Yours Truly Presents: The Morning Benders "Excuses" from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

A Walk with the Wildman

Chickweed, one of the wild edible plants we learned how to identify yesterday while following "Wildman" Steve Brill around Prospect Park. He gives many other walking tours, including at Central Park and Blue Hill Stone Barns.

Daysleeper

I see today with a newsprint fray. My night is colored headache grey.

Farm fresh eggs from a small farm in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Compared to supermarket eggs, the yolks are much smaller and vary in size, but the color (no photoshop here!) is so rich.

I used some of the eggs to try out my own variation of this chai ice cream recipe from the blog Not Eating Out in New York. I didn't have all the ingredients and used raw milk and cream instead. I thought it turned out terrible at first but now that I'm trying it again, it tastes pretty good!

Spring Forward!!!

I would have worked tonight, if I had remembered we were going to lose an hour today-- I was one of the suckers who worked an extra hour for free back in the fall!

But I'm also glad I got to enjoy a nice Saturday night out, even if it was raining. A nice dinner at Golden Palace in Flushing (which leftovers I am now eating!) followed by Green Zone.

Speaking of movies, I've seen quite a few lately. Last week, Petek came to visit us from Pennsylvania for a couple of days. We've only been able to hang out together a handful of times since we met as roommates in Beijing in 2004. She has lived in a different country every year since then-- and now speaks better Mandarin than me! But neither of us could understand a single word of the Northern Chinese dialect spoken by the characters in Walking on the Wild Side, one of the 7 films currently featured at the Asia Society. The series, called China's Past, Present, Future on Film is going on through April.

From Asia Society

Went to Bobolink Dairy in Vernon, New Jersey today for a farm tour. We also picked up some of their delicious breads and cheeses from their store.

Below, the ciabatta bread made with duck fat

and our favorite cranberry walnut sticks

Kumquats are definitely not locally produced, but I couldn't resist buying them anyways. I thought about making a marmalade but really didn't feel like going through all the effort to can and preserve it-- I am lazy-- so I decided to experiment with our ice cream machine.

A day later and we had kumquat sorbet!

Since I've been posting lots of food pictures, I might as well continue.

Prosciutto and mozzarella from Fairway

and Neil's pasta with bolognese sauce-- his best yet.

Making Kumquat Sorbet

More photos soon.

Lovely day.

Salt & Pepper Dungeness Crab from R & G Lounge

At The Slanted Door, we had Crispy Imperial Rolls

Cellophane Noodles

And Blood Orange Sorbet

Dessert at Chez Panisse Cafe, a slice of Pink Lady Apple and Sour Cherry Tart and Lime Sherbet with Candied Mint

12-course prix fixe dinner at Jai Yun

A fire while we were walking on Pine Street

Ferry Building/Farmer's Market

Dungeness Crab Omelette with Avocados and Brie

And side of Brioche French Toast from Mama's

We arrived at 8am for breakfast and this was the line after we finished eating.

Of course there's nothing like home-cooked food: Neil's Aunt Amy's banana bread-- the best I've ever had!

Back from San Francisco

And we had such great food! Above, Meyer Lemon Meringue Tart from The Slanted Door. More to come soon!

President's Day Weekend

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio!

Awake in the middle of the night.

Once again.

And hungry.

Today we went to Mitsuwa, a Japanese supermarket that I used to go to with my family when I lived in California. Since Neil has been wanting to buy some Japanese ingredients to cook with, we decided to drive over to the supermarket's East Coast store, located in Edgewater, New Jersey.

We had lunch at the food court before heading into the city to do a little shopping. Below, my free-range chicken cutlet from Katsuhana.

For dinner, a great meal at Bombay Masala in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Yes, my life seems to revolve around food, though I was too hungry by dinner to take any pictures. Great pick, Mandy-- we'll definitely have to go again!

Missing Montana

My first movie of the year, Sweetgrass, a documentary about sheepherders in Montana. We went to see it at the Film Forum after reading great reviews and although I enjoyed the film (it's set in Montana after all!) my sister and husband did not share the same enthusiasm. Shobes had to keep herself from falling asleep and Neil's sole response was to mimic the noise we heard for the majority of the film... "Baaahh."

I can't wait to see Broken Embraces. I'm waiting for you, Shobes, unless you already have someone who equally loves Almodóvar to watch it with. It's a beautiful morning, and I had a good night's rest... but now I have to wean myself back to sleep again within the next couple of hours to prepare for work tonight. Bah.

The day after Thanksgiving and I'm having cheesecake for breakfast =) And turkey too.

While prepping for the big meal, we busted out the Kitchen Aid mixer for the first time. I don't know why I haven't used it earlier-- it really makes baking so much easier! Mandy and I made red velvet cupcakes, which were delicious. Mandy brought over ice wine from Pellar Estates, which we visited last week on our way to Toronto.

More cooking: I made (pretty awful) cornbread for Neil's (really good) oyster stuffing. He also cooked us up a beautiful breakfast of steak, eggs, and asparagus with his new sous vide machine.

Other news: I have wasted about 20 hours of my life in the past 3 days playing Scramble on my phone.

On another note, here are pics of the concert we went to see with Lang Lang and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. I think even if you don't like classical music, you would be moved in some way by Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. But then again, Neil didn't seem to be too impressed. He said, "It was alright."

I can't remember the last horror movie I saw, but I would have watched 100 horror films if it meant I would never have to see Old Boy, a movie I watched tonight at home in Toronto with my sister and Eddie (who is Korean by the way... how dare he not warn me!) Since I am now very disturbed, the only remedy I can think of is to watch this:

As usual, my sis and I are now the only 2 people awake at 4 in the morning, unable to sleep. Boo. But at least I'm not Oh Dae-Su.

Ouch.