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Blah, blah blah–It’s doppelganger week (on Facebook), everybody. I’m sure there is no one who is unaware of this by now. For whatever reason, I feel like I can’t give in, so I’m cheating and revealing my doppelgangers on my bloginstead. At one time or another, I have been told I looked like the following:
Right before the new year, I sat down and wrote out the things I wanted to have in my life every/almost every day. I wanted to stop going out so much, break some old habits, and start some new ones. This is what my new routine looks like:
-Wake up before or by 6:30 AM
-Go to the gym for at least an hour
-Make a killer savory breakfast
-Make a killer cup of French press coffee (Gorilla or Intelligentsia)
-Consume and imbibe whilst listening to old records I bought over the last 5 years and still have not listened to.
-Read the Holy Scriptures and pray, using the Book of Common Prayer (1928 Edition) as my guide
-Show up to work at 10:30 or 11:00 AM
-Work
-Leave work at 7:30 PM or thereabouts
-Eat dinner (or not eat dinner)
-Take care of occasional pending business matters
-Create something, whether it be music, a missive, a mixtape, a package to a friend, a sketch, or some other blessed spontaneous affair
I’m loving it thus far.
There is a large gap between my last post (so last year) and this one. For the last two months, I have been in a different state almost every single weekend. My home doth float, indeed, for where’er I lay my hat, is, in a way, my home. Can someone please remind me why I don’t get frequent flier miles? The second weekend of November took me to Washington, D.C. where I met up with a bunch of friends whom I hadn’t seen in quite some time. The weekend after that, my close friends flew me out to Mission Viejo in California so I could partake in their Autumn Festival. Then, for Thanksgiving weekend, I went with my mom to Chicago to visit my older brother, Aaron.
I should mention here that I made fettuccine pumpkin Alfredo two more times, once in Cali, and then again in Chi-Town. I am happy to report that these attempts proved much more delicious than their disastrously sweet and spice-ed predecessor.
For the first weekend of December, I was here in New York. I was in Leesburg, Virginia during the second weekend, however, where I attended a 3-day open house Christmas party at the home of a famously hospitable family. My third weekend of December brought me to Dallas, TX, where I spent some time with one of my closest former classmates from college. An unforeseen flight delay landed me in Atlanta, GA for about 12 hours, in which my ad hoc gang, The Shadows, was pulled over by 3 cop cars and patted down quite thoroughly before being released without a charge laid against us.
Of course, the weekend that followed was Christmas weekend and my family and I had the pleasure of receiving visits from my brother and the same close friends that flew me to Cali a month prior. I celebrated my 24th birthday. It was absolutely absurd in the best possible way. New Year’s Weekend saw me in Philadelphia after a not-so-frosty Polar Bear Plunge into the sea at Coney Island.
My latest cooking craze is HOT SALAD. You prepare a bed of spinach, arugula, and romaine. You then top it with some sort of hot sauce or soup. I find spicy chicken curry and noodle dishes serve this purpose especially well. And so, we find ourselves up to date on the life and times of yours truly. Happy New Year.
So, I came home and my parents had cooked some squash and some chicken. I decided to play with my food and make a curry out of it. I cut up the paprika-spiced chicken, I scraped the squash out into a pot of coconut milk and added Thai red curry as well as an Indian ginger/garlic paste. Lastly, I put water chestnuts in. I ate it over rice. It was pretty good. I would do a couple of things different, but it was def delish. During Autumn, I’ve realized, I want absolutely every meal I eat to include squash or, if I have it exactly how I want it, pumpkin. I go crazy for pumpkin. That is why the week after this venture, I convinced Maeve to make a pumpkin alfredo sauce with me. We do not have photo documentation. I am not upset about this. Let’s just say when a recipe calls for pumpkin puree, don’t use pumpkin pie filling. It’s hard to persuade pie filling to taste savory. I’m not discouraged, though. I know what I did wrong and I’m excited for the second try. Here are the other pictures of my pumpkin-family (squash) curry: 
Samuel Dickison came to visit me in mid-October and I don’t know if I’ve ever had that much fun taking someone around the City before. We did it ALL–which means I got to go everywhere that I like to go and he got to go everywhere I like to go. What a great deal, right? I will try to recount the itinerary, though I can’t imagine remembering everything we did.
Tuesday Oct 13th
- Samuel arrived at the Philadelphia airport at 9:30 PM
-Get home, talk into the morning hours and go to bed.
Wednesday Oct 14th ( I took off from work )
-Brooklyn Bagels shmeared with cream cheese (and ham!)
-DUMBO (Visit shops and galleries on Front St and the parks by the bridges)
-Walked over the Brooklyn Bridge
-Dylan’s Candy Bar and Serendipity (frozen hot chocolates and lunch, yes in that order)
-Roosevelt Island gondola
-Stumptown Coffee at the newly opened Ace Hotel
-Thrift store shopping
-Highline Park
-The Dodos and Ruby Suns at the Bowery Ballroom
-Treacherously long trek home on the exceptionally evil Q train
Thursday Oct 15th (Samuel braves it alone in NYC during the day)
-Guilianos (Sausage egg cheese and a hashbrown patty on an english muffin)
-Fraunces Tavern (Where President Washington gave his farewell address)
-Stone Street (Oldest remaining street in NYC)
-Staten Island Ferry
-Wall St, New York Stock Exchange, Trinity Church
-Battery Park
-World Financial Center and Ground Zero
-Museum of Natural History
-Meet up at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria
-Superfine
Friday Oct 16th (Samuel braves it one more day)
-Columbus Circle
-Central Park
-Metropolitan Museum of Art?
-Meet up at Metis
-Dunkin’ Donuts
-DiFara’s Pizzeria (Best Pizza in the WORLLLLLD)
-Coney Island
Saturday Oct 17th
-Brunch at Cafe Cortadito
-LES
-9th St Espresso
-St Mark’s Place
-Avett Brothers at Terminal 5
-Times Square
-Torrential downpour in Union Square
-Gyros from a street vendor
-Alison’s Housewarming Party
Sunday Oct 18th
-Church
-Post-church fellowship and grazing
-Chinese food for lunch with Daddy-O
-Where the Wild Things Are with Mom and Pattie Ann
- Carrol Gardens
-Hang at Maeve’s apartment
-Buttermilk Channel
Monday Oct 19th (I took off from work)
-Sleep in
-5th Ave in Park Slope
-Gorilla Coffee
-Thrift Stores
-Katz’s Deli
-SoHo
-MarieBell hot chocolate
-The Strand
-Union Square
-Pre-CMJ Industry Party at Rebel NYC
-Go home and get packed up
-Drop off at the MegaBus stop outside of Madison Square Garden at 1:30 AM
For Halloween, Maeve and I and some of our friends dressed up as the villains from the musical, Annie. Of course, we chose to channel the 1982 film version with Carol Burnett as Ms. Hannigan , Tim Curry as her brother, Rooster, and Bernadette Peters as Lily St. Regis, Rooster’s lady friend, because nobody did it justice like they did. As you can see, we rocked it:
I simply can’t get enough of this Cuban restaurant, Cafe Cortadito. I first came across the name while I was searching for coffee shops in New York City that made my favorite coffee drink– the cortadito. After multiple failed attempts to visit, it was almost a year later that I was first able to eat here with Peter Kong this past July, when we ran into it entirely by accident on the most serendipitous of days.
Since it was a warm summer afternoon, the windows were open and the sunshine pouring in was brightening up the already lively little cafe, playing off the warm orange and amber tones in the decor. The service was phenomenal– very friendly without being fake and very fast without making you feel like you couldn’t lounge in there the rest of the evening, had we so desired. Patricia, the owner’s wife serves as hostess and is very attentive to customers while her husband, Ricardo, works his cooking magic in the within-arms-reach kitchen on the other side of the wall. The bathroom is immaculate, there is a large-party room in the back, and the music is upbeat, complimenting the sense of life and freshness in the place. I have been back twice since and at night, Cafe Cortadito is just as charming, with an added sense of class after dark, the dim lighting putting you at ease, making quite sure it’s a night you won’t soon forget.
As far as the cuisine is concerned, absolutely everything I have had is outrageously delicious. All of the food is full of flavor. The meat is as moist as the fresh fruit they serve. Their black beans and plantains are simple but delectable. Personally, I would have to recommend the green plantain-encrusted snapper and the avocado-pineapple salad with red onions and Spanish cheese. For drinks, be sure to try the champagne sangria or the champagne mojitos. Trust me, any time you spend here is a time to keep it festive. The desserts are a dream (coconut flan, triple leche cake, rice pudding, guava and cream cheese) and whatever you do, don’t forget to top it all off with a cortadito in a glass mug. Celebrate the flavor of your life at Cafe Cortadito.
In the last week and a half, I think I sent out a grand total of 13 letters and/or packages. I had some nights free and I decided to get back in the habit of keeping in touch via the good ol’ United States Postal Service. I did make a few cell phone calls as well, lest I lead you to believe that I’m totally antique.
During my letter-writing frenzy, I came across a large bag of assorted small pictures and whatnots I had wanted to use for making my own stationery. I scanned a lot of them first, though, so that I have the images backed up and will be able to make multiples. While writing my letters out, I was listening to a bunch of cassettes I’ve owned for at least a year but have not had the pleasure of hearing yet. I bought all of these cassettes at various thrift stores, however, and some of them were warbly and not pleasant to listen to, so I threw them out and made stationery out of their delightful album art. They’re nothing too special, but I was happy with them. Here are some of the results:
Lionel Richie and Andrae Crouch stationery; Space Familia stationery
I know this might be hard to deal with, but the title of this post is what occurred last evening. Don’t think. Just click.
There is a Jewish auction of sorts going on at the synagogue on the corner of my street. I can hear the bids getting higher from my window. Now they are having an Israeli-rock dance party and the kids are taking turns at the mic. Sometimes you don’t have to go very far to be reminded, ‘There’s no place like Brooklyn.’
