What I Did This Weekend, or, Productivity, Thy Name is Me

The above picture is for Robert Norman, who wondered in a comment how I could manage to stop and take pictures while cooking. This is just a glimpse of the mess that explodes in my kitchen when I attempt to make something. I wouldn't want him (or any of you) to think that I am not completely in a tizzy, and barely able to form full sentences while cooking and taking pictures of cooking. Perhaps you missed the post last week when I talked about throwing things in a crock pot while running around in my bathrobe, hair a mess and fully talking to myself like the crazy lady who hangs out by the McDonalds on 40th & &7th Ave. Make no mistake, I am no domestic goddess. And if there are pictures of my cooking adventures, it probably is at the expense of the meal I'm trying to make.

There, I feel better. Good to have that out in the open. Moving on...

We did a ton this weekend. And I enjoyed it all. There was cooking, bike rides, movies, walks, cleaning & organizing and good discussions. Let me give you the blow by blow.

FRIDAY NIGHT
I went grocery shopping after work and lugged home food to make for the weekend. But was too tired to cook so we ordered fajitas from our favorite Mexican place in our neighborhood. Best salsa in 3 counties. (I just made that up, but feel that it is true.)

SATURDAY
First there was breakfast. Most important meal of the day. Coffee for me, OJ & iced tea for Geoff. And I made him this.


And opted for a tomato & Parmesan reggiano omelet for myself.


After breakfast we had a long chat on the couch...business ideas & planning and a little business related internet research. Then we retired to The Cabana. Which is what I call our bedroom. It's always so sunny in there because of our corner of windows. So we chatted some more and enjoyed all the sunshine and then I threw some things in the crock pot to make Ginger Beef Stew.



While the crock pot did its work, we walked over to the movie theatre to see The Blind Side. It's such a great story, but we felt like the film fell just shy of what it could have been. I still basically enjoyed it though.

We came home to a pretty decent ginger beef stew. I would link the recipe except I can't for the life of me remember where I found it. (And apparently it doesn't hold up well a couple days later, as Geoff said today that it was starting to remind him of cat food. So. Not the highest of recommendations. And sorry for the gross mental picture I just gave you.) Once again our grocery store didn't have the kind of beef the recipe required, and I think that ultimately that was the problem, but it was still fairly decent the day we made it. Served over brown rice with steamed broccoli...


We attempted to watch a Jane Austen movie, (Pursuasion) but it put Geoff to sleep pretty quickly, so even though I maintain that he started falling asleep just when things were starting to happen, we gave up trying and just went to bed, as we are old and lame. Maybe we'll try again sometime...

SUNDAY
After breakfast, and some Real Simple reading for me, I got a little fussy. Sometimes I do and don't know why. Yes, I know what you're thinking...very similar to a toddler. But Geoff calmed me down and we set out for the rest of the day.

There was bike riding. And for the most part, I confined myself to only taking pictures without looking through the viewfinder.....just aiming the camera in the general direction of things as it hung over my shoulder & around my neck. Got some interesting things actually....

The church a few blocks from our house


This guy I liked a lot


I know it seems like we live in the middle of an industrial park, but we don't. We just have created a bike route for ourselves through one. Not a ton of traffic that way...


We ended up back in Long Island City. Where there was lunch. And Sangria.


The wall by our table. I just liked it.


My camera's view as it hung from my neck while I was riding


Anyone need an apartment? A computer? A new church...?


I'm obsessed with these big barn doors. If I ever take headshots or album cover shots or any kind of shots, I'm going there. I love them.


Heading up one of the hills on the way home


And let me share with you a little tip I learned this weekend...biking up hill Post-Sangria is not the easiest or most advisable way to do it. Just in cast you thought it was...

Then it was back home where I organized The 4th Wall in my living room, which has been an eyesore for ages. It's one of those places that just really accumulates things. And the furniture doesn't match the rest of the room. But that's another post entirely...more on that later. I organized it a bit though and that at least felt like progress.

We had a slight casualty when Geoff was working with some steel wool and sliced his finger right open. Definitely sprayed blood on the walls, but that came right off, no problem, so once he was appropriately bandaged, we moved along to the fun stuff, and might I add, the most important element of any cooking scenario...


Clearly. And while he nursed his wound, I started on dinner.


I made Beef and Bean Chili Verde.


Really easy and REALLY good. Wish I'd made more of it to last us through the week with leftovers. It was YUM.


Also, let me just apologize for the very cooking-focused blogging that has been happening recently. I would like to think that I do and think about other things as well, but....this has been what I've been up to. So.... there you have it. But there will be other non-food related things to come. Hang in there.

Oh, PS.....there was one thing that I didn't make, but wanted to:


Chunks of banana rolled in cocoa powder and then in coconut. Relatively healthy, especially if you get real cocoa instead of this chocolate + cocoa combo that's bound to be a bit sweeter. And they didn't have unsweetened coconut (ah, teeny NYC grocery stores), so I had to get the sweetened kind. A fun idea though. I'll let you know how it is....

Three Day Weekend

We were excited to have a full three days off together for the first time since....Christmas? Ridiculous, but true. We made the most of it.

Saturday started with a seven step process to get us to breakfast on a park bench (all within a couple blocks walk).

1) drop off laundry at Skillman Laundry
2) Geoff drops off shirts at Diamond's dry cleaning (named for the owners Maltese, who is always in the store. he's been there ever since I've lived here and is getting fat in his old age. which i love in a dog)
3) i go to Starbucks for my iced coffee
4) Geoff stops by Wendy's for iced tea (he doesn't really do coffee)
5) Geoff gets his bagel sandwich at NY Eats
6) I get my bagel & cream cheese from the bagel shop 2 blocks away
7) arrive park bench & enjoy (which we do)

I liked this guy. Green belt, suspenders and just his general demeanor won me over.


This guy..... just as fascinating, half as friendly.


After breakfast we wander home and come upon a street fair on Greenpoint Ave.


Inflatable castles & slides
tons of people
and really weird things for sale in tents.
Like this.


And Oscar. He's a Pug/Shitzu mix who belongs to the woman we met from Camp Bow Wow (the dog boarding place in our neighborhood). I love him. Clearly.



We were walking along, minding our own business when I was accosted by a small Asian woman who literally dragged me into her booth for a massage. Sort of hysterical. Not that great of a massage. But an experience. Can you see how she's digging her thumb into my arm?? She was strong!


After quickly popping into the eye doctor, (and we ended up having to go back again 'cause the contacts she gave me were not settling right in one eye. which ended up being because i had two lenses in that eye. which she says was not the case when i left the first time. no idea how that happened. how do i manage these things??) we headed home to get our bikes. Off we went over the Queensboro Bridge. We took a loop or two around the park and then headed to meet Megan & Jeremy O'Grady for dinner at Cilantro. We hadn't seen them since New Years. Which is NUTS. It was good to catch up. And then off we went, home on our bikes.

I'm loving biking. We both are. And riding from our house to Manhattan is such a great ride. Just the right amount/difficulty of hills. Heading into Manhattan there's a long slow incline until just past the middle of the bridge and heading back to Queens there's a steeper shorter incline on the first part of the Manhattan side of the bridge and then 2 smaller, slower incline hills when we're in the home stretch in Queens. I dig it.


Sunday dawned, a little humid but still nice. We hopped on our bikes and headed over to Long Island City for brunch. Found a great little spot called Masso with a 2 for 1 fruit infused mimosa special. Yay.

I loved this cute little container for the cream.


After brunch we just rode around LIC exploring. Such an odd/cool little neighborhood. Half hip/half commercial and some great waterfront apt buildings. We just tooled around for a while checking it all out. Really cool piers on the waterfront. We've talked about living there if prices continue to come down. Especially because they'll let us have a dog. And a big selling factor for me was that they've just put in a small Whole Foods-ish grocery store. Loved it.

Apartment shopping


Loved this cute lil' car



The view from our potential future front yard.


But also, we saw this. I don't even know what this is. Or how to understand it. But the top "car" seems to be cemented to the real car. No idea.


Geoff got some great bridge shots.




What is this place all about? I like to think about what it once was. Right at the base of the bridge, I bet it was an old waterfront mansion, since condemned and now closed up and surrounded by super scary barbed wire. I mean, it was probably a school or torture facility, but I like to think it was a fancy mansion with lots of history.


Requisite daily dog befriending obviously occurred. This is Max. I love a pug.


What a face!


Here's Max giving you "pensive"...


We headed home and spent the late afternoon in what I have now dubbed, our "cabana". Which is basically our room, with all the blinds open, breezes blowing, ceiling fan on and afternoon sun pouring in. Ahhhhhhhh. We had dinner that night at Cafe Boka. Aka our kitchen table. Wine, candlelight, good conversation and the random contents of our pantry/freezer. It was awesome. We've decided to dine there more often.

My Shiny new bike!!

OK, not really. These are not our new bikes. However, these bikes are always locked up on our block somewhere. Always together....aw, how cute. :-) They were not the entire inspiration for the bike purchase, clearly....but kind of a constant reminder of what we were missing out on.

And so, after visits to multiple other bike shops, we landed at Spokesman Cycles, with three locations in NYC. Super helpful sales guys who REALLY know what they are talking about. Here I am with my new bike! I love it! It has baskets!


Now for fun detail shots that tell you more about my bike:
That's right, Bike, I CAN ride you 'cross town. And anywhere else I feel like.


My bike is a little cocky. Which I dig.


Pretty trees. Unrelated to bikes except that we passed them on our block on the way to the car on the day we bought the bikes. We call them "fish trees". Because, while beautiful to look at, that is what they smell like.


Check out these amazing COLLAPSIBLE baskets I got. I love that they collapse. LOVE. And of course, my safety tail light for night time riding. As I think my friend Michelle always used to say in college, "Safety first, never last, have a future, not a past." I can't wait for her to say that to her son someday, as he will inevitably roll his eyes. :-)


Queens Boulevard & cityscapes at sunset while driving home with my new bike in the back of the car.


In our neighborhood...


So, we got bikes. And have already been on several amazing rides. But more on those later. And OK, so we bought these almost a month ago, but hey, what can you do....

PS, look at the bad-ass way they hang in our foyer (as we clearly have no garage like you fancy suburban people). Geoff, ever the engineer, rigged that sucker up. Impressive right? And dare I say, bordering on...art installation-ish? OK, that may be a bit of a stretch, but while I didn't originally want bikes hanging in the foyer, there's no place else for them. And they do actually look pretty cool.