Beer and tea

This was a pretty busy weekend, and one that started with a book club on Friday. Sam's niece was staying with us that night, so I made some cookie dough for the two of them to bake while I was gone. I was thinking it was just for their sake because I'm nice, but really it's also pretty awesome to return to fresh-baked cookies.

The reason Sam's niece was staying with us was because her parents were running a half marathon in Queens on Saturday morning. Naturally, we woke up, bummed around, and made blueberry pancakes. Basically the antitheses of running 13.1 miles. We did make it out to Corona Park and the finish line in time to see them cross it though. We were hanging out at the finish line for about a half hour, and it really is fun to cheer on strangers, and to see the different reactions on people's faces when they finally make it.

They held hands crossing the finish line, which was cute.  

That night, we went with a friend to see a Czech band at the Czech Consulate. I must say, since my Czech friend has moved to the city, I definitely do a lot more Czech events. I'd been to one other event at the Czech Consulate before (a suitably depressing documentary about Stalin's gulags); however, Saturday's event was a free concert by an alternative rock band called Please the Trees. When we got there, we were surprised to find the audience was roughly the same demographic as for the gulag movie: mostly people over 60. It was not your typical rock concert audience, but all I knew about the band was that the poster my friend sent me had a naked woman on it, so maybe they had a greater reach? There was no chairs as generally befits a rock concert, but after enough people agitated for them chairs were brought.

The band eventually took the stage to a smattering of applause. Then they actually started to play. I'm not exaggerating when I say that within 30 seconds of their starting to play, about ten people got up and left. I think a lot of the audience were just people who come to all the events at the Czech Consulate  out of habit, and they hadn't actually investigated what this on was. In their defense, the band was not "a less exposed Arcade Fire" as advertised. They were interesting. We all agreed their covers were excellent, and their own songs a little less so. The lead singer actually had a pretty cool voice, and I think part of the problem was the equipment they were working with, but they also seemed to be rehearsing new dance moves or something. Something about their stage presence didn't quite gel. They do get points for a good band name though.

At one point the singer put down his guitar and put on a creepy wicker mask. Again, they could probably work on their staging a bit. 

After the concert (we stayed for the whole thing because we felt bad about their audience hemorrhaging so early), we went to the excellent beer hall below the Czech Consulate which serves a number of traditional pilsners. Now that was worth the trip.

On Sunday, I met at friend at the Coffee and Tea Festival which is my new favorite festival. It was in an armory pretty close to my office, but I've somehow never noticed this huge building. You could smell the hot beverage goodness wafting out of it before you even walked in the door. Inside there were tons of booths with different tea sellers, many of whom I'd never heard of. I would say it was 70% tea and 30% coffee, which was fine with me because while I drink a fair amount of coffee, I'm not much of a connoisseur, but tea I can get behind.

The land of tea and coffee!

We tried some interesting blends including one that was a tea but actually has espresso in it as well. I came away with enough samples to get me through the rest of the tea season (I don't really do ice tea, so once it gets hot here, I quit drinking the stuff). I actually only bought one box of tea at the expo, and that was less because of the tea (although it was good), and more because of the packaging. A mother and her two daughters run the tea company that grows all of their tea in Kenya. The packaging is all unique pictures of African life made out of banana leaves by local women who are paid a living wage. I'm not going to open it until I finish all my tea samples, so if I don't get to it by the time it gets warm here, I might make a gift of it, if any of my reader's are interested. The tea itself is a rooibos.

You can kind of see the cute packaging in this photo. 

Anyway, that about sums up my weekend. It's supposed to snow again this week, which doesn't really seem possible. But hey, at least I have tea.

And whistle goes on...

Happy St. Patrick's Day, readers! I realized today that for the past two years, I've honored this occasion with some enjoyable (well, for me anyway) jigs and reels on the tin whistle. Unfortunately, I've mostly stopped playing the tin whistle. The trouble began when my original teacher moved on from the Irish Arts Center, and I wasn't a fan of the new teacher. Even as I decided not to continue taking classes, I vowed to myself I would continue practicing. I even bought a 3-ring binder to organize all of my sheet music in. Fast forward a year (and a couple of months...) and the 3-ring binder with all my music crammed in it (not in the holes mind you, just stuck inside in no particular order) is under my bed gathering dust and cat hair. My tin whistle itself has somehow found its home at the bottom of my underwear drawer like some dirty secret I'm hiding from my non-existent maid.

Dinah was never displeased by my tin whistle drop-out status. 

Seeing as it is St. Patrick's Day though, and seeing as I have no other St. Patrick's Day related plans, I decided to dust off the ole binder and see if I couldn't still play a tune. Since the tin whistle is one of the easier instruments out there, it wasn't hard to get back up to speed...or maybe not up to speed, but at least a slow plod. I even decided to make a video this year, so as not to falter tradition. Unfortunately, the only song I could still remember (reading sheet music feels like a cheat somehow) is a simple polka "Maggie in the Woods." And I use "remember" pretty loosely.

Here's this year's video. You may note the pained expression on my face and think this is perhaps not a celebratory St. Patty's video at all, but trust that that is merely my frantically-trying-to-remember-the-next-note face, and not indicative of any repressed holiday hatred. Also, I did mess up a number of times, but I have a conference call in a bit, so I can't do a second take. Another reason to not do another take is that Dinah seems less than pleased that the tin whistle has found its resurgence.  All that naysaying aside, if you still want to check it out, feel
free! If anything I think it can serve as a cautionary tale: stay in (tin whistle) school, kids. You'll only embarrass yourself later.

As further St. Patrick's Day cheer and a precursor to Macaron Day later in the week (who could forget Macaron Day?), I might attempt to make some green macarons later in the day. Also because I made ice cream over the weekend and have a ton of egg whites to get rid of. If this does, in fact, happen, I'll make sure to post about it tomorrow. In the mean time, enjoy your St. Patrick's Day plans, whatever they may be!

And on Saturdays, we climb ice walls

This weekend, Sam and I went up to the Catskills for a lovely day of ice climbing. When booking the trip a couple of weeks ago, I was a little wary of the weather because it's been a pretty harsh winter, and the ice climbing trip guide explained we would be outside for 6 to 7 hours and to dress accordingly. As a non-skier or winter hiker, I didn't have adequate outer wear but fearful statements on the trip guide like "cotton kills" at least scared me enough to make an attempt to buy snow pants the day before. Turns out everyone is out of ski attire by March. As luck would have it though, this past Saturday was mild and sunny. I didn't even break out all of my layers (although I was at any given time still wearing about four of them).

A beautiful March day in the Catskills. 

After a couple of hours of driving from the city, we arrived at a small parking lot and met up with the rest of our mountain guides.  They outfitted us with helmets, crampons, ice axes, and mountaineering boots--really all the ingredients of a successful day of not falling off of mountains. The hike up to the ice fall that we would be climbing was a bit more treacherous than I would have thought. There was no trail, so we were basically just walking up a steep mountainside through a few feet of snow. The crampons helped for the most part to make me feel less like I was about to careen over the edge, but on some of the softer snow, my feet definitely sank down a ways. I guess this is where snow pants would have come in handy.

We didn't climb this, but isn't it beautiful? 

After about a half hour hike, we reached the day's ice climbing spot. One of the guides had run ahead and already anchored one of the ropes, and while they demonstrated how to ice climb, another guide was able to hang a few more. So by the time they'd gone over the basics, there were a number of courses all ready to climb.

Climbing an icy cliff, like a pro. Probably because this was one of the pros. 

This was my first time ice climbing, and I have to say, it's very different from rock climbing. I'm not sure if it's harder or not, but I will say being good at rock climbing doesn't really help you. When I rock climb, I tend to move faster as I get tired just to get through it. I also will jump for things and grab at holds I can't actually manage for every long. In ice climbing every step has to be deliberate, and you can't move on until you've firmly planted each limb. You anchor both axes (harder than the guides made it look!) and then you carefully move each foot up a little bit at a time and kick into the ice with the crampons.

This is me. Probably resting

The main thing that I found tiring about ice climbing, other than the forearm workout, was the grip strength. By the end of a climb, it was difficult to hold onto the axes, and I kept feeling like I was going to drop one. On the plus side, the climbs themselves did get slightly easier throughout the day because you could see where other climbers had made indentions in the ice and use those to plant your axes. Still not easy, but a little better.

While I was having issues with the technical aspects of ice climbing, Sam had the added bonus of facing his fear of heights. I'm lucky that he always is willing to go along on these little adventures, and luckier still that he doesn't have interests like caving that would exploit my own fears (claustrophobia).

You'd never know he's not a fan of heights.

Overall, it was a lovely day, and we both had a lot of fun. It's always nice to get out of the city, and the fact that we were gifted fine weather made it that much nicer. I'm not sure ice climbing will become a regular hobby for either of us (if for not other reason than because it's cost prohibitive), but it's always nice to try something new.

There's at least five layers in this photos. 

The Bard's Cards

I do believe everyone who reads this thing will already be familiar with this new venture through some form of social media or direct email, but I did promise a post about it. Today was the official launch date of the Shakespeare greeting card line The Bard's Cards that Sam and I have been working on for the past few months.

We're every excited to share them with people, and while I realize I send out a few more greeting cards than I receive, I know there are fellow card senders out there still. I'm hoping they find our site and am doing some social media advertising to try to encourage them to. If anyone reading this knows anyone who might benefit from such a product make sure to send them here: The Bards Cards.

While we're new to the business side of things and don't have nearly as much fun entering tax data and estimating shipping costs as we do with the creative part, Sam and I have been having a good time working together on this. Naturally, he manages all of the art and design, and I just bumble my way through the works of William Shakespeare and try to think of cute animals. Equally difficult and fun jobs, both. We may not get rich doing this, but we're excited to see where this goes.

And now I promise to keep all further spamming/advertising/what-have-you off this blog and save it for  the Bard's Card's blog. Have a wonderful weekend, readers!

An unfortunate mish mash

Okay, it's March now, so I'm back to regularly scheduled posting. In fact, check back Wednesday (or possibly Thursday) for an exciting mid-week second post! Times they are a-changin'. This weekend was a wonderful mix of beautiful weather (Saturday) and typical, of this winter anyway, snowfall (Sunday), but I celebrated each with friends and eating. I met up with some friends in Soho to brunch and soak up the sunshine to hopefully counteract whatever vitamin D deficiencies I've been getting by refusing to leave my apartment when it's under 10 degrees. There was also some tea shopping and a birthday party in the evening.

On Sunday, I had some Crossfit friends over for brunch to toast to the first week of the Crossfit Open. For those reading who aren't familiar with the many layers of Crossfit competition (or in my case: optimistic participation), the Crossfit Open is the first stage of the Crossfit Games season. Everyone around the world who does Crossfit does the same workout each week and then enters their scores online. Then the top few people from every region advance to regionals and the top people from each region eventually advance to the Crossfit Games! It's pretty fun because you can see how you rank against everyone else who does Crossfit from friends in other cities/states/countries, Crossfit celebrities, and regular celebrities who do Crossfit (like New Girl's Schmidt, who did it last year). I just realized how many times I used the word "Crossfit" in this paragraph and am reminded of why people think of it as a cult. The real takeaway from this was supposed to be that I made an awesome brunch, so moving on...

For brunch I made a delicious decadent pear and ginger french toast (recipe here). I also made what has become one of my favorite easy skillet meals lately when I'm in the mood for breakast for dinner: sweet potato hash. The one on Sunday was made with "soyrizo" (chorizo flavored soy product) because one of the brunch attendees eats kosher, but in general my recipe is as follows:

Sweet Potato Hash:
1 onion
1 T butter
1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1 lb spicy italian sausage or chorizo
1 T olive oil
1 T chopped rosemary
salt to taste
eggs

I know many of my readers are wary of my cooking projects because they are by and large messy and time consuming, but this one can be completed in one pan. Thinly slice and separate the onion and then cook it over medium heat with the butter and a little salt until caramelized (usually takes about 20 minutes). Set aside the onions. Then (same pan) cook the sausage until browned, drain off fat, and set aside. Then add in the chopped sweet potato, olive oil, rosemary, and some salt. Cook until the sweet potato starts to get soft. Add in the caramelized onions and sausage and stir to combine. I usually poach a couple of eggs to throw on top, but other than that, it can be done all in one pot.

So this was a rather stream of consciousness post in the end. I invite readers to create their own narrative thread between a random sweet potato hash recipe, a diversion on Crossfit, and the obligatory description of the weekend's weather. Don't forget to check back Wednesday (or Thursday) for the next post! I promise that one will have a more cohesive storyline AND photos.