More spring than the last time I said it was spring

So last week wasn't spring after all, but this week surely is. It's a sunny 70. Someday I will tire of starting every post talking about the weather, but today is not that day. This weekend I celebrated the weather outside on Saturday and Sunday, but Friday was spent at a murder mystery dinner suggested by a friend.

Held in the basement of a theater district Italian restaurant, it was as far from celebrating the outdoors as one can reasonably be. Luckily on that particular night, it was still winter. My friend had found the event on Groupon. We thought perhaps it would be an interactive experience where we would take on characters (something I've always thought would be fun). Instead it was more dinner theater where actors who clearly hated their lives rattled off bad puns and dick jokes while attempting (with varying success) mobster accents. While the show was pretty terrible, my friend who works in film did point out that based on the smell left in the room after a shoot-out, it was clear they were using real blanks in their guns, which seemed a surprising production value for the show and also not especially safe. In the end, we had a chance to guess the killer, which none of us succeeded in doing (turns out it was a plant who we never suspected because she was the only person they pulled from the audience who seemed as uncomfortable to be there as we were). We missed out on winning a "Married to the Mob" t-shirt, but such is life. Regardless of the quality of the show, I still had fun at least, thanks to some excellent company and an enjoyable post-show discussion!

On Saturday, I celebrated a friend's birthday at a Brazilian restaurant in Brooklyn. This reminded me that I never have quite perfected pao de queijo. I've made something that is really delicious and very easy, but after once again trying the real thing, I realize how far off the mark I am. If any readers are skilled at making a nice dense Brazilian cheese bun, please feel free to pass on the recipe.

Friends in the closest thing to Brazil in Williamsburg. 

Sunday was the most glorious day weather-wise (well excepting today, of course). Sam had the idea to go boating in Central Park, although after we got to the park, I remembered it was the first weekend of the month which means we could get into many museums for free as Bank of America card holders (I hate to give them free advertising on my oh-so-popular-blog, but it really is a good program. One day, when I monetize, they can owe me retroactively for this.) So we ended up skipping the boating and concluding our walk at the Guggenheim. They're doing an exhibit on the Gutai movement, which apparently centered in Japan in the 1950s-70s. Mostly it involved using every day items (like light bulbs and paint cans) in the art or painting in unusual ways (say with one's feet). This is what I got out of the exhibit anyway. Gutai scholars out there are free to correct me. Here are a couple pictures (Sam-taken) from the museum.

I don't remember seeing this at all, but I guess whatever it is, Sam took a picture of it.

The iconic center gallery of the museum. It's kind of hard to tell here, but the colorful things going across the center were large plastic tubes weighed down in the middle by colorful water. They looked more interesting in person. 

Overall, it was a lovely weekend. I'm excited for this upturn in temperature (as evidenced by the fact that it's all I will talk or write about). Happy spring, friends and readers! I eagerly await your cheese bread recipes. Other comments also welcomed.

Spring comes to Astoria

Okay, so it's April now, and time to go back to the old "what did I do this weekend thing." Mostly because it became spring here this weekend, so I'm welcoming the idea of actually doing things again. We've been waiting for spring around here for quite some time. So what did I do with the first sunny, blue-skied weekend of spring? I had the idea to go for a picnic on Roosevelt Island at the new park/monument to FDR, built right by the creepy, former-smallpox hospital.  The park is a good hour long walk from the apartment, which was fine by me because a nice long walk on a beautiful day sounded heavenly. Perhaps less so to Sam who was told of this idea when he came back from a 90-minute spin class, but after being cajoled with the promise of picnic food, we were off.

The walk took us south through Astoria to Long Island City (where a bridge connects Queens to Roosevelt Island). Along the way we stopped at Socrates Sculpture Park, a waterfront park with, as you might imagine, a quite a few rotating sculpture installations. They also have a number of events in the summer including a farmers market, outdoor yoga and pilates, movies and opera, and weird classes on things like urban chicken farming and building coffee tables out of reclaimed wood (I kind of want to take that one, but it's scheduled for when I'll be honeymooning). At any rate, here are some photos of our jaunt:

An artistic photo, courtesy of Sam, showing one sculpture at Socrates. This one has been there since at least August, which is the last time I was at this park.

See that sky? Talk about blue! If only the same could be said for the East River. 

Four Freedoms Park. This was the edge of what would have been a beautiful picnicking lawn except for all the goose shit everywhere. 

A large floating head to commemorate good, old Franklin D. 

The view from our chosen picnic spot at the edge of the monument. It turns out you're not supposed to eat there (although it's not anywhere in the posted signage). Luckily, it took about 10 minutes for the park ranger to get around to telling us that, so we had mostly eaten anyway. 

We ended up punking out on the walk back and taking the bus. As luck would have it though, the one MTA bus that goes to the island also travels about a block from our apartment. We really should go back more often! The problem is there's not too much to do on Roosevelt Island. It's a very odd place, full of high rise apartments and hospitals. There is a lot of green space, 1970s architecture, and people in wheelchairs. It is technically part of Manhattan, though not connected by any bridges, but has the energy of a small town. Well maybe not a small town, but a less-frenetic city. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's a nice enough place to see on a nice spring day.

On Easter Sunday, I went to a friend's house where she made lamb, I brought brocoli salad, and then we gorged on jelly beans. Typical Easter stuff. Before that, (and I'm not sure why I didn't just list those chronologically), I went to Grand Central to see the last day of the Nick Cave (performance artist, not the musician) dancing horses. It's part of the seemingly endless celebration of the Grand Central Centennial celebration. This is what the horses looked like:

Okay, so not a great picture of the horses. This is what happens when Sam doesn't go places with me, and I'm left to my own devices. 

Unfortunately, my friend and I were the not the only people there, so during the actual show all attempts to see the horse dancing were fairly difficult. At one point, I gave up on trying to stand on my toes to see over people and just watched the spectacle in the camera display of the guy in front of me. Luckily, for those readers who have never seen people put on colorful horse costumes and dance around a train station, others filmed it. In fact, this might very well be the video of the guy in front of me (note: they mill around a lot first, the actual horse dancing doesn't start 'til about 7:18).

So other than a rushed scavenger hunt in the Met and watching that new documentary about The Shining, that was pretty much my Easter weekend. Perhaps not the most religious of observances, but I certainly enjoyed it.

The play's the thing...for some

This weekend Sam was running lines with his niece because her 5th grade class is performing Hamlet. Or at least some version of the classic tragedy that fits in a 30-minute time period and involves all the roles being septupal cast and all the Hamlets/Ophelias/ghosts/etc speaking in unison like some sort of Greek choragos. Still, it's a far cry from the plays I remember doing in elementary school which I'm pretty sure were never performed outside of elementary schools. The two that come to mind are the classics "Help! I Need a Vacation" whose plot can be fairly accurately deduced from the title and "Oh My Deer!" (not to be confused with the P.G. Wodehouse two-act Oh My Dear! which appeared on Broadway in the early 20th century) about a town being overrun by deer.

In trying to find any evidence of these plays to validate my elementary school memories, I discovered this awesome video of the title song from "Oh My Deer!" being performed. I have a feeling that is exactly what my 5th grade class looked like. I also like that "City Engineer" is one of the characters and that the staging requires the chorus to stand behind potted plants. But I digress. My elementary school had a rousing selection of plays, but Shakespeare they were not.

At any rate, the unexpected presentation of the first scene of Hamlet (my fianace has an excellent ghost voice) coupled with the announcement of the Shakespeare in the Park dates and plays for this summer (they're doing Love's Labour's Lost and Comedy of Errors with the brother from Modern Family in it for those in the city in June) had me thinking about the Bard.

I know absolutely nothing about this play, but I will probably go see it. 

I had an idea for a post based on something I saw on a blog around James Joyce's birthday. Someone had taken all the 1-star reviews of Joyce's most famous works off of Amazon to see what his greatest critics thought. Some of those posted were very funny, so I thought perhaps Shakespeare could enjoy the same treatment. As a note, the excerpts below are, in some cases, taken from larger reviews and edited for the sake of brevity and comedic effect.

Hamlet

The ambivalent high school student:
I really didn't enjoy reading this book and I wish that our English teacher wouldn't force my class to read this play. Nevertheless I finished it. I think that the story is very complex and complicated and consist of a huge amount of details. I think that Shakespeare did a pretty good job, though.

The reviewer who failed to see the humor:
This has to be one of the worst plays ever written, Shakespeare or no Shakespeare. While the Bard was the master of English drama, he really slipped up here. The plot makes no sense, the characters motivations are contrived, and the jokes fall flat. 

The pro-censorship child:
I would not recommend this book to anybody under 13. I found it to be extremely boring and porbably won't read it again. One thing about this book is the fact that it has alot of gore that is not fit for younger kids. It doesn't really bug me but it might bug some younger children(If they read it)

The intentionally (I assume) ironic:
Well, let me tell, you: it's boring and derivative. It's about this Prince who doesn't get his father's throne, and feels all depressed about it for a while, and fights back against his uncle (who took the throne and married the prince's mother), to show everyone that it was actually the uncle who killed his father the king.

Don't waste your time with this; watch "The Lion King", and you'll get it.

Macbeth

The shortcut advocate: 
The premise of the story is entertaining so I would suggest reading a summary of the play.

The generally unimpressed:
Macbeth I found to be tacky with very few memorable quotes.

The one who cuts to the quick:
Maybe I haven't understood the whole meaning of the play; to me it seemed quite boring and too predictable. It's a story about power and abusing power, about traitors and morality, decorated with many complicated sentences and words.

Othello

I agree with this one:
The most annoying thing about this play is that except for Iago, all of the characters are major simpletons.

The musings of an older English speaker:
It is English and I speak English. I just don't happen to speak Old English. Which is really ironic because I am old and speaking English. If you read slowly and put your thinking cap on, you will get the gist of what the story is about. Or! You can just purchase Cliff notes, etc. This story is exciting and full of action...........I Think?

Happy St. Patricks Day!

Although I'm the fraud at the Irish Arts Center who despite going undercover and dying my head red(dish) have no known Irish descent, I do enjoy Irish culture a great deal. I have some Guinness chilling in the fridge and spent part of today jamming on my penny whistle. I haven't been practicing much lately (to my detriment), so it was fun to get back to it. I hadn't been planning to record a song again, but then the teacher gave us a set dance (although I play it like a jig) called "St. Patrick's Day." It seemed inappropriate to not at least attempt it.

You can see my attempt here. I screwed up a few times, but I was loathe to do a second take because unlike when I usually practice (on my lunch break when most neighbors are working), I could hear people walking around overhead. It always makes me feel a bit self conscious, added to which the tin whistle is a fairly squeaky instrument when played in the upper register. As a good neighbor, I could really only subject them to the same song so many times, St. Patrick's Day, or no.

Dinah was a popular addition to the first video, so I wanted to include her a second time. Unfortunately, being a cat, this really required me to go to her. Which, in this case, was the floor. Another reason to not do a second take was because shortly after I finished recording, she was reduced to a melancholic stupor on the floor. It was all very cute (see Exhibit A, below), but impossible to record on my laptop with me in the shot, unless I played the whistle while resting on my elbows. I took it as a sign to move on with my day. Of course, now, as I'm writing this, she's peacefully meatloaf-ed next to me on the couch in a perfect pose. She's likely not destined to be one of the animal acting greats anymore than I am destined to be a tin whistle virtuoso. She's sure cute though.

Exhibit A. A common response to tin whistling.

Anyway, I should probably get back to lazing though the remainder of my weekend, but I just wanted to stop in and wish you a happy St. Patrick's Day from Dinah and I!

Wedding writing

I know, I said I would make this into a wedding planning blog, but that hasn't stopped me from reading a bunch of wedding planning blogs. One of my favorites is A Practical Wedding, a tip from an old roommate who got married. It has some great wedding planning tips for low maintenance wedding planners, but also just interesting stories and ideas about what it means to get married or to be a wife. I wrote a post to submit to them for this month's theme "Decided," but I think I screwed up the submission process and didn't actually get it in for consideration. Well anyway, waste not, want not. I thought I might as well post it here. It does tend to break my promise about not making this blog about wedding planning, but this is more a general discussion of the process and less about the specifics we're dealing with. Plus, I think I'm the only one who actually cares if I make this blog about wedding planning or not.

Because I was writing for a different audience it's a bit more on-the-nose and tied up at the end with a nice message than my usual posts. Fair warning.

I get about five of these emails each day. This one had the subject line: "10 New Wedding Etiquette Rules You Should Know." Reading them is never a good idea.

Sometimes I think I’m not qualified to have a wedding. I know, logically, that aside from the potential issues of legality, the only qualification a couple needs to have a wedding is to want one. However, when someone is holding twelve forks in front of me, each with subtle differences and surprisingly varied price points, while suggesting I should have an opinion on them, I start to feel like a fraud.
I approached wedding planning going on instinct. Hoping that I would “just know” the right choice. This started out well enough. My fiance and I made a number of different appointments at venues around our city in our price range. Then we went to the first one--a working farm just twenty minutes from our city apartment--loved it, and decided the search was over. Even as I was emailing the other venues to cancel the appointments, I didn’t have any concerns about loft galleries and event spaces left un-seen. After all, the farm felt so right and fit nicely in our budget, why waste our time with more options?

This trend continued with a few other decisions...choosing the cake, hiring a caterer (this one was probably helped by the fact that the venue had a preferred caterer), a photographer, and an officiant. All of these decisions were made after copious online research, several emails, but ultimately only one meeting. We liked what we saw, and we went for it. After some marathon planning and booking vendors, I took a short break (okay, more like a month) from wedding planning. During that time, the only decision I made was on my dress, which is the first decision I made by committee. Or at least I had the opinions of several friends and my mother as opposed to just that of my fiance to go on. Since I’ve jumped back on the planning train, I’ve found I’ve lost some of my planning mojo. I think it might be because I’m now looking at the more decorative aspects--the flowers, the reception decor (which apparently is supposed to have a theme?), colors that supposedly have to match other colors, and a host of other things that seem out of my skill set. 

Thankfully, the Internet exists to supply me with the paralyzing fear of turning my wedding into a goat rodeo by failing to choose wedding colors. Pinterest, facebook, and the wedding websites currently infiltrating my inbox with daily advice, giveaways, and “Top Ten Mistakes You’re Probably Making Right Now!!” lists. The problem is this doesn’t just lead to agonizing over future decisions and staring longingly at one guestbook, then another on Etsy. That alone would be an inevitable slowing down of the overall wedding planning process, but what’s worse is that it’s causing me to re-think all the decisions I’ve already made.

Well, not re-think exactly. But I continue to waste my time perusing options for things I cannot change. I look at the websites for other venues and daydream about my wedding there despite loving my chosen site (in addition to being a working farm, they also have alpacas!). I haunt the website for the store where I bought my wedding dress and imagine what I would look like in their newly released spring styles. It isn’t even that I think any of the options out there are better or that they invalidate any of my choices. It’s just that each decision that is made takes a field of endless possibilities and closes it to just one. Or, I guess, sometimes more than one, as we did choose three cake flavors when we couldn’t decide.

When we got engaged back in August, the decisions came fast and easy. We knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. We also knew we wanted to share that with our friends and family. These are the decisions that matter long after the playlist winds down and the last Instagram is taken. There isn’t some better option; there is only what is. I know that on our wedding day, our guests won’t be surreptitiously using their iPhones to compare our centerpiece choices to other even more rustic chic options. And I know I won’t be either. While it can be hard to keep things in perspective while the Internet is constantly reminding me of all the things I could be doing differently, it’s nice to know that the most important decision has already been made.

For all your savory waffle needs

Last night it was doing that worst-of-both-worlds snow rain business that the weather channel describes as "wintery mix" for lack of a better term. I was in the mood for some comfort food. Another qualification was that this comfort food needed to use cilantro, as I had some cilantro that was badly in need of using. In my search for cilantro recipes, I came across a chana masala waffle topped with samosa filling and a cilantro chutney. The recipe was vegan, but I could see there was a lot to work with. While kind of out there, it nicely fit into two of my comfort foods categories: breakfast for dinner and Indian food. Although my cabinets now resemble a pretty robust spice market now, I realized I was still short chickpea flour and chana masala, so as an added bonus this trip necessitated a trip to Kalustyan's. That place is amazing. Despite being a pretty small store, they have every weird, speciality ingredient I've ever gone looking for. It was definitely worth the 10-block slog through blinding mix to get what I needed and try to avoid too many impulse buys (came out with some black lava salt, but that's really more a necessity than anything else).

For the meal itself, it had three components, all pretty simple: the cilantro chutney, the beef samosa filling (although in this case it was used as more of a topping and less of a filling), and the chana masala waffles. For the cilantro chutney, I don't really have a recipe because I basically just made it the way I would make a pesto (throwing stuff in a food processor until it seems about right). I will say it involved the following in some form or another: cilantro, lime juice, onions, garlic, green chilis, and coconut oil.  Unfortunately, it never got quite the right consistency. I think my food processor isn't what it used to be. It was more of a paste than a sauce. It made me regret not just buying some chutney at Kalystyans. The only thing that stopped me was remembering that having borderline cilantro was the original impetus for the dish.  

For the beef topping, I did the following.

Boiled some water in a saucepan and added:

1 cup peas

2 peeled potatoes

Allowed to boil until the potatoes were soft, then drained and mashed them together. Meanwhile, I 

heated some oil in a skillet on high heat. Threw in:

1 diced onion

4 chopped garlic cloves (if you aren't obsessed with garlic, you could probably get away with 2)

Heated until the onions started to get limp, then added:

1 lb of ground beef

Stirred until beef was all browned. Then time to add pretty much all the spices in my cabinet. I added:

1 T minced ginger (so from the fridge, not cabinet)

1/2 tsp pepper

1 1/2 tsp salt 

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp coriander

1 tsp turmeric 

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

green chilies (the rest of the little can I had opened to make the chutney)

Once that was all heated and mixed. I add the potato mixture to it. The result: 

Mush! But tasty, mush. 

Once that was done, I got to work on the waffles. Mixed the following wet ingredients:

3/4 c milk
2 eggs
1/4 oil
1 T minced ginger
1 T tomato paste
a couple of cloves of minced garlic (honestly, goes in pretty much everything I make)

In a separate bowl, I mixed the following dry ingredients (you will note some familiar faces):

1 1/4 chickpea flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp chana masala
1/2 tsp smoked paprika (Side note: my favorite spice right now--have been putting it on everything from salmon burgers to popcorn)
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp salt (I used black lava salt, but I suppose you could use the boring table stuff)

Add the wet to the dry and mix to incorporate. Cook in waffle iron. Which should look like this (provided your waffle iron is as awesome as mine is):

Once that's done, just pile some of your beefy mush on top of a spicy waffle (which smells amazing while cooking, I must say). Throw some cilantro chutney on top (or really, the chutney of your choice), and you've got yourself a tasty dinner. Or breakfast, as honestly that's when I ate the leftovers. Verdict: delicious.

Better than it looks. If that's even possible. 

Marching fourth

So that was kind of a pitiable showing last month. Will try to do better in March. Right now I keep making the mistake of being busy, but not with anything worth writing in depth about. This weekend, I

• Went to celebrate a friend's marriage by recreating a brunch at the place we actually wanted to go but couldn't get reservations to (our version was probably superior anyway).
• Attended the birthday party of a good friend and discovered I have a natural talent for bocce ball, provided the indoor court rules are almost completely ignored.
• Helped a friend paint her apartment (well 1 1/2 rooms of it anyway) a beautiful red that looked rich and wine-colored on the wall, but rather looked like dried blood on my skin (that's how I paint: messily). Possibly disturbed a few people on the subway ride home.
• Overcooked a skirt steak
• Wandered around the local salvage yard for not-too-junky window shutters for a potentially poorly conceived wedding project.

There are all well and good pastimes, but not terribly interesting to elaborate on (both as a writer, and no doubt as a reader). I guess I finally understand why people tweet. Not to be deterred; however, I fully intend to write more regardless of how boring I'm actually being. After all, originally I used to write about things other than what I'm currently doing, and I do actually miss those times. For March, I'd like to try to expand on a few ideas not grounded in current events (although naturally that will change if I actually do something cool in March...). Since I just came up with this idea now, and it was kind of taxing, I won't actually start on this free form writing project today, but the promise is still there. Instead, I leave you with this: 

I call it "The Reluctant Handyman." It will serve the March spot should I ever get my 12-month Dinah photo calendar off the ground.