[quiet] is the winter of our [dis]content

if my blog accurately reflected the comings and goings and otherwise -ings of my life, i would still be utterly ill at the moment. but luckily this blog is really only a snippet of daily proceedings, so no i am no longer vomiting out of taxi windows, but am instead happily healthy once more. huzzah for health!

to celebrate my last week of non-sickness, i returned to normal new york routines: a great deal of working, meetings, film screenings, lots and lots of park-walking (the leaves! the leaves!!!), park avenue-apartment wine/cheese-ings, but mostly i feel that the best moments of my hours outside unicef are filled with an ever-increasing amount of home-cookin'.

i tell you. something snapped when i was in berlin. the combination of working from home, having a loveable someone to cook for on a regular basis, and the uber-attractive glow of food blogs has turned me into a bona fide domestic:


maybe it's also that i'm getting "old"? ha! i will be a WHOLE quarter century this week - and look at this picture i just took with my computer (laughing whilst looking down at my roommate):


old - right? ok, maybe it's just the dark lighting.

but in addition to those scrumptious lemon-lime baby cakes above, tonight i made the best curry possible, and am wondering if one can start a food blog which simply reviews all other food-blogs? i may go down that road should i find myself for-whatever-reason-unemployed within the next year. (not likely, however - unicef is very good to me.)

but in other news, i'm staying in tonight. is this further proof of my burgeoning domesticity + age + eventual boredom? if so, bring it on. i'm incredibly content to step my way into a quiet winter. revisiting authors i've let fall by the wayside, make more yummy food, and simply bask in calm - so utterly scarce in manhattan. my life is so very full: there is a great deal of love in it, i am healthy and comfortable, i feel regularly renewed to learn and grow, and the future is hopeful. could i ask for anything more at this stage? methinks no.

so here's me transmitting love and baked goods to you all from my quiet apartment tonight in upper upper manhattan :)

[oh yes and duh - happy halloween! nowadays the only point of this holiday as far as i'm concerned is to see nieces and nephews look cute in their costumes. blog away with pictures fam! i can't wait to see! :)]

tender is the night

i'm horribly ill today... worse now in the night. sicker than i can remember being in a long while. it came suddenly - violently - today at work, forcing me into a cab at 3pm - vomiting out the side window as we drove up the FDR from midtown to harlem where i crawled in between sheets, bowl at my side, and tried to sleep to prevent myself from feeling all the pain and yuckiness.

since then i have watched a full 2.5+ hour documentary and then fictional film on rembrandt's "nightwatch", whilst (nervously) eating saltines to regain some strength...

and all this rembrandt night watching (literally) reminded me that i live within a subway ride from a whole room of gorgeous rembrandts and resolved myself to go to the met more than i have been this last year. (when i can actually stand upright that is.)


sigh.

i really do need to sleep now! i simply can't seem to. sickness and all that mean sleepless, long, reflective, weary, and tender nights for me...

so in the meantime i'm reading keats...*

*ironic, yes - considering i'm just nigh on turning 25. (weird!) but i'm comforted to know it's not 1821, and i do not have consumption. even if it kinda feels like it.

back at my desk (with a few alterations)

1. i'm wearing the FAB red curdoroy dress that steph very kindly made me. (click on the link and you can get one yourself! they're wonderful!)

2. i'm sipping the DELISH mighty leaf african nectar tea that mom lovingly bestowed on me.

3. i'm staring at the INTENSE playbill posted on my cubicle from the broadway production of hamlet (with jude law no less) which leslie and i were privileged to attend on saturday.

in other words, the weekend of the p fam women was a success, and i'm still reaping the benefits. thanks mom, les, and steph for coming all the way back east to the freeeezing cold city :) it was absolutely the best new york weekend i've had in a long long while :)

love you all lots and lots.

(sorry les: totally stole those pictures from you! hope you weren't going to blog them! ha!)

excited! excited!

SO excited that ...the angels will be in town this weekend to kick the yankees' trash.
(though NOT excited that the cheapest way-in-the-back-bench-not-even-real-seats-tickets are over $150 - dang yankee stadium)

...my boss is working from home today, so after my afternoon meeting i'm bookin' it home to complete my assignments there.
(NOT excited that she didn't tell me friday or earlier this morning she would be working from home, or else i would have never left)

....i can eat more of my banana bread yumminess stored in my freezer this afternoon while working. seriously everyone - make this stuff. it's amazing.

but above all, i am STOKED beyond STOKED that mom, les, and steph (and maybe stella!) are all descending on the city this weekend! ah! it will be so fun. i'm bouncing in my seat now thinking about it. i love visitors. especially when they happen to be the fam.

huzzah! go angels!

home early tonight

ah! i'm getting into this hyper-stimulation mode again. stepping into a thriving place like new york just morphs me into this huge sponge where every subway encounter and cultural event i am exposed to soaks up into me...

and after 3 over-full weeks of such sponging, i end up feeling really, really tired. ha.

today was such a day of almost overindulgent absorption: 'twas the first day of open house new york, where hundreds of awesomely interesting locales in the city typically closed and locked to the public are opened up for free perusal. awesome, yes? yes. after visiting 10 such sites scattered far far apart throughout the boroughs, topped off with an excellent film screening tonight at the maysles institute, i just had to come home. i planned to stay for the post-screening poetry reading, and then meet more friends to go dancing on the lower east side... but... all the way back down from harlem to avenue A after a week of readings and screenings and subway insanity and i just couldn't muster the strength. heck, i can't even muster the strength to tell you all about what awesomely interesting locales i went to and visited.

instead i was home by 10 to bake some banana-cinnamon-sugar-chocolate-bread-cake amazingness. and speaking of that, why yes that photo is in fact 3 stacks of oatmeal chocolate chip cookie pancakes that me and dear xarissa made last weekend to celebrate general conference. we feasted that weekend, with a perfect farewell-to-summer key lime coconut cake as well. oh and did i further mention that i also made my first scones recently?

homemade bagels are next.

and a very large p.s./fyi.. i cannot express in proper words how much i miss this:





















and maybe that's where most of the actual exhaustion comes from after all. :(

11 weeks until we're reunited. (not that i'm counting or anything)

there are lots of snipers, but hey - i might be in a commercial with nicole kidman

the last two days at the UN have been MADNESS. MAYHEM.


in case you haven't heard, there was a global environmental summit of all world leaders at the general assembly yesterday where obama gave a lackluster speech, and today is the day when american delegates get to walk out of what is sure to be another america-bashing diatribe by iran. maybe they'll rip up the UN charter the way qaddafi did in his speech. yay for UN politics! but i tell you, the security around my building is insanity. i have to wave my little blue UN badge to get past multiple police blockades, and the whole area is guarded by roof-top snipers and large men roaming the sidewalks in full battle-gear yielding large guns. there are myriads of protest/support groups around the blockades of every denomination and political affiliation - huge groups of orthodox jews, green peacers, and my boss even saw a man with an "i <3 qaddafi" t-shirt. really? of all people to heart?


this is most definitely the closest i'll ever be to so many world leaders and a genuine global event, and i am incredibly jealous of all my coworkers who have caught a glimpse of obama.


on the upside, just a few floors below me UNIFEM is filming a public service announcement against the global abuse of women with nicole kidman. they've asked UNICEF staff to come by for 5 minutes and serve as extras. hello, of course i'm going to go by. if i can't see a crazy world leader (think how close i am to chavez, qaddafi, and ahmadinejad as i type!), i'm at least going to see nicole kidman. but i'm thinking that maybe we should have roped in all the world leaders to serve as extras instead - think how great it would be if politicians actually took a real stand on a critical issue rather than snarking at each other like high school kids and puffing up their own egos. nice thought, yeah? :)

i no longer have dad's name on my checks

one of the guaranteed markers that you are traveling abroad are the ubiquitous HSBC ads (example above) - please tell me you have thoughtfully read them as well while shuffling through the gangplanks and corridors of european airports? they actually have made their debut in the new york subway recently as well, which makes me super happy. i absolutely love them. i remember first seeing them in heathrow a few years ago and thinking them clever. though i can absolutely see how some people would find them cheesy and easily mockable.

whatev'

i fell for it. they totally worked their magic on me. because today on my lunch break i finally began the process of phasing out the union bank of california checking account i've had since i was 16 for brand new ones at HSBC. ["ones" meaning checking AND savings - take that adulthood! and is it ok to be talking about this on a public blog? i mean, i'm not giving details, right? hm. i'm worth hardly anything anyway, so no one should be getting too excited.]

in any case, i owe a great deal of my decision-making process on which bank to switch to to those lovely ads which have comforted my jetlagged self on many an occasion. and this has all just proven to me that don draper was right all along. and by don draper i mean the main ad exec on mad men, the fabulously written and lusciously designed tv series that toni and i shamelessly fell in love with via rented dvds while together in berlin. SO GOOD.

and now... i'm offiicially declaring the workday over, i feel awake and over jetlag, i have a 3-day weekend because of Eid (yay UN multiculturalism!), and i'm off to the whitney to see the new o'keeffe abstraction exhibit. bon week-end!

coming back to new york city is not the same as coming back to america

there are so many wonderful things that just scream new york city and it's insane uniqueness. it really operates on its own planet (and seems to be quite content to do just that). my flight from berlin landed at jfk earlier this evening, and just in the few hours of being home all these idiosyncratic delicacies of the city have jumped out and greeted me again after nearly 3 months away...

fast talking street vendors, loud dominican music, harlem cat calls, ubiquitous notices of subway service changes, old men playing dominoes on cardboard boxes, jazzy latin hair salons, the mr. softee tune...

noise noise noise... that constant background noise of the city that never ever ever goes away, adding to the general buzz/hum/energy/freneticism of the place...

and just plain and simple multiculturalism... (berlin is surprisingly homogeneous) new york is really unlike anywhere else in terms of world representation (maybe london?) - each subway train is filled with chinese, arab, bangladeshi, dominican, african, palestinian, puerto rican, anglo-saxon, micronesian, visigothic etc etc etc people of all shape and size..... it's remarkable.... what brings everyone here?

in any and all cases i am back. manhattan is a glorious and absolutely mad place to return to... it will never get old, and i admit that i am quite content to be here at the moment - knowing that i'll be back in berlin again before too too long - berlin is also a fantastically interesting place that has endeared to me a great deal by now, and that i will truly truly miss...

and also... i can be content (and not cry too much) knowing that toni will be here before too too long as well... :)

and so p.s... everyone call me! i have an american cell phone again! let's chat! for real! huzzah!

AND everyone excuse the fragmentary nature of all sentences in this post. i am fighting major jetlag tiredness right now, having been awake for nearly 24 hours, and having spent my 9 hour flight from europe squashed between loud increasingly drunk russians...

grammar and coherent verbalization are not my priorities at the moment :)

we went to dresden to visit toni's little sister ...

... and it was super beautiful.

food blogger for a day

i'll just tell you off the bat that the cake[s] were a HUGE success.


the chocolate zucchini cake was divinity. i used applesauce with a bit of maple syrup, cinnamon, and nutmeg to substitute for the apple butter, and toni chopped up ritter sport 50% cacao bars for the chocolate chips. AMAZING. i think i may just do the ritter sport thing back in the US, even with the option of chocolate chips. because seriously - the germans do chocolate right.

i put an uber creamy cream cheese frosting on it, which was divine. toni's flatmates have already commissioned my services for january for the next birthday in the apartment. this cake alone will now be responsible for my multiple trips back to deutschland. thanks ginger! :)

and so the tradition in germany is that you eat cake for breakfast on your bday, and since this chocolate cake of divinity was for the lovely dinner party last night, toni and i decided to make yet another cake yesterday to enjoy this morning. so this is what our breakfast table looked like:


french apple tart from allrecipes.com. SO GOOD. make it. for real. you won't be disappointed.

let it be said that this my first time:
1. making a cake from scratch
2. making any kind of pastry dough/pie/tart crust from scratch

and yet they both turned out amazing. i owe this to 2 factors:
1. heavenly recipes that i dutifully followed [ginger was SO RIGHT ON]
2. the subconscious skills i accrued from the dozens of cookie sessions at grammy's house growing up. yes grammy i remember! they were my favorite! and look how they payed off! :)



sigh. celebrating toni's birthday for the full weekend was uber fun. i will spare you all details, but to sum up:

it will be really hard to leave germany in 10 days.

*toni checking out the apple tart as it carmelized in the oven. DIVINE.