SICK :(

No adventures today, just resting to fight off a cold.  This seems to be the winter of the perpetual cold for me.  In the last two months, I think I've had more days with a cold than healthy days.  I'm hoping that I will develop resistance to so many cold viruses that I will never get sick again.  We'll see...

14th Street subway station

Okay, so I'm going to cheat a little bit.  I didn't really do anything blogworthy today--just some laundry, reading, and catching up with friends over the phone, so I'm going to post some pictures that I took earlier in the week.  The 14th St. subway station has these cute little bronze sculptures all over the place, which Brandon and I thought must have some sort of social commentary attached to them, because many of the sculptures involve moneybags and seem to represent "The Man" (so to speak) holding down the little guy.  Upon a little bit of research I found that these sculptures are part of a public art project called "Life Underground."  A couple of pictures that I took the other day are below, but you can see a more comprehensive collection of pictures at the artist's own website: http://www.tomostudio.com/exhibitions_subway.html
The entire collection can be seen here: http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/artwork_show?21

Brooklyn Flea

The Brooklyn flea market has moved indoors for the winter, and is in the space that formerly housed the Williamsburg savings bank.  A bit more elegant than your typical flea market environment.  We didn't end up buying anything, but we did have some good eats.  We shared a nice buttery lobster roll, a gourmet hot dog and some Salvadoran pupusas.  I would recommend going for the food, and if you are in the market for some vintage clothing, this is the place to go.

 

Brazilian party

Had a good night at Le Poisson Rouge; the live Brazilian music was just what I needed. Too tired to write anything more right now, but I'm going to try to post a short video.

BAMcafe

Went to check out a show at the BAMcafe tonight with Brandon and Aunt Diane. I was definitely impressed by the space-- it's large, has a nice vibe and a diverse crowd. The music itself was just alright. We went to see a guy named Blitz Ambassador, a Ghanaian-American hip-hop artist. The samples of his latest album sounded pretty cool when we listened to them the night before, but somehow the live performance didn't seem to do him justice. We're blaming our ambivalence on what seemed to be a poor sound system. The cupcakes were perhaps the highlight of the evening. They came from Everything Frosted, a bakery on Mosco St. in Chinatown. They have a lot of your traditional flavors like red velvet and chocolate, but also some Asian-inspired flavors such as green tea, red bean, and taro. They were quite good--a nice dense cake and a light frosting, and it was just sweet enough without being too sweet. Yum!

Making Magnets

Got crafty tonight making some fridge magnets out of flat glass marbles and pictures cut out of magazines. If you like them, ask me to send you some :)

Marumi and Milk and Cookies

Tonight I went with a friend to check out Marumi, a Japanese restaurant in the West Village. If you look at the window in the first picture, you will notice an "A" prominently displayed in the window. This is the city's new system for grading restaurants based on the health department inspection. A is good, B is less good and C is not all that good. So blog followers, do not be concerned about me, in this case the raw fish was in trustworthy hands. Having a little room leftover after a dinner of sushi and sukiyaki (pictured below) we braved the bitter cold to walk over to an establishment called Milk and Cookies. I had very high hopes for this place, and their cookies looked promising, but left us a bit underwhelmed. They were a bit too crunchy for my taste and did not contain enough chocolate. The best of the bunch was the chocolate chip cookie, but I'm afraid to say that it alone would not merit a trip back to this establishment. With each underwhelming bakery I try in New York City, my desire to open up my own bakery someday grows just a little bit stronger...

Rai Rai Ken

It's the perfect time of year for a couple of steaming hot bowls of ramen noodle soup. And these ain't your 25 cent packs of Maruchan ramen... The snow has already started--they say up to 10 inches tonight. Good thing I finally got a pair of snow boots!

Plenty o' pumpkin gingerbread

I have a feeling that food pictures will be featuring prominently on this blog. While I usually try to have interesting adventures over the weekend, during the week I mostly just go to work, do some errands and eat! (and sometimes bake). No one wants to read a blog about going to work and running errands, so eating and baking win by default. The dish du jour is pumpkin gingerbread, from a recipe I got at allrecipes.com: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pumpkin-Gingerbread/Detail.aspx

Cut down on the oil a little bit, add a little pumpkin pie spice and voila, a delicious winter treat!

Deep fried Oreos and a music festival

Today I did my arteries a disservice by consuming a burger, french fries, and for dessert... deep fried Oreos, a first for me. I think for me, eating deep fried Oreos is one of those experiences that I'm glad to have had once, but I don't feel the need to repeat again. I didn't care too much for the batter on the outside, and on the inside the Oreo becomes a little mushy upon frying. But it wasn't too bad with ice cream :)

But then I tried to dance off all of those deep fried Oreos at NYC globalfest, a music festival with artists from all over the world. There were a dozen different acts on three stages over five hours. All of them were pretty good, but the favorites were an Afro-Peruvian band, a band that played Indian Bhangra music and a band from Senegal. After all this fried food and dancing, I'm ready for some sleep!