who wants to go swimming?!?!
ME!!!!!!!!!!!!
My new summer romance, the Sol Goldman Pool in Red Hook.
2 comments July 17th, 2010
My new summer romance, the Sol Goldman Pool in Red Hook.
2 comments July 17th, 2010
This Sunday is Greek Easter (and happens to be regular Easter, too) and we are hosting a slightly smaller version of our yearly Greek Easter (Greekster?) dinner party. As usual, I am stoked to get out the Badavas/Lianides family recipes and have a great reason to head over to the Greek neighborhood of Astoria to do some shopping!
This year may prove to be the year that I actually get the traditional Greek Easter Red Eggs right! The past few years have been plagued with light pink, hot pink (both from red dye packets), and reddish brown (red onion skins) eggs — but never truly the reds that my YiaYia always managed to pull off with little difficulty. I realized too late into the game last year that the homemade egg dye was supposed to be made with YELLOW onion skins, not RED, and ended up pretty close to the mark, but with a slightly brownish tint. This year I am quite determined to get the perfect red eggs, and have the giant bag of yellow onions at the ready!
And then of course, once you have the red eggs, you have the best part of Greek Easter, the part that all of our guests eagerly await, competition singing through their veins — the Greek Easter Egg Battle!! WHO’S EGG WILL REIGN SUPREME??
Wish me luck!
Here’s a good recipe if you feel like giving it a whirl.
3 comments March 31st, 2010
This almost-too-amazing-to-be-real shot is from the streets of Tokyo, in the Nakameguro district, and the Sakura (cherry blossom) trees are in full bloom. Although I don’t have a plane ticket to Tokyo in my hand, I luckily do live 1.5 blocks away from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden where the cherry blossoms are starting to gear up and will be hitting their stride starting next week. Somehow last year I neglected to actually get into the Gardens themselves to witness the insanity, but this year it’s number 1 with a bullet on my list of must do’s in April.
1. See the Cherry Blossoms in Botanic Garden
2. Get a job.
At least I’ve got my priorities straight!
2 comments March 29th, 2010

and then proceeds to clear the 1 foot of snow off the car with a plastic dustpan and an old frying pan
3 comments February 26th, 2010
I saw John Murphy at the Brooklyn Flea on the first weekend it was at One Hanson, and ended up in front of his table going through all the art and fawning over the amazing frames for about 20 minutes. I don’t know why, but I didn’t even bother to ask if he actually sold the frames separately at that point–and when I saw on Design*Sponge that he did, I was stoked! They are incredibly awesome, and the pictures on the site don’t even do them any justice compared to the real thing. If I could, I would make a whole wall out of these frames, with or without art in them.
1 comment January 27th, 2010
Scrolling through the ever-so-awesome Pinball Publishing blog, Coin-Op, I found these perfect little beer tasting notebooks made by BS Brewing, a Portland, Oregon homebrewing and extreme food collective. As I am prepping for my 2nd Homebrewer’s Tour coming up this weekend, I thought they would come in quite handy and ordered myself a 3 pack.
Get some for yourself, or the beer aficionado in your life. They are pure beer-related design-y goodness (and have YELLOW. I LOVE yellow). Not much is better than that.
33 Beers: Beer Journal Extraordinaire
1 comment January 19th, 2010
We have done the un-doable–made homemade Seattle-style chicken teriyaki that is JUST AS GOOD as our beloved Tokyo Garden in the U District, from 3,000 miles away. We got insanely lucky that the recipe the NY Times just happened to include in it’s article about the beloved Teriyaki joints of Seattle is from our go-to, absolute favorite spot. Which is pretty crazy, considering there are approximately 3,000 teriyaki joints in the Metro Seattle area. So happy.
This was a 2 day process, but every hour of waiting was well worth it. Chicken thighs from Fairway, ginger and garlic from the veg stand around the corner, and the ever-present Kikkoman soy sauce from the fridge = pure teriyaki bliss.
With this fail-safe recipe in our hands, we can now put our money where our teriyaki is and move to Mexico and open a teriyaki joint to cater to all those gringos from the PacNW who get tired of tacos down in Sayulita.
2 comments January 12th, 2010
We went to the Brooklyn Flea yesterday to check it out in its new winter digs, the old Williamsburgh Bank Building. And I am so glad we did! That building is INCREDIBLE and practically on par with Grand Central station. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it is truly some beautiful craftsmanship and art. They don’t make buildings like this anymore. So Fancy.
And what’s even MORE exciting is that we actually bought something there! A piece of furniture, even! It’s an old school desk from the 1940′s, made of pine, with a bench seat on the front and desk attached to the back. I was drawn to it because my grandparents always had one of these benches in their home to sit on to take your shoes off, and it was the exact same wood. It’s funny to feel my home aesthetic coming together, however slowly. I’m much more New England-y than I thought!
2 comments January 11th, 2010
Finally finished trimming the tree last night, watched a Charlie Brown Christmas and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and cut snowflakes out for the windows for a couple of hours with the hubs. Must say, the apartment is looking pretty festive! Every year I’m always shocked at my own levels of holiday shlocky-ness. I rarely go for the tastefully understated look–I go straight kid dreams with a tree covered with every decoration we have (and tinsel, pre-cats) and paper snowflakes covering most window surfaces.
Dave found this handy guide to cutting 6-point snow flakes out last night and I’d figured I’d share it in case anyone had the hankering. Well, it’s really 6-point stars that we turned into snowflakes. It was more interesting than the plain 6-point snowflake directions. Enjoy!!
Found at HighHopes, Six-point Star.
2 comments December 11th, 2009
The seed has been planted for a holiday cookie swap and I am SO IN. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, and am ready to get the baking on. Clicking through the internets this morning I saw Serious Eats guide to the Cookie Swap and how to reign supreme, and feel even more bolstered in my skillz. Freezer cookies, here I come!
Read the Guide here at Serious Eats.
2 comments December 8th, 2009
Tonight was the 3rd installation of Tightwad Tuesday, an informal, off-the-cuff happenstance that came about after getting together to eat Mac and Cheese with friends, and realizing that spending $10-15 per person at a restaurant can be just as fun as getting together for those ridiculously priced meals from my employed days. Almost. But then again, better, since they happen more often!
So far we have eaten at MacBar, where we ordered 6 different small mac and cheeses and rotated them among the 5 of us, commenting on each. My favorite was the chipotle chicken mac and cheese–that was the only one I could have eaten the whole thing of! The rest were delicious but RICH. It’s definitely a place fit for sharing, so grab friends, order up and be fuuullll.
MacBar, 54 Prince Street, NoLita www.macbar.net
Week 2 was dinner at Bark Hot Dogs, not too far from my neck of the woods. We shared disco fries, killer onion rings and a growler of their special-made Sixpoint brew, the Bark Red Ale. That beer is de-lic-ious! So was my dog, which I got with 3 different types of pickles on top. I’d definitely go back and have another hot dog if I’m in the hood.
Bark Hot Dogs, 474 Bergen Street, Prospect Heights-ish, Brooklyn www.barkhotdogs.com
Tonight we hit up Baoguette/PhoSure in the West Village. I’d been particularly craving Asian food, so it totally hit the spot. We shared the Hue’s Summer rolls and an order of fried Spring rolls, then moved on to the Pho/Banh Mi. I had the Sloppy Bao sandwich, their take on the Sloppy Joe which was pretty darn tasty. I definitely want to head back to try the Pho, though it will never beat the Than Bros in Seattle. No one can–that place has truly ruined me for all other Pho, for the rest of my life.
Baoguette/PhoSure, 120 Christopher Street, West Village www.baoguettecafe.com
What’s next on the list??!
1 comment December 1st, 2009
I had to steal this from my co-hort here at Ways&Means, mr. ladiesloveoutlaws, Salah Mason.
Kalani does some awesome designs, and I want some tees, bad.
But my favorite thing on his site has to be this custom invitation. This thing rules.
check out his site at kalanifujimori.com.
his tumblr blog is here & his food blog, Kalanipig, here, too.
November 17th, 2009
Happiness was my dinner last night at Lomzynianka… This was one of our mainstays when we lived in Little Poland, aka, Greenpoint and we celebrated many a good time there, gorging on cheap but perfect Polish comfort foods, and drinking Zywiec beer bought in from the bodega on the corner.
The only bad thing about last night is that in my fervor and excitement I had to order ALL of my favorite items which left me in a state of Polish food mental slurriness.
I’ll take it!
November 14th, 2009
Yesterday I was lucky enough to spend the day on a Brooklyn Homebrew Tour, led by the courageous beer aficionado Joshua Bernstein. I say ‘courageous’ as you’d have to be in order to lead 25 progressively drunker beer nerds throughout the borough of Brooklyn via subway, herding them into apartments to taste the projects of 4 different homebrewers.
It was an awesome time, and the beers were amazing. Here is a general list stolen from Julie, as I was too, uh, distracted to keep track of what was going down: Red Ale, Oatmeal Stout, Pumpkin Ale, a really delicious lemony IPA, Aventinus, Bourbon Vanilla Porter, an uber hoppy snappy IPA, Blond Ale, Rye IPA, California Common.
Best. Idea. Ever.
update: Read the article written by the Village Voice writer who came along on the tour, Beer Here! A Report from the Brooklyn Homebrewer’s Tour
1 comment November 9th, 2009
I am loving on Andy Pratt’s designs today. I really, really appreciate the line drawings in his Location Collection, and see a couple of possible holiday gifts there in the mix. He’s also got tons of other cool cards and prints, and anyone who is a friend of the Scout Book is a friend of mine.
Check out his website here, and his SuperMarket shop here.
4 comments November 3rd, 2009