So, last you heard, I was having a pleasant Saturday of Peep recovery.

Recovery progressed smoothly until Rachel arrived.

Rachel is my cousin. She may be small, but she can move a 2500-pound metal cube with no sweat and she can make me stay out until 2 a.m. dancing in heels and spending my own money on alcohol. (If you know me, you know that heels, dancing, and alcohol are very hard sells where I am concerned.)

Rachel and her boyfriend Jaime arrived at my apartment on Saturday evening after driving down from MA for a quick one-night-stay at Hotel Sarah. We started the night at Cafe Orlin, one of favorite restaurants from the NYU days. Rachel put me in a headlock until I agreed to buy myself a drink. OK, maybe it wasn’t that hard for her to convince me once I saw this on the menu:



It was a vodka drink with fresh strawberry and fresh kiwi … and it was very strong but very tasty. I am really never ever tempted to buy a drink unless it has fresh fruit in it. This one fit the bill!

For dinner, I went with one of my Orlin stand-bys: the falafel and hummus plate.

I don’t know how authentic the Orlin falafel is (it’s definitely no Mamoun’s), but sometimes a glammed up version of street food can really hit the spot!

For dessert, we all split the carrot cake.

This was my first experience with the Orlin carrot cake, believe it or not. I usually end up having dinner there with die-hard chocolate lovers (ahem, Gina) who insist on the flourless chocolate lava cake. I was disappointed at first when I saw that this carrot cake did not have cream cheese frosting, but I needn’t have worried! The cake was served warm, and it had a thin and crunchy sprinkle of brown sugar on top. What really put the cake over the edge, however, were the candied pecans in fresh whipped cream on the side.

With a successful dinner behind us, we heeled up and headed to Central Bar, another NYU favorite and the only place I consider taking people when dancing is on the agenda because there is no cover to get in and there is usually an Irish man of some sort working the bar. Gina arrived a little bit later, I bought myself another drink (Rachel was staring me down!), and we all stayed dancing for hours until Gina’s husband was able to pick us up after his hockey games and chauffeur us back to the Slope (Thanks, Chris!).

Five hours after getting to bed, we were up again for an early brunch before Rachel and Jaime had to hit the road! So yes, recovery was derailed by more drinks and less sleep. But it was fun, and it was worth it 😀

Have you experienced any derailments lately?

I have an idea. How about you tell me it’s not really almost bedtime on Sunday night???!! How did this happen?!

Saturday involved a prescription for Peep recovery which went something like this:

(The Peeps moved into freezer bag 1A with the current lease-holder, half a package of Newman’s Os.)

Some of you suggested that I put one of these innocent marshmallow birdies/duckies into a microwave for 5 seconds to see what becomes of it. Unfortunately (or fortunately for the Peeps), I am microwaveless!! Anyone have pictures to share of what happens to the little creatures?

Peep recovery continued with hot yoga followed by this:

CSA delivery #2! My half of the share (pictured) included pea shoots, spinach, mesclun, three eggs (the other three are from last week), asparagus, cilantro, garlic scapes, and snap peas.

Next on the Peep recovery agenda was a 1 p.m. breakfast:

This bowl involved an immersion-blended mix of cooked kale from Nydia’s Edible Arrangement, whole wheat couscous from the health event, and overripe banana slices from my [old] roommate Tara; a sprinkling of instant oats and goji berries for chew; cinnamon and nutmeg, and this new find:

I heard about this PB2 competitor last week and had to get my hands on some samples when I found out that FitNutz had a chunky mix! Peanut pieces aside, however, I much prefer the taste of PB2. The FitNutz butter had some extra sweetness in it that didn’t thrill me. (I also mixed the packet with a tbsp of plain yogurt instead of 2 tsp water.) It was ok, and I know I will enjoy my sample packets, but I’m probably not going to be buying it anytime soon.

The FitNutz experiment represented a perfect segue from Peep recovery to kitchen adventures. I decided to take on the challenge of homemade balls once again. Although the goop-turned-crepe last week actually worked out quite well, my goal this weekend was to achieve ball perfection. I learn well from my mistakes, so I opted to skip a pre-soak and just throw all the balls into a pot of boiling water.

As you can see, they started out a light beige color and turned the desired dark brown as they cooked.

I could tell the tapioca was done when the balls became dark brown all the way through (any beige meant that the texture would still be chalky instead of chewy inside). Because these were jumbo balls (as opposed to the typical tapioca with teeny balls), they took a long time to cook — at least an hour and maybe two.

I was overjoyed with the finished product: ball perfection!

I had some homemade bubble tea right then and rinsed the rest of the balls with cold water, drained them, and put them in the fridge for storage and easy access.

My final kitchen project of the weekend was none other than coconut-banana ice cream. I had a few chunks of fresh coconut left in my freezer from when Jessica gave them to me at work weeks ago. I chopped the coconut into small pieces and mixed it with some more of Tara’s abandoned banana chunks, a chopped date, and plain yogurt.

One intense immersion-blending session later, I had this:

Which, after 15 minutes-stir-15 minutes-stir in the freezer, became this:

I garnished the “ice cream” with a fresh CSA strawberry, an OhNuts! whole strawberry in dark chocolate, and a sprig of homegrown basil.

Does your freezer have any unlikely bag-mates?

Also, Melissa is giving away a ridiculously loaded prize package over at For the Love of Health. I highly suggest that you go enter her contest as me ASAP.

Around 7:00 last night, Kate, Gina, and I arrived in Long Island City for an event we’d been planning for weeks.

The NYC Food Film Festival!!!

The festival has been going all week long, and last night was the final night of it. The idea is that you get to sample the food featured in the films FOR FREE while the films are screening. Could anything be more brilliant?

What made the event even more perfect, however, were the facts that (1) the rain had stopped for the first time in what seems like a decade and (2) the festival took place at Water Taxi Beach, a man-made beach in LIC (with amazing views of the city) that I’ve always wanted to visit but never had until last night!

Sand!

We started at the Jarlsberg cheese station.

Appetizers round 2 (you can review round 1 here):

I had two slices of baguette with boursin cheese, radish, and Israeli cucumber; Jarlsberg with olives; manchego with local honey (meant to correspond with Save the Honeybees about the colony collapse epidemic) drizzled on top; grapes; and chocolates.

Gina, Kate, and I nibbled on our cheeses and admired the view … and then needed to pose in front of the view (obviously):

As we nibbled, servers came around with the next course: okra gumbo with shrimp and chorizo.

This gumbo was deeeeeeeelicious, so I had two cups. I believe this course was meant to correlate with Mr.Okra, a delightful film about an old man who delivers produce throughout the streets of New Orleans.

Next up, we had Swedish meatballs (from Ikea, no less, hahahahahahahaha!):

I had seconds of these little guys, too! So tasty. The Swedish meatballs went along with … ummm, I’m not sure? I don’t think we saw a film about Swedish people or about meatballs!

While we waited for the sun to go down so the films could start, my favorite men arrived on the scene to display the power of their hoses:

My heroes.

Back to the food vs. men debate from earlier this week … these men would win, no contest. The FDNY makes food obsolete.

We had to cool off after the water show, so it was time to make a beverage run, the only thing that cost us money the whole night.

Kate and I each ordered The Bees Knees (I think?) cocktail on the left; Gina ordered the other option that had tamarind and lime. I was excited about my drink because it supposedly had blueberry bitters, but it just tasted like a too-strong margarita. Funny how the one thing that cost money was the one thing that disappointed!

Before the films began, the festival kicked off with an awards ceremony for the films that had been screened throughout the whole week. The prize was a slotted spoon, and this little boy got his hands on one and went wild in the sand:

Finally, it was dark enough for the movies!

While we were watching, some buttermilk ice cream made the rounds.

(Sadly, the buttermilk movie was not one of the ones being screened last night.)

Finally, the moment we had all been anticipating arrived. Name that Easter candy:

Did you guess?! I can now say I was in attendance at the world premiere of The Power of the Peep.

Save your jealousy because it gets better. Not one to miss out on a colossal marketing opportunity, Peeps provided the NYC Food Film Festival people with 10,000 Peeps to hand out.

I don’t love Peeps, but they were there and they were fluffy and fresh.

I ate too many to count.

Side note: I don’t quite know how this happened, but I found all of this stuff inside my bag when I got home:

Peeps for the next century, hooray!

After the festival last night, we gawked at the view some more:

And then floated our over-sugared selves to the Water Taxi (which was, keeping with the night’s theme, operating for free until 2am!). It was my first time on the Water Taxi, and I quite enjoyed it, so I put together a little virtual tour:

Embarking:

Inside (hi Kate!):

Outside and up the steps:

On the deck!

Bye bye, Water Taxi Beach!

Helloooooooooo NYC!

I hope you enjoyed the tour as much as I did 😛

The taxi let us off in midtown east, so we made our way to the subway and then home. I had a complete sugar crash on the subway and passed out. Kate was worried I’d miss my stop, but I’m a professional subway sleeper, so I got home and was in bed by 1am with no drama. That was a late night for this old lady, but what a fun time! I’ve lived in New York for so long that I sometimes forget how much more there still is to explore. Having my feet in the sand last night was the best feeling, but the Peep baby in my belly today is not so much …

And now for the most seasonally appropriate question of the year: How do you feel about Peeps?

… aka an excuse for vendors to pawn off pounds of bars on unsuspecting compulsive free foodists.

(The loot)

After work yesterday, I met Kate and Gina for this event:

The “Wellness Retreat” was being held in the old Virgin Megastore … which looked very sad stripped of its rows and rows of merchandise. The demos and random orange carpet strips didn’t do much to help the ambience:

Kate, Gina, and I only stopped in briefly as a way to kill time between work and our next event, so we did not partake in the strip-dancing class (but the event is going all weekend long, so you never know what might happen …).

We did, however, find time for a million free samples.

Plus a random plate of parmesan-crusted basa fillet with whole wheat couscous from nu-kitchen, a diet food delivery system in NYC:

This was not very good at all, and the couscous was the plainest thing I’ve ever tasted. Gina and I ate our fish pieces, and I packed our couscous into my leftover lunch containers to take home where it could be salvaged!

Once we had seen all we needed to see at Vitaljuice (which just reminds me too much of Beetlejuice), the girls and I crossed the street over to Whole Foods to try our sample luck. We came upon blackened swordfish, parmesan-artichoke dip, and spinach-artichoke dip:

At that point, I got busted for taking pictures in the store. There were more samples, but I can’t remember them! Oh well, less free advertising for WF — their loss. Sufficiently “appetized” for the evening, we headed out for the evening’s main course.

To be continued …

What is your favorite thing to do with an energy/health food bar? Do you eat them straight, crumble them on yogurt, bake them into treats, let them collect dust in your cabinet until an emergency (usually what I end up doing …)?

I’m breaking Friday up into pieces because so many exciting things happened in the world of my food, and I’m getting overwhelmed just thinking about it!

After my last breakfast crepe yesterday morning, I had to be ridiculously on time for work because I was scheduled for a child abuse training from 9-1 (no, that is not the exciting part). In the training, I snacked on a package of Peeled dried bananas, yummmmm:

After the meeting, I saw that Nydia had released her Edible Arrangements package from Thursday to the conference room table. Most of it was gone by that time, but I helped myself to the kale garnish and two skewers:

I ate the skewers then, but the kale came home with me for later use 🙂

Lunch was the last of Olivia‘s soup and ecstasyontoast crostini, along with some Edward & Sons rice toasts (I ate like 10 more than pictured) and an apple:

Thanks to Belkis and Mildred, I was able to supplement my soup with veggies and rice and beans:



Afternoon snackage included more (and more and more) candy from Belkis’ candy jar and two more ginger almondine cookies from Lillian:

And my strawberry-chia-flax-hemp yogurt:

This will happen again, assuming I get more strawberries in this week’s CSA!

And, because it’s my office, there was cake(!!!) in honor of one of the parent group graduations:

I didn’t actually go to the graduation since it wasn’t part of my department, but Jose went — he’s part of everyone’s department because he does IT — and shared because he is so so so so so generous. Here he is slicing off a piece for Belkis:

And here’s my piece!



It was a very custardy tres leches, mmmmmmmmmmm, LOVE custard.

From there, I was off to more events, but I’ll have to save those stories for later!

What is your favorite layer cake filling (i.e. custard, jam, frosting, tomato sauce (just trying to think outside the box…))?