Resolution for 2013

It's that time of the year. I've been debating what kind of New Year's resolution to pursue. After much back and forth -- between food and exercise -- I've decided on trying to follow a vegan diet for a year. Now there will be two exceptions: butter (for baking purposes because nothing beats butter) and cheese (specifically
parmesan, blue cheese and goat cheese which I like to have in my salads).

We'll see how long this lasts. My year of veggies I had egg and fish as protein back-up. This will be much harder I know, but it will be a good experiment for me.

My other 2013 resolution: making the most of New York City and going beyond my neighborhood. I plan to explore the boroughs more.

Happy New Year!

Stop the Presses! Clark Kent Leaves The Daily Planet

Apparently in this latest issue of the Superman Comic, Clark Kent aka Superman, aka long-time reporter for The Daily Planet, will be doing his impression of "Take This Job and Shove It."

“Rather than Clark be this clownish suit that Superman puts on, we’re going to really see Clark come into his own in the next few years as far as being a guy who takes to the Internet and to the airwaves and starts speaking an unvarnished truth,” writer Scott Lobdell told USA Today.

This should be interesting. Or as Perry White would say, "Great Caesar's Ghost!" (I still don't get that phrase.)

Unexpected Packages

It's always fun getting mail. I'm not talking bills, magazines, wedding invitations or the like. I'm talking honest to goodness mail. Letters or even better: package slips. I got a surprise package in the spring and it was the highlight of my spring. I received another in the mail last night. Based on the info on the slip, I thought maybe it was a gift card. I received an via email from GF and Crate and Barrel, but thought this was Crate and Barrel's official way of tell me.

I got to the post office and knew pretty quickly that I was wrong. This is what I picked up.

 It was not a gift card. It was like a kid on Christmas Eve. I couldn't wait to get home to see who the package was from.

I figured it was a limited group since I haven't sent out my I've moved email (which I will do...soon). I opened the box, expecting to see the Styrofoam peanuts. Instead I got this:

I imagine people who have gift registries for when they get married or have a kid must get these a lot. Since I've done neither, it was really fun to get! But for a second, I wondered if this was Crate and Barrel's way of giving me a gift car -- the box within a box withing a box.

Luckily for me, it wasn't!

It was this beautiful bowl from my cousin's family. It really is beautiful and I've put it on my bookshelf as art for the time being. That's how much I love the salad bowl!

Art: Video Games and Music Videos

When I was in Washington, DC, recently, I went to one of my favorite places - the National Portrait Gallery. It shares space with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which was having an exhibit on Video Games. I had to go and see it.

According the the exhibit information, video games really reflect art in many different mediums - visual, story telling, musically, etc. So this exhibit explores "the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies."

For me it was a walk down memory lane. I remember my cousins who had Ataris or Intellivision or the first Nintendo. I had the Commodore 64 (and I'm pretty sure it's in the basement of my parent's house somewhere) , but I didn't use it for video games. My Dad got it for me in the hopes that I'd become some computer programmer-type. He had good vision, too bad he was stuck with a non-techie daughter!

What made this exhibit truly enjoyable was that they had stations in the beginning where you could play the games -- from Pac-Man and Super Mario Brothers to Myst and some game I'd never heard of called Flower. I played Pac-Man and managed to get all the dots! Some skills apparently never go away.

Here are some pics from the early years of the video game art.




Created with flickr slideshow.
In another art related, memory lane exhibit, when I was in Cincinnati I visited the Contemporary Art Museum. I went in an hour before it was going to close so the guy at the front desk let me in for free. They had an exhibit titled "Spectacle: The Music Video," which was all about the art of music videos.

It was great. They had a lot of music videos you could watch, such as A-Ha's "Take On Me" to Queens' Bohemian Rhapsody.

I actually spent time at a lot of exhibits watching videos, remembering back to when MTV actually played music videos.

The exhibit explained how it was created, why it was different or cutting edge at the time.  It also showed some controversial videos which represented pushing boundaries. And in a more recent art phenomenon, talked about how videos can go viral with other people doing their interpretation of songs or videos, like all the different videos of Beyonce's  "All the Single Ladies."

It was pretty awesome!

An (Unexpected) Day Off

I need to burn some personal days before the end of the fiscal year, which is the end of June. It was pretty eventful, if I do say so myself. I started the day with a movie. It was a bad movie that I do not recommend, but matinees (or movie before noon) are actually affordable in NYC. (Translation: It's under $10!)

Then I headed to Queens to do some exploring in Astoria. I walked around. It was nice, definitely more diverse crowd there. I went to a grilled cheese place called The Queens Kickshaw. Apparently, it started off as a coffee shop, but the owners decided to serve food - hence grilled cheeses - and do craft beer. It was actually a really nice space. I sat at the counter by the cook/chef as he made the grilled cheese. (Another plus to sitting there was that it was warm.) The downside to sitting there was that everything looked good. I had a hard time deciding what grilled cheese to get. (And for a second, I thought about skipping the grilled cheese and going with their stuffing option. Yep, as a main they offer stuffing!

Blueberry Vinegar Cordial

I didn't go for the craft beer though, I tried a vinegar cordial instead. They do a lot of their own pickling, and they add some of the liquid (in my case, the blueberry pickling juice) to seltzer water.

It gives it a nice tart, blueberry flavor. I thought it went nicely with the Gruyere grilled cheese I (eventually) decided on. While I'm not a rye fan, I thought I'd give it a go. I liked the idea of the use of mustard with the grilled cheese. I guess I should explain. The Gruyere grilled cheese was on rye bread with whole grain mustard and caramelized onion and came with a side of cabbage slaw. It was tasty and all the flavors went well together. But sometimes I just crave the grilled cheese from when I was young. American cheese on white bread. The gruyere was not that -- it was definitely a more sophisticated, upscale grilled cheese. It was worth the trek out to Queens. And I'd go back again. Kickshaw is open late! (Given my work hours, that's a plus!)

Gruyere Grilled Cheese

After my wanderings in Astoria I headed back to Manhattan. I was craving some dessert so I went to Columbus Circle with the thought of going to Bouchon Bakery, but instead I walked north to Levain Bakery and got one of their warm chocolate peanut butter cookies.  Then I headed home through Central Park.

Earlier in the week, I had seen the line for Shakespeare in the Park tickets and thought I'd swing by the box office to see if there were any tickets left for the night's performance -- there were! So I got one.

I've always wanted to go to a Shakespeare in the Park performance. Forget the fact that it's free and it has some great actors performing, it's a play outdoors! The show I saw was As You Like It and some of the actors that were in it included Andre Braugher and Oliver Platt. It was a good performance. I liked the set and the chorus was musical. But I kind of wish it had been a bit more cutting edge. Maybe it was from all the Shakespeare Theatre Co. performances I saw, but I tend to like productions that had a different twist to them. This production seemed like the hill-billy version. Still, I'm glad I went and it was a good way to spend an evening.

My $8 champagne.

Oh, and the other plus? When you order a drink (which you can take into the theatre), they really top it up!

All in all it was a great day to spend an unexpected day off. I have another day off that won't be that action packed, I'm sure. But hopefully, it won't take me two weeks to write about.

36 Hours in San Francisco

I went to the Bay Area for Memorial Day weekend -- T was having a baby shower in Napa and I got to visit with my cousins. All worth flying cross-country for, in my opinion. Flying out, one of my co-workers CH was on the same flight as me. It was one of those small world moments.

Anyway, if there was a theme to this trip, it was revisiting old haunts.

I took BART to the Mission. I hadn't been to the neighborhood since I lived in San Francisco in 2001. I grabbed lunch at a small, inexpensive, and yummy taco place.

But mainly I walked around to see how the neighborhood had changed, and how it hadn't.  It was amazing how different it was -- the stores, restaurants -- but the sense of the neighborhood still remained. I stopped by bi-rite creamery and got a scoop of brown sugar ice cream with caramel ginger swirl that was amazing. I don't know if this was around in 2001, but if I had known about it, I would have been there every day!

Then I walked to Hayes Valley. Again, a neighborhood that had changed a lot since I was last there -- a lot of nice cute shops and places to eat. I stopped by Smitten ice cream and picked up a scoop of chocolate. 

This place is well known because it uses liquid nitrogen to freeze the ice cream -- it makes it a lot smoother. It's also fun to watch the "smoke" come out of the container. I went back and tried their strawberry with pink peppercorn. All in all I loved the flavor profiles at Bi-Rite, but I liked the texture of Smitten.

From there I walked to Alamo Square and saw the "painted ladies." The houses looked like I remembered, but I had totally forgotten how hilly the park actually is and all the trees -- the big, redwood type trees in the park. I was also close to my old neighborhood, so I walked to the Upper panhandle and saw the old place on Fulton St.

When I lived there, they had just begun to break ground on a shopping complex next door. I remember the construction would wake me up at 7:30am. It was good to see the finished complex.

I met up with my cousins and went to dinner to this cute little restaurant called Chez Maman.  It was this small place that seated like 14 people -- only 2 tables, the rest was counter space. We had spaces right in front of the stove, so it was like dinner theatre -- watching the cook prepare the different dishes.

I cannot say enough about how good my meal was. I want to go back and try about 5 other things on the menu -- in one sitting!

I got a french cider, mussels (les mouels poulette: shallots, bacon, white wine, cream & parsley), and frites. YUM!

The next day I was off to Napa -- the baby shower was at a spa there. It was great. I hadn't been to the Napa area in awhile. It was nice to drive past all the vineyards. I got back and then headed back to NYC. On the plus side, I got upgraded to business class on the flight, but I fell asleep before take off, so I really didn't get to enjoy any of the "perks" of business class.

CSA

I signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) veggie box through work. I went with the bi-weekly delivery and got my first bag Thursday.  It was a lot of greens -- basil, kale, lettuce, cilantro, arugula, garlic scapes -- and the veg included radishes, turnips, zucchini, and yellow squash. It was a lot  of veg. So I spent this week cooking. I made an arugula and bacon bread pudding. It was actually good. Should be lunch for a couple of days this week.

This morning I made pesto: basil, some cilantro, almonds (I had almonds, not pinenuts), Parmesan, garlic and lots of olive oil.

It went well with my pasta lunch. I figure it will also be a good spread for a grilled zucchini and squash sandwich I'll be making at the end of the week!

The Cloud

Recently, as I've run past the MET I've noticed the roof deck and this space-age sculpture on the roof. Today, I finally got to the roof deck to check out Tomas Saraceno's Cloud City.

You have to get a ticket with a timed entry to actually go inside it. As you can see, it's these clear, sometimes reflective modules. I went wearing a skirt -- probably not the best idea because as the instructions note, some places are clear and can be seen from below. Oh well. 

It really was quite interesting. There are some areas where only two people are allowed at a time. Apparently, there are also different levels of firmness in the structure, something I worried about because some floors creaked more than others. It was exhilarating, though, to see the wires -- the spiderwebs -- that echoed the interconnectivity of the structure.

You're not allowed to bring a bag or any personal belongings into the structure, and you have to duck in certain places to get into the modules. It was a sunny day so I kept my sunglasses on. It was a good call, because it really could reflect a lot of light.

All in all, it was worth the visit. Even if you don't get to go in, it's worth going to the deck. You can peer up into it (and enjoy a drink and the views of the park and the city).
Here's a video of the structure being put up.

Storms + O'Hare = Travel Delays

I’ve had some flight delays before: mechanical difficulties derailing my trip to Morocco for a day, the trip to Iraq that involved two unexpected layovers and 1 expected and missing the connecting flight to Dublin because at Logan I had to exit the airport to get to the terminal the flight was leaving from and go through security all over again.

My trip from Dayton, Ohio, to Newark, New Jersey via Chicago takes the cake.I finished the Flying Pig Half marathon Sunday morning, drove the hour from Cincinnati to Dayton and was ready to board the plane and bask in post-half marathon endorphins.

I was supposed to leave Dayton (DAY) at 7:09 pm est, arrive in Chicago (ORD) at 7:22 pm cst, run to the other end of the terminal to grab the 8:00 pm cst flight to Newark (EWR) that would get me home at 11:13 pm est.

Sitting in Dayton, all I saw was blue sky, but apparently storms were brewing in Chicago that led to a ground stop for awhile.

This was the delay updates I got throughout my travels:

1) United flight 3762 DAY-ORD on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 8:11 pm from gate B17.

Arrival time now 8:24 pm.

Lynn: Shit, I’m going to miss my connecting flight. Maybe my Newark flight will be delayed

2) United flight 3762 DAY-ORD on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 8:47 pm from gate B17.

Arrival time now 9:00 pm.

Lynn: Well, I really am going to miss my flight, there’s no way the Newark plane will be that late. Let me check the app to see where the Newark plane is coming from.

3) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 8:30 pm from gate B18.

Arrival time now 11:43 pm.

Lynn: Ok, it’s delayed, but I’ still going to miss it. Better email work.

4) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 9:10 pm from gate B18.

Arrival time now 12:23 am.

Lynn: Hmm, I wonder how fast I can run between the two gates, which are on complete opposite sides of the airport? Maybe running 13.1 miles this morning wasn’t a good idea for the legs.

5) United flight 3762 DAY-ORD on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 9:46 pm from gate B17.

Arrival time now 9:59 pm.

Lynn: well never mind. I’m going to call about airport hotels. Maybe I’ll find one with HBO and I can watch Game of Thrones. At least some good will come out of this mess.

6) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 11:00 pm from gate B22.

Arrival time now 2:13 am.

Lynn: Wait, this seems promising! United is just teasing me now. Oh, the plane has landed. They’re letting us board! I finally get to leave Dayton! (which besides having very nice, helpful gate agents, have electrical outlets everywhere!)

7) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 11:30 pm from gate B22.

Arrival time now 2:43 am.

Lynn; This is promising. How do I get back to NYC from Newark at 2:43. I’m glad I have an iPhone now. To Google! To NJTRANSIT! To AMTRAK! (10 minutes later) Crap, I’m going to have to call my folks.

8) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 11:50 pm from gate B22.

Arrival time now 3:03 am

Lynn: Yep, I’m going to have to call my parents to get picked up at the airport.

9) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 12:30 am from gate B21.

Arrival time now 3:03 am.

Lynn: I’m never leaving O’Hare.

10) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 12:05 am from gate B21.

Arrival time now 3:14 am.

Lynn: What. The. Hell. 

11) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 12:37 am from gate B21.

Arrival time now 3:14 am.

Lynn: Damn you, United. Make up your mind! Oh, wait, our plane finally landed!!!!! The agents are saying something about getting ready for us to board. Hallelujah! [White flash] Was that lightening? [Another white flash] Crap. I am never leaving O’Hare.

12) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 1:05 am from gate B21.

Arrival time now 4:04 am.

The gate agents say we’re waiting for the storm to pass.

Lynn: I give up.

13) Missing email – Departure time of 1:15 am

Lynn: I’m going to find a row of seats and take a nap. I’m never leaving. Ever.

14) United flight 3562 ORD-EWR on 6MAY delayed.

Departure time now 1:30 am from gate B21.

Arrival time now 4:04 am.

Lynn: Sure, whatever United. Wait, why are people moving toward the gate?

We boarded, the pilot said we were going to leave soon, but I still didn’t believe. Even when I felt the plane move, I didn’t believe. But then we took off and I promptly fell asleep. Didn’t wake up until we landed in Newark. Actual arrival time, based on my watch, 4:37am. Yes, my parents picked me up.

Lesson: never fly through O’Hare again. Ever!

Also, having my flying pig stress toy helped. 

 Strangely enough, even if all the waiting, I didn’t manage to finish my book.

Yes, I'm a Geek

After 2 postponements, the Space Shuttle Enterprise finally made it to New York City! I dragged my friend NM and her two kids to go out on a windy, chilly day and see the shuttle piggy-back a NASA 747 at 1,500 feet, flying over the city. It was great!

I know The Enterprise never went into space, but it's still the closest I've ever come -- and every will come -- the seeing a shuttle fly. And -- be honest -- seeing a plane on top of another plane is pretty cool. Lots of people were out watching the shuttle, which passed by the Statue of Liberty, the westside of Manhattan, the Intrepid (its future home) and up the Hudson to the Tappan Zee Bridge. Then it came back down the Hudson. It was sureal. And we weren't the only ones out there. It was really crowded along the Hudson.

I didn't get any shots of it, but it was fun seeing other shots of the shuttle between skyscrapers. It just seemed unreal.

And of course, I took some video of the shuttle.

Vanilla Cupcakes with a Lime Alternative

This weekend I checked out The Cupcake Diaries from the library. It's written by the owners of Georgetown Cupcake in Washington, DC. I was not a fan of the cupcakes in the store - I was more of a Baked and Wired girl - but they had a chocolate cupcake recipe that I've always liked making (just the cake, not the frosting), so I was curious about some of their other cupcakes.

I tried the basic vanilla.
2 1/2 cups of flour (I went a little shy on the flour, it was more like 2 1/3 cup)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
8T unsalted butter at room temp
1 3/4 cups sugar (also went a little shy on this)
2 eggs at room temperature
2 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
seeds for 1 vanilla bean (I had half on hand so I used it, and then added an extra 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla)
1 3/4 c milk (the recipe called for whole, but I used 2%) at room temperature

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
2. Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside in bowl or on wax/parchment paper.
3. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. (I beat the sugar on it's own for a minute or two before adding in the sugar). When it's light and fluffy, add the eggs in one at a time.
4. Add the vanilla extract and vanilla bean seeds to the milk.
5. Add a third of the dry ingredients into the wet sugar/butter/egg mixture. Wait until it's incorporated,  then add in a third of the milk mixture until it is incorporated. Repeat 2 more times.

6. Scoop the batter into a lined cupcake tray. You can use an ice cream scoop for consistency, but I aimed for 2/3 full.
7. Bake for 16-18 minutes. Every one's oven is different, mine took the full 18, almost 19 mins. But start checking at 15 mins. It's ready when a toothpick comes out cleanly.

8. Let the cupcakes cool on wire racks.  I was able to make 18 cupcakes from this batter.

I decided to go with the Vanilla Cream-Cheese Frosting. 

4 T unsalted butter, room temperature

4 cups confectioner's sugar. (not surprisingly I went shy on that because I don't like overly sweet frosting. It was more like 3 2/3 to 3 3/4 cup).

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 oz. room temp cream cheese

Put all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and, using a stand mixer or hand held mixer, mix away until it is to the consistency of your liking. I went long and it got it really nice and smooth.

I did split the frosting. Half I kept vanilla, but with the other half I added in the zest and juice of 1 lime. (If i had and extra half lying around I would have added that) to make a lime cream cheese frosting. I did add a little extra powdered sugar here to  to help absorb some of the juice.

The vanilla cupcakes I decorated with sugar sprinkles and the lime I kept plain, but you could see the zest of the lime in the frosting, which I think was quite nice.

All in all, it was a good cupcake. 

Best Valentines Ever...

You have to have lived in DC to get some of these valentines, but some of these are really funny!

Chocolate Molten Cake

I had a chocolate craving and found a quick, easy recipe for Chocolate Molten Cake. It's a Chuck Hughes recipe. I picked it mainly because it was fast and didn't require too many ingredients. You start with melting 6 ounces of dark chocolate (I used a mix of semisweet and milk chocolate because it was what I had on hand) and a stick of butter (1/2 cup). While it's melting, mix 3 room temperature eggs with a 1/3 cup of sugar.  You want it to thicken up and get a nice pale yellow color. Once that happens you want to mix the chocolate mixture into the eggs. Temper the eggs by putting in a little bit of the chocolate mixture into the eggs and sugar and stir. The chocolate mixture will be warm and you don't want the eggs to scramble at all.  Then mix in all of the chocolate into the eggs.  Butter 4 ramakins or molds. Divide the mixture into the ramakins and put into a preheated 400F oven for 9-12 mins. It should still be gooey in the center. Let it set and then eat!

Learning How to Make Bulgogi and Kimchi

During my recent trip to Seoul, I signed up to take a beginning Korean cooking class at O'ngo . They offer classes in English, as well as other languages. The day I was there, there was a class in English and one in Japanese.

It was fun. I've been given Korean cookbooks by my Mom in the past, but never really opened. I'm not as good of a cook as my parents. I always get good food when I go home.

Bulgogi is fairly easily. But kimchi is harder. Or at least, I always thought. I have memories from when I was a young kid of my grandmother and parents making large batches of it.




My Dad said he could teach me how to make kimchi. I would like to know how they made it. It would be nice to know my grandmother's kimchi recipe.

I did not taste the kimchi that I made. We ate the instructors. It needed to sit for a day. I left Seoul the day after I took the class. But my Mom and my Aunt Youngmee's family had it. They said it was good - but they are family, they'd kind of have to.

After the class, the guy that helps run the place took us on a food tour of a local market. That was a lot of fun.

Apparently, a lot of restaurants frequent this market. They have all the necessities, including large tubs of red pepper paste. My favorite was the home-made tofu. They were stamped with Korean words. It was very different looking from tofu that comes out of a box.

I had visited another market. It was an outdoor market that had food stalls running up the middle. I grabbed lunch there. It was very crowded, with people huddled around certain stalls. Lining the sides were various restaurants or stalls selling spices, meats, fish, vegetables - you get the picture.  It was very different from the supermarkets, where there are ribbons on the fruit that is sold.

Still, at least these markets were something I could wrap my head around. There's one other way of shopping in Seoul. It's a spin of ordering on the web and having it delivered. You didn't need to go online, per se. In one of the subway stations there were photographs of store shelves - everything from detergent to toilet paper and vegetables to milk. While you're waiting, and you realize you need something, you can scan it with your smart phone. From there it will be delivered to your home. (You do need an account I imagine.). It was a hoot!

Turkey Chili

I decided to cook today. It was cold and I wanted comfort food. The easiest comfort food for me to make, with the ingredients I had on hand was....chili! If you read my running blog, you know that I was a NYChiliFest 2012 last weekend. I ate a lot of chili. Still, I got out the ingredients and cooked.

You can watch here.


All in all, it was good. I topped it off with some jack cheese. And the good news is I have lunch for the week!

Cupcakes in Seoul

One of the things I enjoy about Seoul are the food courts located in the department stores. Think more Harrods than the food court in a mall. Anyway, I needed a break and there were some cupcake stands so I decided to try a couple.

One was a chocolate mint cupcake, the other was banana.

One thing I've noticed right off the bat is that the sweets in Seoul are not as sweet as in the states. I think that's typical, but the cupcakes were not overly sweet.

The chocolate mint was okay. I wanted to like it more than I did. The cake was a little dry, but not too sweet. I really did like the frosting. It was smooth.

The best thing, though, about this cupcake was the name!

It gives a girl ideas. If nothing else, I knew it was my cupcake. I had wanted to ask for some stickers, but I didn't. Besides, my Korean probably wouldn't have been good enough for it.

Anyway, the banana cupcake was more moist, which was welcome after the mint chocolate cupcake. Again, nice job on the frosting. Not too sweet, smooth, and good banana flavor.

I didn't understand why it had mini-marshmellows on top, though. I understand the need for garnish, but it should have something to do with the flavor, right?

The Filling Station Doesn't Fall Short

As most people who know me or have read this or the running blog, I love burgers. I would go out of my way for a great burger place. And I did over the holidays - not much, but it was a drive.

My cousin, BC, had mentioned that he'd found this great burger place by his house called The Filing Station. So, when I was home over the holidays, I thought I'd try it out. I can see why this would be a great place in the summer. It's really about outdoor seating, since it's like an old curbside shack you would have found in the 1950s. For the winter, they did provide "indoor seating" but it was basically a nice, wooden tent over the shack. It was cute.

Anyway, I ordered a burger and a side of fries. What I really enjoyed about this place was they offered dipping sauces - truffle aioli, spicy ketchup, ancho chile mayo, tartar sauce, blue cheese dip and spicy honey mustard. The chef/order taker recommended the truffle aioli, so I got that.

Out came the burger, fries and dipping sauce. The fries were good, but the dipping sauce made them great! It was so flavorful and tasty. And you didn't need a lot of it. I had dipping sauce left over. As for the burger. It was also really good. It was the meat - I think it had a lot of flavor to it. The burger was also cooked to order. So I asked for medium and it came out medium. All in all, it was worth the drive to Palisades.

I went back with BC, CC and TK, on New Year's Day. I got one of the names burgers - the Texaco. It was good, but not as spicy as I would have thought. I also got the ancho chili mayo this time around. Also, quite yummy, although not as rich as the truffle aioli. But I think the Fill'r up burger will be my standard when I go back. And yes, I will go back! If only to get a beer with my burger next time around. They had a nice selection of New York State microbrews.

Making Sugar Cookies

As usual, I went on a holiday cookie binge this past December. I made peanut butter blossoms. I branched out into a couple of bar cookies - m&m bars. And, of course, I made sugar cookies. After years of trying out different recipes, I think I've found the one I like. It's based off of Alton Brown's Sugar Cookie recipe.

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon milk - (go a little shy on this (you'll see why at the in a bit)
• Powdered sugar, for rolling out dough
• 1/2-1 teaspoon of vanilla (this is my addition to the recipe

It's your typical cookie recipe: sift together the dry ingredients, cream sugar and butter, mix wet ingredients, gradually add dry ingredients into the wet ones. Put the dough into 2 equal disks and refrigerate. (I do this overnight, but you should do this at least for a couple of hours.)

Roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thick and use your cookie cutters. Bake at 375 for 7-10 mins (depending on size and thickness).

Then you decorate!

I used a royal icing:

• 3 T of Meringue Powder
• 4 cups of confestioners' sugar
• warm water - at least 6 T, but really have more on hand

Mix the dry ingredients and then gradually add the warm water. Stir it in completely, stopping to check consistency as  you go along.   Once you get it to the consistency you want, divide the icing and add color gels to get different colored icing.

As you can see, I went a little overboard on colors and decorations this year.

I found that if it was smooth enough, you could do this lovely design that reminded my of venitian paper. Basically, you choose a a color as the base of the cookie, put another color frosting as stripes on top, and then, with a toothpick go back and forth. The icing has to be runny or it won't work well. The cookie gloves are a really good example. 

In the past,  I have invited friends over to help decorate. With the move, I wasn't really able to do that, but next year I hope to. It's more fun that way and decorating 2 dozen cookies can be taxing after awhile. Still, I want to get better. That means actually piping borders and using tips to decorate rather than a butter knife.

We'll see how spring sugar cookies come out.

Doughnut Plant Conclusion

After running around Seoul - figuratively, not literally - I did not find a Doughnut Plant. I found  alot of other U.S. chains from Burger King to Jamba Juice. But alas, no Doughnut Plant.

Looking for NYC in Seoul

After one 13.5 hour flight and then another 3 hour flight, I made it to Seoul. And what am I trying to do? Locate the Doughnut Plant in Seoul. It's made it's way to Asia and, as my aunt was saying, it's Hillary Clinton's favorite doughnut! (That was the ad campaign used here apparently.) I did learn there is one at the airport, so I can grab some as I leave, but I think it would be a nice way to start my first day in Seoul.