On my way to the subway for the social segment of my 4th, I stopped into Union Market to inspect the samples and hit the jackpot. Marinated gardiniera veggies (cauliflower and carrots), caramelized cippolini mushrooms, four types of cheeses, and …

… chocolate chip Tate’s Bakeshop cookies and fudgy frosted chocolate cake. The perfect appetizers to my imminent lunch 😛

I got up to my lunch destination around 3:00 for a very special visit with Coco from Balance, Joy and Delicias!. Coco had boldly decided to take a trip to NYC all by herself and set up a whole schedule of things to do while here. Initially, I didn’t think I could meet up with her because I was planning to go to MA for the weekend, but I decided last minute to stick around because of everything I needed to get done at my apartment.

Coco and I met for our late lunch date at HanGawi, a vegetarian Korean restaurant that Coco put on her NYC to-do list after Katie recommended it a few weeks ago. I knew we had made a good choice when we walked into such a peaceful setting. We had to take our shoes off upon entering, and they were stored in cubbies alongside these beautiful and intricate authentic Korean shoes:

The tables were very low, and pillows were arranged around them instead of chairs.

But, I’ll let you in on a secret. If you look closely, you’ll see that every table has a hole in the floor underneath it. That way, we didn’t actually have to sit cross-legged for the whole meal 🙂

Coco ordered the fixed price Mini Emperor’s Lunch … but it was quite substantial!

It came with pumpkin porridge which Coco let me taste — so good! It was sweet and creamy and warm and perfect 🙂

Coco’s also came with vermicelli delight as an appetizer, the same dish that I ordered to start. I was so excited when I saw this on the menu (“sweet potato noodles with seasonal mixed vegetables”) because, ever since I was 17 and my friend Mimi (hi Mimi!) invited me over to her house for a summer party and some of her mom’s cooking, I have been obsessed with these noodles (aka glass noodles or cellophane noodles). The texture, the look, the taste … I love everything about them. Sophomore year of college, I set out on a mission to hunt these noodles down. I lived in Chinatown then and must have purchased and tried preparing every single type of vermicelli I could find, but nothing was the same! I made my then-boyfriend take me to Koreatown in hunt of the noodles, and we finally found them!! See the empty bowl?

Clearly, I was a pro at cleaning my plate eight years ago as well. Yay for 2001!

Saturday’s restaurant was located very near my 2001 success story in Koreatown, so I felt full confidence when I ordered the sweet potato noodles. They arrived just as I had dreamed they would:

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I want more!

Coco’s entree, the vegetarian stone bowl rice (see above action shot of Coco and food) arrived with my second course (I ordered two appetizers instead of a meal): kabocha pumpkin pancakes.

These were sweet and spicy at the same time and soooooo tasty! I need to try making something like this at home.

Coco’s meal came with two types of kimchi — one spicy and one gingery — and she let me try bites of each:

Next, this mysterious cold apple-ginger-cinnamon tea/soup arrived for us. I was entranced by the pine nuts (and apple pieces) floating on top:

It was delicious, and I drank it all up. I’d been under the impression that this was some complimentary palette cleanser before Coco’s dessert arrived, especially since the lady explained it was “on the house” when she brought it. Our server dropped the check off shortly thereafter, and I flagged him down a minute later to alert him to the fact that Coco had never received the dessert that came with her fixed price meal. He explained that the tea/soup was the dessert and that they had just given one to me on the house so I wouldn’t feel left out. Awwwwwwww. After that, I felt very guilty about my un-zen greediness. Oops.

Coco had been planning to meet up with a friend for the fireworks, but her friend couldn’t make it … so I roped her into sticking with me for the rest of the evening 🙂 We wandered in the general direction of our next destination for a couple of miles. I took pictures of the sunny weather so I’ll be able to remember it when it starts to rain again.

We stopped in at a pinkberry because Coco had never had tart frozen yogurt before. I wasn’t going to get anything … but then I did 😛

(A small original with raspberries, coconut, and green tea powder.)

Erin Gunn & Co. made their arrival from Yonkers around 5:30, and we attempted to enter our pre-selected pre-fireworks location. I was so excited to have found this place in Hell’s Kitchen with fresh fruit cocktails, outdoor garden seating, and yummy healthy snacks! Sadly, I did not call ahead. Had I done so, I would have found that ‘disiac was closed for the Fourth of July. Plthhhhhhhh. Instead we wandered around until we found ourselves a dark, dank Irish pub in which to settle for a few.

(Left to right: Mike (Erin’s fiance), Bryan (Erin’s Australian cousin), Coco, Erin, me)

Despite the darkness, the food was delicious! I wasn’t hungry (HA!!), so I helped myself to some of Erin Gunn’s onion rings and black bean and corn guacamole:

And Mike’s tomato slice:

And most of the hummus platter for the table:

Bryan ordered club soda, and I scolded him for scoffing at the finest tap water the country has to offer.

After the pub, we needed sunlight! Joshua Tree looked perfect.

We snagged a nice spot upstairs by the balcony:

I ordered the Lemon Drop Martini with grey goose le citron, sour mix, and countreau in a sugar-rimmed glass.

It was as refreshing and light and frothy and airy as it looked. Mike took a pensive sip and approved as well.

Finally, the time arrived for us to work our way over toward the Hudson for some fireworks. On the way, we encountered THE DESSERT TRUCK!!!

Kate would be so proud. We moved closer.

And closer:

I was so tempted by the goat cheese cake with rosemary caramel and fresh berries … but I knew I’d have better luck getting the others to help me if I ordered the warm molten dark chocolate cake with olive oil and chocolate center, hazelnuts, sea salt, and vanilla ice cream. So that’s what I did 😀

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh my goodness. I’m not sure there are words! The others definitely helped me (thank goodness) because I would have eaten 15 of these all by myself if I’d had the chance.

The sea salt and hazelnuts really made it unique, mmmmmmmmmmmm. Next time: goat cheese cake!

After dessert, we headed toward the water on 47th street with 50000 of our closest friends.

The fireworks were supposed to start at 9:20, but they made us wait about three extra minutes, the nerve!

When the show started, I had a great view.

Seriously. Every time I tried to take a picture, these two decided to snuggle right in my line of sight.

Due to inevitable crowd shift, however, things eventually improved!

As usual, these Macy’s fireworks were the best I’ve seen! I usually avoid these overly crowded NYC events (esp. parades!) at all costs, but I keep coming back to the fireworks year after year after year.

The show ended after 26 minutes, and we turned to leave.

Oh. I almost forgot we had to wait for our 50000 best friends to leave first.

Coco headed back to her hotel, and Erin, the boys, and I stopped into Emmet’s for one last drink:

It may appear as though I drank this radioactive green thing.

But I couldn’t stomach the liquid jolly-rancher-ness and instead stuck to my water (after eating the cherry, lemon wedge, lime wedge, and rim sugar, of course :-P).

Yay for being social! Coco was even more sweet and exuberant than she is on her blog, Bryan was a hilarious new addition, and any night I get to spend with Erin Gunn and Mike is automatically a success. I had a lovely time, and I’m sad that I’m going to have to dive right back into my grad school bubble this week. Plth.

Social highlight of your weekend?

Another reason I love this weekend: the perfect balance of me time + friend time + zero grad school time!

The first part of yesterday was my new favorite Saturday routine. I started with a mini-breakfast of 1/3 cup overnight maple-free maple oats topped with blueberries and SOTBPPDCS butter:

This teeny serving was perfect to fuel me up for Saturday morning’s hot yoga class. After yoga, I tore back down to Brooklyn to pick up the CSA. Kate is out of town this weekend, so I was responsible for getting the whole share. After the photo shoot, I split everything in half so Kate can come collect her stuff on Tuesday when she’s back.

You can tell summer is finally here by the expanding variety of exciting goods: head of green lettuce, head of broccoli, head of red lettuce, 3 pints blueberries, garlic scapes, snap peas, bok choy, 2 zucchinis, Swiss chard, 1/2 dozen eggs, and “braising greens.”

The most exciting part:

Once all of the produce was sorted and processed, I put together mini-breakfast part 2, this time with 1/3 cup of scary-weight-management-powder-turned-delicious-vanilla-yogurt-chia-goji-pudding.

On the side, I sliced 1/4 of the chayote from Friday night and dipped it into this organic hot mango chutney from Native Forest. The chutney was pretty pretty hot, so it paired perfectly with the refreshing watery crunch from the chayote.

My snacky little spread:

Shortly thereafter, it was time to head out for the social segment of the day, along with some good old-fashioned 4th of July festivating!

What do you crave more on weekends: solo time or social time?

As you read this, I’m probably getting trampled to death in the madness of the Macy’s 4th of July fireworks. (Grrr, I hope they move the fireworks back to the East River for next year. The Hudson is SO inconvenient!)

Picking up where I left off yesterday, I’ve been sitting on [not literally] this packet of scariness ever since the health event two weeks ago:

So, I’m obviously not trying to manage my weight (have you seen the kinds of things I eat every day?!), and even if I were, I sure as heck would not want to manage it with a shake … let alone a shake composed almost entirely of chemicals. Note how the first ingredient is entitled “carb blend.” Yummmmm!

However, I am physically incapable of throwing away something nutritious (even when the nutrition is this questionable), so I needed to figure out an alternate arrangement. I dumped the powder into a bowl.

I stuck my finger in for a lick, and it was wayyyyyyy sweet. But it smelled like vanilla cake mix, and that’s something I can handle. I mixed the powder with about 3 cups of plain yogurt, 1/4 cup goji berries, 1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, and 1/4 cup chia seeds. I let it all marinate and thicken together in the fridge for a few hours.

In the meantime, I got dinner underway with the star of my meal: chayote.

I’ve only had chayote as part of a pile of steamed veggies before — never on its own and never raw. But, once I cut into it, I realized how pleasant the chayote’s texture is raw (maybe even better than cooked!), kind of a cross between cucumber and apple with a good, watery crunch to it. I scooped out (and ate) a little well in one half and filled it with a mix of mashed avocado and salsa.

Over a bed of mystery rice:

And back to the weight management powder trainwreck, I froyo-ed about 1/2 cup of the mix and then immersion-blended to cream it up a bit.

This was actually quite good! I am grudgingly a fan of weight-management-shake ice cream 😛

I topped it with SOTBPPBDCS butter and a chopped square of Newman’s Own Organics dark chocolate:

Mmmmmmmmmm …

What is/was your fireworks plan? And have you seen anything horrifying on a food label lately?

Happy 4th! So far, my weekend has been full of four important things: balls, dates, pits, and nuts. Ummmmmmmmmm, let me explain.

I’m LOVING this weekend, and here’s why:

Last night, I actually got to go just sit in Hanco’s with my laptop and some balls. My apartment was clean all the way down to the bathtub. I had absolutely no homework. I had opened, sorted, and filed all my mail from the past month. And I had been productive in the kitchen in terms of processing a bunch of foods that have been piling up!

First order of business was to do something with these random dried Asian dates that my mom gave me last time I visited MA. I’m not sure about the story behind these dates or what their official name is, but I know they are ridiculously sweet (almost too sweet, and that’s saying a lot coming from my mouth fingers) in a very maple-y sense.

I remembered from working with them to make this rhubarb pie that the flesh was difficult to separate from the pits, so I let them soak for a couple of hours to try to loosen things up. After the soak, I set to work on chopping and chopping and chopping. I ended up with a bowl of flesh and a bowl of fleshy pits. (That sounds SO appetizing.)

First, I addressed the flesh by immersion-blending it to within an inch of its life.

This “date” paste bore a striking resemblance to Artisana‘s line of Bliss spreads/butters (aka crack), so I decided to get some bliss of my own going! Into the bowl went a bunch of unsweetened shredded coconut from Let’s Do Organic along with coconut oil and coconut butter from Artisana.

I also added coarse sea salt (like I said, these dates are just too sweet on their own!) and some South of the Border pistachio-peanut–dark-chocolate-strawberry butter. Oh, did I forget to mention that I made SOTB pistachio-peanut-dark-chocolate-strawberry butter?

I used my Mr. Coffee bean grinder to get everything to the paste-stage for the butter. Not wanting to destroy a third kitchen appliance in the name of nut butter, I finished it off with the immersion blender until it got creamy. This is such an effective method … as long as my immersion blender does not die on me, too!

So, back to the date bliss, I added a couple tbsp of SOTBPPSCS butter and immersion-blended some more. (Seriously, I will do more than cry if this immersion blender breaks!) The blissful result:

Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I can’t wait to use this on everything.

Meanwhile, remember the fleshy [date] pits? I threw them in a pot with a boiling mix of soymilk and water in the hopes that the flesh would just melt off. No luck:

I gave it a few hours of simmering while I did productive things around the apartment, and then I just gave up and scooped out the fleshy pits, leaving the super-sweetened soymilk and water in the pot. I stirred in a few tbsp of ground flax, removed from heat, and poured the mixture into a bowl to chill. But it did not firm up quite enough due to the high ratio of liquid to flax:

So I added 3/4 cup oats for a little soak and came out with a nice, thick muesli-esque base:

Mmmmm, it actually tastes like maple brown sugar oatmeal because of the super maple-y essence of these dates! It appears that eating overnight flax-date oats has just joined the agenda for the weekend 😀

What are your four things for the 4th?

There were so many things to celebrate on Thursday! It all began when Deborah gave me 1/4 of her banana walnut muffin upon arriving at the office:

(Well, it all really began with my savory oats before I left home, but you know that already.)

For the appetizer course, Catherine brought over a box of tostones with garlic that had come with her Chinese food (yes, Chinese food with tostones … leave it to East Harlem) to share with Belkis. Belkis is an angel (you can tell from her glow below) and shared it with all of us.

Belkis continued in her angelic ways when she let us each taste some of the fish that she had caught all by herself!

Along with half of her salad!

I promptly dumped the rest of my chicken/tomatillo/rice mix on top because I’m a mixer 😀

Dessert was s-p-e-c-i-a-l because Lillian had picked up a couple of custard fruit tarts for Nydia and herself, and Nydia shared half of her tart with me:

Custard fruit tarts are my favorite dessert of all time!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm …

Oh, I almost forgot. I had another dessert of avena (the blended dominican oatmeal) leftover from Nydia’s breakfast:

Plus, Myrna and I staged a coup for dessert #3 when we noticed cupcakes languishing on the 5th floor conference room table:

I had 1/4 of my cupcake and split the rest between Deborah and Jennifer.

And thennnnnnnnn, it was time for the monthly “informal staff gathering” in the lobby. As always, the spread was astounding due to Trish’s impeccable organization skills: wraps and carrot cake donated by City Harvest, homemade salad, roast chicken and onions from Fine Foods, watermelon and cake from the grocery next door, and cheese and crackers:

The carrot cake pieces on toothpicks were my favorite. I bet the 4th of July cake was delicious, too, but I had to run to class before it was opened!

Here’s my plate with lots of salad (it had avocado, yay!), chicken, watermelon, and a carrot cake:

(I definitely had more carrot cake and some cheese and crackers before Julia and I scooted out to head down to Hunter.)

My group and I met to tie up some loose ends before we had to present. Madeline offered some gum but then stopped mid-give and said, “Sarah, don’t you want to take a picture of this?” I was happy to oblige:

And Jennifer shared some of her trail mix, complete with dried papaya chunks and yogurt-covered raisins:

During the presentation, I ate these tropical skittles from Emily, slyly (or maybe not so slyly) arranged on top of my presentation notes:

(Plus approximately 20 more skittles after the presentation.)

And then Lisa, Emily, Stacy, Daria, and I went for a drink to celebrate the end of Summer Session [1]:

Can’t wait for Summer Session 2 to start on Tuesday. Vodka and seltzer please?

Thanks.

How do you plan to celebrate this weekend?