Saturday night, I rounded up the troops for a rare night out in Brooklyn and convinced Wife, Ted, and Kate to try brook-vin, a newish wine bar just blocks away from my apartment.

I love everything about how this place looks. I always walk by brook-vin after work/class and wish I had time to go bask in the warm lighting and exposed brick walls and lush garden instead of going home and to bed. It seems cozy and charming inside, so I’ve been dying to try it even though I don’t even drink wine!

Wife and I had a little photo shoot:

And then we all moved out to the garden to take advantage of the unseasonably cool and comfortable weather.

Wife and Ted engaged in intense philosophical discussion (I’m not even being sarcastic here) regarding drink selection:

And I enjoyed the scenery some more because I like to keep things superficial and non-taxing on the weekends!

Wife and Ted ordered wine, Kate ordered the raspberry ginger lemonade (house infused raspberry vodka with house infused ginger lemonade), and I ordered the Spanish 75 (house infused strawberry gin, lemon juice, framboises topped with Cava):

My drink was lovely — very fizzy and refreshing without any sort of sickening sweetness.

And I felt the burn immediately from it, too. I stood up to go to the bathroom and had to pause for a moment to get my bearings. That did not used to happen to me after only three sips. I’m such an old lady!

For dinner, Kate and I shared the shaved vegetable salad with peas, mint, and reggiano:

I loved the paper-thin slices of veggies, especially the beets (not to mention the big mountain of reggiano on top).

Kate and I also split the tartine with Salvatore Brooklyn ricotta, roasted cherry tomatoes, aged balsamic, and basil (though I think it was actually cilantro):

Wife and Ted shared the tartine with white beans, fennel salad, piquillo peppers, and smoked paprika oil:

Along with the panzanella salad (local tomatoes, bread, capers, oil):

Wife and Ted were actually a bit underwhelmed by their selections and agreed that Kate and I had picked the winners of the evening. I loved what we ordered. It made me want to go back to brook-vin every night!

We enjoyed chatting for a couple hours as the sun set and all the pretty lights came on:

After dinner, Kate headed home, but Wife, Ted, and I took a little stroll farther down the street for some yogo monster:

I ordered a small tart original with kiwi, chocolate chips, and coconut. Ted treated, awwwww. What perfect house guests!

That makes, what, the 17th frozen yogurt I’ve eaten in the past week?? I ended up sharing half with Wife and Ted because they had only split a small between the two of them.

Other snacks of the weekend, courtesy of my guests, included a piece of this fruit leather (along with unpictured tapioca ball tea in Hanco’s):

And rice crackers with light sheep’s milk feta:

I also received this special delivery (another expandable bag, yayyyyyy!!! as you’ve seen, I use these allll the time) from Leslie at Jackson’s World because I won her Envirosax giveaway:

How many times would you eat frozen yogurt/ice cream in one week?

Saturday morning, I was up nice and early for my amended Saturday routine. Kate had emailed on Friday suggesting that we check out this event in place of our usual hot yoga class. Free stuff? I am there!

While Wife and Ted slept on, I got myself psyched for early morning exercise with part two of my Amazing Grass adventure:



Unlike the packet I tried Friday that had other grasses and fruits, this packet was 100% wheat grass powder.



It was greener and grassier and not really sweet at all, but I was a fan again! I think something about eating cool whip straight from the tub Friday may have re-wired my taste buds to crave grass.



Wife woke up, so we just had time for a little chat before I had to go meet Kate. The Women’s Health event was held at Pier 46, a gorgeous spot in the West Village right on the Hudson. Any time I’m near water, I can’t help taking scenery pics!







Our plan was to attend the 10:30 Lyrical Vinyasa class (part of the event was free Crunch classes all day long — too bad we didn’t have more time!), but it was full already, so we contented ourselves with some free sampling from Edy’s new Yogurt Blends line.



Nothing like froyo-for-breakfast (the theme of my week, apparently).



I had one of each of course. It was delicious and creamy and perfect 😀





Free photoboothing with gourmet sunglasses:



And free trampoline-bungee jumping!

I actually managed to flip over backwards! And more than once!

I did it until the froyo in my belly got angry, at which point I kindly asked to be released.

After the event, Kate and I speed-walked through the sun-dappled West Village streets (yet another place I can only dream of living):

And a street fair where I had a little sample of Amy’s bread:

And the subway system until we made it to CSA pickup just in the nick of time:

This week, we each got tons of mesclun, 1/2 head of green lettuce, 1/2 bunch frisee, 1/2 bunch kale, 2 cucumbers (one green, one white), 1/2 kohl rabi, 1/2 lb zucchini, 1/2 lb yellow/pattypan squash, 1/2 lb cherries, 1/2 pint blueberries, and 3 eggs.

I’d never heard of or seen a kohl rabi before, but apparently it is also known as a German turnip and is a member of the cabbage family.



After the CSA pickup, I was finally able to make it to the library during open hours so I could return a wayyyyyy overdue book and renew my library card. Phew! It felt so good to get all of that taken care of. I made myself a big yummy salad for lunch and then set to work getting ready for the evening!

What is your experience with bungee cords (i.e. bungee-jumping, using them to tie stuff to the roof of your car, etc.)? I went bungee-jumping for real at my brother’s 2002 wedding in Costa Rica. It was fun, but it was definitely one of those things that I was happy to cross off my list so I never had to do it again …

I’ve done it. I’ve jumped on the train.

The Amazing Grass train, that is!

Friday morning, I knew that the big breakfast was coming up at work, so I needed something to hold me over and keep me busy until it started. Enter Green SuperFood packet:

I’ve been hearing so many wretched things about the taste of this stuff, so I was all set to blend in bananas and blueberries if needed. I sniffed the powder. It smelled green.

I mixed in about two cups of water and shook.

… And I actually liked it! It definitely tasted green, but it was sweeter than I had expected (almost a little too sweet, really). I can see how these would be an excellent between-meals or pre-workout snack. The flavor was mild and fresh and offered a nice contrast to all the junk I’ve been eating lately!

Moving on, when I left work on Friday, I ran into my coworker Erik on the subway. He lives out near me in Brooklyn and was heading to Prospect Park for another Celebrate Brooklyn show with Los Amigos Invisibles and Aterciopelados. (I don’t know either band, but yay for Spanish!) I was on the fence about going since I had lots to do in my apartment (in addition to greeting Wife and Ted, my house guests for the weekend), so I just dropped Erik off where he needed to get in line and headed home to assess the situation and make sure everything was under control.

As I mentioned earlier, I arrived to quite the array of presents from my “spouses.”

First, Wife brought me a delayed Christmas present: a handmade poster of all the places we went the summer we lived in Ireland (5 years ago, ack!). Next, she brought me a bag of homemade blueberry scones and a bag of homemade blueberry muffins from her berry-picking adventure with Ted last weekend. I had a couple crumbs from a smushed piece, mmmmmmm. They’re all in my freezer now. I can’t wait to eat them for real!

And last but not least, they brought me a little package of fruit-shaped marzapan, straight from Sicily where they visited a few weeks ago!

I loooooooooooooooooove marzapan and I love fruit, so I was excited about this package. I broke into the little orange right away:

Maybe I should be a food sculptor (in my time off from traveling the world saving babies). I think it would be so fun to play with marzapan.

Wife and Ted headed out to meet some of Wife’s friends nearby, and I got a text from Erik that he had randomly run into two of our other coworkers, Ray and Jose (and Ray’s wife Alicia), at the park. OK, NYC is a shockingly small world, but it’s not that small. I don’t usually run into people from East Harlem in Brooklyn, and especially not at such a packed event! As I said to Erik, I clearly needed to scoot over to the park since the entire male population of my workplace was there. I located the boys and plopped myself down on a little square of lawn.

The Colombian band Aterciopelados was up first. They were a crazily eclectic band covering all sorts of genres and just seemed like very unique people in general. Look at those snake-shaped mic stands!

The second band, Los Amigos Invisibles, was a Venezuelan party band that also spanned a million genres from disco to meringue. The audience was holding up cell phones in place of lighters. Ohhhhh, technology.

And here I am with the boys: Ray, Jose, and Erik.

It was a lovely way to spend such a gorgeous night, and it’s a rare experience that allows me to be in the minority as a female (just a teeny teeny drawback to the social work profession overall). I did not mind the change of scene one bit!

Do you prefer to drink grass or sit on grass?

Because I learn so well from past mistakes, I thought it would be a smart idea again to begin a kitchen project when I got home from class on Thursday at 10:15 pm. We had a department breakfast planned for Friday morning and, in typical fashion, I didn’t want to buy anything new or create any additional food, especially with the overabundance I’ve been experiencing this week! So, I got up to my old tricks …

The freezer collection:



(A batch of mom’s kitchen sink muffins on the left and a mountain of work/event overflow on the right, including corn muffins, berry muffins, zucchini muffins, and danishes)

The batter:



(1 banana, 2 eggs, 1 cup water, baking soda, baking powder … immersion-blended of course)

In went the muffin pieces:



I also added a hefty scoop of this Once Again peanut butter I won from An Apple a Day:



I have to say that I don’t love this peanut butter. I can actually taste the flax oil in it, but it was good for blending into batter.

Once everything was blended together, I gradually added water until the batter was pourable:



And then I poured 🙂

Onto a parchment lined baking sheet:



And into muffin tins:



I baked it all at 400 until a toothpick came out clean, 20-45 minutes. I ended up with halfway healthy pancakes and muffins:



Which made their way to the Friday morning department breakfast at work:



They soon vanished, as did everything else by the end of the day 😀

My breakfast of Pansy’s homemade white fish fritters, French bread from Belkis, Maria’s spicy eggs, mangu(!!) from Rosalie, and fruit salad with Cool Whip from Mildred:



Erik topped a muffin with maple syrup AND cool whip, and I was impressed with his enthusiastic food combining (he also put a babybel cheese in the bagel and microwaved it — so smart!):



(Deborah was also impressed, as communicated by her disembodied peace sign.)

Again, by the end of the day, nothing was left. Mostly because I sit next to the conference room table where everything was begging to be eaten.



I won’t lie. I dipped plantain chips right into the tub of cool whip.

I started a trend:



Then, I sopped up the remaining cool whip with bread:



Sigh. I don’t even really like Cool Whip, but something happens to my food discretion as the day gets closer to the end (especially when I only get 5.5 hours of sleep the night before due to behaving irrationally and baking all night). I just go craaaaazy …

Anyway, I’m so glad that I moved all of those old muffins out of my freezer because I had a treat waiting for me when I arrived home:

Goodies from Wife!! More on that later …

When you look at a muffin, what do you see? I see future kitchen adventures 🙂

… sort of.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to get into the week’s breakfasts. Poaching came back for an encore, and it joined a new friend: homemade green tea ice cream!

When I was at Pinkberry last weekend, I was so sad that they were no longer offering green tea frozen yogurt. I asked for green tea powder sprinkled on the top of my original, but it wasn’t the same. I stopped into a gourmet tea shop later that day and saw the teeniest jar of green tea powder on sale for $20. Ummmmmmmmm, no.

Enter Mr. Coffee. I dumped the contents of a handful of green teabags into my nut coffee bean grinder:

And then whirred and whirred and whirred until I got what I wanted:

My very own green tea powder!

I mixed it in with yogurt and a dab of honey (it was a little bitter straight):

And I did my freeze-for-20-stir-for-20-repeat method to froyo it. It began as a dessert with half of an UliMana brownie from Elisabeth and a sprig of homegrown basil:

With the famed urban garden in the background:

And it later made its way to breakfast (honey-free this time and hidden!) alongside a poached egg eaten over maple-date oatmeal with SOTBPPBDCS butter:

(With cherries and CSA blueberries of course)

I loooove how the SOTBPPBDCS butter melts, mmmmmmmmmmm.

Another morning, I had the green tea froyo with blueberries …

… accompanied by a coriander-sprinkled poached egg over the last 1/2 Arnold’s sandwich thin with more SOTB butter (and cherries!) …

Yay for bright yellow farm-fresh yolks!

Another’s morning’s worth:

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I had to take that one to go because I was running late:

And one last day of it!

At first, I didn’t think the powder tasted much like green-tea-flavored foods, but it has really grown on me!!!! I love it love it love it and want to eat it every morning 😀

What do you like to do with tea (aside from drink it)?

P.S. I love it when my husband (Mister Softee) puts his foot down 😛