Chicken or the Egg?

Tiles in the 4/5 station at Brooklyn Bridge

Big Black from Rob & Big

Cold Brew

OMG the sun is out!

Officially time for iced coffee! 

I cold brewed a pound of java earlier this week. I thought I jumped the gun, and was not enjoying drinking iced coffee these past few brisk, rainy mornings. But now I'm very glad I did. MMmmm :) Do you know about cold brewing?

Cold brewing is frikkin amazing. It is a process of brewing coffee without using hot water, which eliminates the acidity and bitter grossness that is in hot coffee poured over ice. After reading an article in the Times magazine, I was sold. Even before having tried it. Twas a very persuasive article. Cold brewed iced coffee with soy milk (thats my jam) tastes like melted ice cream, but less sweet. One pound it lasts for bout 2 wks... well even longer now that Zach jumped off the coffee train (traitor).

1 lb coffee, ground

10 cups water

Almond, soy, or cow milk

Directions:

Combine coffee and water, stir to all the parts get to know eachother

Let sit overnight

Strain through a fine seive

Strain through a coffee filter (I run it through the coffee machine without turning it on)

Now you have coffee concentrate.
You can add water to it for black iced coffee, or
a milk thing if you prefer.

1:3 ratio concentrate to other thing

Good Eats

Lunch. 

Saturday 1pm: I can't even contain myself right now. I wish I could bottle the smell of my apartment and share it with the world. Zach and I just got back from the Farmer's Market, but before leaving, we put baby back ribs in the oven to braise in Prosecco and honey. I rubbed them down w/ paprika and some other delicious things last night, with the intention of eating them for dinner. Then realized that we wouldn't be eating until 9 and Zach hatched the genius idea of having ribs for lunch. Baller!

Blue Grass band at the Farmer's Market

The Union Square Farmer's Market is a place of inspiration. You can't really take a list because crops vary as the season progresses. We have our regular spots, but always wind up making something different depending on what looks good.


Go To Vendors at the Union Square Farmer's Market:

• Cato Corner Farm for off the wall blue cheese
• Flying Pigs for pork products (ribs, bratwurst)
• Grazin' Angus for beef products and the most phenomenal, orange yolked eggs
• Ronnybrook Dairy for yogurt
• and veggies from wherever they look best

While I was in Colorado, I bought a super spicy Ethiopian spice blend called Berbere, but I have yet to use it. I don't really know how. While at the Farmer's Market, we went to the Flying Pigs stand (they are awesome at giving cooking recommendations- they are the people who recommended the braised ribs recipe) where they suggested cooking ground pork in the spice. I started picturing something like a sloppy joe. But fancy. A fancy joe.

After a lap around the Farmer's Market and a time out to strategize, we had a delicious food plan for the week.

Radishes for pineapple and radish slaw, to be served w/
Fancy Joe sammiches.

Dinners this week:

Sunday- Fish Tacos by bakedbree

Monday- Gnocci w/ mushroom and spinach ragu

Tuesday- Blue Cheese, yummy bread and sauteed broccoli rabe 

(yes, the main ingredient here is cheese)

Wednesday- Beer (we have softball)

Thursday- Fancy Joe (spicy pork) Sandwiches w/ pineapple and radish slaw

Friday- too far away to think about

This week is going to be a pretty intense week at school, with our Quality Review and testing going on at the same time. However, it doesn't really matter what happens during the day because at 3:45, I'll be thinking about dinner :)

Kids

(Kids + Language) - brain power = funny

Some snip its from my classroom that made me chuckle:

Uh. Good luck. 

I see where you're going here... good effort 

Apparently my telling time lessons were ineffective.

"I ain't never heard a no color with
a T, an R, a Q and a zero?!"

Baby sout, babing suit, but never a bathing suit.

Diagram of a kid's house. May want to enlarge.
I'm curious first wife lives. Basement maybe?

So you think you're pretty good at cursive, eh?

9 year old girl while digging through her candy bag, "I hope I get a sugar daddy!"

Don't we all, honey. 

Being a mom looks hard

I had to call a parent this afternoon. I busted a one of my kids for vandalizing a picture in the Assistant Principal's office while we were taking the state math test. (I test in her office b/c of a space shortage come test time). I don't really like calling parents. I think the thing is that I wish I called home more often with good news so that I wasn't only calling with the bad. Regardless, mom had to know.

When I called, mom said that she was actually having a pretty tough time with her kid. He isn't a jerk, but he is 11 and is starting to push the limits. (The jerks start doing that around age 7) She told me he has been lying and she caught him steeling and she doesn't know what to do with him. Once she started talking, it all came tumbling out. Her mom is terminally ill, she doesn't know how to tell the kids, they're acting out at home. She is crying on the phone. I'm just listening. She said she was thinking about calling me, but hadn't gotten to it.

Mom had a total breakdown. She had been carrying all of this heavy mental shit around, coping, trying to make things work and they just weren't working. Shit, we've all been there before. I have no idea about losing a parent or raising an adolescent kid, but I know the feeling of Ugh why isn't this working? which is what I had to identify with in our conversation. I reassured her that she is doing a good job with her kid (she really is) and offered to put her in touch with some counseling agencies, which she appreciated.


When I got off the phone, I was reeling with how much this woman opened up to me. My initial thoughts were you know I'm half your age, don't have kids, and have never dealt with any of the stuff you are dealing with, right? But none of that mattered. She needed someone to listen, needed reassurance and a little bit of help and I could provide that. Our conversation ended up being so much more than about the incident earlier that day. I'm really glad I called.

Mothers Day

I went out to brunch on Mother's Day sans my mother. I feel like thats a little like not having a Christmas Tree on Xmas (as an adult because you're a lazy schlub, not as a child, too much pity in that comparison). However, my mom was in Baltimore and I was not. I did go with my gal pals whom I've been bff with since freshman year at 'Cuse. We know one another's mothers, so there was much mom talk. Well, Evy is rowing, obviously. How is Maxine? And Jane? What is Maureen doing today? Turns out they were all either at the farmer's market, weeding or gardening in some way shape or form. We cheersed to them :)

pretty pots in Tribeca

Brunch was at Locanda Verde in Tribeca, which is like a foreign territory to me. I have spent the last year tasting the Lower East Side and exploring the seemingly endless Brooklyn restaurants. I almost forgot that the west side of Manhattan existed as an option for eating. Lunch tasted good, but the company was much better than the meal on the table. After catching up on life, we bopped over to Duane Park Patisserie for some desserts (an amazing eclair to be exact) and on to a St. Germaine cocktail to top off the afternoon. Perfection. Well, actually... perfection would have been if we could have made our party of four into a party of eight and had all of our moms there. 

slacklining

I started slacklining (aka tight rope walking, but on a piece of webbing, not a wire) at Brooklyn Boulders this winter. I started off REALLY terrible. Just standing without my legs shaking uncontrollably was a challenge. Its a practice in balance, but also a mental game. Slacklining is one of those things that the harder you try to force it to work, the harder it becomes. It requires you to relax. 

Here are some pics of badass slackliners from the interweb:

One day I want to slackline over water and plunge into the deep blue sea. However, I don't care about slacklining over canyons and dying.

the 5th of May

In the projets

pigeons dance to maracas

being played by a fat woman

in her bedroom window

A Don Draper look alike

in his dapper suit and skinny tie

rides his fixie bike

on cobblestones

buhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuh

toward the Hudson

smiling at the bike path.

When the sun shines

and its still early in May

New York slows down.

We forget to rush.

We are distracted by the flowers.

And the barefoot man smoking weed by the West Side Highway

Everyone is happy. 

It's contagious.

Hunt Cup

Private Attack won the 2011 Hunt Cup

Hunt Cup is a steeple chase race held in the Greenspring Valley in suburban Baltimore County every year. Growing up, I knew it as the day drinking event to which you wore your brightest Lilly Pulitzer dress and may or may not wind up seeing horses. Turns out, it is the oldest and most prestigious steeple chase race in the country. It is also super hard. Only 3 horses finished out of the 12 competing. All of the others fell or scratched before the race started. 

Zach and I went with our friends Liz and Paul to the race this past Saturday. It was a perfect day. Blue skies. Green grass. Warm sun. Crab cakes. Great people watching and an adrenaline filled race. Mom and Dad brought binoculars, which was a great call considering we were watching from a hillside a few fields away. The course is 4 miles long, has 22 jumps and takes about 10 minutes. During those ten minutes, you can feel the entire hillside glued to little specks in the distance, emitting tell tale "oohs" and "ahhs" when another horse doesn't make the jump or loses a rider. 

Hope you enjoy some pictures from the day. The horses were visible only through binoculars, so there aren't many in the pictures (except the one above that I lifted from another blog.) 

The welcoming committee at General Admission parking.
This is where the kids park. 

Tailgating in the Prius

Zach & Paul 

Our neighbors for the day.
They were fist pumping from the moment we got there.
To Chumbawamba. 

Thank you, Wegmans for our delicious spread.

Obviously, we were poppin' bottles of Andre.
That's just how we roll.

Perfection.

Crab cake sammich on fluffy buns w/ pesto. 

Oh hey there. 

Double dutch frisbee with new friends.

Spectatin'

Next time, we should bring a vase of flowers to go on our full bar. 

Who needs a to go cup when you have a  pocket? 

En route to the race course. 

Pre race ponies prancing in the paddock. 

Liz, Mom and Me before the race

Spotted on the way out:
Parasol, big hat, ravens jersey.
That about sums up a day at the races.