Wonder warmers

Not really trying to do a product placement here, but I just had to put a picture of these amazing little guys on my blog.  Brandon got me a pair of these hand warmers for Christmas, and I have to say, this is definitely a winter made for hand warmers.  When they are in the liquid state, you simply bend the little stainless steel disc inside and instantly the solution inside crystallizes generating heat that lasts for about 45 min.  Slip 'em inside your gloves or drop 'em in your pockets and you are good to go.  The best thing about them is that they are reusable.  Just wrap them in a towel, put them in a pot of boiling water for about 10 minutes, and they return to their original liquid state as pictured above.

Red Baraat and a snow day

So, I spoke too soon yesterday when I downplayed the possibility of a snow day today.  Unfortunately, I didn't find out that it was a snow day until after I had arrived at work.  So I stuck around for a while and went home around 2:00.  

In the evening we went to see Red Baraat, one of the groups we liked from GlobalFest.  They were playing at  a club in Brooklyn.  All was well until I stepped in an ankle deep slush puddle with my sneakers on.

Winter wonderland

Pretty serious snow coming down outside.  Probability of me having a snow day tomorrow=next to nothing

Tacos

Made tacos tonight and made tortillas from scratch.  Much better than the store bought variety, and not too time consuming either.

Chocolate PB cookies

In a previous NYC adventure (pre-blog) I went to the Upper West Side to consume what I was told are the best cookies in the city, from Levain bakery.  And I was sold.  If you like warm, gooey cookies, this is the place for you.  A disclaimer, they are like paperweights, so consuming a whole cookie in one sitting is not advised.  If you have never had these cookies, you should go get some.  The only offer four cookie varieties, of which I have tried three, and my personal favorite is the dark chocolate peanut butter chip.  I have since been attempting to replicate the cookies, without much success.  If you go to Levain's website, they don't provide their recipe, but they have a link to some websites that have copycat recipes.  The first recipe that I tried didn't impress me too much--not enough chocolate flavor.  So this time I went back to my old standby, allrecipes.com, and found a recipe for choc PB chip cookies that had instant chocolate pudding mix in the dough.  I was much happier with these cookies, but they are still no Levain's.  sigh....  

A taste of the tropics

Today we ventured out to the Bronx to check out the New York Botanical Garden's Caribbean plant exhibit.  Surrounded by snow and ice, spending an afternoon in a simulated tropical environment was sounding pretty good.  We took Brandon's SLR camera along to try and pretend to be professional photographers :)

              

 

For dinner, we went to Washington Heights to check out a Venezuelan place, Cachapas y Mas, that I have been wanting to try.  We tried a cachapa (a sandwich with two pieces of arepa-like cornbread instead of regular bread), a patacon (a sandwich with tostones instead of bread) and a tacucho (similar to a burrito).  Pictured below are the cachapa (top left), the patacon (bottom) and tacucho (top right).

NY Transit Museum

Who would you rather have as your bus driver?

Going to the NY Transit museum may not be at the top of everyone's to-do list while in New York City, but sometimes in the middle of January you find yourself at a loss for something to do and you brave the cold to walk on over to the Transit museum.  And actually, it ain't too bad.  The museum is an actual working subway station, though trains do not come through there anymore.  You can learn a little something about how the subway tunnels were constructed, what the old turnstiles and tokens were like, and you can play around in some old (sorry, "vintage") subway cars.  Fun fact for the day: there is a large, powerful vacuum hose that the MTA uses to extract the coins from the bus fare boxes.

Winter indoor picnic and milkshakes

    

    

Now that the weather outside is *freezing* and we can no longer hang out outside in parks, we decided to check out some of NYC's indoor public spaces and have a burger picnic.  This one is at 60 Wall Street.  There is a large atrium with palm trees, tables and chairs and an ice cream shop.  Overall, not bad, but a little chilly and not as nice as the winter garden at the World Financial Center.  In the second set of pictures, we are making milkshakes with my uncle's fancy and professional-looking milkshake machine.  Fancy and professional tasting too :)

Shanghai cuisine

Baking bread

Tonight I took a second crack at homemade baguettes.  The first time I made them the taste was good, but they didn't come out with that nice crispy crust with the soft inside that makes French baguettes so delicious.  I did a bit of research and found out that one key to developing that crispy crust is to make sure that the oven has plenty of steam, especially at the beginning.  Apparently, the ovens of professional bread bakers are equipped with steam injectors to keep the oven humid at the appropriate points in the baking process.  So, before putting the bread in the oven I used a spray bottle to spray the sides and the bottom of the oven, and then did two or three more sprays into the oven during the first ten minutes of baking.  This time they came out with a much better crust on the outside.  I still think the bread could use a bit more flavor, so there is more tweaking to be done, but overall much better than my first attempt.