Weekend trip to NYC

One of the nice things about living in CT is that it's sooo close to NYC, my lovely hometown.  When we can empty and rearrange our schedules, we love to take a drive down and have a great weekend of feasting and fun. Here are some snapshots from our last visit:

 Fresh Chinatown fish!

For all those sewing crafters out there: this store had a plethora of antique sewing machines. Wonderful decor!

A little wall of sewing machines. There had to be at least 500 or more total-each one so different from the next!

one of the many...

The front window (or at least part of it!)

At the Scholastic Store...Karl is such a priceless fellow! :)

Some handmade leather shoes at a side market- so beautiful!

Outside Strands Bookstore-the $1 books

A sand artist at Washington Square Park.

The cool design. Thank goodness it wasn't too windy that day, or it would have all blown away!

One of the many cool things in NYC- bringing pianos into the public parks for the public to play on and enjoy. This cool dude was playing some Joplin-esque tunes. I just love how the little old lady was standing there listening and watching.

This guy and his daughter reminded me of Luna Lovegood and her father from Harry Potter. The little girl has the cute wild blond hair and they're nesting with gross city pigeons for goodness sake! Love it.

You've heard me talk about Levain's before. Well here it is again. We went back for a different cookie. The dark chocolate peanut butter chunk.

The long line at little Levains.

The soft, chewy, delicious $4 cookie. (yes, it is worth it!)

My FIRST (can you believe it!?!) NYC hot dog!

At Grey's Papaya

Aaand...bite. YUM!

Awesome yummy boat at Sushi Family in Queens to celebrate my nephew's 13th birthday!

The party people! I must say, I love Kar's pinky here. Not really sure what it's doing.

About 20 minutes later.

Lately, Karl and I have been on a Seinfeld streak. I think we've watched...oh I don't know how many episodes the past few weeks. Anyways, this is THE restaurant from the show. So great! The staff was so friendly and the prices were great!

My Big Salad. (remember that episode with Elaine and the Big Salad?)

Karl's order.

The next day we went to a taping of "From the Top" that was downtown. My mom got us all free tickets and we enjoyed performances from a cellist, harpist, pianist and marimbaist. (is that a word?)

Me and my beautiful mom!

No day in NYC is complete without a cone from a Mr. Frostee Truck! (When my mom asked me what cake I wanted for my birthday a couple years back, I said "No cake! Just Mr. Frostee!" I have never regretted it.)

We went to a little restaurant in Chinatown called "Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles." We had seen it on the show "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" as Guy Fieri's top food choice. You can see into the kitchen with the guy pulling the noodles right before your very eyes! So cool.

The noodle bowl we ordered! Although you can't really tell from the picture, this bowl of soup was laaaaarge! So tasty, mmmmmmm....

Even just looking at this picture of duck makes me hungry.

So that was our little weekend, or what I remembered to take pictures of. Oh yes, we also went to Schnippers with our awesome friend, Hannah Chung, and had amazing a yummy dinner and also the best Dark Chocolate Malt you will ever find. If you ever go to NYC, plan where you would like to go to eat-there's so much good food out there!

My sweet, little apartment

There's something you should know about me. I love arranging  rearranging furniture. Probably too much. When we first moved into our apartment, I would rearrange the furniture every month. Living room and bedroom. I have no idea why I like to do this so much. Maybe I get tired of sameness all the time. Maybe it's becuase I would buy new furniture, throw pillows, rugs, and accessories every week but since I can't, I revert to making the rooms look redecorated (even though it's just rearranged). Who knows? Since we'll be moving from this apartment soon, I thought I would post some pictures of our first little apartment and all the change it has seen over the months. Well, not all the changes since my camera insits on playing a constant game of hide and seek with me...

The clock was a wedding gift from my mom and the white chair is SOOO comfy for reading. If you look closely in the corner on the heater, you can see the bird cage from our wedding with all the lovely cards from our guests.

I fell in love with this rug from Target. And it was on sale!! 

The other side of the room. boring. 

 

The living room arranged in a different way. To give you perspective, the furniture was on both sides of the left and right walls before.

Clock now on the opposite side of the room. The mysteriously shaped piece draped in an orange table cloth is actually a red tool chest that we have nowhere else to put.  (no we don't have that many tools :) It mostly just has music in it)

...and we collect books....lots of them. Karl is big on the boxed sets and I love collecting old editions of children's books.

Some of the boxed sets. The collection has grown significantly since then.

Yet another arrangement...

3 things that you can always expect to see in our living room: A red cello, music stand, and an awesome wall candle holder. 

Although in some ways I will miss this apartment (like the wood floors and spacious kitchen), I am glad to be moving to another space where I can arrange and rearrange some more! Oh, and if you know a good place to get packing boxes, I would love know!

Spring Recital

This coming Saturday is my husband's recital. For those who are not able to make it, I thought I'd do a little post with some pictures. We went to the local park to take some pictures for his recital posters. There's this really cool gardening shed with peeling paint that has a lot of character to it.

 First a bit about his recital- this is his first recital for his GPD degree (Graduate Professional Diploma) and he's playing some Bach, Beethoven, and Boccherini. (For those of you who are reading this and can come, it's at 8pm in Berkman Recital Hall at the  U. of Hartford.) I'm so glad I don't have to make the trek from Baltimore this year and can even put out a little reception for him. When I asked him what he would like for the reception his reply was in one word: chocolate. Then he promptly began to name things: brownies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cheesecake...Yeah ok, Karl... I think we'll have brownies and fruit with chocolate dip, and then some other non-chocolate items. I'm thinking coconut macaroons, some salty items, and drinks. Ok, enough about food (food always distracts me). Here's my studly hubs and his cello:

I ended up using only one picture in the poster, but it sure was fun to these (and a bunch more!) shots! 

Easy Bread-No Machine or Kneading Involved

When it comes to making bread I am lazy. Let's face it- why should we be using our energy to pound and punch a sticky mess of bread goo when we could be using for better things...like stirring up a batch of chocolate chip cookies or a smooth and creamy cheesecake? Besides, bread is a staple. We use a lot of it every day- toast and jam, sandwiches, croutons, french onion soup, bread pudding, snacking with olive oil and balsamic- the choices are endless. For a bread that I can make every day I need it to be shockingly easy. That is where this Easy Bread recipe comes in. It uses 4 ingredients:
Flour
Salt
Water
Yeast
That's it.

And you don't even have to really touch the dough with your hands. (Who likes to spend 5 minutes at the sink scraping sticky, yeasty dough from under their fingernails?) The end result is something in between an Italian loaf and sourdough. Quite tasty. Here's what mine usually looked like:

Sometimes I shape the loaf into a long Italian-style loaf instead.  My husband's favorite is to toast it and slather on some butter. He says its very tasty and a loaf usually doesn't last more than 2 days. We eat it with soup, toast in the morning (like I said before) and my new favorite, toasted with cream cheese and fresh pineapple. Rambling aside, here's the recipe:

In a LARGE mixing bowl combine:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. yeast (the kind that comes in the little packets)
1 1/2 cups water

I just stir it around with a rubber scraper until its all moistened. sometimes this requires a few extra drops of water.


Cover loosely with a plastic grocery bag. Let rise for 4 hours.


At the end of 4 hours, flour your counter  and pour out the risen dough. 
Take the rubber scraper and turn it around your bread. Fold in thirds 3 times (meaning tuck the dough ball under itself 3 times).

Spray a pie plate with some PAM. Put the loaf in the pan and sprinkle with flour. Let rise 2 hours.


Right before putting in the oven sprinkle some vegetable oil over the loaf. That will help it crisp on the outside. When you put your loaf in the oven, have a pan with some cold water beside your  loaf in the oven. The steam from the cold water gives it a brown crispy outside and soft inside.


Cook at 500 deg. for 10 min
              450 for 10 min.
              350 for 10 min.


I was first introduced to this recipe by my roommate Ying a couple years ago. Here's how she found it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E68iNfRHBpI

Yes! A YouTube video! Watch this if my directions are unclear. There is one difference- He uses 2 tsp. of salt and I use 1 tsp. I felt it was a bit too salty and reducing it made the taste much better.

What kind of bread recipes do you like?

Meal of the Week- Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Sweet Potato Fries

Lest you think I'm a junk-food junkie, I will post something that is more along the lines of what we usually eat. I ripped a recipe out of the Better Homes and Gardens magazine when  I saw the words "Perfect Pulled Pork." A couple months ago, ShopRite had a great deal/coupon for a free pork shoulder. Free meat? Yes please. We picked out the largest pork shoulder we could find and then picked a recipe from the internet that had great feedback. How did it turn out? Awful. That's why when I saw this I eagerly awaited an opportunity to try this. I didn't have to wait to long and once again there was a sale. (This time it was .49 cents a pound...not too bad.) We made this recipe and it was excellent. And best of all??? Easy. So here is the meal of the week:

Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Sweet Potato Fries

Pork
5 lbs. boneless pork butt shoulder (I actually did it with a 3 lb. and used the same measurements for spices)
1 1/2 tsp. smoked paprika
2 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 tsp. garlic powder (I used 3 cloves chopped garlic)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup water

Combine all seasonings in a small bowl and rub evenly over roast. Place meat in a 6-quart slow cooker. Add water. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-8 hours or on HIGH for 4-5 hours or until pork is very tender.

Place pork on large cutting board or platter and let rest for 10-15 minutes. Pull, slice or chop to serve. Serve in buns.

Sweet potatoes

I don't really have a recipe that I follow for these. Just peel and cut sweet potatoes into fry-size pieces. Drizzle with olive oil and dust with black pepper.
Put in a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes.

They should be crispy on the outside and the smaller fries should be brown.

Chicken Soup for the.....sick person

So for the past few days (OK, over a week) I've had this weird and also annoying sore throat/cough/muscle weakness. I stayed home a couple days from work, which helped some, but I still have this nagging cough. Anyway, this is not what the post is really about. It's really about the very sweet effort my husband put into making me better. He brought tissues, water, snacks, teas, and every comfort you could think of to my bedside. He even knew I wanted to watch Ratatouille and brought that to me too. (yes, I watch that every time I'm sick. It brings back my appetite. Oh, plus the Linguine character is awkwardly endearing.) He was so concerned about my hacking cough and helpless state that I tried stifling a couple coughs to ease his pained looks, but after a couple tries decided it only made my coughing worse. After a day of drinking a reservoir of water and crunching on crackers and corn flakes, my empty stomach cried for soup.
Here's what he came up with:

1 package of chicken ramen
1 egg
3 shakes of red pepper flakes


Cook ramen like you did in college (or follow the directions on the back). During the last minute of cooking the noodles, whisk in the egg. Add the pepper flakes. That. Simple.



It was awesome. Maybe the fact that I hadn't eaten anything all day with any flavor made it better, but it was awesome.  We have actually made it again since I have been sick and it still is 100% delicious. The egg gives the soup more hearty-ness and the red pepper flakes makes all your congestion clear up quickly. This soup is delicious and if you're running late or need a quick meal this soup is faster than boiling some pasta and adding sauce. (and much tastier, may I add)

Yes, I know ramen has 1 billion mg of sodium and 14 grams of fat. But it's super tasty, super fast, and super cheap. Plus, if you eat it with some crusty homemade bread you can't go wrong.

Don't judge. Give it a try to save some money and buy a Jamba Juice. That will totally even everything out. ;)

New Teapot!!

Yay! So I finally have a teapot. After searching Crate and Barrel, Macy's, Wal-Mart, and Target, I finally decided on this cool Michael Graves one from Target. The shape kind of reminds me of a pot from the 1700s but with a modern twist. Also, it has this slide across opening on the top instead of  a pop off small, annoying lid. Here it is...I'm pretty excited.