to upload pictures from my phone without internet. It would make this goal much easier.... but anyway...

Friday September 10: Folake and I celebrating Fashion Night Out. Great night! Quintessential NYC event. Celebrities, and regular people happily co-mingling over free booze and shrimp cocktail.
Saturday September 11th: Sneaking a photo on a beautiful stoop in Brooklyn. Chichi, Leroy and I came across this beautiful stoop while strolling through Prospect Heights and "broke in" in order to take this picture.... ok breaking in is an over-statement as the stoop wasn't locked, but we still felt very rebellious!

Sunday September 12th: Day one of my No Dishes Left in the Sink Overnight goal. As of today (September 20) I've only missed one day! Yay!

Monday September 13th: Made 2 more new recipes today... Took pictures of them. I'll save those for another post.

Tuesday September 14th: Went to a fundraiser for the C.O.R.N.E.R project with my co-workers. After the fundraiser we stopped by Crif Dogs for a hot dog... they have a secret bar in the back. You have to go in this random phone booth and dial the phone to get in. Here is my co-worker Jennifer ringing the bell.

Wednesday September 15th: CRAZY storm in NYC. This is what it looked like from my office at work.

Thursday September 16th: Took a picture of a fallen tree.... the aftermath of our big storm. I took the picture with my phone.... and I can't figure out how to upload it... sigh...

So that was this week... good friends, crazy weather and a clean sink. Loves it :-)

This week in pictures: Sept 3 to 9, 2010 (week 1/26)

2010-09-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

Alright folks... I'm embarking on my 6 month, photo-a-day marathon goal.... pray for me... here's week 1! :-)

Pictures Week 1- September 3rd to September 9th, 2010
Friday September 3rd: Stop and smell the roses. This picture makes me chuckle

Saturday September 4th: No wedding is completely without a bat wielding bride pummeling a pinata

Sunday September 5th: Biking from San Fran to Saulsilito.... congrats to Anthony for getting me on a bike for a long, sometimes difficult, but beautiful bike ride down (up?) the coast.

Monday September 6th: Beach memories... the requisite foot picture.. LOL I take this photo on every single beach. So cheesy!

Tuesday September 7th: Back to New York... picked up the creature and within 15 minutes this is what he had done to his bed and my apartment...

Wednesday September 8th: Photoshoot for my fabulous veggie ratatouille (full post to come!)

Thursday: No pics :-(

New Foods #10-14: Compliments of Ms. Tang!

2010-09-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

I love food folks... Among my group of friends there are a select few food folks. All of my friends like to eat, but most of them don't view food as an event. Food folks will plan an entire day, an entire weekend or an entire vacation entirely around food. Most of my New York friends won't even go out of their 'hood for decent fruits and veggies.... but that's a whole 'nother post...

Anyway, my favorite food folk has to be my girl Janet. Janet lives in California, but usually visits NYC once every year or two, and every time she comes she has an entire itinerary entirely for food. I ALWAYS look forward to her visits and happily use them as an excuse to run around the city sampling cupcakes, dessert trucks, pork buns, sweetbreads and expensive ass PB&J sandwiches. I recently was privileged to attend Janet's wedding to her now husband Chad. Because Janet and Chad are such adventerous eaters, I knew that the food at their wedding and related festivities would be great. The wedding food was delicious (and the wedding was awesome), but the food that really stood out to me was the Chinese dinner that the bride's family hosted the night after the wedding (see the photo of Janet, Chad, my friend Anthony and I at the dinner). The 7 or 8 course dinner ( I lost count) was held at a huge Chinese banquet hall and during that dinner I had the opportunity to try FOUR new foods, bringing my food count up to 12!!

#10- Jelly Fish: The first course of the dinner was a Chinese BBQ plate, which included some BBQ'd chicken, pork, a seaweed slaw and in the center was what I thought were rice noodles, but found out after wards were actually jelly fish strips! the jelly fish was chilled and the strips were a little "crisp", in the same way that shrimp is crisp. The jelly fish didn't have a distinct taste, it just took on the taste of the sauce. Overall I think I liked the jelly fish. I don't think I would go out of my way to eat them, but I'd probably eat a couple forkfulls if they were placed in front of me :-)

#11- Shark Fin: The 3rd or 4th course of the dinner was a shark fin soup. The soup was sweet and sour with little shreds of shark fin sprinkled though it. The shark fin soup caused a bit of controversy at our table as one of the wedding guests was protesting the soup after seeing a show on TV describing the practice of "shark finning" where fisherman cut off the sharks fin and throw the carcass of the shark back into the water to die or be attacked by predators. Kind of sucks... I listened politely as I slurped happily through my bowl of soup... I did mention that the shark steak farmers and shark fin farmers should work together so they don't have to waste all that tasty shark meat... you know just so I didn't seem totally insensitive to the plight of the creature inside my bowl... Anyway, the shark (what I could taste of it with the tiny shreds) wasn't bad. It had the consistency of eel, chewy and a bit fishy. Although it was a delicious soup, it was fairly unremarkable in terms of new foods.

#12 Fish Eyeball: We had a DELICIOUS steamed whole fish course that came complete with head and eyeball. The maitre'de said the eyeball was edible, so of course I had to try it. Anthony actually tried it first and said it tasted a bit like eggs. I took a little bite... at first I thought that maybe it was a fake fish egg, because the consistency felt kind of like biting into one of those fake plastic fruits... little weird plastic bits flaked off into my mouth, but I was assured that it really was the fish's eye. I ate a little bit more. It was in fact sulfur-y like an egg yolk, but really really hard. I'm not sure if you could bite all the way through it... and honestly I'm not sure if I'd want to find out what kind of consistency is in the center. I read on a few blogs about other people's encounters with fish eyes and decided that our eyes were probably REALLY overcooked. Other people describe them as fatty and a little jelly like.... with the pupil still intact. Ours were really hard and there was no pupil. Oh well, I'll have to try it again to get the full effect.

#13 Chicken Head: Although it garnered the most attention for me and our table, the eating of the chicken head was the most anti-climactic of all the weird dim sum foods. It was far more amusing to position the chicken head randomly on people's plates when they weren't looking then it was to eat it. I was instructed by Janet's mom that people usually just suck and chew on the little mohawk thing, and that I shouldn't try and bite through the head. Didn't seem so bad, so I took a little suck and a little bite... tastes like chicken skin. Took a few more bites... more chicken skin... tried to bite into the beak, but beaks are apparently not for eating. The eating of the chicken head proved to be a crowd favorite, which was really silly because I'm sure everyone there has eaten chicken skin... is it so different when it's attached to a skull? But whatever, I'm still counting it as a new food!

#14 Sweetbreads- Although I didn't eat them at Janet/Chad's wedding dinner, the last time Janet/Chad visited NYC we visited Blue Ribbon Brasserie and I tried Janet's sweetbreads. Despite the name, sweetbreads are neither bread nor sweet... in fact they are the pan-fried thymus gland of an unfortunate young cow (veal), pig or lamb. Despite the confusing name, the sweetbreads were actually pretty tasty. They were well seasoned, and had the consistency of a very smooth or silky liver. The taste was a little liver-y as well, but not as strong. Overall I really enjoyed them, but I think that was in large part due to the seasoning and the pan frying. If they weren't seasoned properly, I doubt they'd be very appealing. I'd definitely try them again for an appetizer, but probably wouldn't make a meal out of it.

Thanks Janet for inspiring my food exploration! What do you think I should try next? :-)

Goal #3: Wine tasting in Napa

2010-09-07T21:03:00.000-07:00

After our fabulous hot air balloon ride in Napa I was able to visit the fabulous O'Brien winery and do an official wine tasting! The winery was amazing. The people were really friendly and our guide, Rena (I think), took us on a tour of the vineyards, let us sample the different grapes, and then guided us through a tasting of this season's wines.

Unfortunately I waited over a week (and many more glasses of wine) to write this blog so the nuances of the wines are a distant memory. Despite that I really learned a lot at the wine tasting. Unless you're in a tasting environment, you don't usually get a chance to really discover the differences between different wines. On this tasting I was, for the first time, really able to notice the difference between an oaked Chardonnay and an un-oaked chardonnay or the difference between a Cabernet and a Merlot.

The tasting was really interesting. I wouldn't stay that after my visit to O'Brien's I now have a sophisticated wine palate, but I would say that I have a better appreciation for people who are able to taste distinct flavors in different wines (ie floral, fruity with melon overtones...) I always just figured they were pretentious and full of caca... I also feel like it's helped me develop a more intellectual appreciation of wine... not just an appreciation of it's soothing qualities after a long day..

Overall a great experience. I'm definitely looking forward to getting more into wine tasting. I may even host a little tasting at my house this fall!

A little piece of heaven... hot air ballooning over Napa (Goal #9)

2010-09-07T19:53:00.000-07:00

During my trip to Northern California last week, I was fortunate enough to have the chance to take a hot air balloon ride over beautiful Napa Valley. I had kind of written off the balloon ride goal, not knowing when or where I'd have a chance to do it (I really didn't want to balloon over NYC) or who would want to join me. I mentioned it casually (and half jokingly) to my friend Anthony as one of the goals I wanted to achieve when I was in Cali and was pleasantly surprised when he told me that he was down and had actually been thinking of doing the exact same thing during our trip! He did a little research and found a great Balloon company in Napa- Balloons Above the Valley who charter sunrise balloon rides over beautiful wine country, followed by a complimentary champagne brunch

We had to be in Napa (about an hour away from Oakland) and at our launch location at 6:15am... which meant we had to get up hella early (4:30am!). Needless to say there were few pictures of me taken during this flight as we barely had time to shower and wipe the crust out of our eyes before getting on the road. Once we got to the location we were put in vans and shuttled to our launch site, where they were busily blowing up the balloons....

Hot air balloons are filled with propane gas, which is loud and REALLY hot. I was afraid that it would be cold in Northern Cali that early in the morning, but the heat from the 4 gas tanks was blazing.... and really close my head... The website instructed us to dress in layers, but there really was no need.

The balloons rise pretty quickly when the gas is on full and soon we were floating far above the wine country. Napa is a valley (for some reason it just clicked with me on this trip that a "valley" is the depression between hills/mountains, but anyway... moving on...) that is full of vineyards. There were a bunch of balloons dotting the sky that morning.

Vineyards everywhere... my kind of place...

Our sister and brother balloons basking in the sunrise...

Another view of the vineyards and a sleepy little neighborhood

Balloon shadow on vines...

Here's Anthony and I... sleepy, but so blessed and thankful for the experience

Speaking of Anthony... at some point he pointed to a dry, dusty looking patch of unused land (see below) and asked me if that's what Indiana looked like.... and he was completely serious... SMH Californians

After the ride was over, it was these guy's jobs to pull our balloon back down to earth... I was shocked that we were still doing this kind of thing by hand... I mean isn't there some sort of machine that should be pulling big 2 ton balloons... not 3 little high school dudes on summer break.... it looked real difficult... :-/

After our balloon ride we were treated to a champagne brunch back at the main store... where we proceeded to get tipsy on mimosas before we even started our Napa wine tasting adventures.

Ballooning experience was amazing. The sights were breathtaking, the company was wonderful and we couldn't have asked for a more clear and beautiful California morning. I would definitely love to go on another hot air balloon ride. Despite being stuck in the middle of the sky in a balloon full of propane gas, it was extremely relaxing to be sort of bobbing along with the wind. This would be a great excursion for anyone who wants a unique experience in the air, but isn't really a thrill seeker.

Thanks to Anthony for making this goal a reality and I couldn't have picked a better ballooning partner :-)

Owning the Big O at Babeland! (Goal #12)

2010-08-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

Sunday evening I achieved goal number #12 on my list- “Take a class at Babes in Toyland”! Initially when I added this goal, I had planned on making it kind of like a girls night out and going with some friends to take one of those “How to please your man” type of classes (ie “The art of the blow job”, “How to please your man”, or “Deep throating with Madison”…. Yes those are all real classes happening at Babeland in September), but as I’m getting older I’m less and less interested in spending my time learning how to please others, so I decided take this goal a little more seriously and actually try to learn a few things for, and about myself.

Babeland is an awesome, female-focused, sex shop with a few locations in NYC and Seattle. I, and one good friend, signed up for a “More-gasm” class, which promised to teach us to “Take risks, get messy, own your orgasm, get more of what you want from sex, and be a better partner.” The class was pretty awesome. It was taught by two very sex-positive, funny, female-bodied instructors and covered sexual anatomy, the benefits of masturbation, sexual communication, and some actual tips/tricks for oral sex, sex positions, etc.

Overall, I learned a TON in this class (yes I was the dork in the front row taking notes at a sex class). I picked up a bunch of fun new techniques and actually learned quite a bit about female sexual anatomy, but the concept that I was most struck with was the overarching theme of “owning one’s orgasm” and not expecting someone to give one to you. This wasn’t presented in a selfish I’ma-get-mine-so-you-bests-to-get-yourn, type of way, but more in a “It is totally fine, natural, and even empowering for you to talk to your partner about wearing a vibrating cock ring if you think that will improve your experience” type of way. The class really stressed the idea that sex (at least good sex) is about people experiencing pleasure together, and working on ways to ensure that is happening not a ego trip about how big of a man (or woman) you are that you can “give” your partner the big “O”.

The only think I would change about the class is to include much more on how to bring up the use of toys in sex play. The class was very toy focused, which I think is great because toys can be a very fun, and often underutilized, part of sex, but in the workshop it was kind of taken for granted that all people are comfortable with using sex toys. In reality, I feel most men have a certain level of discomfort , or even competition, with vibrators and other sex toys, and think that if a woman "needs" to introduce something into the mix then he’s not doing something right. If neither partner is sexually adventurous, and especially if the male partner was insecure or egotistical it would be a really difficult subject to breach, and a little more information on ways to positively start that sort of conversation would have been helpful.

Overall I give the class a solid A. I came away feeling empowered and educated. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Chili, Compost and Quesadillas; Recap on Recipes 28 to 55!

2010-08-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

Greetings! I’m back with a goal update. I am not going to sit here and lie and say that I’ve really been keeping track of things this whole time. I haven’t. But I have been inadvertently moving forward in some of my goals. My girlfriend Cynthia, who was part of the impetus for this blog and has her own 101 things blog and I made a pact that as of Monday August 23rd we were in it to win it with this goal stuff.

So this posting is to update goal #10- Make 100 new recipes. At last update I was at 28. I’m sure in reality I’m probably well over 100 at this point, since I make a new recipe at least once a week…. But if you don’t record it, it doesn’t exist, right? So below are the 27 recipes that I can recall making in the last 9 months. In an effort not to bore anyone silly, I will give each recipe a rating and give my thoughts in 50 words or less!

29. Pumpkin chili (Rating 4 out of 10): Don’t remember where I got this recipe, but I remember having high hopes for it… Hopes not realized. Chili tasted vaguely of dirt. Would not make again.

30. Japanese scallion soup (Eating Well Magazine, Rating 6 out of 10): Easy, fast and delicious, but a little sweet/mall food court-ish for me. Would be a great recipe if feeding a non-food adventurous man.

31. Hot and sour Mushroom cabbage and rice soup (The kitchen, Rating 9 out of 10): DELICIOUS! Great soup for a cold. Have made several times. Loves it!

32. White bean and kale stew (Recipe Unknown, Rating 3 out of 10): It takes a lot for me to say I don’t love a kale dish… but from my recollection this mess was nasty. Don’t remember where I got this recipe from, you shouldn’t try it. Fail.

33. Ultimate spaghetti and Meatballs (Food Network, Rating 4 out of 10): Made for the fam when I was home for Christmas… Good, but not as delicious as the 274 positive reviews led me to believe. The sauce wasn’t as flavorful as I’d like, and the meatballs were too bready. Expensive and not worth the effort.

34. Pasta alla norma (Epicurious, Rating 7 out of 10): Surprisingly tasty given the simple ingredients, but a little greasy due to pan-frying the eggplant. Tried to make it again roasting the eggplant and it wasn’t as good. Would make again for company.

35. Double chocolate cherry cookies (Epicurious, Rating 7 out 10): Made these to bring to work last Valentines Day. Yummy with 2 types of chocolate and dried cherries.. Would make again, but not for co-workers… dried sour cherries are expensive as hell!

36. Overnight cinnamon rolls (Food Network, Rating 7 out of 10), Really tasty. Time consuming, but not too much active time. Would definitely make these again, for family or some sort of romantical brunch :-p

37. Raspberry Buttermilk Cake (Epicurious, Rating 8 out of 10), Perfect summer cake! Easy and delicious. Sweet buttermilk cake with a little sourness from the raspberries. Would be good with lots of types of berries. Yum… Will definitely make again.

38. Outrageous Brownies (Food Network, Rating 7 out of 10): Made a few times for work… HUGE hit, but can you really fail with a pound of butter, a pound of chocolate, 6 eggs and 3 cups of nuts? A bit indulgent for me, but people love them.

39. Lime and honey glazed salmon with basmati and broccolini (Epicurious, Rating 4 out of 10): Great idea, 1 dish meal, cook the salmon on the seasoned basmati rice and then steam the broccolini over the salmon and rice in the end. Rice was soupy and didn’t cook properly. Broccolini was super bitter. Bleh.

40. White bean and Tuna Salad (Simply Recipes, Rating 7 out of 10): Good basic recipe using stuff that you probably already have in your house. Have made this at least 4-5 times to bring for lunch. It’s hard for me to find oil packed tuna, so I just use water packed and add a little olive oil. Don’t skip the red onion in lemon juice step… or your breath will be uber-stinky. Probably make this once a month for lunch

41: Slow cooked salmon (Steamy Kitchen Blog, Rating 9 out of 10): Probably my favorite new way to cook salmon. Great for summer ‘cause it doesn’t heat up your house. Lightly scented with the aromatic of your choice, flaky and beautiful…. Just don’t use crappy salmon.

42: Jasmine Rice with Garlic, Ginger and Cilantro (Epicurious, Rating 9 out of 10): DELICIOUS! Made for company and had to stop myself from eating the remainder of pot when he left. Oily, gingery, and delicious, but definitely not an everyday rice. Tried to make with brown rice…. Didn’t work so well. Will try again.

43. Pork tamales (Cooking Mexican, 8 out of 10): Curtis and I had a second International cooking night with tamales. Delicious, but a little challenging. The pork filling was DELICIOUS! I would totally make that and just eat it over rice.:-p. Would have scored a 9, but the amount of shortening in the cornmeal makes me nauseous.

44. Sweet Tamales with Raisins and Spices (Food Network, 7 out 10): Tasty and easy to make… at least easier than the meat tamales because you don’t have to wrap the cornmeal around a filling. Would be a great ending for a Mexican themed dinner.

45. Roast for Christmas- (Secret Saba recipe, Rating 8 out of 10): Delicious. My family really enjoyed this… my mother couldn’t stop “Mmmm”ing. Tried to make an au jus, but it ended up burnt. In the end MUCH better than my previous attempt at roast.

46. Pork Tenderloin with seasoned rub (Food network, Rating 4 out of 10) : Interesting mixture of spices… unfortunately it was pretty nasty. I don't remember it well enough to describe the nastiness, just believe me when I said it wasn't good. I’m not so sure about Elie Krieger…. Wouldn’t make again.

47. My favorite Simple Roast Chicken (Epicurious, Rating 7 out of 10): I love roast chicken and love salt, so cooking chicken in a salt crust intrigued me. The chicken was AMAZING, moist and delicious… but it smelled too much like chicken… which kind of bothered me. Would use the method again, but would add more spices/aromatics to mask the chicken smell.

48. Skillet Ginger Chicken with Cilantro and Lime (Clean Eating Magazine, Rating 5 out of 10): Hmmm I think this was good. I don’t really remember, and I don’t think I made it more than once, so it gets a 5.

49. Adobo pork-chicken (Recipe unknown, Rating 8 out of 10): I made this for a Phillipino Party. My first time making or tasting Adobo pork-chicken. Didn’t know what it was supposed to taste like… and it wasn’t too appetizing looking, but it was a HIT apparently. Even got a shout out on facebook!

50. Hainanese chicken rice (Steamy Kitchen, Rating 9 out of 10): . I LOVE THIS MEAL! It’s super easy. The rice and the chicken are super flavorful and it’s fun to make for company b/c of all of the different toppings/fixins that you can add onto it. Also tried to make with brown rice… need to work on that.

51. Mediterranean Chicken Salad (Epicurious, Rating 9 out of 10): Another one of my go to lunches. I usually make this with rotisserie chicken. I use white wine vinegar instead of tarragon vinegar, and just add extra fresh tarragon. Never added tomatoes. I use roasted red peppers instead. I also usually add feta.. yummm..

52. Wheatberry Waldorf salad (Whole Foods, Rating 7 out of 10): This is my attempt at the wheatberry salad at WholeFoods. Super tasty, but also super caloric with nuts, apples, dried fruit, juice, and oil. ¾ of a cup of salad is 400 calories. I might try the beet wheatberry salad next.

53. Avocado and Watercress Salad (Epicurious, Rating8 out of 10) Surprisingly delicious. Made for a bday dinner for someone who, unbeknownst to me, didn’t like avocado. The dressing, made with grated apple, grated onion, soy sauce, vinegar and sugar was unexpected and amazing. Will definitely make again.

54. Chicken Quesadillas (Clean Eating Magazine, Rating 7 out of 10) Tasty! The filling was a mix of ricotta, mozzarella and mashed white beans. Additions of beans reduced the fat, but didn’t give it the diet taste that adding cottage cheese can. I sent this to my mom, maybe she’ll stop using cottage cheese in her stuffed shells. Love you mom!

55. Compost Cookies (The Kitchen via Momofuku, Rating 7 out of 10), My 2 girls Saba and Alex gave up sweets and fried food and alcohol for Lent, so I made these cookies for their boozing post lenten brunch... butter, sugar, pretzels, potato chips, reeses pieces, chocolate chips in a cookie? Weird, yes. Delicious, indeed.

March is ME Month!

2010-03-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

So with the official start of spring right around the corner, today being "Spring forward" the clock day, and tomorrow being the first day of the week AND the 15th of the month, it seemed a good time as any to jump into some mental and physical spring cleaning goals!!! Winter is a notoriously bad time for me (and for lots of other folks) with the long dark days, and cold weather, so I'll try and shake off the winter doldrums quickly... and in time for my birthday and my mom's birthday cruise. :-p

Goals I'd like to achieve this month (March 15-April 15):

Read 1 non-fiction books- As we all know... I hate reading non-fiction, but I'm in the middle of a pretty good non-fiction book now, so hopefully I'll actually finish it!

Drink 1.5 liters of water per day for 2 months- Clear skin, shining eyes, lusterous hair... all need water... which I don't drink enough of, at all. I tried this goal previously, and failed miserably. Let's see if I can do better this time.

Do 15 minutes of abs 3 times a week (outside of a class) for 1 month: I'm trying to kick the whole workout thing into high gear this month, which includes doing abs pretty much every day... so unless I fail on my working out then I will achieve this goal.

Use the foot thing in the shower every day for 2 month- Open toe season is approaching... 'nuff said.

Leave no dishes in the sink overnight for 1 month- Another goal that I failed miserably on..

Make bed every day for 1 month- First time i'm trying this... I honestly don't remember the last time I made my bed... I never make my bed. I was watching on the Today show that happy people are more likely to report that they make their bed in the morning. Apparently starting the day with an achievement like making your bed, sets you off on the right foot and puts you in a better mood for the whole day.

In addition to all of this, I'm also trying to eat cleanly for a month and lose 6 pounds... just to lean out a bit for the Spring/Summer. I will, hopefully, be posting more on this and updating all the goals I've achieved this fall/winter sometime this week.

Love y'all!
N

Leroy and Roxie!

2010-03-12T05:13:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday Everyone!

It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I'd drop by and put up something fun and cute for you. :-) The video was taken by clients of my fabulous dogwalker, Nickey, when she was boarding Leroy for a few days. Leroy LOVES to play with the big dogs, but I rarely get video of it... so here you go :-)

New Food #11... Blood Sausage

2009-11-01T19:57:00.000-08:00

So... on Friday night I had the opportunity to try another new and.... interesting food: blood sausage. If you remember from previous blog, blood sausage was NOT something I was necessarily open to trying.... at all, but when confronted with new, albeit potentially disgusting, food Nana Mensah does NOT back down!.

So what is blood sausage... According to Wiki "Black pudding or blood pudding is a type of sausage made by cooking blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. It is also called blood sausage.

Pig or cattle blood is most often used; sheep and goat blood are used to a lesser extent. Blood from poultry, horses and other animals are used more rarely. Typical fillers include meat, fat, suet, bread, sweet potato, barley and oatmeal."

So yeah... Blood Sausage is essentially exactly what it sounds like it is... Casing stuffed with a little meat, some fat and then filled with blood and poached until the blood becomes "solid". I didn't have my camera with me, but our dish looked pretty much like this..
Or this...

My thoughts?... I'm actually getting a little nauseous, again, looking at that picture so I'm gonna make this short. I am not exactly sure what makes sausage sausage (maybe just meat in a casing?), but there was nothing sausage-like about the consistency of this sausage. I would compare the consistency to that of really really REALLY soft, moist and crumbly liver.... like spongy and wet.... so crumbly that when you put your fork in it it just sort of falls apart...

The consistency was really difficult to get past.

I think if they had called it blood pudding, NOT put a casing around it and served it in a bowl I wouldn't have been expecting something solid to be entering my mouth and wouldn't have been so traumatized by the texture of the "sausage".

The actual flavor of the sausage wasn't too bad. If I remember correctly it was cumin-y, fennel-y and garlic-y... The taste was very rich and intense. I put a little bit on a piece of bread and it was FAR more palatable that way. Eating the mushy, livery, wet substance by the forkful was NOT the business... at least not for me.

I didn't eat too much of the sausage. As I was eating it, I could feel my stomach turning.... and the churning didn't stop for the rest of the night. I'm not sure if I would try blood pudding/sausae again, but I'm glad I was able to mark something else off of my "new foods" list and didn't suffer too much for it.

NaBloWriMo!

2009-11-01T16:13:00.000-08:00

November is National Blog Writing Month!... who knew?!?

So apparently during National Blog Writing Month the goal is for all the bloggers out there to commit to posting at least 1 blog a day for all of November.

I love goals! I haven't written on this thing in over a month... I'm in.

Ugh the HARDEST thing about blogging is actually writing. It's hard folks. It's easy to think of things to write... Execution is a biyatch.... but I'm in it to win it!

Keep an eye on me... this is like my own little NYC Blogging Marathon! Feel free to cheer me on from the sidelines... you can even throw food and water! heh heh

N

Meet Diva! Fabulous Foster #5

2009-09-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

Meet DIVA! My newest foster pug!!
Diva is a 4-month old owner surrender. She was surrendered because her previous owner's mean landlord wouldn't let her keep Diva.... What kind of awful person could resist such a face?!? Oh well... His/her loss is my gain (for the moment) and someone else's gain forever!

Diva is a super playful little gal. She and my Leroy get along fabulously. Like all of my other female fosters, little Diva totally dominates Leroy....
She likes to steal all of his toys and hide under the futon where he can't reach her...

When he tries to go in after her she tells him off!

With all his toys quarantined under the couch, poor Leroy is forced to play with plastic bags :-(
Sometimes Leroy tries to get the upper hand by stealing HER toys and jumping up on the couch.
That didn't stop Diva... Note the look of fear/annoyance on Leroy's face :-p

Overall they play really nicely and love to engage each other in a game of tug-of-war with the fleecy toys! See we can all get along!

Diva is a super cutie and I think she knows it.... She is definitely ruling Leroy, but I suspect he kind of likes to be dominated by the ladies.

So that's Diva! Unless I steal her and run off to Bermuda with she and Leroy, I hope she finds a great new home!

23 days in…

2009-09-23T08:33:00.000-07:00

23 days into my “no eating out” for a month goal and I’m still going strong!!

To achieve the 90% completion criteria, I can slip up on 3 of the 30 days. I’m doing really really well so far! Today is day 23 and I’ve only slipped up 2 times. The first mess up was last weekend. It was a pretty hectic Saturday. I had to drop Puggie off at his new foster home at 9:30, get my hair done at 10:30 and then I decided to get a mani/pedi after my hair appointment. I was starving and didn’t pack a lunch so I stopped off at a local spot and got a curried chicken sandwich. Weekends are the hardest part of this goal because you either have to schedule yourself to come home in the middle of the day or carry your lunch with you… The other slip-up was last week. I forgot to pack my breakfast so I got really hungry at like 11:30 and had to eat a super early lunch…. Which then caused me to get really hungry again at like 3:00… so I picked up a cup of soup. If I had packed my breakfast AND lunch and I was still hungry then the cup of soup wouldn’t have counted… but the reason I had to get the soup was because I didn’t pack my breakfast… so I’ll count that as a strike. :-p

Honestly it hasn’t been too too difficult for the month. The worst days are the weekends you kind of have to be tied to your house, or carry food with you. The meal that I’ve found most challenging overall has been breakfast… I’ve been doing a lot of random breakfasts… essentially just eating whatever is available in my fridge. This morning I ate roasted tomato, feta and shrimp for breakfast… Random. I’ve been making a lot of homemade pizzas, so there have been numerous days where my breakfast was left over frozen pizza. Breakfast is hard… I don’t love cereal. I don’t really want to start doing the whole carb thing (bagels, toast, etc). Smoothies create a lot of dirty dishes and aren’t that filling, and I don’t really give myself enough time to cook a proper breakfast in the morning, so I’m kind of at a loss.

Anyone have any good suggestions for easy breakfast suggestions?

7 days to go! I think I will break my eating out fast with a delicious burger and some tater tots from Trailer Park…. Who’s down?
N :-)

Eight-hundred eighty-four thousand, one hundred sixty miiiiinutes!

2009-09-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

How do you measure the goals of a yeeeeaaar!!! (and 23 days)

So if you haven’t figured it out yet… you were supposed to be singing the above to the tune of that song from the musical Rent… you know the one that EVERY single show choir did back in 1997.. heh heh…

ANYWAY! (ugh! show choir humor is lost on you all)

I am 614 days (1 month and 23 days) into my 1001 day goal achieving odyssey. So far it has been going moderately well…. It may not look like it from the scant number of crossed off goals to the right, but damnit I feel like I’m achieving something! And that’s what counts, right? I’ve been going at this for a year and I wanted to share my top 5 suggestions/lessons learned for anybody out there that may want to start a little goal setting/achieving of your own.

1. Limit the number of goals that are based on multiple parts or time durations!
I have many of these goals (taking a picture every day for 6 months, don't eat out for a month, don't drink for 60 days, etc). While these are great goals for helping to create good habits, they are really difficult and are potentially discouraging as a slip up on ONE day causes you to fail the entire goal for that go around.
2. Take a close look at your finances before planning your goals
I have a few fairly pricey goals…. Hot air balloon rides, trips out of the country, quarterly trips out of state, wine classes, cooking classes, buying pianos and horses…. Ok not horses, but you get the idea. While they all sound good, realistically it may be difficult to do all these things.
3. Get organized!
It really takes a good deal of organization to try and achieve a set of goals. Planning at the beginning of each month exactly which goals you’d like to achieve within that month will help keep you on track. I hope to start getting much better at this in the remaining 387 days!
4. Doing it together, makes it mo better!
This is something I haven’t really been that great at, but I want to start really doing in earnest from this point on. Doing things alone isn’t fun. Some goals (like doing your dishes every night for 2 months) don’t lend well to group participation, but many other goals (hot air balloon rides, cooking classes, classes at babeland) are definitely things that other people would be excited about. If you pick a particular person you’d like to do a goal with and let that person know ahead of time, you can use their excitement to motivate you to get it done.
5. Cut yourself some slack.
If the process is creating more stress and anxiety then you’re doing something wrong. Goal setting is about self improvement, creating good habits, and hopefully becoming a better and more fulfilled person... not a stressed and dejected one. Don't beat yourself up if you fail on a goal. Just pick yourself up and try it again...

That being said… There are a few things that I personally would like to re-evaluate moving forward specifically in regards to the time/date related goals. They stress me out. The purpose of all of those goals was to create good habits for myself… so I asked myself… does slipping up on 1 or 2 days mean that you failed on the purpose of the goal? Of is it more important that you learn how to pick yourself up if you miss a day and continue? While I see the merits of the former in the spirit of the goal setting goals standard... in many ways my real live will never live up to the gold standard and I am not going to kill myself trying. It's more important to me that I learn how to pick myself up when I fail... because I fail a lot. :-p

So from this point on, I’m setting a 90% completion criteria on my long term goals. the 90% completion refers to the number of days, not actually the number of units of goals (lol I'm such a dork). I've listed the goals effected by this and their new completion criteria below.

Goal	Original	90%	# I can miss
5.) Take 1 picture every day for 6 months	180	162	18
28.) Meditate every day for 1 month	30	27	3
32.) Get up at 5:30 am every day for 3 weeks	21	19	2
39.) Be on time or early for everything for a month	30	27	3
40.) Don’t drink alcohol for 60 days	60	54	6
47.) Take multivitamins every day for 3 months	90	81	9
48.) Take medication every day for 3 months	90	81	9
50.) Drink 1.5 liters of water per day for 2 months	60	54	6
77.) Set a budget and stick to it for 2 months	60	54	6
78.) Don't eat out for 1 month	30	27	3
84.) Use the foot thing in the shower every day for 2 month	60	54	6
35.) Go to bed with all clothing hung and no clothing on bed, floor, etc for 45 days	45	41	5
87.) Leave no dishes in the sink overnight for 1 month	30	27	3
88.) Make bed every day for 1 month	30	27	3

Honestly I'm looking forward to working on these goals SO much more now that the pressure has been lessened slightly.

That's all for now... Day 615 here I come!

Thursday's Things.... Aboriginal Art

2009-09-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to post an episode of "Thursday's Things" on Thursday... but no matter, this week's "Thing" is Contemporary Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Art!

"Wild Yam Flower" Janet Golder Kngwarreye

I first heard about Indigenous Australian Art (IIA) from my Australian boss. I had never heard of or seen it, so I was intrigued when she mentioned that she and her husband were moderate collectors and my friend Alex's recent trip to Australia made me more curious about these beautiful paintings and the stories behind them.

Indigenous Australian Art is like the perfect melding of modern art, "ethnic" art and folklore. The amazing color work and structural complexity of many of the pieces would rival that of the most prominent western modern artists but there is a certain freedom and flow in the paintings that are definitely reminiscent of "African" art. While the pieces are visually stunning, the folklore aspect is what is most interesting to me. Art is one of the key rituals in the culture of the Indigenous Australians, and was and still is, used to mark territory, record history, and tell stories.

"Grass Seed Dreaming" Barbara Weir

One of the main themes in IAA is "Dreamtime" or "Dreaming". According to Wiki, “indigenous Australians believe in two forms of time; two parallel streams of activity. One is the daily objective activity, the other is an infinite spiritual cycle called the "dreamtime", more real than reality itself. Whatever happens in the dreamtime establishes the values, symbols, and laws of Aboriginal society.”

Many Indigenous Australians also refer to the creation time as "The Dreaming". Indigenous Australians believe that every person, in an essential way, exists eternally in the Dreaming. This eternal part existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. Both before and after life, it is believed that this spirit-child exists in the Dreaming and is only initiated into life by being born through a mother.

Pretty cool, huh?!

I noticed that a lot of the paintings had reference to inanimate objects “Dreaming” and was a bit confused given the description above… it seems that in many stories of the Dreaming, the Ancestor Spirits came to the earth in human form and in that form they created the animals, plants, rocks and other forms of the land that we know today. Once the ancestor spirits had created the world, they changed into the trees, the stars, rocks, watering holes or other objects. These then became the sacred places of Indigenous Australian culture as the home of the ancestors due to the fact that the ancestors did not disappear at the end of the Dreaming, but remained in these sacred sites.

"Sunset Reef Dreaming" Rex Winston Walford

I obviously don’t have enough information to turn this post into a dissertation on IIA. If you’d like to learn more about IIA or just Indigenous Australian Culture in general, here are a few links.

Ok enough info... here are some more pics! All of these pics were taken from the “ARTERY” website, an Aboriginal Art Gallery. It seems like I am most drawn to clean, structural pieces but there are a ton of other styles on there as well. Enjoy!
"Women's Ceremonial Dance" Josephine Napurrula

"Bush Medicine Plant Dreaming"Gloria Petyarre

"Mina Mina Dreaming - Rock hole (Puli)" Lynette Corby Nungurrayi

Ah-shegonya- mamabishima-ma!!! (translated: my evening at the Lion King! Goal 16)

2009-09-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

Another (part of a) goal down and a WONDERFUL evening was spent a few weeks ago when my parents and I had a chance to check out The Lion King on Broadway. I wasn't really expecting much... I always thought of the Lion King as kind of a kiddie show or a touristy show, but it was fabulous! The music was amazing, and the acting was superb.

One of the things I really appreciated about the show was it's treatment of African inspired dancing and song. The style of dance was authentic and absolutely beautiful. It was obvious that it was choreographed by African Dancers... not jazz/theater choreographers who'd watched a couple Ailey shows.... The last musical I saw on Broadway was The Color Purple and I was extremely saddened/disgusted by their "back to Africa" scene. The half nekked actors were jumping around with Michelin man, multi-colored tire looking things on their legs and spinning around throwing their necks back and flailing their arms while saying "Oooga Booga". (I SWEAR they were speaking some random gibberish.) I was thoroughly disgusted by the lack of respect that the choreographers had for African dance, so you can only imagine my pleasure when I saw the beautifully choreographed, and precise dance in the Lion King.

In addition to the dance, the visuals were astonishing. I won't spoil too much, but the entrance of the "animals" is really astounding. The actors completly turned into the animals they were portraying, their movements so perfectly mimicking the slink of the puma or the skip of the gazelle that sometimes I could actually fool myself into thinking I was watching animals on the stage. It was so beautiful I actually found myself tearing up a few times. Here are a few pics I found online to whet your appetite...

My favorite character in the play was the woman that played the "juju woman" (as my mom would say) was PHENOMENAL. I believe she's South African, so that may have helped her out a little bit, but she played the part of an older African woman to a tee. It tickled me, and my mom, to no end.

Also I found out that my cousin is in the show. He plays Bandzai (spelling?) one of the 3 hyenas. He was phenomenal as well.

All in all I had a really great experience at the Lion King and it's without a doubt something I will keep in mind if I have tourists coming in from out of town, or when my nephew gets older and comes to town.

Here are a few pics I snapped...

A huge replica of the wooden mask used in the play to represent Mufasa's spirit

Mom my and I with the tickets to the show... I was really excited!

My mom and dad enjoying some pre-show fun in Times Square.

Super fast (and super delicious) weeknight meal- Tuna pasta with capers and white win

2009-09-16T17:35:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to post less about food/recipes... as this isn't really a food blog, but I made really delicious and REALLY easy dinner tonight that I wanted to share. Tuna Pasta with Capers in White Wine. The dish is essentially a olive oil, onion, red pepper flakes, a can of tuna, capers, white wine and parsely.

Delicious

I got this recipe from a blog that I frequent Simply Recipes. My attempts are recipes from that site were hit or miss, but this was definitely a hit! The entire meal took about 20 min and it was really tasty, really cheap AND made from ingredients that you probably already have in the house. This is something I would totally make for an impromptu dinner if somebody stopped through. It's a recipe that too good and too easy not to share... so here you go. You're welcome.

Ingredients

Salt
4 ounces bow tie (farfalle), linguini, or spaghetti pasta
2 Tbsp olive oil (plus more)
1/2 medium onion, chopped
Pinch chili pepper flakes
1 (6-ounce) can tuna packed in olive oil, drained
1 Tbsp capers
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 Tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
Freshly ground black pepper

-Prepare Pasta as directed on the package
-sautee the onion and red pepper flakes until the onion is softened and transluscent
-Add the tuna, capers, salt and white wine.
-Let simmer on the stove until the pasta is done
-Throw some parsley on the tuna mix and add to the pasta.

This is supposed to serve 2 people... but it seems a bit skimpy to me. The blogger said that you HAD to use tuna packed in oil... but I only had tuna packed in water. I drained the tuna, added some olive oil and let it sit for a bit and I thought it tasted fine.... but who knows, the oil packed tuna may be phenomenal.

Let me know what you think if you try it out :-)

Puggie pug... the worlds quickest foster...

2009-09-11T19:59:00.001-07:00

Hey Everyone! Meet foster number 4, Puggie!

Puggie came to me on Wednesday night and he will be going to his new foster home tomorrow morning... He only spent 2 days with me but he definintely made an impact.

Puggie came from a shelter in NJ. He was "supposedly"a stray who was between 3-4 years old.... The shelter said he was housebroken, friendly, and playful so the rescue thought he'd be a good little foster sibling for my Leroy. Well turned out the shelter straight LIED to us. LOL Puggie isn't 3-4... he aint even probably 5-6... When the volunteer originally went to pick him up she thought he was 10 years old... and the shelter staff even chuckled a bit when they told her that Puggie was 4 years old. Either way, Puggie came home with me and after a very stressful and anxious first night for him, he's been a real trouper and a perfect angel.

Puggie, at least it seemed to me was in really bad shape... most of his teeth had fallen out, or were in the process of falling out which causes his tounge to chronically hang out of the side of his mouth. His breathing was really laboured the first night... So much so that I thought he had pnemonia or some other serious respiratory problem. He's skin and bones and it just seems like moving around is a bit of an effort for him. He has a cataract on one of his eyes, impairing the visit in that eye, and hyperpigmentation bluring the vision in the other. He's not neutered. His ears haven't been cleaned out in YEARS.

It just makes me angry.

I just don't understand how someone could let their dog, a living creature, go on living like that for years. You didn't see his teeth falling out? You didn't notice that he was walking into things, and that there are large black scars on his eyeballs? I mean WTF

Despite the obvious years of neglect, Puggie is a total angel and mushball of love. He took to Leroy right away following him around the house, trying to hump him, or just lick on him. He tried so hard to play with Leroy on the first night, but he kept on losing his breath and I had to keep them separated because I thought he was going to keel over. By the 2nd night, Leroy and Puggie were sleeping together in Leroy's crate!?! I couldn't believe my eyes. LOL Leroy hates sleeping with other dogs... and doesn't love his crate. I've never seen him snuggle up to another dog in that way.

Puggie is so good natured with Leroy... here's a pic of him lying on Leroy's bed while Leroy is chewing it and trying to shake Puggie off...

Puggie doesn't really make much noise or make many demands. Most of the time he's been here, he's hung out in his crate... which I decked out with a new pillow and pillowcase for him, or he's hung out on one of Leroy's beds in the living room. After the initial burst of interest, Puggie hasn't really wanted to play much with Leroy, but he's incredibly good natured and ignores Leroy's crazy outbursts, or sits and just watches him... Puggie sleeps... a LOT... like most older pugs. As I type this Puggie is sleeping on Leroy's folded up crate liner with his little tounge just a hanging out of his mouth... content as can be.

I think he's even had a good influence on Leroy, who has been a little calmer than usual this evening.

Puggie is leaving me tomorrow to go to another foster home. I'm not sure if I have the stamina to be the kind of long-term foster home that Puggie will probably need. He was only with me for 2 days, but I've already kind of started falling for him... in the same way that I did for Bruno and like I probably will for any other old pug that comes into my path... I just can't believe someone sent this big lump of love to a shelter and I'm so glad that he's going to be going to a great home.

Goal #78- 1 month without eating out

2009-09-11T19:55:00.000-07:00

11 days in- 33 meals down….

So this month I celebrated the 1 year mark of my 101 goals journey and started on one of my most difficult goals… goal #78- Don’t eat out for 1 month. Anyone who’s been even halfway following my blog(s) probably realizes by now that food/eating plays a huge part in my life. I also L.O.V.E. eating out. Trying new restaurants is probably my favorite activity, but unfortunately after living in NYC for 5+ years, my love of eating out has quickly turned from an occasional treat to an almost daily necessity.

I love to cook and I have to come straight home most nights to tend to the creature, so dinner is never a problem… . Breakfast and lunch are my biggest challenges… I’m pretty lazy and disorganized…. if you look at my list, like 80% of the goals were designed to help me resolve the lazy disorganization that plagues my life. Planning, making and packing a lunch the night before and THEN getting up in time to make and eat breakfast AND make coffee is no small feat for someone who’s been known to spend hours each night watching reality TV (instead of keeping a tidy house) and hit the snooze button up to an hour. The folks at Starbucks make it SOOOO easy to visit them every morning… smiling at you, and remembering what you order “skim milk in that grande iced coffee, right?’… so attentive… what better way to start your day? The lunch people aren’t much better…. Automatically offering me extra turnips on my chicken pita or the witty banter I’ve developed with the empanada guy… it puts that extra spark in my day…. Even though I know in my heart all that is just a ploy to keep me coming back.

So…. All that being said, the purpose of this goal is mainly to get me into the swing of becoming more organized about planning meals and eating routine meals at home. The goal is much more about being organized and disciplined, than saving money…. Saving money’s got its own goals :-p In light of the fact that this goal is really more about planning/organization than some sort of exercise in restraint, I’ve decided to make it a little bit more relaxed than originally planned. Originally I had planned on not eating ANY food that wasn’t prepared at home… meaning I couldn’t buy a red bull if I was dozing off at work, or a cookie if I wanted something sweet. I realized fairly early on in the month that if that was the case I wouldn’t be allowed to have any sweets that month or junk food, since I don’t have the willpower to have that stuff in my house…. A very unfortunate episode on the 5th day involving chicken broth, the trash can, a pan of homemade raspberry shortbread and tub of whole foods brownie bites served as a bleak reminder of what happens when there’s sweets in my house… but I digress.. I decided to focus on meals only with the goal being to prepare 3 meals a day for myself each day this month.
So meals have been going really well so far… 33 down! I really do feel more organized and put together. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of actually packing my food at night (like my mom has done for the past 20+ years), but I think I’m getting there.

20 days to go!

Thursday's Things.... Fall Wardrobe

2009-09-04T07:28:00.001-07:00

The temperature is quickly dropping here in NYC which means winter, with its hot sweaters and itchy tights, are around the corner. :-( Thankfully we still have a few months of fall to mentally prepare ourselves for winter. Actually fall is one of my favorite seasons.... the beauty of the trees almost makes up for the falling temperatures and inability to wear sun dresses.

Anywhoo... one of the things that's most difficult about the "in-between" seasons (spring and fall) is what to wear. Every year I say I'm going to try and improve my fall wardrobe... and every year I look around, lust after beautiful, expensive pieces and dont' buy a thing. Looks like it's going to be another season of the same. See below for my fall wardrobe wishlist.

Blurred Blossoms Top
I'm really in love with watercolor type prints these days. This shirt would be SO great with a pair of wide leg jeans and a long or cropped cardigan.... or maybe slightly bloused with a skinny belt. It's a measly $58... compared to what's below that seems almost afforadable!

Curled Zinnia Dress
I never wear dresses in the fall... because I HATE wearing tights, but this dress might change my mind. I love the colors and I think it would really brighten my mood on a dreary fall day.... too bad it's $360

Climbing Vines Blouse:
Love this too! Beautiful, uplifting color. Would look great with some skinny jeans and heels.

Fosteriana Cardigan
I'm in love with printed cardigans these days (although I don't own any) and this is a great one! You can't see it too well but the pattern is a string of tulips. So cute for a measly $178!

And on the other end of the expensiveness spectrum.....

Floral Cardigan
A cute floral cardigan by Forever 21...

Floral Sweater Top
And another cute sweater top (at least I think it's cute, LOL) by Forever 21.

Please let me know if anyone would like to buy any of these for me, and I'll be happy to forward my mailing address :-)

Till next week....

N

Sea adventures- (new foods 8-10)

2009-08-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

Had a nice little run of new foods this week, trying 3 delicacies from the sea: Octopus salad, Bagels and Lox and Sea Urchin. Some hits... some misses... see below.

Octopus Salad:

The octopus was probably the most pleasant and "normal" of the new foods that I ate. I think an octopus is really just a big squid (maybe?), so I wasn't really expecting it to taste much different than other squids.. The texture was pretty similar to calamari, but the octopus had a more distinct, sharper taste and the meaty center was surrounded by a fatty layer of skin. I really enjoyed the octopus salad. My boss said it wasn't really octopus because they sliced it and removed most of the legs... but whatever.. I'm still marking it off. Pretty tasty. It's definitely something I'd order again..

Bagels and Lox...
Hmmm I'm not 100% sure if I should count this since I've had smoked salmon before... and lox is just smoked salmon... but I've never had the combo together... and that's something, right? Right! Anyway... every week I treat myself to 1 bagel from Zucker's bagels and smoked fish down by my job. Usually I eat half a bagel with a little cream cheese, tomato and capers (mmm), but I figured I'd use this weeks bagel day to try lox. Apparently the traditional way to eat a bagel and lox is to add tomato, capers and red onion... so that's what I did... That sammich came to a whopping $10.05!?! Totally nuts, but for a good cause, right? Anyway my fancy bagel and lox sandwich tasted pretty much like bagels with smoked salmon.... obviously. :-p Wasn't the worse thing I've ever put in my mouth, but it didn't really excite me... if anything I think the taste of the salmon muddied the deliciousness of the tomato/caper combo. I think the consistency of the salmon bothers me more than the taste. Raw salmon still has a bit of crispness... crunch, but smoked salmon is just mushy. All in all, not bad ... but I'll stick with my tomato and capers.

Sea Urchin (actually Spaghetti with sea urchin and clams)
This was an interesting one... Sea Urchin- was on the list I posted a while back, honestly wasn't exactly sure what to expect. I know sea urchin looks like a spiny little ball, so I was kind of expecting to be eating slices of the outer part... assuming that although it "looks" spiky, the spikes were actually flexible... and would kind of have the consistenecy of calamari (LOL seeing a theme here?) I was wrong. The edible part of the urchin isn't the spiny outer portion, but the soft, gooey, innards, as seen in this pic.

As I said before I had no awareness of this, so I was a bit surprised when my Spaghetti with Sea Urchin and Clams showed up looking like spaghetti, clams and some orange booger looking things. My co-workers (who apparently thought I knew what sea urchin was) were quite amused by my face as I put the mushy, globby, blob in my mouth. It was very... blobby... and musky (as described by my co-worker Paul). I'm usually pretty tolerant of odd textures, but I don't know if I'd be able to get over the texture of sea urchin... slimy... blobby... boogery and snotty. The taste wasn't offensive... and as I continued eating, I did become slightly more convinced of how it added to the creamy pasta dish, but I don't think I could EVER eat any quantity of it on it's own. I could do very small pieces mixed, well, into a creamy sauce but the idea of eating it raw as sashimi or in sushi is a bit much for me.

So there are numbers 8,9 and 10. The octopus was pleasant, the sea urchin may deserve a second taste (under the right culinary circumstances) and the bagels and lox was "eh".

Any suggestions for what I should try next?

Shouldn't I be losing weight by now... (Salads 11-14)

2009-08-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

Not losing any weight, but I've definitely been eating some tasty salad. Eleven to 14 are below...

Fast, grown-up potato salad-red potatoes, olive oil, lemon juice, whole grain mustard, capers and parsley (#30).

This was actually a pretty decent, grown up, low fat but high flavor version of potato salad. It's more of a dinner table potato salad than a cook out potato salad. I really liked it alot. Not the most miraculous thing I've ever eaten, but definitely could go in the rotation. Pictured below with my not so successful pork chops...
-Would I eat this salad again? - Sure. It was pretty tasty

-Would I serve this to company? - Yes, it would be a nice compliment to a simple American meal.
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience? - You don't need mayo for potato salad.
- Salad rating: A-

Canned salmon,capers, celery, Greek yogurt, and lemon juice in endive leaves (#61).
This "salad" wasn't that great. I used canned sockeye salmon and greek yogurt. It tasted pretty much like a tuna salad... with salmon. I decided to serve it in endive leaves... just for fun. I think the bitter green was a bit too bitter for the salad. This may be a good, higher end substitute for a tuna sandwich if it were put between some good quality bread, but as it is I could take it or leave it.
-Would I eat this salad again? - Probably not as a salad
-Would I serve this to company? - May bring it to a picnic as a fancier version of a tuna sandwich.
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience? - Not really... I don't use mayo on much, but it seems yogurt and lemon juice may be a good replacement if I ever were to use it.
- Salad rating: C+

Black plums, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, celery, red onion, grilled chicken, dried marjoram and oregano and chopped almonds with field greens (#81).

So delicious... I had actually been thinking of this salad since Monday. Since I discovered my love of Balsamic vinegar, I could just imagine how great of a pairing it would be with the tart and juicy plums. I wasn't disappointed. SO. GOOD. The balsamic-y plums with the chicken, crunchy almonds and cool celery were amazing. I thought I might put goat cheese in it, but it totally didn't need it. When I make this again I might cut the plums smaller so there's more delicious plummyness to go around.
-Would I eat this salad again? - yes. I'll probably eat this again tonight
-Would I serve this to company? - Absolutely! Would make a great main dish salad
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience? - Plums and Balsamic vinegar... mmmm
- Salad rating: A+!

Quinoa, spinach, orange zest and juice, olive oil, honey, sliced oranges, dried cranberries, chopped red onion and almonds (#95).
Interesting salad. I decided to serve it with sliced baby spinach. There wasn't too much savory in the salad. I wasn't that keen on the first few bites... It just seemed to sweet and kind of ordinary for me. I could see a LOT of people really liking the salad, grains, oranges, cranberry, honey... It's a gold mine for people who like salad with fruit, but I wasn't too impressed. It did grow on me after a few bites... and more black pepper and honey. I feel like there was a spice that could have been added... but I'm not sure what it is. Decent, very nutritious salad though... especially for those who don't love grains and love sweets :-) Extreme close up below... Very pretty salad!
-Would I eat this salad again? - Probably. It's nutritious and I generally have the ingredients on hand.
-Would I serve this to company? - Sure. Would be a good lunch salad for a vegetarian
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience? - Hmm... not really
- Salad rating: B+

Thursdays things... Hands free edition

2009-08-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

So instead of randomly posting things that I like throughout the week, I'm going to try and be more organized (and spare y'all 15 posts about lipgloss and kitchen gadgets) and designate 1 post a week to talking about a few things. You're welcome! :-p

So what do I want this week? Well I'm a simple gal who loves to entertain and only has 1 pot holder (no... not 1 set... just 1 lonely pot holder... not sure where the other is) so these serving platters caught my eye. They have built in handles! And they are really pretty.

I love them! No more trying to carry hot platters to the table... or even worse bringing the cooking pot to the table and putting it down on top of a rolled up cloth napkin.... not that I've ever done that.... Moving on...

Second thing this week... I'm not generally the most organized chick in the world and this is highlighted every day as I try and prepare myself for my daily dog walks.... this involves finding poop baggies, my keys, some treats and usually my cell phone. I then have to figure out how I'm going to carry all this crap and still wrangle my bi-polar dog (he's either totally nuts, or totally lazy on walks). My solution to this: the fanny pack! A totally hands free solution. It seems fanny packs have been making a come back... I'm not talking about the standard order, 1990s, West Virginia trailer park fanny packs, but awesome, modern utilitarian versions that are popping up today. For some reason I figured I could find a few "styles" at American Apparel... and they didn't disappoint. Here are a few choices...

Red Vinyl....

Denim...

Shiny Black Vinyl...

Hmm... maybe I should just chuck the whole idea and just go with this?
HAHAHA Just kidding. Leroy's chunky butt would break my back.

What do you guys think? Can I get away with this, or is American Apparel just trying to fool us into thinking these are ok by pairing them with tight dresses and pouty faced models... American Apparel is totally around the corner... So I may have to get on this today LOL.

I've also saw a few really cool leather hip bags that I would totally wear out to a bar/club/date... but i think they're too fancy for dog walking.

Pork, it's what's for dinner! (Recipes 29 and 30)

2009-08-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

Do y'all remember those Pork commercials? Or was it "Beef...it's what's for dinner".. Either way, I've been eating a heck of a lot of pork this summer. I actually had never really cooked or ate pork until this year... I think it started off with that damn jerk pork that my friend Julian was always eating..... mmm porky, spicy, fatty goodness... Anywhoo, in the last few months I've discovered that the "other" white meat can be very versatile and flavorful. I like it better with sweeter marinades (like maple and fruit sauces) and it's great in Asian stirfry's and just straight off the grill.

I made 2 pork tenderloin recipes within the last week... one hit, one miss

The hit...
Grilled pork with cherry chutney.

Cherries were on sale at Whole Foods the week for $1.99/pounds the week before so I bought a truckload. I can't eat cherries raw... they give me bubbly guts, so I figured I'd make them into chutney. If you haven't pitted cherries before, you totally should! It's fun and mess and when you're done it looks like you killed and butterflied a small animal on your cutting board...

Anywhoo... The recipe essentially made a chutney out of fresh cherries, onions, cherry preserves, balsamic vinegar and allspice. The chutney was really tasty. And who knew it was so easy to make chutney? I cooked up the pork tenderloin on my new electric grill (I love it!) and served it along side a green salad and some quinoa. It was extra tasty. I seasoned the pork only with salt, pepper and garlic powder and it came out beautifully. The chutney complimented the pork well, and my girl Anafidelia had the great idea of trying the same recipe using sour cherries and putting the chutney over a pepper crusted steak.... ideas... Anywhoo, here's a pic of our meal

The second meal was the "miss".
I got a very promising looking recipe off one one of the blogs I subscribe too "Simply Recipes". the recipe was for "Mom's Perfect Pork Chops"... well I don't know who's mamma made these, but they sho wasn't perfect to me. The recipe called for you to toast whole coriander and cumin see, grind finely and make a dry rub adding salt, pepper and sugar. Sounded good to me. I love coriander and cumin. The recipe then called for you to pan fry the chops. I decided to go the healthier route and use my trusty electric grill. Bad Idea. The rub just sort of sat on top of the chops in a powdery mess. I could kind of see where the recipe was going... but the execution was off. It could have been because I grilled instead of fried? Maybe the pan frying would have carmalized the sugar in the dry rub and turned it into a sort of sweet and savory glaze instead of a powdery mess. Oh well. I made a salad from my list to go with this "Grown up, fast potato salad" and a side of sauteed vinegar. I threw threw the rest of the pork away.... which is HUGE for me as I never throw anything away. Here's a pic of my sad pork meal...

Oh well... that's my pork saga so far this summer. Anyone have any great pork recipes to share?

Dude look like a ladaayyyy!

2009-08-19T18:03:00.000-07:00

In world news (at least the unimportant world news that I find out on Ohellnaw) On the heels of Usain Bolts historic record shattering 100-meter dash... looks like another runner is out to make history... or just headlines. Apparently there has been some... concern... that 18 year old 800-meter runner Caster Semenya of South Africa who smashed the women's 800-meter dash record is actually a man. Whoa! The World Track and Field Federation has requested a gender test to determine Semenya's sex once and for all.....

Honestly from the picture it's really hard to tell. She has an incredibly masculine body... no hips or thighs or boobies... but she doesn't have any type of a bulge either. I don't know on this one... if she really is a women then she's going to have some serious self esteem issues after this whole thing is over. If she's a man then the South African's have some 'splaining to do... I'm hoping that she's a hermaphrodite... not only because I'm obsessed with hermies, but it would also be interesting to see how they rule on this case.

Here are some additional pics for your consideration....

What do y'all think? He or she?

Oh Leroy...

2009-08-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

This video was taken about 2 weeks ago. I was dogsitting my friend's Maltese, Lenox, and Leroy was... "excited" about meeting him. Lenox and Leroy had met one time prior to him coming to stay with us. Lenox wasn't terribly excited about Leroy, but they seemed ok.... apparently Lenox forgot about that meeting... and Leroy forgot all his home training.

Just makes me chuckle, hopefully you will too!

Hey! let go of my browned tomato! (salads 7 - 10)

2009-08-13T20:36:00.000-07:00

Back to the Salads! I know you guys missed them! But never fear, I'm still mixing up the salads here in Brooklyn. Here are entries 6-10!

Browned tomatoes, curry powder, arugula, mint and lime (#10)
Hmmm this salad was fairly refreshing, but nothing to write home about. It kind of reminded me of a far less interesting Vietnamese sandwich. I think I needed to add a lot more cumin and maybe get more of a char on the tomatoes to make it more special? I don't know. I wasn't that impressed and I'm not really sure what I would serve this with. Didn't take a picture because tomato, arugula and mint don't make for a very interesting pic, but here were my thoughts:
-Would I eat this salad again? Eh, probably not
-Would I serve this to company- I could see how some people would like it.. but I wouldn't know what to serve it with.
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- I don't love the combo of mint and tomato.
- Salad rating: C- I just didn't really dig it.

Chili dusted shrimp with watercress, corn, cherry tomatoes and lime (#62)
I think I "could" like this salad... with a few tweaks. Mr. Bittman said to sautee the shrimp and corn and add the watercress and tomato at the last minute. I don't know if that's the best idea... the cooked scrimps created a bit of a sauce and when you added thew rest of the ingredients it reminded me a bit of corn and seafood chowder. I think I'm going to try it again grilling the shrimp separately and then throwing it into the rest of the hot salad at the end and see how it turns out.
-Would I eat this salad again? Yep, I'd like to eat it soon
-Would I serve this to company- Yeah probably. It was pretty and has potential
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- salad is never good when it's swimming in shrimp juice
- Salad rating: B+ I didn't love it, but I know I will.

Jicama and green mango with cilantro and lime (#8)
Yummm I have never had Jicama before. I always hear about it on top chef, but have never tried it. Yummy... cool, crunchy, non-obtrusive, low carb... what's not to like. Jicama and mango are a perfect match. I wonder what else jicama goes with. I'll have to investigate. Perfect salad. I could eat this every week.
-Would I eat this salad again? I want one right now
-Would I serve this to company- Yep I planned on making some for my friend Curtis last weekend but ran out of time
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- Mmmm Jicama!
- Salad rating: A+

Jicama and mango with cocounut milk, cilantro, lime and curry powder (#9)
My second Jicama salad in 2 days. Pretty much the same salad with the addition of the coconut milk and curry powder. The salad smelled A.M.A.Z.I.N.G! The salad tasted.. ok. It wasn't bad at all, but I feel like the coconut milk dulled the jicama/mango/lime combo and the curry didn't add too much. But I'd make it for company with less coconut milk. It really smelled good and may be a good company salad. :-)
-Would I eat this salad again? Probably not by myself
-Would I serve this to company- Yep, looks great, exotic ingredients, smells fabulous
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- Sometimes simplier is better
- Salad rating: B

Tomato wedges with strawberries, balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese (#13)
mmm REALLY tasty! The strawberry/ balsamic mix could be desert-y, but the tomato and parm add a nice savory note. yum... some freshly cracked pepper ould be nice. mmm i think i'm starting to understand peoples love of balsamic, its not vinegary... its more smooth and "chocolaty" kind of... yum! inspired me to add some pitted cheries, balsamic and chicken to a salad also... very tasty. would be great with spinach or mescilin. Really nice salad.
-Would I eat this salad again? Yep. I almost had it the next day
-Would I serve this to company- Yes. Would be great with a nice American summery meal
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- I actually like balsamic vinegar
- Salad rating: A

2-week Doggie Boot Camp!

2009-08-13T18:53:00.000-07:00

Leroy, my crazy little pug creature is a year old now. He's a super sweet boy and well behaved, for the most part, but I think I've been a little indulgent with him since he was so little when I got him and since he's so freaking cute!

How can you not love that face!

But I digress....

My lovely parents are coming in a few weeks and I'd really like to have some of Leroy's behavioral issues under control before they get here. I love my parents, but they aren't the same type of dog person as I am. They aren't really going to love Leroy jumping on the couch, licking their faces, and running around the house like a spastic beast. Also my parents are going to be here during the week, so it would be great if his walking was under control so he'll be able to walk nicely with my parents even if I'm not here. If Leroy's behavior doesn't improve I fear it will be a long week behind the gate for him.
So in order to save Leroy from a week in pritchen (heh heh that's prison and kitchen together) Here is what I'd like to work on...

Goal 1: Staying off the Couch. Leroy is not allowed on the couch until after the 'rents leave. Amy instructed that I was to have Leroy sit/lay down on the floor when I sit on the couch and give him a treat and a toy. She also said I should keep the squirt bottle handy... I assume for when he jumps on the couch. I'm not sure if I should physically take him off, or just squirt him, or if I should say no. I'll have to follow-up with her.

Goal 2: Greater impulse control- Leroy must sit before we enter, leave, when we hit every crosswalk. He also must sit every time someone pets him. If he sits when he's petted he gets a treat. If he doesn't sit then we leave.

Goal 3: Less distraction/sniffing on walks- according to Amy, I should just bring a squeaky toy with me on walks and squeak every time he gets distracted with sniffing or picking things off the floor. I kind of want to squirt him with a water bottle... but I'll try Amy's method first. :-p

All of this starts tomorrow. I think the hardest thing to be consist with will be the couch... I don't mind Leroy on the couch at all... in fact I like cuddling up with the little stinker but it'll be better for him in the long run if he's only on the couch when invited.

I just informed Leroy about our plans.... he obliged me by calmly laying on the floor (good boy!), but he looks a little dubious...

I'll keep you all posted on our progress!

Update on my 101 Goals.... (April/May/June/July Update!)

2009-08-11T19:51:00.000-07:00

So... it's been a minute since I've updated y'all on the progress of my 101 goals . I've been getting away from blogging about my goals... because there were obviously more important things to talk about... like Michelle Obama's plastic belt and John B's wife's twists! But I'm back! And here has been what's going on in the past few months..

For those of you who are new to my 101 goals list, back in September I started a project where I wanted to complete 101 goals in the next 1001 days. The goals have to do partly with self improvement and are partly just fun thins that I want to do, or things that I've been putting off. I'm hoping to save $10 for each completed goal... and I'm going to do something fun with all the money I save... Not sure what yet. All of my previous goals posts are labeled as "101 things". I'm going to try and update more consistently with the goals because they really were the impetus of my blogging.

Anywhoo... here's what I've been up to!

Finished Goals!
I’ve finished 7 out of 101 goals…. (Geez… that’s not that great, eh? LOL) and 2 were completed within the last 3 months

Motivate someone else to do their own 101 List- My girl Dawn informed me that her brother had created his 101 goals list and had already completed at least a few goals! Yay Dawn's Bro!.

Buy a digital piano (casio privia or Yamaha YPG)- I bit the bullet and bought myself a absolutely beautiful digital piano that i LOVE back in July. I've been off and on with the practicing... the summer hasn't been great for me, but I'm dedicated to utilizing my investment better come fall!

Goals in Progress
4.) Acquire >2 songs per month for 6 months (4/6)- August would be month #5 of this goal (although May was a bit sketchy... heh heh... ). The whole purpose of this goal was to ensure that I add new music to my collection AND to blog about it... I've been adding, but not sharing my thoughts with you all... That will hopefully change in August.. Here's what I've been downloading so far:
-April- Theophilus London (This Charming Mixtape) and Kid Cudi- Day and Night
-May- Gordon Gartrell Radio, Black Eyed Peas (Boom Boom Pow)
-June- The entire Jazmine Sullivan Album
-July- The entire Essential Michael Jackson Album

10.) Make 100 new recipes (28/100)- Moving along nicely with this goal, me thinks... I think the last recipes I posted on (in reference to my 101 goals) were my Ethiopian recipes with Curtis (recipes 15-17). Since then... I've made...

* Pasta with peas
* Barley Risotto (Clean Eating Mag)
* Tangine of Chicken and Peas (Serious Eats NY)
* Awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies (All recipes)
* Lemon chicken with Parsley and Mint (Epicurious)
* Tangy Spicy Chicken Thighs (TheKitchn)
* Grilled pork with cherry chutney (Epicurious)
* Plum upside down cake (Simply Recipes)
* Soy-Ginger baked tilapia (Epicurious)
* Split pea soup with Chorizo (Epicurious)
* Orecchiette with Broccoli, Anchovies and Chilis (Serious Eats)

20.) Watch all the movies that have won Best Picture since I’ve been alive. (16/25)- I'm at 16 of 25... Some of which I saw before I started this and 3 of which I've seen since: Platoon, Out of Africa, and Lord of the Rings. I blogged about the first 2... hopefully I'll find something intelligent to say about the remaining 9 :-)

34.) Blog on my 101 90% of the days (112/901): Between my 2 blogs (now just one) I officially have 112 blog entries… Long ways to go my friends....

37.) Visit 10 museum/art exhibits or lectures (1/10): I visited the Museum of Sex with my Brother and Sister in Law during their visit to NYC.... and yes, MoSex counts damnit!

44.) Take 1 weekend trip per quarter (3/8)- Not doing too shabby on this one... maybe not purposefully, but still it's gettin done! I have to figure out how I'm going to make up Q1...
- Q1 (Sept/Oct/Nov 2008)- No Trips:
- Q2 (Dec 2008/Jan/Feb 2009) - Cincinatti Christmas
- Q3 (March/April/May 2009) - Birthday Trip to M.I.A
- Q4 (June/July/August) - DC trip to visit Cyn

13.) Try 50 foods or types of cuisine I haven't tried (8/50)- I don't think I've tried any new foods in the past few months.... really need to remedy this.

Stuff to start very soon....
31.) Read 6 non-fiction books (0/6)... Really I need to get one this. LOL
5.) Take 1 picture every day for 6 months (0/180) - Hoping to start on August 15, 2009
66.) Have conversations/meetings with people at the DOH not working in HIV (0/3)
71.) Make a business plan for my personal chef business- Been slacking, but not for long...
74.) Save $15,000 for emergency fund- Not too far off....
75.) Start retirement planning/Open retirement account- Just need to do it...
76.) Put $5 in savings for each completed task and $10 for every uncompleted one. -Also just need to do it... LOL it's only $35 dollars so far. LOL

For the love of real women....

2009-08-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to pause and send some love to the "famous" men (Black and otherwise) who are proud to show off their beautiful, natural, Black women.

Please note I am NOT hating on any beautiful bi-racial, "exotic", long haired, light skindeded types... but it's always refreshing to me to see a successful man marry a brown/dark-skinned black woman. Sorry if that's offensive to anyone...

I also think this really hit home for me (again) because I just finished reading a little snippet about Terrell Owens who is known for dating a "certain type" and feeling that he "shouldn't be faulted for that" I caught a snippet of his reality show last week where he was complaining because his homegirl was wearing a head scarf to bed... and he would never date anyone who had to wear a head scarf... Ugh just STFU with your sexy ass...LOL...

Moving on...

Anywhoo... just saw this pic on YBF of John B and his wife.

I love it!

And my eternal favorite couple- Anthony Hamilton and his stunning wife Tarsha

I love them so much I can't even stand it.....

I swear if Anthony leaves her for a Japarazilia-rican model/actress I will slit my wrists

LOL

Leroy's Hamptons Getaway!

2009-08-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

It really is a dog's life. While I was stuck riding a bus up to DC last weekend, my dog Leroy was having a fantastic beach weekend with the East Coast elite (my friend and fellow Curly Tail Pug Rescue Volunteer Anna) in the Hamptons. Anna and her husband Scott have 2 adorable pugs, Roxie and Bernie, and they were kind enough to add Leroy to their beach brood for the weekend.

Here is the entire crew, pretty Roxie (in the pink) and Handsome Bernie... Bernie and Leroy got along fabulously... but Roxie didn't seem too impressed...

Bernie had a special... "affinity" for Leroy... apparently he likes the boy dogs better... Who can blame him! Leroy is a pimp! He even walks with a lean :-p

They did a little running along the beach... See pugs DO run!

Leroy seemed a little skeptical of the water at first... little pug... big waves..

But Leroy isn't known for having fear (or good sense...) so into the water he went!

Leroy had such a fantastic time on his beach vacay! Thanks Scott and Anna (and Roxie and Bernie) for putting up with his crazy @ss for a while 3 days!

Adventures in Salad #5- Morrocan Carrot Salad

2009-07-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Grated carrot salad with cumin seed, olive oil and lemon juice (#14)

Today I tried the Moroccan carrot salad which was made of grated carrots, toasted cumin seed, olive oil, lemon juice and cilantro. Four or 5 times a week I get a chicken pita for lunch from this little Mediterranean place by my job and I thought this would make a nice accompaniment. According to Mr. Bittman there is "no better use of raw carrots" I might have to agree with him on this one. Although it sounds like there's not really a lot going on ingredient wise, this salad achieved what yesterday's salad did not; a cohesive salad experience where no single was overpowering or odd and the salad as a whole provided an entirely different taste experience any any of the parts.

I really liked this salad. The carrots were nice and tender after stewing in the lemon juice for a few hours. The cilantro and lemon provided brightness which was nicely tempered by the cumin-ness of the cumin seeds. :-p I don't really know how to describe the effect of the cumin in this dish... slightly sweet... earthy... and a perfect compliment for the cilantro and brought everything together.

If I were to make this salad again, I'd probably add a more cumin seed. I also might add just a tiny bit of honey... maybe.. it was near perfect as is.

So my final thoughts....

-Would I eat this salad again? Absolutely. I think this will have to become one of my lunch time staples when I eat my pita. I need to find a way to add some green without ruining the flavor.
-Would I serve this to company- Absolutely.
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- toasted cumin seeds are yummy...
- Salad rating: Solid A- Great little addition to my salad repertoire!

Weekend fun in DC

2009-07-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

This quarter's weekend getaway (goal #44) was a trip to DC to visit my girlfriend Cynthia. Cynthia is a huge deal. She has her own fabulous blog, Hungry Sista, is a writer for Essence Magazine and is currently a press correspondent for the White House (yeah... Prez Obama, Michelle and them... fabulous). I traveled to DC with my girlfriend Alex (who is also a huge deal!) on one of those commuter bus lines that travels between DC and New York. I was NOT pleased with taking the bus (we were originally going to drive Alex's car), but it turned out not being as I anticipated. for $50 (round trip) we rode in a fairly comfortable, air conditioned bus with free wi-fi and watched a movie (Paul Blart, Mall Cop.... which was surprisingly funny and touching... I shed a little tear at the end... and I'm not ashamed...) Alex introduced me to TastyKake donuts at our rest-stop break... She says they are a Philly treat.... can't say they were too shabby. Def better than Entemann's powdered donuts.

After 5 long hours on the train, we finally arrived in Dupont Circle, got our luggage and decided to get a cocktail while we waiting for Cynthia. Alex and I both had John Daily's at a cute little place called Bread and Brew. John Daily's are one of my new favorite summer cocktails. I was introduced to them the week before at Delysha's wedding. It is a mix of sweet tea vodka and lemonade. You can't even taste the alcohol.... not that this seasoned gin and tonic gal minds the taste of alcohol, but it got the stamp of approval from lightweight Alex.

Cynthia showed up and we trekked over to her spot. We had plans that evening to meet up with Alex's friend for dinner so Alex decided to jump in the shower to make sure she was all fresh and clean (apparently Cynthia and I weren't too concerend :-p)... after a slight towel... "situation" and some back and forth about outfit selection, we were off to dinner at this awesome placed called Oya for dinner. It was fantastic. I had these BBQ sticky ribs that were AMAZING (but messy) and this great cocktail called a Fuji Island... which was a mixture of Soju, cucumber and black pepper. Sounds odd.... tasted fabulous.

Being the old broads that we were, we went home after dinner and, after a slight sheet... "situation" we promptly fell asleep. Saturday we spent the day wandering around in Georgetown, shopping it up and eating pizza and Ben and Jerrys. I "motivated" (read: forced) the girls to walk home instead of taking the bus... about a 45 min walk, mostly uphill (Hey we gotta work off that Ben and Jerrys) so by the time we got home we were beat, and I promptly fell asleep. It was 7:00. After making fun of me for falling asleep, Cynthia and Alex both decided to nap too... We woke up around 10:00 to pouring rain and decided we were too lazy to go out and just sat around chatting and watching TV.

Sunday we woke up bright and early, had a lovely brunch and then took an extremely anti-climactic tour of the National Cathedral. Church service was going on at the time, so maybe that is why we only got to see like 1.5 rooms?... but I"m not so sure. Beautiful cathedral though... from the outside :-p

We bid adieu to Cynthia, boarded the bus and were on our way back to NYC. I had a great time in DC and really can't wait to visit again :-)

Adventures in Salad #4- tomato, peach and cilantro summer salad

2009-07-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

Salad #4: Spicy tomato, peach and cilantro salad with a lime vinaigrette. (#2)

So... today's salad was a pretty simple mixture of beefsteak tomatoes, ripe peaches, and fresh cilantro with a few sprinkles of red pepper flakes and a healthy squeeze of lime juice. According to Mark Bittman the combination is "Astonishing". Hmm... can't agree with you there, Mark.

I was excited to try the salad because, again, it's not something I would have tried. I don't love peaches by themselves and I generally dislike fruits in my salads...( except for the occasional cranberry in a mesculin salad) but I thought maybe the combination of all of the ingredients would be greater than the sum of their parts and really create a truly "astonishing"and totally different taste. It didn't.

The tastes didn't seem to compliment each other... if anything I feel like the tomato and peach somehow dampened each other and my little buddy, cilantro--who usually guarntees a festive time-- was just there to look pretty. To me, this tasted very much like a poor man's version of mango salsa... which is essentially the same ingredients, but subbing the mango for peach. I love mango salsa, but the mildness of the peach flavor didn't do this justice. If I were to try this again I would probably sub nectarine for the peach (they have a brighter flavor), add more red onion, and instead of cutting everything in wedges, I'd dice the tomato and nectarine..... but unfortunately I have no interest in trying this again. If someone else does, please let me know your thoughts. I'm dissapointed in you, salad 4.

-Would I eat this salad again? Nope... but it does have me feening for a Qdoba mango chicken salad....
-Would I serve this to company- Nope... I didn't even finish my serving... and I finish everything
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- Yep... peaches are only good in cobbler... and they're only marginally good there ;-p
- Salad rating: D

A summer's worth (and fall) of simple salads

2009-07-28T08:51:00.000-07:00

Summer is not a great time of year for someone who loves to cook... it's too hot to turn on the stove. It's definitely too hot to turn on the oven. It's even too hot on most days for me to lug my overpriced produce from Whole Foods... it's just too hot to think about food. Most of the things that really salt my cooking tomato (heh heh) are delicious soups and crispy roasted chickens and marinated baked tilapia.... Salad (and don't get me wrong i LOVE a salad) just isn't as exciting.

While I like to think of myself as a generally adventurous eater... I am EXTRA boring with summer salads. I can (and often do) eat the same salad for weeks on end; romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber marinated in vinegar and salt, some snap or snow peas (maybe) and grilled chicken, and I always dress my salads with lemon juice, olive oil and salt. DELICIOUS and refreshing but boring. Last week I stumbled upon a really great article by Mark Bittman, a New York Times food columnist, called 101 Simple Salads. I figured this was as good a time as any to try and expand my salad repertoire.

So... I am going to attempt to try at least 50 of the salads on Mark Bittman's list. The salads are separated into 6 "types"; vegan, vegetarian, meat, seafood, noodle and grain salads. There are hot and cold salads so I should be able to do this well into fall.

I started this little project last Wednesday and so far I've tried 3 new salads..

Salad 1: Tuna with black olives, capers, tomatoes, parsley and olive oil (#59)
I don't have a picture of this salad, unfortunately, but it was DELICIOUS. It was a good salad to start with because it's something I wouldn't have thought I'd have liked to so much. I'm generally not a huge fan of capers (unless they're on a bagel with cream cheese and tomato) and parsley is my LEAST favorite herb.... it's one of those ingredients that if I see it in a recipe, more likely than not, I won't make it. But I have to say the salad was GREAT. The salty/tanginess of the black olives and capers really complimented the earthy-ness of the parsely and tuna was the perfect choice of protein. MMMM my mouth is watering just thinking about it. When I went to DC this weekend I was actually craving parsley... and almost ordered a pizza with parsley on it.. somethign I would have NEVER done before eating this salad. Good job Mark Bittman. Totally opening up my mind... and my palate :-p
-Would I eat this salad again? Most Def!
-Would I serve this to company- Yep!
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- Yes I learned that parsley isn't the unwanted stepchild of the herb world...
- Salad rating: Solid A

Salad 2: Seared steak with dinosaur kale, black olives, olive oil and sherry vinegar. (#79)
This was the first of the "hot salads" that I tried. I was ok... nothing to write home about. I first seared the steak in a hot skilled and cooked it for about 2 min on each side. While the pan was still hot, I tossed in thin strips of the dino kale let that sizzle down for a minute or 2, and then added the olives, oil and sherry vinegar. Eh.. it was ok. The steak was delicious... but then again what's not to like about beef seasoned simply with salt, pepper, garlic powder and tumeric... but the Kale was nothing to write home about. Kale is my favorite green, so I liked it, but it tasted pretty much like any other kale dish I make. For some reason I thought the mixture of the olives, steak, kale and sherry vinegar would be a new taste experience.... it wasn't. If anything I thought the black olives competed with the vinegary kale. So...
-Would I eat this salad again? As a combo, probably not.
-Would I serve this to company- I'd serve the steak with a side of kale, but not as a "salad" and not with the olives.
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- Yes. Olives don't go with kale and Tumeric is a great addition to a steak rub.
- Salad rating: C-

Salad 3: Arugula salad with whole wheat penne, parmesan, lemon zest and olive oil. (#85)
Another hit for Mr. Bittman! So this salad is made by combining, a big bowl of arugula, with a little bit of slightly cold penne, lots of lemon zest (I zested a full lemon), olive oil and parmesan cheese. I added some grilled chicken... just because I like meat :-p I figured I'd like this but I wasn't sure how impressed I would be with it (I mean... what's not to like about arugula, pasta, cheese and olive oil?) but it was really great! The mixture of the spicy arugula and the tangy lemon zest/olive oil was perfect. The parm added a nice bit of saltiness and the penne made the salad seem way more substantial and hearty than an arugula and lemon zest salad should be. I don't use lemon zest very often... I always think of it as kind of bitter and I just have bad childhood memories of my mom always ruining a perfectly good, nutmeggy pound-cake with dried lemon zest... but I've started to come around on the lemon zest. Between this dish and this chicken, lemon, mint dish that I made recently, I've slowly becoming a fan of the zest.
-Would I eat this salad again? Yep. I would eat it again tonight if I wasn't doing this salad challenge :-)
-Would I serve this to company- Absolutely.
- Did I learn anything from this salad experience?- Yep... Lemon zest, while a foe of nutmeg, can be a friend of arugula :-)
- Salad rating: A

Trying to find Natural Inspiration....

2009-06-29T11:22:00.001-07:00

I know it's been forever since I last blogged. I'm not apologizing for it anymore. I'm just going to do what I do and hope that it's better this time. So I've been thinking a lot about making some sort of drastic change to my appearance. Usually when I start thinking about this it usually means doing something to my hair.... and that "something" is usually cutting it. But I jut don't feel like cutting my hair this time.... and moreover, I'm not even sure that I really am feeling natural hair so much, at least not on me. I still think natural hair is beautiful, artistic, earthy and amazingly versatile.... but I'm not so sure that it's "me" anymore.

I've had every type of natural hair style under the sun

The baldie... from a long ass time ago LOL

Box braids from way back in 2003

Plait outs...

Painful Cornrow extensions that took out all my edges from 2006

Twist outs

Flat Twist Attempts:

Weaves...

Free-form fros

wigs... heh heh no I didn't leave the house like this

And more different "styles" of 2 strand twists then I'd like to re-count.

Are any of these really me anymore? Whenever I see woman out on the train, on TV I start to long for a more "polished" look... a less earthy, eclectic look... maybe even a more "normal" look one that won't cause people to have certain pre-conceived notions or assumptions about me when they first look at me. I've been thinking seriously about making some drastic changes.... still thinking on them. Maybe I'm just going through a midlife breakdown. What do y'all think?

So long it's been......

2009-05-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

It's been SOOOOO long since i had a new post here... yes i KNOW Janet! :-p But I"m back in action effective today and hopefully won't be out of action like this again. Ugh who knew it would be so hard to maintain a blog?!?

Be back later!

Puppy Love?

2009-04-15T20:42:00.001-07:00

It's Wednesday night and a battle is raging in Brooklyn....

The battle for COUCH DOMINATION!

What starts off as an innocent argument over remote control... control...

Quickly turns into an all out brawl!

Fiona takes an early lead with a leap...

and tackle!

If you don't let me watch For the Love of Ray J I will tear off your face!!

But Leroy would not be outdone... Sprawling Fiona on her back and going for the gut!

"I WANNA WATCH ESPN, WOMAN!'

Suddenly the human in the room moves toward the kitchen!

ooooh what's she doing in there?

oh, she's just doing dishes.... We're tired... let's cuddle

The end.

Fair Fiona... Foster #2

2009-04-14T18:08:00.000-07:00

So..... after 5 days of dealing with constant yipping, the "scratch scratch SLAM" of little pug bodies running across hardwood and sliding into the wall, and more vomit, pee and poo than I have experienced in.... months, and a moderate tear-filled breakdown, I am FINALLY able to sit down and write a blog about my 2nd foster puppy. As some of you may know, my first foster pug was Bruno, a distinguished calm, mostly blind, and very chunky old guy who stayed at my place for about a month last October. Fiona is nothing like that. Fiona is a 5 month old, skinny little puppy who has a digestive disorder called megaesophagus.

Fiona has been in foster care her entire life. She and her brother Cosmo (who also has megaesophagus) came to Curly Tail Pug rescue from a different rescue because our co-founders felt we may be able to help their conditions stabilize due to our experience with special needs puppies like our spina bifida puppy Sophia. Fiona is a TOTAL cuddly puppy, NOTHING like my Leroy who didn't really like to be held unless he was really sleepy. Fiona loves nothing more to be picked up and cuddled. It's helpful for her digestion if she's held upright after she eats, so I try and hold her for a few minutes after each meal and every time she curls up in my arms, puts her little head on my shoulder and goes right to sleep. If I'm sitting on the couch (and Leroy is constrained to another room), she will hope up next to me and calmly busy herself with a plastic nylabone.

Fiona HATES loud noises.... which is unfortunate for her because I'm a clutz and I cook a lot so there's always clanging and banging and sizzling... When I'm in the kitchen cooking she's usually hiding back by the bathroom. Fiona and Leroy are friends... for the most part. Fiona likes to play with him when she feels like it... Leroy is manically obsessed with playing with her. He's after her ALL the time... He runs her into walls and flips her over... it's a bit scary. She doesn't seem to mind for the most part

It's pretty amazing to me how different her personality is from Leroy's. Left to her own devices I think she'd be the perfect puppy... calm, cuddly, loving, submissive... all together perfect.

Her digestive disorder is preventing her from being adopted quickly, in my opinion... which is sad b/c it's totally manageable.

More to come of this little gal :-)

Basic at-home strength training

2009-04-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

Within the past few weeks a couple folks have asked me about basic/beginning strength training exercises that one could do at home with minimal equipment. We all know I LOVE to talk about working out so I figured I'd just post it here for anyone who was looking to add some strength training to their workouts.

The moves here are really basic. They are a starting place for folks who haven't done as much strength training in the past with free weights. There are endless variations on these moves that will make them more challenging, but for this blog I'm just going to post the basics. My camera broke so you won't be able to see me demonstrating these lovely moves... but I'll make it work.

General Info:
1- Focus on form. Making sure you have good form is the most important thing when you're starting a strength program. If you don't have good form you are not going to be actually working the muscles that you're targeting and there is a greater chance for injury.

2- Reps and Sets: For each exercise you should aim for doing 3 sets with about 15-17 repetitions per set. The weight should be heavy enough so that by the time you get to about the 15th repetition it should be getting difficult and by the time you get to 17 you should feel like you can't really do anymore. If you're pumping it out like Jane Fonda with your pink 3 pound dumbbell you're not really doing anything.... at all.

3- Timing: I do my strength training in such a way that I get cardio and strength all at the same time. I do this by interspersing intervals of cardio between the strength exercises and moving from exercise to exercise quickly. You should NOT be taking 2-3 minutes break between the exercises, just keep on pushing through it. If you need water... drink some water and get right back to it.

Exercises: I'll present 2 exercises for each body part. Ideally you will do 3 sets of both exercises , but if you're trying to save time you can just pick 1 or do 2 sets of both exercises.

Cardio/Warm-up: Running in place, jump rope, or jumping jacks for 2 min.

Legs/Lower Body:
Squats (body weight only- no dumbbells):
Squats are the FUNDAMENTAL lower body exercise. Learning to do them properly with good form is key. A good way to start is doing chair squats. Do NOT rest on the chair when you lower into the squat, just hover above it Hold your arms out in front of you to help you with balance. ALL of your weight should be in your heels when you squat down, not on the balls of your feet or your toes. Yu should be able to wriggle your toes in your shoes when you squat. Another good way to practice form is to hold onto a pole (if you have one in your house... i won't judge) or the counter to help balance.

Static lunges-
Lunges are great lower body exercises. In static lunges you are simply dropping down into the squat from the starting position rather than stepping forward or backward into the squat.

Form: Your front knee should never go beyond your toe and your shin and thigh should form a 90-degree angle. If your knee is going over your toe then you probably need to widen your stance.

2 min cardio (jumping jacks, high knees in place, jump rope)

Bicep Curls
Form: This is a very controlled exercise. Your upper arms (above the elbow) should be kept still. Do not swing your arms. The only movement should be raising and lowering your lower arms.

Hammer curls
Hammer Curls are a variation of the bicep curl working a slightly different part of the muscle. The main difference is the hold of the dumbbell. For hammer curls you should start with your arms by your sides gripping the dumbbells with you palms facing your body (not facing upward like with traditional curls). Raise the dumbbells with your palms still facing each other and the dumbbells should be upright.

Tricep Extensions
The picture shows seated Tricep extensions, but you can do them standing. It's actually better to do them standing because it engages your core muscles as well.

Tricep Dips:
Tricep dips are a great exercise. Keeping your feet on the floor is the basic level. When you get more advanced you should place your heels on another chair so you are dipping your full body weight.

Form: Make sure your shoulders are relaxed and you're not shrugging them

2 min cardio (jumping jacks, high knees in place, jump rope)

Military Press (shoulders)

Military press is a great shoulder exercise. It is pictured seated, but you can do them standing, or better yet standing on one leg or another unstable surface :-)

Form: When you lower your arms down out of the press, your upper arms should be parallel to the ground and your upper and lower arms should form a 90-degree angle.

Lateral Raise:
When doing the lateral raise you should keep your elbows slightly bent. The more you bend your elbows the easier the exercise will be. Make sure you're standing up straight (try not to arch your back) and do not raise the dumbbells higher than your shoulders.

Chest Fly
Chest flys are a great exercise for the pectoral (chest) muscles. You can do them on the floor, but laying on an elevated surface is better because you have a wider range of motion.

Simply extend your arms outward and then bring them together over your chest. Your arms should remain straight (elbows very slightly bended). The more you bend your elbows the easier the exercise will be. Do not arch your back. make sure your lower back is pressed into the bench. Once you have this exercise down, try doing it with your legs raised straight out in front of you (allmost parralel with the ceiling) for a great lower ab exercise as well :-)

push ups
Oldie, but goodie. Most people think push-ups work out your biceps, but actually they mainly work out your chest muscles and to a lesser extent your arms and core (abs/back). They are an awesome overall exercise.

You can do them on your knees, but they are MUCH less effective this way.
Form: Don't poke your butt out. Your body should be in a straight line. Look down at the floor so you don't strain your neck. Keep your abs tight.

Ok so that's it. That's the basic total body workout that you can do at home with VERY minimal equipment. If you try out any of these moves let me know how you like them. Also if you have any questions just leave them in the comments :-)

Crazy Times!

2009-04-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

Oh my God things have been so crazy over the last week! I finished up a transcription project (whew), my camera broke (boo!) and then mid week I took in an ADORABLE foster puppy named Fiona! She and Leroy have been driving me nuts, and I'm working on 4 hours of sleep but I wanted to update my blog a little just so you all would know I'm still here.

So much to tell you about! can't wait until the weekend

Besos :-)

Body of Work Challenge... it's not too late! :-)

2009-04-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

Hey y'alls....

I made mention on one of my Blog Roundups of the Body of Work challenge that the Social Fitness blog has going for April. Essentially the challenge is to work out for 26 days in April (ie 6 days a week... you get one day off), and then blog about it on the site.

Ok before you get scared by the "6 days a week" thing, there are MANY types of exercise that count... actually I think any exercise counts. You don't need to have a gym membership. You don't need to have any fancy equipment.... you just basically need 2 legs and some motivation.

Here are some examples of workouts/routines that anyone could do.... without a gym
1- Get off the train 2-3 stops early and power walk the rest of the way home
2- Get together with a friend and learn the dance Single Ladies (put a ring on it) or any old Janet Jackson video.
3- You can do a VERY effective total body strengthening workout at home only using your body weight or light dumb bells. (I'd be MORE than happy to help anyone with this)
4- Order a few fitness videos and do 30 min - 1 hr of cardio or strength training in your apartment
5- Do the "Park workout" Go to a park with stairs. Run or walk the stairs for 15-20 min, do some lower body work (walking lunges, squats, etc), do some upper body work (tricep dips on the bench, push ups), do some abs (planks, side lifts, or full out crunches if you're not afraid to lay on the ground).
6- Take a dance, pilates, or yoga class with a friend

There are SOOOO many options for things that you could do to get moving for the month and honestly it is very motivating to participate with a group who is going through the same thing. The blogs can be as simple ("I got up this morning and walked 45 min before work) or elaborate (... morning... it's a time of reflection... as I stretch my weary joints... blah blah") as you'd like. so don't let the blogging deter you.

At this point there are over 200 people participating in the Body of Work challenge... It's day 2 and 99 of the 200 pulled their ass out of bed and did a little sumthin for day 1. It's only day 2. It's not too late for you to get your ass off of your couch and into the game....

And if my helpful hints aren't motivation enough... there are also GREAT prizes.
1st prize- a YEAR membership to CRUNCH gym (1,000 value!). Crunch has awesome classes like Barre ASSets (an ass class with a ballet bar), pole dancing classes, spinning, etc.

The other prizes are awesome, but this is the one I'm going for....

Come on fools... Who's with me!

Blog Roundup 4/2/2009

2009-04-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I'm still sitting here reeling in disbelief that I am SUCH an idiot.... (read previous post).... I am still committed to bringing you your "daily" gems from the blogiverse... Thankfully it's been a calm last few days on the fashion sites... my bank account just can't handle anymore "Spotlight Store of the day" posts... So today's posts are for the foodies... Enjoy

Food:
Self-Saucing pudding at thekitchn. I think my boss is psychic... Every time she brings up some odd culinary topic, it shows up in a blog the next day.... Maybe she's writing these blogs...? It's very odd. Anywhoo a few days ago we were talking about Self-Saucing pudding. I guess it's a goo that when cooked is like a pudding on the bottom with a nice crust on the top... kind of like a lava cake. Thekitchn posted a recipe for a "Hot Toddy Pudding Cake" that sounded awesome... butter, sugar and scotch... I think I'll try it this weekend.

Thekitchn also posted about these toaster bags that will allow you to make grilled cheese in your toaster oven! I think that's awesome.... they took a poll on the blog... most people did not agree with me. Judge for yourself- "Toast-it Bags"

And lastly, just in time for Easter, thekitchn posted a link to a Chicago Tribune slideshow describing how Marshmallow Peeps are made.... What?!? Dont' act like you're not curious! :-p

That's it for now... :-)

Why reading is fundamental....

2009-04-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

So a few days ago I entered a little contest on a blog called Soul Bounce to win 2 tickets to see Omar and Teadra Moses in concert at S.O.B.s.... the night before the concert I was talking to a new girlfriend online and she happened to mention the concert and said she wanted to go. I was like, "cool! I might win free tickets to that!" So we decided to go. She looked up the information for the concert and it turns out it was at Santos Party House in Manhattan and not S.O.Bs. I was like... that's odd... they must have changed locations, but didn't think much of it. Also the doors opened at 10:00... which I thought was late for a weekday concert, but she seemed to think that that was pretty standard. So I was like cool.... I was done for a little weekday late night adventure...

Turns out the next day I get an email from Soul Bounce saying I won tickets to the show! EXCELLENT! I didn't read the email very thoroughly, I just replied back saying I would be in the house, and told my friend we had free tickets. YAY

So around 10:00pm we set up to Santos Party House for the "concert".

We arrive at about 11:00.... The DJ is playing... no Omar... my girl seems to think that this is normal because people usually start late....

12:00 rolls around, no Omar... DJ still playing.... more artsy, no-job on Thursday, looking people roll in....

12:05 rolls around... A Blond chick takes the stage... can't really hear her singing over the too loud background music and drums.... No one seems to be paying attention to her.... We are repeatedly jostled by wildly dancing chicks... Waiting for Teadra...

12:15 A short woman takes the stage... I can't really hear her name very well due to the horrendous sound system... It sounds like she's saying Tedra the Empress... She is a short, round, young girl with locs.... She looks NOTHING like the Teadra Moses that I am used to seeing... but Teadra often calls herself the Lioness... and this chick was calling herself the Empress... and I couldn't hear for shit, so I just figured she'd gained some weight, loc'd her hair...and COMPLETELY changed her sound... She was good... not the person I remembered, but she was good.

12:30- Another act takes the stage.... I am getting sleepy.... Assuming that I'd already heard "Teadra" I started getting antsy... Where the Fluck is Omar?!? Thankfully a AMAZING singer by the name of Yazarah took the stage. She was awesome... a force of nature... Amazing voice... amazing body... I was pleased...

12:30-2:00.... COMPLETE Mayhem. The two hosts/MC's get on the stage.. PISSY drunk and just a mess... a... MESS... They introduce 2 more acts... I can't even describe it... I don't want to disrespect anyone's art.... so I will just continue...

2:15... Omar strolls in... is hanging out in the audience... I'm like... WTF... get on stage dude so I can go home.... He doesn't.... another pissy drunk MC gets on stage and starts talking incoherently about how Omar just came in from London... and how he's sorry... What?!? What are you talking about?!? We get our coats. We leave and take a sleepy cab ride back to Brooklyn.

This morning I come to work and go on the Soul Bounce website THOROUGHLY prepared to see a bunch of comments about the wackness of the show.... that's when I realize the following:

Candace and I actually didn't go to the Omar and Teadra Moses concert last night.

We went to the after party

Omar and Teadra were performing at a COMPLETELY different venue starting at 7:00. A real concert.... at a real venue... that started at a reasonable hour... That I would have enjoyed.... and I would have been home by 11:00.

Omar was never supposed to sing .... he was supposed to be hosting the after party.

ALL OF THIS WAS ON THE EMAIL THAT I RECEIVED SAYING I WON

I am so irritated right now

I'm so glad that it was only Omar and Teadra Moses.... if it was someone I really liked (or even knew... heh heh @ "The colored section") I would be EXTREMELY P.O'd right now

ARGH!

Friday Night Ethiopian Extravagana (Recipes 15-17)

2009-03-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

So my guy Curtis and I had an Ethiopian food night on Friday. We had decided about a week ago that we wanted to get together and cook something new, and we settled upon Ethiopian food because neither of us had ever attempted that at home and there were tons of vegetarian options for Curtis and meat options for me.

The Menu: Since neither of us had had Ethiopian food for a while, I found a few menus online for Ethiopian restaurants and Curtis picked 2 veggie dishes (Atakilt Wot and Shiro) and I picked 1 beef dish (Tibs Wot) since I had beef in the freezer that needed to be used. In addition to the dishes we, of course, had to have some Injera and I made a little cocktail for us as well.

Ingredients of interest: Ethiopians use a LOT of spices in their cooking. The only spice that neither of us had ever cooked with was Fenugreek seed. Fenugreek seed seemed to provide an essential flavor to 2 of the staple components of Ethiopian cooking, Niter kibbeh and berbere (more about those later). Fenugreek is native to India and is often used in Indian, Mediterranean and Northern African cooking. By itself fenugreek has a slightly bitter taste. Incidentally I had become familiar with fenugreek a few years earlier when I ordered a "grow your boobs big" kit online. It came with a bunch of herbs and berries that were supposed to make your boobs bigger. One of them was fenugreek! I believe you were supposed to make tea out of the seeds AND use a lotion on your boobies that was infused with fenugreek. Obviously this didn't work out for me, but now that I have stock of seeds I may give it another shot... Anyway moving on...

The Process... So before Curtis came over I decided to make 2 elements of the meal, the niter kibbeh and the Tef. Niter kibbeh is a clarified butter that is infused with ginger, garlic and a ton of other spices. To make the niter kibbeh I just melted a 1/2 pound of butter with a couple slices of fresh ginger, 2 cloves of garlic, cardamon pods, cinnamon, cloves, turmeric and fenugreek, let it simmer for an hour and then strained out the solids. It smelled AMAZING! The smell was very warm and "comforting" (for lack of a better word) from the cloves, ginger and cinnamon, with a certain spiciness from the fenugreek and tumeric. it smelled SOOo good... i wish this blog had smell'o'vision so I could share it.

Tej is a sweet wine that is made from fermented honey and the leaves and twigs from a special kind of hops called gesho. Obviously i wasn't going to be fermenting honey in Bed Stuy so I decided to go with this rough approximation of tej that was basically honey, water and wine. It was tasty... I'm sure it didn't taste ANYTHING like real tej, but it was sweet, refreshing and got the job done. I think I'm going to try and get some real tej sometime soon then just so I can try it.

Curtis came through around 7:30 and we quickly got started on the berbere. The berbere, along with the niter kibbeh, seemed to be the most important, quintessentially Ethiopian, elements of the meal. Berbere is a hot pepper baste (or dry powder) that is made from a TON of spices (cumin, cardamom, allspice, cloves, turmeric, nutmeg, paprika, cayenne, etc etc). Curtis and I had most of the spices on hand in ground form, but we decided to be authentic as possible and purchase the whole form of each spice, and toast and grind it into powder ourselves. The berbere was really easy to make.. we just toasted the spices until they became fragrant, ground them up in my coffee grinder, and then threw them in the blender with some onion, garlic, ginger, oil and water. So easy and so tasty! I can't really describe the taste of the berbere itself it was similar to Indian curry but sharper... not quite as muddled. Ours wasn't that hot, but i don't think I got the right kind of peppers for it. I have about a cup of berbere left over and I'm definitely going to keep it on hand. It would make a fabulous marinate for fish or chicken, or just an additive to stews for an extra kick of flavor. Yumm....

The actual dishes were probably the least excite portions of the meal to make. To prepare Tibs Wat (Beef stew) you cook up some pureed ginger, onion and garlic in hot niter kibbeh, add some paprika and berbere paste, red wine, beef stock, cayenne and beef chunks marinated in lemon and salt and let it cook for about 40 min. Nothing terribly exciting but this mess was hella tasty. I was very concerned because I tasted the mixture after the addition of the paprika and berbere and it was REALLY disgusting. If it weren't for Curtis calming me down I might have chucked it... it was that nasty, but obviously the addition of the wine, stock and beef created some sort of culinary magic because in the end it was fantastic... spicy, complex, creamy, and a tad bitter.

Curtis took the lead on preparing the veggie dishes but they also didn't seem that difficult to make. The atkilt wot was basically a bunch of cut up veggies (carrots, green beens, cabbage) and potato cut up, COVERED in niter kibbeh and baked until tender, buttery and delicious... and it was.. Seriously that niter kibbeh is no joke because those veggies were excellent. The taste was much milder than the tibs wot, but i liked it because it allowed you to really taste the complexities of the niter kibbeh. Also the flavor wasn't so overpowering that it couldn't be combined with other types of cuisine. I would totally make this as a side dish to go along with baked chicken and brown rice... I think a lot of people would enjoy their veggies prepared this way. Not particularly healthy (veggies doused in spiced butter) but definitely delicious.

Lastly Curtis made the Shiro Wot which was spicy green pea stew. As written the Shiro Wot was simply peas, onion, garlic, ginger, salt and pepper. The flavor was obviously really mild and not particularly Ethiopian... I think I dropped the ball on this recipe. I should have looked for a better one. I think niter kibbeh should have been subbed for the oil and there should have been some berbere in there. We ended up adding a few tablespoons of berbere at the end and it really kicked up the dish.

Lastly we tried our hand at injera... injera is a spongy, sour, crepe-like flat bread that is used as a utensil for eating the stews. Proper injera is made from teff (a cereal grain indigenous to Ethiopia) flour mixed with water and allowed to ferment for several days. Because of the fermentation, injera is very sour. After fermentation the injera is baked into large flat pancakes. Soo... we decided on our Ethiopian theme late Wednesday and I didn't figure out how to make injera until Thursday so obviously the fermentation was out. Instead we decided to make this "quick injera" recipe that I saw online which was basically a batter made from whole wheat and white flour, baking powder, club soda and a little lemon joice. This was not injera. These were very bland pancakes. They definitely LOOKED like injera and were spongy like injera... but they tasted like very bland pancakes. Thankfully neither of us really like injera so we were pleased with our pancakes.

Overall I give the meal a solid A and the company an A+. Although we didn't actually eat until 11:00 we had a great time cooking and chatting and it was just really nice to be able to share an activity that I like so much with someone who enjoys it just as much as I do. By the end of the night i was EX.HAUSTED but the learning and company was totally worth the effort. Hopefully we can make this a monthly or bi-monthly activity. Here are a few shots of our finished products:
My Plate...

Curtis' Plate...

The table:

I think I'm going to use my leftover berbere to make some doro wat next weekend or later on this month and try to make a proper injera. If anyone interested in coming over for dinner just let me know. :-)

N

Spring has sprung in Brooklyn!

2009-03-28T20:50:00.000-07:00

I had a FABULOUS time this weekend! My friend Curtis and I had an Ethiopian food extravaganza on Friday night yummmmm. Cooking, great food, awesome company, good conversation; what more could a gal ask for?

Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous spring day so Leroy and I decided to take a little stroll around the Stuy. We went to the dog park where he played with a 80 pound pitt bull and did a fabulous time teaching a cute little girl about proper puppy care. I was so proud of him! He didn't really jump of on her and he let her attempt to pick him up by his front legs, pull on his tail, generally manhandle him while constantly yelling at him to lick her. Such a good dog! Maybe he does have some therapy dog in him yet. :-)

Leroy and I then strolled over to Fort Greene and checked out the Fero and Addy "Leaving New York" Sale (R.I.P Fero and Addy...) where I ran into my girl Candace and FINALLY found a great bag!

A beautiful Tano bag for less than $100 bucks! Can't beat that!

I also found some adorable earrings and Candace purchased a hot clutch and an iridescent orange bag... Very cute.

So sad Fero and Addy is closing.

Candice, Leroy and I met up with our girl Tania for a late lunch at Cafe Lafayette in Fort Greene where we had a few drinks (ok just I had a few drinks), laughed and entertained the obligatory relationship discussion from a nosey, but kind of cute, passerby. Good times.

Sunday Leroy and I chillaxed the rainy morning away chatting with friends over IM, finally catching up with my Sis, watching bad VH1 reality shows, and eating leftover Tibs Wot. Leroy now loves watching TV (he's much calmer post-snipping)... although he seems a little suspicious of this Ceaser Milan character.

I finally got off my butt around 3:00, took a shower and decided to actually achieve something today. I hung out in Target for a few hours... Target is like a black hole... I haven't been there in a while, but there is SO much to look at... I bought a few things that I needed and bought another bag... a white faux-leather tote. I like it. What do ya'll think?

After Target I headed over to the gym for a late workout. No cute boys to look at, but I did get some good circuit training in and feel like my beach body is coming together. I finshed off the weekend with a delicious dinner and dessert from Peaches Brooklyn. If you are in Brooklyn and are in the mood for chocolate you should RUN, not stroll, over to Lewis and MacDonough for Peaches' triple chocolate brownie... So.Flucking.Good. No more sweets for me until next Satuday so I was sure to end the weekend on a sweet note!

This was such a beautiful weekend! I can't even verbalize how excited I am that it's spring. Corny as it sounds, I really feel like every spring is a rebirth. Winters are hard for me. Each winter I start out strong, but by the end of the season I'm always depressed and feel like I'm running the last lap of a marathon in the midst of a blizzard so severe that I can't see the finish line... Winter exhausts me. I LOVE it in the beginning, but by the end I'm literally on my knees begging mother nature for mercy. When spring comes it feels like the planet is hugging me and telling me that I made it.... I feel so grateful to be alive and able to experience another spring.

Anywhoo that's enough for now,

N

Blog Roundup- 3/26/2009

2009-03-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

Just a few thangs from the ever revolving blogiverse….

Random:
Gettogetha (a really cool lifestyle) posted these awesome bulletin boards from a designer on Etsy. I have been looking for a bulletin board for my apartment, but really didn’t want to do the standard dorm, cork board look… I don’t’ really have that much on my walls so I feel like everything I hang up has to add value…. Even a bulletin board. I LOVE these “Hoop de doo” bulletin boards from little pretty studio. They are so adorable. They are small, so you’d have to get a few

Gettogetha also posted a really cute idea for host/hostess gifts. As a girl who likes to entertain friends (AND drink) I always appreciate people bringing a bottle of wine or spirits as a hostess gift, but the wine undoubtedly will be drunk at the party leaving me as the poor hostess empty handed when it’s over. Enter the wine stopper! Perfect hostess gift. You can use them at the party to keep the wine corked, and the hostess can keep them for her personal use. I am definitely going to keep a stock of these on hand. Gettogetha posted some cute ones

Fitness:
Anyone who knows me KNOWS I love personal challenges. I’m always trying to get people to enter them with me (budget challenges, workout challenges, water drinking challenges LOL), so the “April Body of Work” challenge at Social Fitness was right up my alley. Basically the challenge is to work out 26 times in April and go on Social fitness and write up a short ditty about your workouts to keep yourself accountable and give others ideas. The prizes aren’t too shallow either. The grand prize is a free year membership to Crunch (over $1000) value. Anyone else want to join in?

Food:
Evil Mad Scientist's project for this week were mini pizzas made in little springform pans. SUCH a cute, delicious (looking) and potentially healthy ideas. I will be trying these in the near future...

That's it for today.... thankfully Budget Babe has stopped that Spotlight Store of the day nonsense... the "Babe" is costing me dearly but hopefully I'll be cuter for it come spring.

Ta-ta....

Oh My Damn....

2009-03-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

OKAY Eric Benet... I see you... I watched this video at work... probably shouldn't have.... Whoo wee..... That's all I'm going to say...

Chocolate Legs @ Yahoo! Video

2 More Best Picture Movites- Platoon and Out of Africa

2009-03-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

I watched 2 more movies on my "picture of the year list". I watched both of these last Saturday during my failed DIY kinky twist experiment... Even though I wasted 3-4 hours last weekend trying and failing to put in my twist extensions, the day wasn't a complete loss because i got to see 2 really good movies!

The first movie I watched was Platoon. I didn't think I would really like this movie, since I'm not that into war movies but it turned out to be a pretty decent flick. The movie centered around the lives of 13 soldiers and specifically 1 new soldier who had volunteered to go to Vietnam (he was a wealthy, white guy who dropped out of college) in an effort to personally recify the injustice of only the poor having to go to war (something the other "poor" soldiers thought was really idiotic). The movie kind of followed his change from a shared shitless newbie to a "real" soldier and showed his struggle to not let the atrocities that he saw committed in Vietnam turn him into a monster as well.

The movie was violent, but not in a gratuitous way, and had that late '70s, grimy, M.A.S.H type visual effect... like the movies i used to watch on Sunday afternoons on FOX growing up. Overall I really enjoyed the movie To me, the main theme of the movie seemed to be the struggle not to let Vietnam eat the soldiers alive... Stress, fatigue, disease, often leads soldiers to do things that they wouldn't normally do (rape, kill innocents, pillage villages) and it seemed like there was a real struggle within all of the characters around what Vietnam was making them become. There were 13 or so "supporting" characters and I really appreciated the fact that each of the 13 had their own personality with depth... it wasn't just like, "this is the evil guy ann this is the good guy..." they each had their own struggle, which Oliver Stone was able to get across quite skillfully despite the fact that no one had that many lines. Also it was also just kind of cool to see all of the young actors, Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp, The guy from Scrubs, Willem Defou, Forrest Whitaker, the bad guy trying to take over Ice Cube's shop in Barbershop... Good times all around. I don't know if I'd watch the movie again, but i give it a solid B.

The second film I watched was Out of Africa. I was NOT excited about watching this... from the previews it seemed like it was going to be one of those beautiful, sweeping, but mind-numbingly boring pics... like the English Patient. Also the movie is about colonial Kenya and the main characters were all rich white people.... I was not excited about this movie. But it turned out to be REALLY great! The main character, played by Meryl Streep, was an "aging" (probably late 20's... but I guess that's old for a single woman in the early 1900s) single woman with family money who married her best friend, a poor Baron, in exchange for a title and had to relocate to Kenya to be with her new husband.

When she arrived at her new place it was made pretty clear to her that her marriage wasn't real and her new husband wasn't really going to be around much and of course at first she was put off by all the black faces she saw. She didn't trust anyone... she looked at all the natives like they were dirty and were going to steal her stuff...( needless to say I was getting annoyed at this point.) With no friends or family in the remote area where she lived, the Baroness decided to throw all of her energy into making sure her farm prospered and creating actual relationships with the people who worked on the farm and lived in the neighboring villages. During this time she met and fell in love with a man, played by Robert Redford, who seemed to be sort of a wandering/jack of all trades type... but with money. LOL He was sexy and funny and they had a true connection and fell in love.. aWWW but he was also a man and didn't want to be "controlled" by calling it a relationship or actually getting married.

Anywhoo I'm not going to recap the entire story, but all in all the Baroness grew to really care about her "native" neighbors and friends... not in an annoying, paternalistic type of way, but a real, honest affection for who they were and respect for their ways and culture. Through her relationship with Robert Redford's character (who was RIDICULOUSLY hot in this movie...) she discovered herself, her own self worth. SUCH a great movie! The end was heartbreaking... I was sitting in my apartment crying like a fool. I won't spoil it, but it's definitely worth checking out. I would watch it again in a heartbeat, so i give Out of Africa a solid A.

Spring Decorating

2009-03-22T13:11:00.000-07:00

Spring has sprung and I decided I HAVE to switch up my living room. I have some beautiful curtains, pillows and couch throw that my mom made for me 3 years ago, but they are just TOOOO dark for me now and for some reason the combination of the bright yellow walls and dark maroon curtains is making me feel like the room closing in around me. So I'm going to change it. It's spring so I'm going to try and redecorate in a happy, sunny, springy way.

I don't really want to repaint my wall, so I'm going to have to just work around the yellow and try to make it less manically intense and more sunny and happy. So here's my living room at this point:

It was night time, but you can see how heavy and dark the curtains are, and just how generally dark the color scheme is.

So the plan is this:
1- Get new window treatments
2- Get some cute throw pillows for the couch
3- reupholster my dining room chairs and benches
4- Get some plants/window boxes for the windows
5- figure out a simple, cheery and cheap tablescape.

I did some research online and I think the main accent color I want to go with is in the vermilion/coral/orange family. All the decorating shows say that when you're picking colors you should find an inspiration room, or pillow/accessory or image that inspires you. Here are the things that spoke to me...

I really like the sunnyness of the sunflower on the Nourish and Shine Pomade label and I just LOVE the dining room in the picture, although I feel like it may be a little orange for me. My original plan was to do more coral and yellow (like Michelle Obama's outfit)... but I don't know if that or the orange will do better.

At this point I've taken down my curtains and the room already looks so much brighter. I've found a couple cute pillows at Crate and Barrel and CB2 that I may start out with... Anyone have any suggestions on curtain color or how I should reupholster my chairs and stools?

Gracias folks!
N

Blog Roundup 3/20/2009

2009-03-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

What up party people.... It's the first day of Spring!!! YAY! Here's some fun stuff I found today :-)

Fashion:
The Budget Babe is QUICKLY becoming my favorite blog (and my bank account's nemesis...). The babe over at Budget Babe has bled my bank account a bit more today's "New Store Spotlight" The store of today is "Akira Chicago" Akira is a trendy high end/low end (ie you can get a D&G $300 watch and a $15 plastic belt all in one stop!) boutique in Chicago. I checked out their website and they have some cute stuff! Their Spring line is called "Couture for the Poor". Ooowee they have some cute stuff! Argh! Damn you Budget Diva! Here are a few things that caught my eye...

In addition to Akira, Budget Diva also notified me to a sale at 6pm...Nine west shoes for $19.99.... I bought 2... Grrrr... oh well I guess $40 for 2 pairs of 9 West work shoes ain't that bad :-) at

Shefind s "Deal of the day" was Banana Republic's sale on "frill free dresses" I was actually at Banana yesterday trying, in vain, to find some work slacks and I saw this dress... It's on sale for $100 now. Is it worth it? --->

Food:
TheKtchn posted this little can strainer kitchen gaget thingie.... If I could find it in a store I would totally buy it because I'm always losing corn kernels, etc when I try and strain the liquid out of the can.... and I think this would be a GREAT use of $9.00 :-D

And Lastly, TheKtchn also posted this awesome easy spring dessert recipe: Shortbread Jam Tart I love shortbread... and I'm sure I have all the ingredients (sugar, butter and jam) at home.. so sounds like a possible dessert for this weekend.

That's all for now. Have a fabulous weekend!

Pasta in Almond Garlic Sauce (recipe #15)

2009-03-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

I made a pretty tasty new dish last night- Penne pasta in Almond Garlic sauce. I came across this recipe last week on one of the blogs that I follow and it seemed pretty interesting. It's basically a pasta with a white sauce made of pureed almond, garlic, butter, Parmesan cheese, and lemon, mixed with frozen peas and topped with mint and basil. The idea of pureeing almonds into a pasta sauce was intruiging, and I had basically all the ingredients on hand (except for the mint and Parm) so I figured I'd give it a shot.

According to the recipe, this entire meal (including prep, etc) was only supposed to take 20 min and wonder of wonders, it actually did! This was a super easy meal. There was virtually no prep work. No onions or garlic to chop, no peas to de-shell... Pretty much the only prep type work you had to do was blanch the almonds... but then again you could buy almonds already blanched.

For those of you who aren't cookers, blanching is basically dipping a food into boiling water briefly. Vegetables (asparagus, snowpeas, etc) are often blanced to bring out their color and then placed in ice water. You can also blanch tomatoes to easily remove the skin... but I digress. I generally think of blanching as ONLY dipping the food into hot water, but apparently "blanching" an almond is dipping it into hot water and then removing the skin from each almond. I found this out by mistake... I don't think I've ever blanched almonds, so when they came out of the water and the skin was all bubbly I just figured that's what they were supposed to look like. I was about to throw the almonds in the blender when I saw that the skin was peeling off of a few of them and I realized "OOOOOH maybe I'm supposed to take this skin off so it's not all chunky and stuff in the sauce!" I'm smart :-p So I peeled all the almonds... which was kind of fun.. If you grasp them with your thumb and forefinger at the pointy end, the white inside will kind of shoot out of the skin like a little nut missle... This was great fun for me... because I'm a dork. It was great fun for Leroy as well because he got to eat a few wayward missles.

After I finished with the almonds I threw them in the blender with a little water and a couple cloves of garlic. Next you heat a little butter and olive oil in a pan and add the almond-garlic mixture. The garlic almond mixture will begin to thicken after a few minutes...
It will go from this ---- > To this --- >

After the mixture thickens you add a little bit of the water that you cooked the pasta in. The starchy water will help the mixture thicken. Then you throw in the cheese, peas and lemon juice and lastly you add the basil and mint. When I opened up the basil I had in my fridge I realized it had gone all funky, so I had to use dried basil instead of fresh. Other than that (and not using as much butter) I pretty much followed the recipe. This is what my version looked like!

Overall it was pretty darn good. It wasnt' particularly nutty... the almond taste was really mild. I LOVED the peas and mint combination. Apparently that is a very "spring" combo... according to my boss :-p And honestly even though I didn't necessarily know those 2 were like quintisential "spring" ingredients, when I tasted it, I thought "This tastes like spring..." As written I think I give the dish a solid B+. If I were to make it again, I would obviously use fresh basil. I would also think about using a sharper cheese? I'm not sure if straight Parmesan is sharper than Parmesan-Reggiano, or if there a sharper hard Italian cheese I could sub? I would also probably add far more lemon juice, and more garlic.

Anyway, my Penne with Almond Garlic sauce was QUITE tasty. Please let me know how it turns out if any of you make it.

I need a new bag... STAT!

2009-03-19T11:30:00.001-07:00

So the horror of almost losing my brand new cell phone yesterday has put a fire under my ass about getting a new purse. All of my current purses came off of the street (the nice bag guy at 18/19th and 6th... Thanks Sabs) and while they look nice-ish, none of them are particularly durable or zip all the way shut... And I'm getting very annoyed with my change, ipod and phone always getting caught underneath the torn lining. So I"m getting a new bag this week. Period. I don't want to spend more than 100 on it, but I'd like it to be cute.... That being said... Does anyone have any ideas or seen any cute bags around? My only requirements are that it's cute, leather or high quality pleather, fully zips closed and has functional compartments. Here are a few I've seen on the net within the past few days that I thought were cute... just so you'd know the style I'm kind of going for.... Thoughts/suggestions anyone?

Grey Bselma from Steve Madden: On sale for $73.00

Whitney Drawstring Bag from Steven by Steve Madden- Ivory on sale for $164

This is cute from Bluefly (Matt and Nat), but it's $150 and it's not leather..

That's all I got so far...

Suggestions anyone?

Blog Roundup 3/17/2009

2009-03-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

Just a few thangs fo yo ass.....

Shopping/Fashion:
So Budget Babe is doing this cool thing where they spotlight a new online store every day for a week (or a month?). Yesterday's store was Bare Acessories which is an online store selling accessories (bags, jewelry, hoisery, sunglasses, etc). They had some cute stuff! Here are a few of the bags and Jewelry that I liked...

Food/Recipes:
A few blogs posted recipes yesterdays in honor of St. Patrick's day. One was a SUPER cute peppermint cupcake (pictured to the left) from the Simply Recipes blog. Thektchn posted a Guinness Chocolate cake. I've never had Guinness before, but the recipe was from Nigella Lawson and I think she generally makes tasty stuff... A couple ideas for next year. :-)

Fitness:
The folks over at the About.com Exercise blog finally posted something useful (there were about to get deleted from my subscription list). I love exercises that you can do between sets of strength training to keep your heart rate up... some of my faves are jumping jacks (Old school, I know), jump rope, and burpees. About.com posted a new one; Froggy Jumps! They are basically like jumping squats but harder. Here are the instructions:

Squat all the way down to the floor, putting your hands on the floor in front of you.
In an explosive movement, push up from the floor, jumping up in the air.
As you jump, tap your heels together and take the hands behind the head or up in the air.
Land with bent knees to protect the joints and go back into your squat to prepare for the next jump.
Repeat 10-20 froggy jumps, rest and repeat, if desired.

I tried a few of these last night... they're no joke. They really work your legs because of the deep squat, and you can't be lazy about pushing off into the jump or you won't have time to click your heels together. Good stuff.

That's all for today!

The food of the Garifuna... (new foods 9-10)

2009-03-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

So this weekend my homegirl Tania invited me to a wonderful Garifuna cultural affair in the Bronx. Tania is Garifuna and she was born in Honduras. Just a little history on the Garifuna, the Garifuna are mixed race people who are descendants of Carib, Arawak and African peoples. The Garifuna generally live in Central America along the Caribbean Coast of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. I kind of thought that the Garifuna were like Black Hondurans.... I'm not sure that's 100% accurate, but the folks at the festival were definitely of African descent and the food was delicious and had definite African inspirations.

Given that it was Tania and I at this affair, obviously the first thing that we did was take a shot. Guifiti is a traditional Garifuna spirit made from rum infused with herbs, nuts and berries. Apparently alcohol was not allowed at this function because after we paid for our shots (actually a scary drunk man paid for them.... but that's another story) we were covertly handed 2 little cups and a half empty bottle of rum and had to pour the shots ourselves under the table while trying to disentangle ourselves (physically and socially) from the scary drunk guy... Anywhoo I have no idea what the rum was infused with, but it was strong and it was tasty. It had a bit of an anise taste to me... a little licorice-y. The guifiti went down fairly smooth, but I think I would like to mix it with something or at least have a chaser next time.

Machuca- The next thing we ate was this DELICIOUS coconut based seafood soup that you eat with a mash of green plantains called Machuca. We actually got to the Machuca right when they ran out, but Tania told her friend, who was making the food, that she wanted to introduce me to the Garifuna culture and I NEEDED to taste the Machuca so she scraped a bit more soup and plantain out for me. And I'm glad she did because it was tasty... coconutty, but not in a heavy way and had notes of cilantro and lime in it. There was only a bit of seafood in my portion, but the broth was nicely infused with seafood flavor. The plantain mash was actually pretty tasty. I'm not usually a fan of starchy mashes (fufu, etc), but the mash actually had a flavor of it's own...

Next on the list was also one of my favorites, Baleada. Baleada is popular street food in Honduras... it's basically a thick, homemade tortilla filled with refried beans and a slightly sweet cream. It sounds like it would be a bit odd, but it was really tasty. The cream tasted a bit like cream cheese or sour cream but it was a bit sweet. The refried beans were just refried beans, but together it worked. Yummm...

After the Baleada we got a couple cups of hot Atole. Atole is porridge like drink made with corn, coconut (or Carnation evaporated milk I was told... Do any people of African descent NOT love the Carnation?!?), hominy, and spices... i think i tasted nutmeg and maybe cinnamon. It was VERY sweet and heavy. I initially though that it was a soup because, despite the fact it was served in a cup, they gave us spoons, but apparently Atole is actually a drink. It was tasty, but it was so rich I could only have a couple spoonfulls.

Next on our gastronomic tour of Honduras we had some Tamales... They were very much like traditional Mexican tamales... chick wrapped in cornmeal and steamed in leaves. They were tasty, but not my fav.

Tania and I took a few sweets to go. One was a sweet called semitas that looks like a very large, puffy sugar cookie with a braided ring of dough surrounding it. The Semitas (I'm not sure if that's singular or plural :-/) were tasty... They pretty much tasted like sugar cookies... with some nutmeg. Blacks all over the diaspora love them some nutmeg... almost as much as they love the Carnation...

The last thing i tasted was the Garifuna Yucca Bread. It is pretty much what it sounds, like... "bread" made of mashed yucca. It was quite interesting... They cut it off of a big tray, and when I saw it on the tray, I kind of thought it was flan, or something similar... The inside of the bread had that kind of flan-like firm mush look. Upon tasting it, the texture was a little like flan, but much denser and chewier... i can't think of much to compare it with, but it kind of had the consistency of fufu... if you for some reason decided to chew your fufu. It was chewy, firm and kind of elastic. The texture was interesting, but definitely not unappealing. The bread tasted pretty good... it was very sweet and moist and tasted of.... you guessed it! Brown sugar and nutmeg... heh heh... yum..

All in all I really enjoyed my taste of Garifuna! I am going to count it as 2 new foods given the Machuca, Guifiti, Tamales and Semitas were not totally foreign to me. I think I am going to try and make machuca this month... it was really tasty. So look out for that :-p

Peace!

Recipe #14- Barley Risotto with Asparagus and Peas

2009-03-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

I tried one of the recipes from this month's issue of Clean Eating this past week. It was a take on risotto, but instead of using a short grain, sticky rice like Arborio, you use barley. I was intrigued when I first saw the recipe, not only because the picture was so beautiful, but also because I'm always looking to introduce grains in interesting ways into my cooking.

So why try the risotto with barley as opposed to just using the rice (What's wrong with Rice? Right Janet :-p) Well when compared to white rice, barley has almost half the calories (193 v. 242 calories per cup) and fewer grams of total carbs (53 v. 44), but I think the biggest difference between rice and barley is the fiber content. While white rice has a whopping 53 grams of carbs, it only has .6 grams of fiber. Barley, on the other hand, is lower in carbs, but MUCH higher in dietary fiber with 6 grams per serving! Barley even tops brown rice when it comes to calories, carbs and fiber. Anyway...we all need to up our fiber content, and barley risotto sounded WAY better than a glass of Metamucil...

The recipe was pretty simple. You basically saute up some shallots and scallions in olive oil, add the barley and some chicken broth. Let that cook. Add the cut up asparagus and peas, and then stir in fresh basil, parsley and lemon zest.

Overall I REALLY enjoyed my barley risotto! Initially I had planned on putting a little butter in it and maybe throwing in some white wine, but I figured I would try and make it a totally clean meal and see how it tasted. It was really good. Clean and simple, but very very tasty and that was just with the asparagus (I forgot the peas).

The thing I was most worried about was getting the creamy consistency that most risottos have. While it wasn't creamy like a typical risotto, it did have an element of creaminess to it.... I'm not really sure where the creaminess came from... maybe it was cooked in more or less liquid than normal, or maybe barley is supposed to a little creamy when cooked? Either way I was pleasantly surprised by the texture and the taste of the dish. The next time I make it I may try and up the creaminess quotient (without ruining the clean-ness of the meal) by roasting and pureeing some cauliflower to add to the broth... I'll probably also add a little coriander (which I like with asparagus), more lemon zest to brighten up the flavor, and I have to think of a different herb to add... I'm not really a fan of parsley.

Overall I give the dish a solid A

DIY Hair- Kinky Twists!

2009-03-13T07:20:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I'm going to attempt to twist my own hair with extensions... There are a TON of girls on nappturality who have done this, and there are like 5 million youtube videos demonstrating the technique, and I've been 2-strand twisting my hair for years so I'm going to give it a shot. I actually tried doing kinky twists YEARS ago... the summer after I graduated college... I think only a few of you (or just Steph) were around to experience those kinky twists....

They were a hot mess....

They looked kind of like this picture. --------- >

But e'rbody was quick to tell me how cute they were... even you Steph, even though you came clean once I took them out. So I am going to give them a shot again this weekend. I'm going to keep them kind of short... This kind of what I"m hoping they'll look like -

I'll let you know how they turn out! :-)

N

Blog Roundup- 3/13/2009

2009-03-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

What up party people.... A few interesting things in the blogiverse today....

Shopping/Fashion:
Budget Babe hipped me to a funky headband designer in Philly, Lisa Kathryn Designs. She sells her stuff on etsy.com and she's running a promotion where 1 lucky girl (or guy...) will win a free headband. She has some cute stuff... It's very Urban Outfitters/Katy Perry/Solange-ish, but I really like a few of the pieces and they'd be fun for my spring/summer fro. They're only $10-$12 so I think I can afford to just purchase a few, and if you mention the Budget Babe you get 10% off. Here's a few of my faves below :-)

Food/Recipes:
I saw this really awesome kitchen gadget on thekitchn today. It's a counter/cutting board that you can hold on your lap! As you can see in the picture you balance the board in between your legs, use the portion in front of you for cutting and then there seems to be a trash area on one side and another holding area on the other side. GENIUS! I should get one of these for my mom.... She's always sitting down and cutting things and this seems way more ergonomic than sitting on a stool and reaching up to the counter to cut things.

That's it for today! Have a fantabulous weekend y'all!

Naive or neigborly?

2009-03-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

So I met a nice woman on my block who has a french bulldog... I'm 99% sure that he's a purebred Frenchie. I met her before she got the dog and she told me she was getting a French bulldog and when she came and introduced Leroy and I to her puppy last week and she again said that he was a Frenchie. I was talking to her randomly on the street yesterday when a guy, who I had just met a few minutes earlier, came down the block and asked her what type of dog she had. She told him he was a mutt. The guy asked her a few times just to be sure.... and she said that he was a frenchie mixed with something else... i don't remember what she said, but she definitely said that her dog was a mutt. I had just met the guy a bit earlier. He had stopped me to chat and had asked what type of dog I had. I, of course, told him that Leroy was a pug and we had a nice little conversation about pugs.

Back when I first got Leroy people used to stop me all the time to talk to me about where I got him, how much he was, etc. Puppies are really expensive in New York and a lot of people around here breed dogs (Pitts and Shepherds mostly) so the majority of the time I just figured they saw he was a purebred dog that was "rare" (at least in Bed Stuy) so I figured they were just curious. A few times i was a little reticent to tell people how much I paid for him because I just felt a weird energy from them, but for the most part I told them I got him from the Midwest and he was pretty cheap... a few hundred bucks.

What do you all think about my neighbor not telling the guy what kind of dog she had? I kind of thought she was doing it because she didn't want to tell him that she had an expensive dog for fear that he might get stolen? Maybe I'm just being paranoid and projecting my personal feelings on her? Maybe she just didn't feel like telling him for other reasons?

Do you think I'm naive by being very forthcoming about the breed and cost of Leroy? Do you think there's any validity in being concerned about people having ulterior motives when they ask Leroy's breed of "price"?

What say you?

Blog Roundup 3/12/2009

2009-03-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

What up party people.... A few interesting things in the blogiverse today....

Shopping/Fashion:
-The folks over at Budget Babe posted a link to a $19.99 shoe sale over at 6pm.com. Poetic License shoes are only $19.99 for one day only. I've never actually heard of this brand of shoes, but they don't seem too bad... a couple functional little work shoes in the mix.

-Budget Babe also posted a very comprehensive "Spring Essentials Wardrobe Checklist" today for those of you who are tryna step it up, on the cheap, for spring. Pretty good list in my opinion. Here are my top 5 from the list:
1. Short sleeve cardigans- To make spring shirts out of summer tanks. There were bunch of cheap and cute ones at Forever21
2. Lightweight scarves. - All the little celebrity chicks are doing this and I've seen it in a few window displays... very cute way to dress up standard jeans and t-shirt look.
3. Classic trench. I've been looking for a cute, single breasted, trench for a few years... if anyone has any suggestions PLEASE let me know.

4. Stylish sneaks. I need need NEED a new pair of sneakers as my die hard Puma 'speed cats' actually have a hole in the toe.... I'm so bad with sneakers... please give me suggestions
5. Jumpers. I love jumpers! I wanted to get one last season, but didn't see any that I really loved... I need to get at least one before Miami. Here's one from Bebe...

Food/Recipes:
I LOVE this new blog I just subscribed to Thekitchn, from the Apartment Therapy folks. There were a bunch of great posts today, but for some reason the post about pudding really jumped out at me. Pudding isn't just for kids (and Bill Cosby) anymore with fancy flavors like Mexican chocolate and anise or lemongrass infused vanilla. The pics were beautiful and the coolness (and relative low fat-ness... depending on the type of milk used) seemed perfect for a light spring dessert.

Yummm.... That's it for now. See you in a few

Blog Roundup- 3/10 - 3/11/2009

2009-03-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an EXTREMELY slow day in the blogiverse ( and in my universe). Today wasn't much better, but here are a few highlights....

Random:
Very introspective and most likely accurate perspective of the real "Change" that has come to the White House... see below (From The New York Nerd)...

Now that's the kind of change I can get behind... or in front of... heh heh.... Movin on.....

On SoulBounce today there was a spotlight on L.A. Visual Artist Steven Lopez. I hadn't heard of Steven Lopez before today, but the stuff posted is AMAZING! His new series is entitled 'After Midnight' and is a tribute to the icons of R&B (Chaka Khan, Tina Turner, Aretha) and soon to be icons like Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and India.Arie. The images are incredibly vibrant and he had a video on his webpage of himself creating the Erykah Badu piece above. I'm awestruck by visual artists... given that I have ZERO visual artistic ability, so I thought the vid was really cool. Check it below.
Erykah Badu- Amerykahn Promise from ikeepmoving.com on Vimeo.

Single Ladies videos... this ish has to stop!

2009-03-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

Saw this video on Young Black and Fabulous yesterday.... I'm not going to describe it, because I think the blogger there said all that needs to said.... Read on....

"The Beyonce World Domination continues. These little boys in the Philippines have re-enacted B’s “Single Ladies” video. I’m slightly disturbed yet impressed at the same time. Is that possible? Either way…I have SEVERAL questions. A few that instantly came to mind:

1. Who bought these daisy dukes and extra smedium shirts for these little boys and is THAT who I should be mad at?

2. Who choreographed the remix parts with the acrobats and patty cake games?

3. Was this a school assembly?

4. Is Dr. Phil on call? I have a feeling some ish is about to pop off as soon as they hit puberty.

I must say…homeboy in the urnge–yes, urnge–shorts was killin’ it. Bump what you heard."

HAHAHAHAH oh the hilarity....

Leroy at the park

2009-03-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

My friend Julian and I took Leroy to the park last weekend... we tried to play fetch with him. It didn't go so well. Here are a few videos

Leroy's weekend at the vet!

2009-03-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

My dog is very cute....

Leroy and I were off to the vet last Thursday for Leroy's big surgery. GOOO castration... this is Leroy's before shot... I think he suspected something was up...

When we got to the vet, Leroy got a little overwhelmed and promptly peed on the floor while I was talking to the receptionist... I think he was stressed, the vet tech said it was because of all the dog smells... maybe because he knew his balls were about to be removed... here's a pic of him pre-surgery... More wrinkles and bigger frown... Poor Leroy

Leroy made out of his surgery like a champion and he was bouncing around like his old self when I picked him up the next day. They didn't put a cone on him, so I unfortunately don't have any funny cone head pics.... oh well.

Leroy is not allowed to run or do anything strenuous for 10 days... He got a little bored at the apartment on Saturday and decided to create a toy out of my diet coke bottle. Such a creative little guy!

While Leroy was at the vet, the nice doctor found out that he still had wormies. He's had wormies before... we think he got them from his mother, because his littermate also has the same problem. Leroy has to take medicine by mouth for the next 4 days. Leroy does not like his medicine and does not always want to swallow it.

Leroy had a very eventful weekend. He is still feeling a bit under the weather, but is looking forward to being able to go run about outside in a week or so.

Bye everyone!

Relationship Ponderings.... Marathon First Dates

2009-03-09T12:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about marathon dates in the last couple of days. A friend of mine had a first date that lasted 3 days (Friday-Sunday) It was a long distance first date (ie the people lived in different cities), and the person coming from out of town was staying at my friend’s apartment and they were just going to spend the weekend together.

I personally was NOT a fan of this plan. Not to say that I haven’t had numerous marathon first dates, and I couldn't’t see the draw in it, but in my old (read: bitter and jaded) age I tend to lean towards the less is more style of first dates and suggested that maybe the date was scheduled on a weekend where the person was coming into town for something else (not JUST for the date) and they could meet up for a few hours on 1 or 2 days.

I feel like marathon first dates have the potential to go south, or even sabotage the entire potential relationship for a couple reasons:

1. One party may feel trapped and not comfortable enough to leave. I can think of one specific date that started out fairly early in the day with brunch, and then we were wandering around for a while and decided to catch a movie… good conversation, having a good time, etc… then the guy invited himself over to watch TV because a reality show that we both enjoyed was on…. I liked him and was having a good time, but honestly just wanted to go home and sit on my couch… but I didn’t really feel comfortable telling him he couldn't’t come watch it, when he knew that that’s what I was going to go home and do (I had mentioned it earlier in the date). I ended up getting really irritated with him, not only because I felt like he was crowding my space, but also just because he kept on making stupid comments during the reality show. LOL. Afterwards he wanted to sit and chat, and I finally just had to tell him that I wanted to go to bed and he needed to go. I don’t think he realized I was irritated (people who know me may question that :-p) but the experience left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, and definitely didn’t leave me hungering for more of him… Other than with my case, I feel like this may be more of a danger for girls than it is for guys because, in my experience, a guy doesn’t really like it when girls are all up under them too soon… and guys, (again in my experience) don’t like unpleasantness and try to avoid it at all costs… So they may go along with the long *ss date, and seem totally into it, but in the back of their mind they’re thinking, “This is a needy *ss chick…” and may be put off and never call again.

2. Knowing too much too soon = loss of interest. This is another one that I suffer from… when I leave a date with you I want to be excited to see you again, and hungry for more information about you… I feel like a first date should kind of be like a teaser… you put on your best dress, make sure your conversation is on point, and give the person a glimpse into your life and make them want to get deeper with you…. A 9+ hour date provides WAYY to much time to get too deep too fast. It also provides a false sense of comfort/security. If you spend an entire day or more with a guy you may feel like, “I’m really comfortable with him. I feel really close to him,” and may be tempted to share things that you would usually hold off on sharing (family issues, thoughts about marriage, kids etc)… and then the dude (or girl) could be scared off.

3. Increased length of date = more time for the other person to annoy you, or vice versa. I feel like everyone has had this experience… you’re on a date… he’s looking good, you’re having a good time, joking, and then someone just says something real dumb that throws the whole vibe off. Sure… this can happen during a dinner date… But if this can happen during a 1 hour dinner, imagine the likelihood of someone saying something stupid during the course of a 3 day date. Granted, people are always going to say stupid stuff… but having 3 short dates where you come away feeling like this person is the most awesome guy/girl in the world will give a better buffer when he/she says something idiotic on the 4th date…. Versus you spend 8 hours with someone and they say 2-3 stupid things… you come away thinking “seems like a cool guy/girl, but they sure do have strange ideas on xyz”.

4. Increased likelihood of regrettable slutatiousness- Longer time together = greater opportunity you’ll end up at someone apartment/house = increased probability that you’ll get it poppin = increased possibility of post-sex weirdness = less likelihood that this relationship is gonna work out. If you add alcohol into the mix, the greater opportunity of ending up at someone place turns into an almost certainty and the likelihood that the other person is going to go away from the date thinking “This person is definitely marriage material” decreases to next to nothing. I think this is common sense, but I’m sure some people disagree and think great, long lasting relationships can be born out of first date sex…

Just my thoughts… Thoughts?

Blog Roundup- 3/9/2009

2009-03-09T08:14:00.001-07:00

I read a lot of blogs, especially music, fashion, fitness and lifestyle blogs. I know that blogging/reading blogs isn't something that everyone enjoys, so I figured I would try use my blog addiction for good by posting a roundup of the interesting/useful stuff that I see on the blogs every day... or almost every day (y'all know I'm a slacker) :-p. So here's the roundup for today! (And don't hate on my Blog Round Up Logo.... you know you like it!)

Shopping:
-If you're in the market for a reuinion, prom, wedding, etc gown, check out the 90% off sale at edressme. (from Budget Fashionista)

-30% off at GAP, Banana Republic, and Old Navy for 5 days in March (starting March 12th). You need a barcode number. You can find it here . (from Budget Diva)

Music:
-The dude over at Flwrpt Brooklyn! posted a new mix, "Spring 2009"... It's hot. IT's mid-tempo, uptempo R&B, hip-hop, house, etc... He has a ton of great mixes on that site... I've been listening to them all weekend.

- I LOVE Gordon Gartrell Radio. It's a podcast/radio show hosted by MC/singer Phonte (of Little Brother/Foreign Exchange) and DJ Brainchild. They have 12 podcasts up so far starting back in May of 2008. The music is good. The commentary is HIL.LARIOUS. I love it. The most recent episode was posted back in February and talks about domestic violence... in the light of the Rihanna/Chris Brown debacle. The first song is really intense (at least to me) but if you can get past the first song the music is hot and the commentary is great. Check out this episode (and all the other ones). (http://www.gordongartrellradio.com)
Enjoy!

Plastic belts? Is that what's hot for spring?

2009-03-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

First Lady Obama is sharing the cover of "O" magazine this month with O herself. She looks so cute! She's wearing a red dress with a bright yellow cardigan with the waist cinched with a clear plastic belt.

Are plastic belts what's hot for spring?!? they BET not be charging $100's of dollars for those damn belts... A plastic belt should be $20 tops..

I will be copying this look... I wonder who makes the dress?

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors Please

2009-03-05T18:50:00.001-08:00

Soo..... this is my second blog. This blog is a spin off of sorts on my 101 goals in 1001 days blog. I found myself blogging about a lot of random crap on that blog... and I really want to keep it more about my 101 goals and not just place a bunch of random crap up there. One of my 101 goals was to blog 90% of the time in the next 1001 days. I honestly don't think I'll be able to have 901 things to say about 101 goals... So I'm going to combine the count over these 2 blogs.

This blog is mainly going to be about things that I find interesting, confusing, beautiful, enlightning, etc.... music, relationships, food, life, hair... I will hopefully put up some poetry and other general creativeness that I'm usually too shy to show folks.

I'm still working on the title for the blog.... The address is www.ATrainToBklyn.blogspot.com because I realize that 90% of my brillant thoughts come to me on the train.... I commute an hour and a half a day and I think the A train has the MOST interesting cast of characters of any train in the city.... Always provocking thoughts in my brain... hence the title.

So that's this blog.... It's just going to be the recepticle for my mental diarrhea. Feel free to leave comments, complaints, etc.

Love y'all!
n

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors Please

2009-03-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

My new favorite magazine

2009-03-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

Hey Y'all... I stumbled across this GREAT magazine and I wanted to share. I've been trying to clean up my diet a bit... halfway in preparation for the bikini/stiletto fest that will be occurring in Miami for my birthday, and partly in preparation for my 20% body fat challenge.

Usually when I try and get a little leaner I go back to the tried and true methods that I learned from my co-worker, Desiree, when I worked at a gym in New Haven, CT. Desiree was an aspiring body builder, (and super creative Sponge Bob Square Pants impersonator), and she was the QUEEN of clean eating, body builder style.... Which essentially meant eating 6-8 times a day and the meals generally consisted of lots of egg whites, oatmeal, brown rice, steamed veggies, grilled chicken, sweet potatoes, and cans of tuna on lettuce. That chick, and many other ridiculously ripped folks at the gym, ate like that EVERY DAY.

I was on the body builder style clean eating plan for a month or so and... that mess WORKS. It's no joke. If you're trying to drop weight quickly, that would honestly be the way to go. I stopped because honestly I was looking a little crackish... I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror one day and though; stop the maddness. It wasn't cute. I think it was around that time some members of my family started whispering about me possibly being anorexic.... Yes y'all... that diet is no joke. LOL

Anyway while I still incorporate a bunch of things I learned from that diet/lifestyle, that particular style of "clean" eating didn't really work for me. Firstly, I need variety and excitement in my food... While it really works for some people, the "food is fuel" viewpoint that a lot of body builders take is completely at odds with my personal "food is fun" viewpoint. Secondly, the diet makes you lose weight pretty quickly, and I'm not trying to really lose weight like that... and Thirdly, eating egg whites, tuna, and grilled chicken and veggies all the time REALLY made your farts stink... and I just wasn't down with that.... heh heh was that too much information?

Anyway... I was looking online last week trying to find some resources on "clean" eating to see if there were any new foods I could add or recipes that would spice things up if I decided to try eating that way for the next few months. That's when I came across Clean Eating Magazine! Although the magazine is from the same people that make Oxygen and Muscle Fitness ( I think), it really isn't about "clean eating" in terms of what fitness fanatics eat, but it's totally dedicated to eating foods in their most natural state... meaning minimally processed, seasonal, fresh foods. The magazine also talks about healthy lifestyle (mind and body) and has a TON of recipes that actually look like they would taste good (unlike the recipes in most fitness/muscle mags).

I LOVE this magazine! It completely speaks to how I try to eat generally (small amount of processed foods, cooking with seasonal ingredients, etc) and it uses a ton of grains and other ingredients that I wouldn't necessarily think about, or know how to use, but it doesn't do it in a crunchy granola, hippy-dippy kind of way. There is this really great looking white pearl barley and asparagus risotto that I want to try this month, and I think they have some recipes with Amarath as well. I'm so excited about this mag. It's a really great resource so far. You guys should check it out. Clean Eating Magazine

N :-)

Daily Wrap up- Wednesday March 4th

2009-03-04T10:02:00.000-08:00

Just my little update for today.... not the best of days... woke up hella late, felt like crap, didn't drink enough water... didn't eat too badly except for the white bread, and didn't work out. Um... yeah.... Next.

Status Table:

Wake up time:
Ugh I set my alarm for 6:30 this morning.... I stumbled grogily out of bed at 7:45, my head was pounding and I felt like I had been beaten with wet rags.... I guess that's what I get for hitting snooze 10 times.

Water:
Ugh... I wasn't keeping track of this today.... But I know I drank more than none because I bought a gallon of water last night before bed.

Food:
3/4 of a banana
8 oz. oatmeal from Starbucks with brown sugar and fruit
3 little pieces of coconut candy from Vietnam
Bowl of white bean and chicken Chili with Lime
Chicken, goat cheese and sundried tomato sammich on White Baugette
Couple glasses of Cranberry wine

Workout:
None

Money Spent:
$4.50 on Oatmeal and HORRIBLE, NASTY Skinny Vanilla Latte... bleh I can still taste it.

Shoulda gone to Chick Fil'a... (WTF News of the Day)

2009-03-04T09:21:00.000-08:00

So apparently this chick, Latreasa Goodman, was REALLY upset that her neighborhood Micky D's was trying to scam her out of her paper with the old Chicken Nugget switcharoo.... She ordered a 10-piece at the drive- through window, paid for it and THEN was told that they were out of those sweet nuggets... to make matters worse, they would not refund her money. They tried to pawn a nasty McDouble on her... So homegirl took matters into her own hands and called 911, not once... not twice, but THREE times an an attempt to report the travesty that was occuring....According to Goodman, "This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn’t have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don’t want one," "This is an emergency."

I feel her... I rarely eat at McDonalds, but the only thing I've gotten there in YEARS is the chicken nuggets and maybe some fries... I mean the little McDonalds window person really tied her hands in this one....They should have givenLatressa her $6.48 back straight away. That drive through chick should consider herself lucky... you really shouldn't mess with people's food... People are very unpredictable when they're hangry... it's a good thing she called 9-1-1 and didn't just go in and shoot up the employees and ransack the place looking for chicken.... 'cause you know they had some in the back or in the basement somewhere, Little Pookie and them were probably just too lazy to go down there and get it.

Oh well, Latressa was charged with misuse of 9-1-1.... hopefully she has learned her lesson and will just hit up Chick Fil'a next time.

E.T.A. HAHAHA they posted a link to the actual 911 audio on theybf.com... HAHAHA at how earnest she is in....

Daily Wrap Up- Tuesday March 3

2009-03-03T05:41:00.000-08:00

Today went pretty well me thinks.... I almost got up on time... I actually sat up in my bed at 6:30, when the alarm went off, and thought about whether I wanted to get up.... usually I just roll over and smack my nightstand until the music/alarm goes off, or falls off the nightstand... At that point I generally fall back asleep with the music still playing ( a lot of times what's on the radio gets incorporated into my dreams... I've had some fascinating conversationss with Steve Harvey....).... and get up an hour or so later than I had planned. So... yeah, so despite the fact that I still didn't get up on time, I consider today a small victory because I THOUGHT about getting up on time! Yay!

I worked out (YAY), but I ate too much... was doing well until about 10:00 when I started snacking on avocado and wheat tortilla... I also had to douse and dump (ie pour water over and throw away) the rest of my salt water petite brownies... I was just eating WAY too many of them... All in all, not a horrible day, but I can still do better...

Status Table:

Wake up time:
Woke up at 6:40 (or 6:50... i don't remember). I hit the alarm once or twice, I was supposed to get up at 6:30.

Water:
About FOUR full glasses of water today!!! YAY!
Food:
8oz of Perfectly protein shake (post- work out)
1/2 cup Fage 2%, some honey and GoLean Crunch and a banana (breakfast)
7 mini eggs (snack)
Turkey, Munster and bacon open faced sammich and Small chicken ginger chili from Whole Foods(lunch)
Lil bit'o'Cherry Cobbler ($1.12 portion from Whole Foods... I don't think I've ever gotten ANYTHING from Whole Foods for less than $5, so that should give an indication of the amount of cobbler:-p) (lunch dessert)
1 glass cranberry wine
Bootleg Salmon wrap - Salmon, wheat wrap, lettuce, goddess dressing
5 sea salt petite brownies (dessert.... The remainder of the brownies were doused in water and thrown in the trash)
Wheat tortilla
some avocado
Swig of Bolthouse Farms

Workout:
Jillian Michael's 30 day crunch level 2
Arms: Push ups, arm curls, tricep kicks, overhead triceps
Shoulders: Shoulder set (military press, boob squeeze, front lift), Shoulder Fly

Money Spent:
$10.22- Expensive, yet quite tasty, lunch from Whole Foods

Daily Wrap up- Monday March 2

2009-03-02T05:06:00.000-08:00

It's really funny how much of a motivation it is for me to see little stickers, in a goofy excel table. Numerous times today I was sitting at my desk thinking, "Yo I HAVE to do my dishes tonight or there's going to be NOTHING in today's box!" now granted.... I didn't do shit when I got home other than take out my braids, but it is definintely a motivation to know that everyone (meaning the 3 people that may check this blog) will know how crappy you ate today, or that your sink is filled with crusty dishes and your floor is covered with dirty clothing. While it didn't necessarily work today, I do have a good feeling about this little status update thingie... I forsee strong work this month.... strong work indeed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status Table: (heh heh... I really need to figure out how to make this table look better ;-p)

Wake up time: 7:45 Grrrr totally forgot to set my alarm... fell asleep last night with all the lights on and all my clothes on.. :-(

Water: Hmmm no water as of 3:07.... I need to remedy that
-Ok... now it's 5:20pm and still no water... I did drink a cup of honeybush tea with no sugar... I think that counts, no?
-11:45pm- Just took a swig out of the water bottle in my fridge.... This only the 3rd drink of liquid I've had today; coffee, tea and swig'o'water.... I really need to find a way to drink more water. I hate drinking with meals, but maybe I'll force myself to drink at least 8 oz of water with lunch and dinner?

Food:
1/2 cup Fage 2%, some honey and GoLean Crunch, and cup of coffee with sugar and half and half (breakfast)
Spinach and Salmon Wrap-salmon, tortilla, spinach, mushrooms, Goddess dressing (lunch)
Apple and 7 mini eggs (Snack-yummmmmmmmmm)
6 Raw almonds (Snack)
Big bowl of White bean Chili and Brown rice (dinner)
3 sea salt petites (dessert)
A few mini sweet peppers (random snacky)

Workout:
No workout today. I didn't set my alarm, so I didn't wake up on time, and I had to take my braids out, so I couldn't do it when I got home... tomorrow morning.. it's on

Money Spent:
$1.90 Coffee
$25.00 Muscle Milk Powder at GNC
$1.07 Little Mini egg packet
$5.00 Hair pins and Black soap at Beauty Supply Store

Daily Wrap Up- Sunday March 1

2009-03-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

Wake up time: 10:45am

Water: Unknown but more than none :-p

Food:
Breakfast:
Leftover Garlic Kale from dinner (Breakfast)
Fage 2%, kashi go lean, honey (Pre-workout)
8 oz of Bolthouse Farms Vanilla Perfectly Protein (Post-workout)
Little sample of Trader Joe's Barley Soup (yummy!)
Little sample of Brown Stewed chicken from my landlord (I'm trying to learn how to make proper stewed chicken)
2 glasses of Tempranillo
2 bowls of white bean chili with brown rice
5 sea salt brownie bites

Workout:
Legs: Basic Squats, Step ups, Split Squats, Jumping Lunges, Dead lifts, dumbbell squat, calf lifts
Back: Back row, Back fly, Back press
Abs: Double crunches, scissors/lower leg lifts, Bicycle

Money Spent:
$7.00 on a Metrocard (my daggone Transit check expired! Grrrr!)
$1.50- water at the gym
$10.00 - 2 magazines
$19.00- Produce at produce stand
$37.00- Grocery at Trader Joes

Good day overall... I ate too much chili, but other than that I'm ok with what I ate today. There were a ton of cute guys at the gym tonight.... Is it tacky to meet guys at the gym? I'm guessing if I have to ask, it probably is.... not that any of them were checking for me anyway, and I was wearing tight ass black pants and doing dead lifts. Oh well... there was this cute dude there with glasses... he had the unfortunate Superhro physique (Big ass upper body and little teeny legs), but he had glasses on and just seemed cute in the geeky "I wear glasses to the gym" kind of way... tee hee... cute.

I am planning on doing upper body and abs at home tomorrow morning. We're supposed to be getting like 27 feet of snow tonight and I don't want to trek to the gym in the morn.

Nighty night! :-)

In like a Lion and out like a f(cking monster!

2009-03-01T19:12:00.000-08:00

So I think I need to kick this goal thing into higher gear and star to actually complete the goals that I say I'm going to start each month and blog on them more routinely. I think one of the issues that I've been having is that I set my sights WAY too high at the beginning of the month... I'm a pretty results oriented person. When I can actually see the results of my work, I am WAY more likely to actually get it done... so this month I'm going to do things a little bit differently. I'm going to focus on actually completing one or 2 goals, and I'm going to do some preparation work for other goals.

Goals I’m going to continue/stick on track with this month
4.) Acquire 2+ new songs (The last few months of failure on this will hopefully have prepared me for success this month.... :-/)
10.) Make 2 new recipes
13.) Try 2 new foods/types of cuisine
20.) Watch 2 movies that have won Best Picture since I’ve been alive.
Read 1 non-fiction book (a new book or one on my shelf)

Here are some things I’d like to start to track in the next month or do the preparation for the actual goal

- Wake up at the same time every weekday: I wake up at different times every day depending on what time I want to be at work or whether I'm working out that morning. I think it would really help me with my timeliness if I had a routine wake up time every morning. In order to take care of my morning dog routine, go to the gym and get to work on time I have to wake up at 6:00am. If I can get an actual set routine for my gym days I should be able to wake up at 1 time for gym days and another time for non-gym days, but until I get my gym schedule set in stone I'm going to shoot for a 6:00 wake up time.

-Find a multivitamin that I’ll be able to swallow
-Record the amount of water I drink each day.
-Record everything I eat. I think I eat pretty well, but I'm trying to clean up my eating habits a bit in preparation for summer and Miami to a smaller extent. I think writing down what I eat everyday and posting it for everyone to see will keep me honest :-p

-Record when I go to the gym and what I do.
-Record all the money I spend for an entire month
-Record the number of days that I go to bed with no dishes in the sink and all clothing hung up.

At the end of each day I am going to write a daily update which will include the time I woke up, whether I worked out, what I ate and drank and the amount of money I spend each day.

I respond REALLY well to tables so at the end of every day I’m going to update my little status table with cute little icons and what not.... I often have tables like this in my apartment... with little stickers or symbols on them... I'm such a kindergartner :-p

Wish me luck

February Wrap up...

2009-02-28T21:28:00.000-08:00

February was an “ok” month in terms of my goals. I achieved 1 goal- goal #85- follow a face regimen every day for a month. The skincare goal went REALLY well! I followed the skincare plan that I described in 2 other blogs. I feel like my pores are getting smaller, my skin is getting softer and smoother and the chemical peel might actually help minimize the dark marks. Most importantly I think the skincare goal actually achieved the purpose that I hoped ALL the goals would achieve; taking things that I know I should do for myself and make them a routine part of my life. I really enjoyed the process. It wasn’t difficult and taking the time to go through all 3 steps every morning and night really reinforced the idea that I am worth the time and effort to do stuff like this. May sound corny, but it was really great for me….

So here are the goals that actually had some movement in February (started, continued or failed :-p)
4.) Acquire >2 songs per month for 6 months (2/6)- FAILED! Looks like I’m starting over again. For some reason this is hard… I think I need to make it a point to get out more to listen to music (live or not). I don’t even hear 2 songs per month that I would be interested in having… I know good music is out there… I need to make more of an effort to get to it.

10.) Make 100 new recipes (13/100) Made 3 new recipes this month: a GREAT chicken Tortilla Soup, a kind of nasty White wine, Kale and Pork soup, and my remake of the Shrimp Provencal.

13.) Try 50 foods or types of cuisine I haven't tried (8/50) I tried 3 new things this month; oysters, bone marrow and pigeon. I found the oysters to be… interesting, the bone marrow was kind of booger-y and not that exciting and the pigeon was pretty tasty.

34.) Blog on my 101 90% of the days (40/901) 10 times in February… that’s about 36% of the time.

55.) Go to the gym 500 times (0/400) February was actually a pretty good month in terms of working out. I'm getting back into the swing of routinely hitting the gym... but unfortunately I didn't mark down the number of times I went. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to hit the 400 mark, but starting in March I'm going to actually start documenting when I work out.

Here are the goals that I had planned to start/continue in February…. But didn’t... :-(
20.) Watch all the movies that have won Best Picture since I’ve been alive. (1/25)
31.) Read 6 non-fiction books (0/6)
39.) Be on time or early for everything for a month (0/30)
50.) Drink 1.5 liters of water per day for 2 months (0/60)
56.) Complete 50 military push-ups
35.) Go to bed with all clothing hung and no clothing on bed, floor, etc for 45 days (0/45)
87.) Leave no dishes in the sink overnight for 1 month (0/30)
88.) Make bed every day for 1 month (0/30)

Building on what I learned from my skincare goal (I do better when I can physically see the results of my work) I’m going to try something a little different for March…. More to come soon.

Really Mayor Grose.... really?

2009-02-27T08:47:00.000-08:00

So in WTF news of the day, I was scrolling through my Google Reader (thanks Janet!) and came across this story... Apparently Mayor Dean Grose of Los Alamitos California decided it would be cute to email this picture with the title "No Easter Egg hunt this year."

.... Really Mayor Grose? Watermelons? I don't know if I'm more upset with the poor photoshopping, the racist-ness, or the stupidity of an elected official emailing this picture... Either way Mayor Grose is Mayor no more.

Dumb ass...

Goodbye Slum!... minus one

2009-02-25T09:25:00.000-08:00

So there's been a bit of an uproar about the treatment of the kids that starred in Slumdog Millionaire. I believe the kids that played the child versions of the main characters of the movie were actually residents of the slum where the movie was filmed. Reports have stated that they weren't adequately compensated (movie reps stated that they were paid "above local Indian wages") and despite the success of the film they are still residing in the slum...

Well the Indian government has graciously decided to purchase new houses for the Slumdog Kids... wait... for only TWO of the Slumdog kids... the 2 that played the child versions of the "main" characters "Jamal" and "Latika". According to the Indian government those 2 actors have brought "laurels" to the country..... Uh weren't there 3 main kids in this movie? Jamal, Latika and Jamal's Brother Salim.... WTF happened to his house? Maybe Salim's character didn't bring "laurels" to the country since he was a jackass kid who pushed his brother into a hole filled with runny poop and was the mastermind behind all of the swindling and general mischief that they 2 got into, but damn! He was playing a character! It's not like he personally pushed someone into a pile of shit and stole tourist's money. WTF?!? I honestly think that kid stole the movie. He was my fav by FAR! And how shitty will that be for him when he's busily scavenging for breakfast in the local landfill and sees his slum friends roll by in their new Landcruisers on their way to their new houses with their non-landfill breakfast... Damn...

But honestly why is it the Indian government's job to buy these kids houses? I mean, while I think all 3 should get houses, kudos to the government for doing anything, but where the fluck is Danny Boyle?!? He made a little movie that was originally going to go straight to video and now he is going to make MILLIONS on this movie. I would understand more if he wasn't going to make any money on the movie then maybe he could have been given a pass, but come ON! It's just common decency to share the wealth with the people that helped create it. If nothing else the filmmakers/production company should at least set aside a few 100,000 for each kid to receive when they come of age and ensure that they are in school. But apparently they don't feel that's the responsibility.

Argh... This angers me. I think we should start a campaign to at LEAST get the third kid a house. Who's with me?!?

ETA: Apparently Danny and co have set up a trust fund has been set up using some of the movie's almost 200 MILLION dollars in profit... But it looks like the trust fund is also just for the 2 kids. Am I missing something here? Maybe the 3rd kid isn't from the slum.... SMDH

Edited AGAIN to add that houses and the trust fund will go to the kids that played Salim and Latika, not Jamal and Latika... Perhaps the kid playing Jamal (the real Main character) isn't from the slum... it's sounding a bit better... but still a bit sketchy IMO

Spring/Summer/Miami Slutatious Fashion...

2009-02-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

As some of you know, I'm heading up to Miami this April to celebrate my dirty 30th birthday! I planning on looking hot and maybe a little slutacious throughout the entire trip (stilettos at the pool, thong bikini, the whole 9...)

Since this is my blog and I can do what I want, I'm decided to post a few pics of ideas for Dirty 30 looks... I'm posting these mainly so I can remember things that I've seen and liked, but feel free to post comments, links etc for other looks that you think are cute :-)

Here's a few...
I like the look in the picture to the left... the crotch grabbing pink teddy number...... maybe good for a night out?

SIKE... (heh heh I said "Sike")

I do like the high waisted mini, simple tank top and long necklace look... Cute look for a night out in Miami, or a night out in NYC.... I'm not so sure about the booties... I like them with the look, but I feel like my feet will get hot or something :-/

Love this little dress! Love the frills! Love the color... (although I think it would look better on my skin than Kim K's)... just love it. Definintely a little too conservative for Miami.. I'm not really sure where I would wear this? Maybe a wedding? Maybe a really nice date? Very cute...

In terms of accessories, I really love those full finger rings... Not the crazy claw things that Beyonce's been wearing, but I really like the Gold one in the pic... Very cute.... And I really need to get more accessories for Goal # 42

Ok that's all for now.... :-)

2009-02-24T15:07:00.000-08:00

I LOVE What's wrong with Chips and Salsa? A carrot cake muffin isn't bad for you... it's got CARROT in it! But it says low-fat

1. Look at the ingredient list... Ideally there shouldn't be an ingredient list... but if there is one, the fewer ingredients the better. What do I mean "there shouldn't be an ingredient list"... ideally the majority of your diet should consist of whole foods...
2. Size matters... serving size that is... 1st thing Service Size and number of servings
3. Stay out of the Isles
4. Just because it says "Low fat, organic, Healthy or Whole grain" on the package don't make it so. Ignor the buzzwords.. all natrual isn't good... cyanide and arsnic are all natural...
5. the salt shaker isn't the devil.... But your hot sauce may be.
6. Fiber is your friend (at least 3 grams per serving)
7. Fat won't necessarily make you fat... but low fat/fat free foods may. (Flavored yogurt... add your own fruit.)
8. EVERYTHING in moderation
9. Your vitamins shouldn't come sprinkled on your cereal or in your soft drink.

Juice isn't healthy