Good times with chickpeas

This weekend I enjoyed three long days of sunshine and not terribly humid weather. It was one of our summer Fridays at work, so I had off for a nice long solstice weekend. That said, while I enjoyed the lovely weather and exciting soccer matches at various locations--park, beer garden, friend's rooftop--I don't really have that much to say about it. Instead I wanted to post about something that's been sorely missing from my blog of late: food. I wanted to share something I've been making a lot because 1) it's easy, 2) My Cost-co membership means I now have tons of canned chickpeas, and 3) I'm trying to throw a few vegetarian meals in every week. 

I've often tried to replicate Indian food, but I'm usually not satisfied with the result. My attempts at chana masala have come the closest. Now fair warning: this is probably not at all authentic chana masala. I started out by reading recipes online (which themselves may or may not be authentic), but after a while, I realized I was just using them as a guide. The main thing I realized is you just need to put a ton of spices in there. I'm not sure which of them make it work, but even just estimating the measurements, I've yet to screw it up too badly. 

Stuff you will need. Feel free to soak your own dried chickpeas overnight if you are not a Costco shopper. 

Ingredients:
1 onion
garlic (I put about six cloves in, but I put garlic in everything--scale down as needed)
1 jalepeno (this is where it probably starts to get inauthentic)
3 T oil (I've used coconut or regular vegetable, and both were fine)
2 cans chickpeas
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tsp minced ginger
1.5 T chana masala
1 T coriander
1 T cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp turmeric
salt to taste
water

Other than the rice you serve with it, this can be a one pot meal. Just dice up the onions, pepper, and garlic. Then heat the oil on medium high and cook them until soft. Add in the ginger, spices, chickpeas (drained and rinsed if using canned), and tomatoes. Add in 1/2 cup to 1 cup of water to help make a gravy. Turn down the heat to medium and cook stirring occasionally for 15 minutes. It should start to get a bit thicker. You can then use a fork to mash some of the chickpeas a little to thicken it.

Friends and family who follow my usual cooking projects will know how rare it is for me to make something in one pan. My loyal dish washer can also appreciate this one. 

Once you've mashed your chick peas to get the desired sauce thickness, you're ready to serve it over rice. So by the way, you should have been cooking rice throughout this process. I forgot to mention that. Naan would be delicious too, but that's another seemingly simple bit of Indian cuisine I have yet to master.

Not the most beautiful dinner, but it's tasty and reheats well. 

Do any of my readers have any good vegetarian meals to share? I find I can get in kind of a food rut and just making the same things over and over again. Costco has not helped to curb that tendency. 

Much Ado

On Friday, I was excited to win tickets in the virtual line for Shakespeare in the Park. I was less excited when I realized it was 100% chance of rain around show time. Still, since it's rare to win tickets, I figured I would persevere. Along with flash flood warnings being texted to me by the weather service, the walk to the theater through Central Park seemed more and more ominous.

This is what it looks like shortly before the sky opens up.

 After some power walking, I made it to the theater just in time to grab my tickets. I turned around and the pouring rain had started. Since it was the type of downpour that an umbrella wouldn't really stand up against, and since I was in the middle of the park, I chose to stay under the relative comfort of the overhang of the Public Theater. There were beers and food for sale, so it was a reasonably comfortable place to hole up for a few hours. I figured Sam would join once the rain stopped, but he ended up forging his way into the park as well.

The poor people in the stand-by line. They were eventually told to come under the overhang as well. And the good news is, they all got in. In fact, the theater was half empty.

 The show ended up starting about an hour late, but I was impressed the theater never called it off. We were seated while it was still raining, and since we weren't allowed to have umbrellas open during the show (for obvious reasons), and we weren't willing to shell out $15 for garbage sack ponchos, at first we planned to leave at intermission. However, luckily it stopped a few minutes later. And true to Shakespeare in the Park form it was a wonderful performance of Much Ado About Nothing.

You can't take pictures in the theater, so I'm punctuating this post with images from sculpture art in parks. You'll note it was lovely every other day this weekend. This was Saturday in Socrates Sculpture Park. This one's cooler in person. 

The play starred Shakespeare in the Park regulars Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater as Beatrice and Benedick. They were both exceptional, per the usual. There was also a guy from Game of Thrones, although I suspect none of my readership watches that show.  The staging was a bit more straightforward in setting than some of the more experimental productions The Public Theater has done in the past. The stage was transformed into the town of Messina with a lovely Italian villa and little garden and orchard. This was actually my first time to see this play performed, although I remember reading it in college. It doesn't quite top Twelfth Night in terms of my favorites, but I will say it grew in my esteem. It was also fun to hear the quote we'd chosen for one of The Bard's Cards read in its appropriate context.

Socrates Sculpture Park. Can you spy Sam?

 Shakespeare in the Park is one of the New York traditions that I appreciate the most. Combining good theater with being outside and making it free? It doesn't get much better. I feel like some of my favorite theater experiences have been in the Delacorte. Admittedly, some are better than others (I thought last year's musical version of Love's Labour's Lost was a swing and a miss), but I always walk out of the theater with such a wonderful feeling. The leisurely walk across the park at night to get back to the train, along with the throng of other theater goers is all part of the experience. So I guess what I'm saying is: there's a reason I'm willing to walk through a huge park in an approaching thunderstorm or pay $8 for a hot dog while crouching up against a building for two hours. And while I sometimes complain about how much things cost here and other drawbacks that come from living in this city, I do appreciate all the experiences I have here.

Madison Square Park on Sunday. Not my favorite of their sculpture series, but still kind of interesting looking.

A little Italy

Sorry for the short interlude, readers! As most of you know, Sam and I are just back from a trip to Italy. A first time visit for both of us. We went for a wedding of a couple of wonderful friends, but enjoyed a week of touristing beforehand. If you don't want to hear my whole trip breakdown, you can skip to the pictures: here. If you don't want to look at 300 pictures, then you can see the shortcut highlights below. So many options! Well, really just the two.

Our first stop was in Rome. After a long plane ride and a stop in the Lisbon airport, during which my eye developed some sort of condition that made it both hypersensitive to light and impossible to wear contacts, we arrived in Rome and made it to our studio apartment. It was extremely tiny and over a loud bar, but also very well located. Our first day in Rome was something of a blur, in part from jetlag and in part because I legitimately couldn't see that well. I also looked like a tool wearing glasses with sunglasses over them. Nevertheless we made a pretty good dent in the city. Rome, as it turns out, is very walkable. We wandered the Colosseum, the Forum, and then made a long loop through winding streets and random ruins to the Pantheon. After a quick walk-by of the Trevi Fountain, we headed home to sleep.

Me and the Colosseum. You can't tell but I'm probably wearing two sets of glasses here. 

The second day, after a quick trip to a pharmacy (turns out Roman pharmacists all speak English and are perfectly willing to diagnose eye problems even if they still can't give you over the counter antibiotics), we did the Vatican museums. We met up with our friend Sara and after confusedly walking  about the entire length of Vatican City, we eventually found the correct entrance for our tickets. All in all, I have to say, the Sistine Chapel is very nice, but there are some equally lovely ceilings elsewhere in that place that aren't nearly as crowded.  After, the museums, we went to what was perhaps my favorite meal of the trip. Sara had a friend who was living in Rome and recommended the place. I honestly think it photographs better than any of the treasures of the Vatican. 

I had a faro fettuccine with pesto and zucchini blossoms. Sara (food on right) had a sort of eggplant cheese stack, and Sam (not really visible) had a delicious orichette with broccoli.  

After Rome, we headed to Florence. I think this might have been my favorite of the cities on our trip. It was even more walkable than Rome, and all the twisting streets were so beautiful. Plus there was just so much art. Not just the museums and plazas with statues, but random paintings on alleyways and wonderful galleries. I took a shine to a painting in a gallery by our apartment, but alas it was 1500 Euros. Slightly above my current art acquisition budget. There were also lovely gardens. I would recommend the Bobli Gardens to anyone looking to spend a lovely afternoon in Florence, walking the maze of shrubs and enjoying wonderful views of the city. If I had one negative thing to say about Florence, it would be the number of mosquitos. Although interestingly most of them seemed to be concentrated just in our apartment. Never open your window at dusk in Florence! This is the sage wisdom I offer to other travelers.

A cool piece of public art by the Ponte Vecchio

A Florentine street.

In Florence, we went to the Uffizi Gallery, best known for containing masterpieces like Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi. There were also scads of other wonderful paintings and sculptures. We spent a couple of hours there and saw a good chunk of the offerings. Many beautiful works, but after a while your mind starts to glaze over and all the Virgin Mary's and depictions of the massacre of the innocents (question: why was mass baby murder such a favored painting subject?) all start to look the same. One thing I will say for the Uffizi Gallery is that it's the first art museum that I've noticed was equipped to help the visually impaired. Do blind people go to art museums? I never really thought about it, but I guess I could be wrong in assuming they don't.  In addition to having braille descriptions of the paintings, for the Birth of Venus, they actually had a full tactile representation of the painting, so you could feel what it looked like. I guess if I were blind, I would appreciate the effort, but since they only did that for the one painting, I'm not sure what I would do in the of the giant gallery. If they truly want to be progressive, they should let people feel the sculptures too.

A Florentine sunset

After Florence, we were off to Venice. We had just one afternoon in Venice, so we spent it mostly wandering around and getting lost in the labyrinthine streets. Which I guess is fair to see what we did in Rome and Florence as well, but in Venice it was a little different. Getting lost didn't really feel like being lost because we weren't really trying to get anywhere. We just wandered until we got tired, at which point we would sit and have a gelato or a coffee or a wine, depending on the time of day.

Selfie from the top of St. Mark's Basilica 

A bit of Basilica

Something about Venice sort of felt like a theme park to me at times. Perhaps it was the lack of cars or the signs directing you to attractions on every corner. That said, it is a beautiful city. We didn't feel the need to do much museum going because the streets and canals themselves are like art.

A Venetian sunset

Our final stop on the trip was in fact the original reason for the trip: two friends were getting married in a small resort town on the Adriatic, Sirolo. We had been looking forward to this for the whole trip, and it did not disappoint. The location of the wedding was beautiful, and it was fun to see some friends and to meet new ones. The reception was at the hotel where we stayed, a former monastery in the middle of a nature preserve on a mountain overlooking the ocean. Not too shabby.

View from the hotel on Monte Conner

The night before the wedding was my new favorite Italian tradition (now that I know about it): the wedding serenade. The night before the wedding, the groom has to go to the bride's window (in this case it was her cousin's hotel room, that looked out over a cute courtyard, but we were all willing to pretend). He yells at her window to come down and when she doesn't, he has to sing until she opens the window. The groom, who is not Italian and is in fact from Michigan, learned the song or at least read the lyrics off an iphone and was accompanied by a guitarist. The gyst of the song as far as I could tell was "come to the window, my love." After a couple of verses, when the bride was satisfied by the display of affection, she opened the window and threw down a rose. That was the signal that he could come up to the room and they make a show of kissing in the window. It was all very cute. My friend Sara got a video of it which I will have to share (if the groom will allow...). No image really since it was so dark, but the audio is still cute.

Snazzy for the wedding.

The wedding itself was wonderful. It was so nice to see two of the most kind-hearted people I know, so happy. There was also nigh unlimited food and beverage, which didn't hurt. We were at the wedding or reception for a total of about 12 hours. It started with a cocktail hour with a huge spread, followed up a four course lunch, then cake and fruit, and ended late into the night with limoncello.  In Italy, they don't half-ass weddings.

My favorite picture from the wedding. 

All in all it was a wonderful trip. It's hard adjusting to the indignity of drip coffee and no afternoon gelato breaks, but admittedly it is nice to see Dinah again and generally to be home.  Now I just have to get started planning my next vacation.

Not a bad place to visit. 

One year

Today, is Sam's and my first anniversary. It doesn't seem like it could possibly have been a year ago that we were drinking mojitos and petting llamas with all our friends and loved ones. I'm told the anniversary gift for one year is paper, and I'm not sure where "electronic media" falls on the spectrum (perhaps in the future when paper no longer exists and we just upload all our thoughts to cloud servers), but I wanted to blog a little tribute to our first year together. My original goal, and one I will attempt to go forward with anyway, was to have a photo of the two of us together from each month of the past year. Unfortunately, what I realized is that we've apparently been very bad about joining the selfie craze. I have tons of pictures of things we've done and even more pictures of our cat sleeping, but very few of us together. This will definitely be something we'll have to work on in year two. As it is, by getting a bit creative (read: cheating) and lowering my allowance for what is considered a flattering photo, I think I've culled together enough photos to make an attempt.

So without further ado: Sam and Susan: A Year in Photos, Sort of

June, 2013. Chiang Mai, Thailand.

This first month was easy, picture-wise. We went on our honeymoon to Thailand and had many tour guides to take our photo. This particular photo was taken by a recent graduate of the University of Texas on a trip with his fellow frat guys. Interestingly they were in the Thai cooking class with us. I still haven't attempted to make my own curry paste since that day, but I do like this photo.

July, 2013. Fairfield, New Jersey. 

In July, we went to a hot air balloon festival with some friends (who are in fact getting married themselves in just a couple of weeks!). I realized that most of the pictures on here were taken by them. I guess if we want to have photos of ourselves together, we should hang out with them more. The photo above was taken sometime after we discovered the food truck selling only bacon but before the festival decided it was too windy to actually launch hot air balloons, which accounts for the naively carefree smiles on our faces.

August 2013. Camp site near Cape May, NJ. 

 In August, we went camping, or at least our version of camping (sleeping in a rustic cabin). We went with the same friends who took us to the balloon festival, thus explaining this photographic evidence. I think I've finally gotten the campfire smell out of that shirt.

September 2013. Fort Tyron Park.

There's nothing about this picture I don't like. The way the flowers match both of our dresses. Sam's glee at holding a stuffed monkey. The fact that we're all smiling at different cameras, but all look legitimately happy. Originally I'd hope to find 12 photos of just us, but I threw that out the window to allow this one. We have such lovely friends after all, and we all clean up so nice.

October 2014. Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington DC.

This is the point of the photo-searching that I started to be okay with photos that weren't too flattering. This was taken after walking a half mile in 90 degree weather (a crazy warm spell in October) to get some chili. Photo credit to my sister for this one. I don't blame her for making us look so bedraggled. For that I can only blame DC and also our insistence on walking because we were too cheap to pay for the metro.

November 2013. Central Park

Believe it or not, this photo represents our attempt to take more photos of ourselves. This is our sad recreation of our engagement photos from the year before. This may be taken at the same location and around the same time of year, but it's safe to say that left to our own devices and without a professional photographer on hand, we don't look quite as good.

December 2013. Tenafly, NJ

Sadly by this point, I pretty much gave up on finding a photo featuring us both. December, when we had so many family members around, and I have plenty of pictures of everyone else, there was not a single one of the two of us together. I do have a justification for the photo above though. While it appears only Sam is in it (and I was in fact behind the camera/phone), in this picture he is making banana fritters on Christmas morning. Since making banana fritters on Christmas morning is such an integral part of my identity as a Meyer, it is almost as if I am in the photo.

December 2014. Tenafly, NJ.

UPDATE: Received a photo from my Dad that has both of us in it! The photo above is from the day after Christmas. It not only features Sam and I, but also 75% of our parents and 50% of our siblings.

January 2014. Brooklyn.

 Remember that time we had a baby? Actually, this is a photo of us with our friends 'daughter. But another good way to get photos together is to hang out with other people's babies and wait to get caught in the photographic crossfire. We saw this little tyke last night and she's grown so much in the last 6 months. Bigger, yes, but also somehow even cuter.

February 2014. From Sam's mind. 

 Is this one also a cheat? February was yet another month when my photo documentation was found wanting. I have a bunch of Sam, but none with me. Still, Sam drew this last February because we were furiously getting our card business off the ground. This is the drawing of our little family that appears on our web site. I think Sam looks more boyish, I like more mom-like, and Dinah looks much thinner than our real life counterparts.

March 2014. Catskills. 

March 2014. Catskills.

So continues the lack of photos together in the spring. I blame the fact that it was cold and snowy for most of February and March, thus limiting photo opportunities outside (and who wants to take photos inside with unflattering artificial lighting?). My cheat for the month of March is to include two photos from the same ice climbing outing. If I wanted to further justify my photo choices, I might make some sort of convoluted and yet somehow simultaneously cliche metaphor about how marriage is like climbing an ice floe. But all I really have to say is how I feel really cold looking at these photos, and I'm glad it's finally summer. Also, we were on this trip with a bunch of perfectly nice people who totally would have taken our photo together with a beautiful mountainous backdrop, if only we'd thought to ask them.

April 2014. But in reality not even close to April 2014. Governor's Island.

The photos above and below are not from April 2014. That is the greatest cheat of all. I have no idea when these photos were taken (although I know I could verify on my blog). It was definitely sometime last summer and very likely June. What can I say? I like these shots from the Jazz Age Lawn Party and also I didn't have any pictures from April. Incidentally, these were taken by the couple we went to the hot air balloon festival and camping trip with.

April 2014. But in reality not even close to April 2014. Governor's Island.

And that brings us to May, and in fact today. Proving that in blogging, as in marriage, and as in life, I am capable of learning from my past mistakes, we made sure to get a photo together on our anniversary. We went out to Baked in Red Hook, the bakery that had made the delicious cakes for our wedding last year. Since we aren't the types to take up space in our freezer with cake for a whole year (nor the types to eat dried out, year-old cake), we thought it would be nicer to just get a fresh cupcake. And get a fresh cupcake, we did!

May, 2014. Red Hook, Brooklyn

It has truly been a wonderful year. I feel like the time has flown by, but at the same time so much has happened. We've traveled halfway around the world. Started our own business. Continued to obsess about our cat. It's been a wonderful year, and I can't wait to enjoy (and hopefully document better) all the wonderful years to come!

The show must go on

This Sunday was the beginning of the National Stationery Show, which may or may not be the largest stationery trade show in the country/world, but it does have the distinction of being the only one that I have heard of. The Bard's Cards was not exhibiting this year (we're a little too green for it), but we definitely wanted to check it out to get a sense of what it's all about, not to mention scope out the competition. We walked around the show yesterday, and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been to the Javits Center for the Book Expo every year, so I was familiar with its enormity, but throw in enough brightly colored papers, and it seems even bigger.

The NSA is different from BEA in that it's not open to the public, only to people in the trade. There were no book signings and much fewer samples and free tote bags being handed out (well, at least not to the competition). People were there to do some serious greeting card buying, and there were some seriously cool booths and products out there. It actually really made me want to own and curate a small card shop. But that's a dream for another day. We were there strictly for reconnaissance.

The entrance to the NSS. There are hundreds of exhibitors back there and (according to NSS literature) over 12,000 attendees.

 The first takeaway from the show is that the booths are tremendously creative. You can't just get away with throwing down some basic carpeting, hanging a sign, and putting your product on tables. These people have serious lighting and design concepts. Structures were built. Ambience was created. I guess it should be expected from an industry mostly composed of artists and designers, but it made me that much gladder that we hadn't attempted to exhibit this year. I hadn't even conceived of a booth plan yet, but whatever my non-existent ideas were, I already know I need to kick 'em up a notch.

Some of the nominees for the Louie Awards in the "thank you" category.  That's another thing I learned this weekend: they give out awards for greeting cards, and they are called Louies. 

In addition to coveting competitors' booths, I also chatted with some of them. As a greeting card consumer and now being in the industry and actually looking at the logos on the backs of the cards, I've definitely started to notice the same letterpresses and designers popping up over and over again. It was fun to see the people behind a few of my favorites. Some of them are just husband and wife operations as well. I also hung out on the supply side of the expo and did some research on paper suppliers and printers (should this enterprise grow to require more than we can produce in our Astoria office). I now have adorably letter pressed business cards in abundance.

The greeting card industry is so colorful!

 One of the paper suppliers sponsored an alphabet scavenger hunt. Twenty six of the exhibitors were given a letter and a different type of paper to use and they came up with a creative card for their letter. You could go around to the different booths on the list and get your free card to create a really cool alphabet set. It was a nifty campaign, but the show was so big that I only got about half of them. If I have time, I'd like to go back and explore a bit more.

We have our work cut out for us for next year. I'm thinking we build a realistic scale model of The Globe. 

It's kind of blurry because I felt the need to try to be stealthy. But this is the sort of booth detailing that I would like to emulate.

Overall, our first foray into the National Stationery Show was a fun one. I highly recommend you check it out someday, readers, if you ever find yourselves a member of the greeting card industry.

Spring at last

It's actually been spring here for a while, and particularly beautiful this year. Or maybe it just feels that way after such a long winter. I haven't been taking any pictures, but I've certainly appreciated Astoria recently erupting in blooms. Well except for the sudden allergies that I'm not usually plagued with but that have somehow surfaced this year. Still, even if I have to do so through glasses instead of contact lenses, I can still enjoy seeing the loveliness of spring. 

On Friday, Sam and I were meeting a friend for a going away dinner, and enjoyed a nice walk through Central Park first. It, much like Astoria, was heavily flowered. But, much like with Astoria, I didn't take any pictures of the blooms. Luckily, spring is not a phenomenon localized to New York, so I'm sure you can assume it's rather like things wherever you are. (Well unless I have any southern hemisphere readers, which seems unlikely at this point.) Instead of flowers, Sam took a picture of this cool gazebo thing we discovered in the southwestern part of the park. I know that area pretty well, so I was surprised I'd never seen it before. 

They probably have gazebos where you are too, but nevertheless. 

The last time we took a picture on this bridge was on my birthday, and it was cold and snowy. 

The going away dinner was at this restaurant in Harlem. Sam took this artsy picture of it, so I figured why not share it? 

Saturday and Sunday were equally glorious (weather-wise anyway; my horse lost the Kentucky Derby). A new flea and food market opened in Astoria in the back lot of Astoria Kaufman Studios, where they film Orange Is the New Black, Sesame Street, etc. I mostly go to these things for the food, although it's always fun to see the wares as well. Most of the stuff is pretty expensive, but now knowing what they charge for a booth there, I can't say I'm surprised. I got some lobster hush puppies and an artisan donut, and all in all it was a good day.

The new flea on the block.

Today, it's also quite lovely out, but I'm inside, nose to the grindstone. Well technically right now I'm writing this post, but soon I'll be back working. Now, in fact. 

An homage to gluttony

Has it been two weeks already? I was somewhat remiss in posting last Monday, as has become this blog's custom (posting on Mondays, that is, not being remiss). However, while I had spent a lovely Easter weekend in New Jersey with family, I didn't have too much to say about it. No point in blogging just to hear oneself type, as they say. 

At any rate, this weekend I did something a little more interesting, at least by own ranking of how interesting I think people will find things. A friend organized a culinary tour of Flushing, the neighborhood in eastern Queens that contains our borough's Chinatown. I'd eaten at restaurants in Flushing before, and always with someone who knew what they were doing/where they were going. Flushing is far too crowded, chaotic, and full of options for me to feel comfortable navigating on my own. Or at least without doing research first, which so far I've been too lazy to do.  

Our friend/guide had a number of places he wanted the troop to hit up. I skipped eating in a couple of them because I have a finite amount of stomach space, but everything was so good that after a short rest in a random Irish bar (we stepped in to avoid the rain), I was able to eat a full dinner as well. Below are some of the things we ate.

Sam enjoying his dumplings

 The first place we went (photo above) was known for its dumplings. While Sam and some others were inside the store buying food, the rest of us waited outside (because it was a tiny hole in the wall place, and we couldn't really fit). A random guy came by and warned us in both English and French that the place we were standing in front of was bad news and had been previously shut down for sanitary reasons. Since our friends had already gotten a feast of food for like $3.50, we decided not to heed his warning. And since it's a couple of days later, I guess I can say that was a good idea. I have no idea what was in the dumplings, but they certainly tasted good.

Sam enjoying some spicy duck neck. You can see the duck heads in the background that no one in our group was adventurous enough to try. 

A market

Dragon fruit within said market

 I was surprised that the prices on produce weren't actually any cheaper than the produce market in Astoria. They did however have a greater variety (see above).

One of Sam's artsy photos.

 My favorite thing from the pre-sit-down-meal portion of the day was the Peking duck bun below. There was a woman sawing pieces off whole roasted ducks and putting them into rice buns to order. Whatever sauce they put on it was delicious.

This duck bun deserves its own photo

The place we went for dinner was Biang and it was also wonderful. By that point, I'd tired of taking photos of my food, but trust me, it was all highly photogenic. I recommend the place for anyone looking to enjoy Flushing from a comfortable seated position. While there was a bit of a line by the time we left, it was also relatively crowd-free. 

I spent the rest of the weekend continuing to eat things and not exercising at all.