Festival of Noise 2010

Dear friends,

This 4th of July, I was honored to be able to perform a song with the best garage band this side of the Mississippi: Kleevage! In this second annual Festival of Noise, I performed "Gold Lion" by one of my fave bands, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs alongside my very great friends. A brave soul managed to record the whole thing, and you can see it here:

Kleevage does Gold Lion

Now I know why rock stars do what they do. Hooray for noise!!

The Happiest Place on Earth

No, I'm not talking about Disneyland, people. I'm talking about a place called The Chocolate Room. Conveniently located about 10 blocks walking distance from my apartment, The Chocolate Room is a magical wonderland devoted to, you guessed it, chocolate. I had the Dark Hot Chocolate, which was like drinking warm melted milk chocolate served in a cappuccino cup, followed by the Flourless Chocolate Cake with red raspberry sauce. It will take at least 6 hours for me to come down from all that sugar and caffeine, but it will have been WORTH IT! And of course I had to bring something home for Rich: a Chocolate Room special Peanut Butter and Jelly chocolate bar. My new Mecca!

Snowmaggedon

Lots of snow on the ground and more inches every hour. It's so lovely! Since I don't actually have to shovel anything or dig the car out and drive anywhere, it's not so bad. I feel for those that have to do those things!

In the Lap of Luxury

My dear husband knows what I like. For Christmas, he gave me a half-day package at Manhattan’s finest day spa: The Spa at Mandarin Oriental, New York. The spa is on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel at Columbus Circle, conveniently located next to Trump Towers with a phenomenal view of Manhattan and Central Park. To make it even more fabulous, my friend Tifani joined me.

The day began with a pickup via private car at my apartment in Brooklyn. When we arrived at the spa, we received a tour of the facilities, and then moved on the “Heat Experiences” which entailed a soak in the Jacuzzi, a tropical rain forest shower, and a steam in the Amethyst Steam Room. After the steam we were perfectly relaxed, so we retired to the Tea Lounge to wait for our therapy technicians to fetch each of us for our treatments.


The half spa day entails a 2-hour something blissful called a Time Ritual, a bento box lunch, and an 80 minute facial. The Time Ritual began with a footbath, followed by a brushing of the skin with a dry bristle brush to improve circulation and skin tone and an apricot and peppermint oil scrub to exfoliate and rejuvenate. After the scrub was an unbelievably fabulous 80-minute deep tissue massage.

Following the amazing Time Ritual was the bento box lunch. Again, the spa did not disappoint. Lunch consisted of a 5-course meal that included red grapefruit slices, mesclun salad, tomato and fresh mozzarella, scallops and asparagus topped with a pineapple salsa, and a dollop of crème fraiche with strawberries. Served with the Mandarin Oriental’s special chef’s blend antioxidant berry tea. Are you kidding me? It was amazing!!


After lunch, it was my turn for the 80 minute facial. I don’t remember much since it was so relaxing that I slept through most of it. But when I emerged my skin was smooth and glowing like I’ve never seen it.


It was such a luxurious experience and I savored every moment of it. Since the Mandarin Oriental was kind enough to share their recipe for the delicious berry tea with us, I will share it with you so that we can all indulge in a little savory luxury:

Chef’s Tea from the Mandarin Oriental NY
6 cups water
4 tbsp Mountain Berry Tea
½ mango chopped
1 stalk lemongrass
½ cup honey
1 inch fresh ginger, sliced
1 slice of lime
1 slice of lemon

Steep together for 15-30 minutes and enjoy!

* Images courtesy of Tifani, the fabulous photojournalist.

I Believe I Can Fly

On New Year's Day, Rich, Mark, Tifani and I took a Flying Trapeze class at Trapeze School New York. This event was my birthday gift to Rich as I thought it would a fun and unique experience for all of us. We were all pretty excited about it until we got there and realized what we were being asked to do. Jump off a 23 foot platform? Dangle from your knees? Do a FLIP?

For the first half of the class, everyone - including myself - was pretty ticked at me for making them do it. But by the end, we agreed that it was such a cool and exhilarating experience that we want to go do it again.

Tifani took some awesome video of Rich and I performing our final task of the class - making a catch!!

The Blizzard of Aught Nine

For all of the hype, the snow storm was fairly tame in our area. Compared to the Icy Enema of Aught Eight that we experienced in Hood River last December, this thing was little more than snow flurry.

But, the several inches it deposited in the New York area did cause traffic snarls, power outages, airport delays, school closures, and generalized anxiety amongst people up and down the eastern seaboard. It caused Buster to frolic in the snow, and caused me to bundle up scarves, gloves AND mittens, hats AND earmuffs and my warmest coat. It also caused our neighborhood to look especially Christmas-y, beautiful and clean, blanketed in white.

Thievery

Farewell sweet bike. I will fondly remember the 8 years we had together. Your name was "Specialized Rockhopper," and you were indeed special to me. You were a hybrid, able to navigate both pavement and mountain trails, although you weren't particularly efficient at either. No matter...I loved you just the same.

Our morning rides to work around Monterey Bay were challenging but exquisitely beautiful. We spent some quality time together in New Mexico. When we moved to the northwest together, you introduced me to Syncline and then went on to carry me around Post Canyon. One time you took me on a crazy adventure down Coyote. That was nuts.

Even though you were a western gal, I thought you would have a happy life in New York City! I was looking forward to you and I sharing rides through the park come springtime, and maybe even a trip upstate together in the summer.

Now someone has snatched you from me, like a thief in the night. Actually, it was a thief in the night. And if I find that person, I will push them off of you, kick them, and claim you once again.

Dear Specialized Rockhopper, I will miss you and I hope that your new life is at least as sweet as the one we had together. And I hope you give your new owner massive saddle sores.

Catching Up

It's been a while since I posted last but that's because so much has been going on! My friend Kristi came for a visit, and since she is an amazing chef, we had a great time sampling much of New York's fine cuisine. We ate French, Peruvian, Indian, British, Mediterranean, and wholesome Farm to Table foods while she was here. We visited the Chelsea Market (known for its exotic foodstuffs), walked around SoHo, explored Brooklyn, and visited Rockefeller Center to see the big tree lit up at night.

PSA - It wasn't me!!

Breaking bulletin...the Tabitha from Brooklyn, NY that emailed the Today show for advice about her finances in her "friendly" divorce is NOT me!! My jaw hit the floor as I'm going about my business this morning and hear Al Roker say my name on television.

We are very happy, we have not maxed out our credit card, and we are not getting a divorce (friendly or otherwise). Not me!

Thanksgiving at the Jersey Shore

We walked the boardwalk and played a rousing game of skee ball.





There were many starfish washed up on the shore.



Buster loves the beach.



We had so much fun! The beach was beautiful, but cold.

You Are What You Eat

Thursday night I attended a reading and discussion session with Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals. Jonathan is a fellow resident of Park Slope, and was presenting his book in support of the Community Bookstore, which is a wonderful privately owned establishment here in the neighborhood.

There are some thorough reviews of Eating Animals, written from different perspectives. Links to a few of the best are below:

New York Times Books: Hungry?
The Washington Post: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Animal Farm
USA Today: Ready for Dog Stew?
Natalie Portman: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan

Omnivore, Vegetarian, Vegan, Human Being, I encourage you to read this book. The subject of eating animals is provocative. The issue is fraught with emotion and conversations can often become divisive, with meat eaters on one side and those who would eschew meat on the other. That is a shame, because that division obscures the facts. Unless one is a sadist, as humans we can all agree that animal cruelty in any form – even one that is sanctioned, subsidized, and supported in every supermarket across America – is just wrong.

The realities of factory farming are beyond cruel, and are so far removed from the pastoral image of Old Mac Donald’s farm that we all grew up with. This transition from humane family farming to ‘crank ‘em out at any cost’ factory farming has happened so rapidly and subtly that none of us really knew what was happening.

Safran Foer spent 3 years exhaustively researching (his statistics are backed up with 70 pages of footnote citations) the truths of factory farming. And the reality is that the cost the factory farming industry exacts on the environment, the land, the animals, and ultimately the consumers of the meat products that it spits out is too high for any of us to continue to pay. It’s time to know the facts and make important choices about where our food comes from. Too much is at steak.

Mama Mia!

My Mom was here for a visit this past weekend and did we ever have fun! We visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the famous Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, we strolled along Central Park, took Buster to Prospect Park, explored the shops and boutiques of Brooklyn, and spent a marathon day shopping in SoHo and NoLita.

A Painfully Obvious Tip for the Painfully Naive

Here's a tip for those who are new to life in New York: If you live in Brooklyn and decide to leave town for the weekend, make sure that you don't try to drive home to Brooklyn during the New York City marathon.

This tip brought to you by me, Chairperson of the Association for Horrendously Apparent Truths (AssHATs).

I Recall Central Park in Fall

A perfect day.

Colors from Nature

My hair grows really fast. I credit this feature to my dad’s side of the family: the Orlandos all have thick and lush heads of hair that tend to go rather prematurely grey.

I haven’t seen more than an inch of my own natural hair color since I was 13. I’ve colored my hair for years, sometimes myself, but more often I have sought out wonderful stylists with artistic vision who could bring out the very best of my head suit.

Since moving here, I’ve visited one salon and it was an OK experience but at a high cost. And unlike at my beloved Salon Visio in Hood River, I WASN’T offered a delicious and soothing cup of tea, I WASN’T treated to a world-class head and neck massage, and my stylist WASN’T paying attention when I described to her what I wanted.

Now, New York is a mecca for world-class salons and stylists. The tricky business is that they are also some of the priciest salons and stylists. While I don’t mind paying good money for great hair, my hair grows just a little too quickly to pay top dollar for a touch up every 4-6 weeks.

With my mousy, ashy blond roots starting to show I decided to save a few bucks and touch up my color at home. This can be a risky endeavor, so I conducted lots of research. Drugstore color can be really damaging to the hair and also not provide the results one is hoping for. The worst-case scenario would be to color at home and then still have to go to the salon to pay for a color correction.

After reading through tons of reviews on my favorite beauty product review web site, Makeup Alley, I decided to try Naturcolor. Naturcolor is a low peroxide dye (only 3% so it can’t really lighten the hair) formulated from herbal extracts that is really gentle on the hair, the body, and the environment. It’s made in Italy and is only carried in health food stores – I found it at the Whole Foods in SoHo.

After calling the 800 customer service number and consulting about my desired effect, I decided to mix two colors in order to get a rich, dimensional auburn color. You can see in the picture above that is exactly what I got! And my hair is seriously silky, shiny, and soft. Naturcolor is THE best at-home color I have tried.

I’ll have fun finding and trying another salon next month. In the meantime, I’ve found a great way to stretch my style budget.

The Real Joy of Cooking

I just love to cook. Partly because following a recipe is so much fun - measuring and chopping and mixing feels a lot like playing with my food. I also enjoy cooking because I love to eat, and nothing tastes as delicious as a meal made at home with fresh ingredients. Lastly, I relish the act of cooking because the process always makes me think of so many wonderful people in my life.

For example, tonight I cooked a cauliflower curry recipe from my Moosewood cookbook. Since becoming a vegetarian, the Moosewood has been my go-to source for delicious and nutritious vegetarian recipes. My particular copy of the cookbook came to me from the library of my dear Aunt Jan. She must have enjoyed the book as well because it is dog-eared and has notes on some of the pages. It is special to me to have something that she liked so much.

The Moosewood cookbook is a compendium of recipes from the famous Moosewood vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, New York. My friend Chesua is from Ithaca, and my stepfather Steve is from a city nearby.

The last time I cooked a new recipe entirely from scratch, it was an attempt to reproduce a truly mind-blowing macaroni and cheese dish that my friend Jen made for a party at her house. Jen likes to cook, too, and we all love it when we get invited to Jen's house for dinner. My mac and cheese tasted good, but not as good as Jen's. She's got the knack.

The pots and pans that I used tonight to fry the onions and simmer the curry were wedding gifts from my uncle Dave and his family. Both Dave and his wife Michele are such amazing cooks that the word "cook" doesn't really apply. They are Chefs - artists of the kitchen who are gifted with a flair for flavor and can concoct exotic dishes without recipes.

As I moved through the step-by-step instructions of my recipe, I remembered the advice of my grandmother to "clean as you go." A tidy kitchen makes the reward at the end of the process - relaxing and tasting the fruits of your labor - that much more enjoyable.

As the heady aroma of curry filled the house, I thought about my high school friend Carrie. Carrie now lives in India with her husband, and just had her first baby boy. Carrie eats a lot of curry and vegetarian dishes these days, but would kill for some fresh avocados like the one I had for lunch earlier in the day.

In the end, my Cauliflower Curry turned out beautifully. I served it over rice and lentils and topped it with raisins. Rich and I both found it to be delicious...spicy and sweet with the perfect amount of heat. It was, as with many of the dishes that I have tried from Moosewood, one of the most successful recipes I've ever followed.

My love of cooking isn't just about the steps on the page, learning what flavors work together, or even the tasty end result. The best part is having people I love along for the ride in my mind as I twirl through the kitchen stirring this pot and chopping that veggie. It's a dinner party and everyone's invited!

Shoutout: Stone Park Cafe

Today was a cold and rainy day in Brooklyn - the perfect day to sleep late and go out for brunch. At the end of our street is a cute spot called Stone Park Cafe, and I've been wanting check it out since we first moved here. Since they are only open for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays at 10 AM (they are open for lunch and dinner during the week beginning at 2:30), it took us this long to get a slow enough start out the door to make brunch make sense. Seriously, we've been wondering why everyone sleeps so late in Brooklyn! If I don't have breakfast by 9 AM, then you don't want to know me.

Anyway, we finally made it there today and MAN...it was totally worth the wait. I had the sourdough french toast with fresh berry compote and Vermont maple syrup. Rich had the eggs benedict. It was, without a doubt, one of the top 3 breakfasts in my life. The service was attentive, the food was outstanding, and the coffee was rich and piping hot.

Hey Stone Park Cafe...HOLLA and thanks for the brunch!

True, true.

Spotted on Union St. in Brooklyn.

But What Rhymes With Ektorp?

Today's post is dedicated to my new friend, IKEA. Thanks to IKEA in Redhook, Brooklyn, we are no longer resigned to sitting on the floor. Having sold our big sofa prior to moving here, Rich and I found ourselves seat-less in our new apartment. Which was fun for the first 3 days, but quickly became a major pain in the butt. Literally.

Hearing all kinds of stories about how long it takes to have furniture delivered in New York, I was prepared to continue sitting on the *hard*wood floor for at least 6 more weeks. I spent hours upon hours (hey, I'm unemployed...why not?) conducting tireless internet research on sofas, dimensions, and delivery options. At long last, I narrowed our sofa search down to these handsome specimens: Pottery Barn's Charleston, Crate & Barrel's Lounge, and IKEA's Ektorp (which looks similar to the Charleston and costs about half as much).

It took a while to make the decision, what with the debates about quality vs. cost. In the end, the deciding factor was size. It turns out that the doorways in our old brownstone apartment are too narrow for Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel's modern furniture dimensions. By process of elimination, the Ektorp won.

After taking the FREE shuttle to IKEA (departing every half hour from 9th St and 4th Ave!) I blew through the showroom and copied down the requisite Aisle and Bin numbers for my purchases. In the Self Serve Warehouse, I found a strapping young lad to help me load the Ektorp sofa, Ektorp ottoman, and a tall Billy bookcase onto my cart. After paying for my purchases, which in total came out to be less than the price of either of the other sofas, I steered my laden cart to IKEA's Home Delivery service area. And there I learned that for a marginal flat fee, all of my new purchases could be delivered bright and early in the morning the next day.

Sure enough, the next morning at 9:30 two delivery men showed up and carried all of the furniture up the 3 flights of stairs to our apartment! AWESOME!

I love you IKEA, for your efficiency, fair pricing, sleek design, clean cafeteria, and strong employees. Our sofa and ottoman are super comfortable and attractive additions to our apartment. I'm so happy I could write an Ode to IKEA, but what rhymes with Ektorp?

Tuesday at the Met

Today I went to the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art (aka The Met) with friends Bruna and Beth (above). Both Bruna and Beth's boyfriends are friends of Rich's from the Naval Academy. Since we are all recent transplants to NYC, we thought it would be fun to explore a little culture and spend some time in the company of women.

The Met is a wonderful art museum located on the upper east side of Manhattan, adjacent to Central Park. It houses a wonderful smattering of art from a range of time periods and geographic regions. The admission fee is on a sliding scale, so you can pay whatever donation you can afford. A nice way to help make art and culture accessible for all, no?

Together, Bruna, Beth and I took in a variety of artsy artifacts including ancient Egyptian sarcophagi, African canoe carvings, Medieval unicorn tapestries and early American Tiffany stained glass masterpieces. Also, there was the complete series of photographs from Robert Frank's "The Americans" as well as a special traveling exhibition of Vermeer's "The Milkmaid."

After having the incredible good fortune to spend the earlier part of this year in Italy's Uffizi, Accademia, and Vactican museums as well as France's Pompidou, Picasso museum, Musee d'Orsay and Versailles landmarks, you would think that I would have had my fill. Hardly! The more I see, the more I love and the more I learn about the history of the artistic urge. The desire to create seems - to me - to be as base as the desire to eat, to love, to wage war, and to reproduce. I am always humbled in the presence of so much beauty and inspiration...the lasting representations of the human spirit.

The only disappointment was that the famous Costume galleries were temporarily closed. I guess I'll be going back, because I can't miss that! Now, who's coming with me?