"Sookk" My First Tai Ever!

Here's one of Lexi's favorite Tai restaurants, Sookk. I have never had Tai before-- but I just loved it! We got a variety of dishes to share-- and each one was fabulous.

This restaurant's interior decorations were incredible! It was such a fun, creative dining atmosphere. Even the waiters attire was unique--but super cute! I would have taken so many more pictures, but it was such a tight space and impossible for me to discreetly capture the ambiance without distracting others with my blinding flash. Super rad place-- I can't wait to go back!

Example of the Believers

I came across this video today and was touched to see the sweet example of this beautiful young girl that is dying from fatal disease Multiple Sclerosis. She continues to be optimistic, as she endures the last year or so of her life, lifting the spirits of all who she comes in contact with. This video really makes me feel so blessed to have my health, and strength. It's crazy how easy it can be to take things like that for granted. I'm impressed to see such encouragement from her friends and family-- what an incredible support group she has! What awesome young examples of Charity!

Example of the Believers

Hooray for President's Day!

We got to take today off work because of the holiday and decided we'd head into town and go to an early show-- we figured there would be a lot of people sleeping in because of Valentines day. . . and then today being a holiday, so we figured we had a pretty good chance of getting in and getting seats close to each other. Bobbi, Lexi and I all went to the movie, "Valentines Day."

Awesome theatre-- but probably the most worthless movie I've ever spent money on- really, don't waste your time. We had fun just hanging out together though, walking up and around the upper west side-- I love the upper west side; this is where I use to live-- probably my most favorite place in the city. I had to sneak into Betsey Johnson. . . one of my favorite stores! They have this awesome perfume that I love. . . so I had to go get a whiff of it to perk me up after that blah movie! haha Also, we are doing a work out challenge at our house. . . to whip us all back into shape before swimsuit season! We all put in ten dollars, and then we put a sticker on here. . .

. . . every time that we work out. We have to work out for at least 30 min. in workout clothes, and break a sweat for it to count. Walking around the city doesn't count. At the end of this month. . . whomever has the most stickers wins a gift certificate for whatever they want. . . and since there are four of us, it will be for $40.00. For further motivation. . . we all have come up with an idea of what we want. . . so we can keep our "eye on the prize" as further incentive to get us out of bed early in the morning to workout! I haven't been dying to go shopping for clothes lately. . . but there is one thing that I've been considering shopping for. . . new perfume! There have been a couple I've fallen in love with lately, and mine is just about out. . . but I can't choose between them. . . one, being the Betsey Johnson-- so I had to go remind myself how much I like it. . . because I keep going back and forth between that and Juicy Couture's Viva la Juicy:

or. . . ?

I change my mind almost every day. . . but I still have two weeks. . . and I have to keep waking up early and working out, because the competition is getting so close I can't afford not to!

Here's our President's Day Dessert:

This was another new recipe. It tasted kind of like a Ginger German Pancake, drizzled with a strawberry and raspberry syrup, topped with whip cream. Mmm I actually really liked this one!

Happy Valentines Day!

I love Valentines Day! I didn't think that I would be able to talk to Fuzz on the phone today but he was able to switch missions with another kid so that we could talk-- I was so happy! We were talking about how amazing last Valentines Day was. . .

He came to New York and surprised me! I had just gotten finished nannying for my friend, in a neighborhood that I knew Fuzz wasn't even familiar with, and started walking towards the subway. I called him to let him know that I was headed home-- but he wasn't answering his phone. Then I saw this man come up walking really close. . . too close. . . I was starting to get nervous! I switched my purse around to the other side and then looked up at the man. He pulled off his hood . . . and it was Fuzz! I was ecstatic! I couldn't believe that he was actually here-- what an awesome surprise! Come to find out he had planned it all out with my roomies and so they had given him the address to where I was that night--- wild! That whole weekend was so awesome--we had so much fun together;) It will take something pretty amazing to ever top that!

My roomies and I got home from church and were all sitting talking in the kitchen when we discovered that we all had Valentines outfits on! Picture time!

We had just finished pictures and then Bobbi from the basement showed up. . . and she was all in Valentines colors too! We just had to get one more picture.

Yummy Experimentations. . .

I've been dying to make quiche out here. . . I got the recipe from mom ages ago, and today I finally made it!


Here's the beginnings. . . which to me is actually the hardest part!



I know you dig my cooking attire. . . that apron I love! Fuzz's sister Julie made it for me for Christmas-- She's so talented! It's reversible too! My awesome hairdo-- haha this head band is suppose to keep all my hairs on my head. . . and not in the food;) I'm set in my gear. . . ready to get cookin'!

I threw in a little squash, cheese, turkey and broccoli, added the egg mixture. . .


And here it is. . . my first quiche ever! I think this is one of my most favorite reipies so far-- it was our dinner tonight. . . and I'm sure it'll be my breakfast in the morning too!

This was a Cheddar, Broccoli, and Rice Soup. . .

I know it looks a lot like that other broccoli soup I made. . . but they are totally different-- the other one was million times better!

Okay so I know that this isn't the most beautiful pepper you've ever seen, but it was my first time alright- haha (and I think it's kinda suppose to look like that too;) This pepper is filled with rice, Cream of Mushroom, cheese, and you can add ground turkey, chicken, or beef too if you want-- topped with breadcrumbs. . . but it really was yummy!

And for dessert. . .

This is the beginnings of my Ginger Snap Icebox Cake.

All you do is layer the cookies and layers of whipped cream-- without sweeteners. . . and Voila!

The magic happens overnight in the fridge. . . all the rock hard cookies absorb the moisture from the cream and soften up. . . so when your finished it looks like this:

Okay, it pretty much looks the same, except now you can cut out cake slices, and they're all pretty and stripedy! Really-- and it's got such a yummy, rich flavor, it almost tastes like a ginger cheesecake! Tasted good and was super easy to make!

Mmm mmm Green Goodness!

So Lex and I decided that we were going to put all of the ingredients we could find that were listed on the ingredients list of this bottle. . . and make our own version of it, but even better! Here's what we came up with:

Here it is! Kinda looks gross though, I know, so I tried it in different lighting. . .

Tada! It still looks gross. Haha but it really tastes lots better than it looks. Right there you're looking at a concoction of Kayle, mango, apple,orange juice, pineapple, kiwi's, peach juice, bananas. . . and maybe a few other things I found in the fridge-- but that's all that I remember putting in there. Oh and I learned that there is difference between a juicer and a blender. . . betcha can't figure out what it is. . . haha Yea I thought about that before I started this project, but my concerns diminished when I beheld the button on our blender that read, "Liquefy." I guess that just means kind of liquefy-- because it ended up with a consistency somewhere in between apple sauce. . . and baby food. We let it set for a bit in the fridge and it turned a little bit more into juice. . . ;) Me and lex took about a shot of this every day for about a week, and guess what?! . . We didn't even get sick! This is a miracle medicine! Tell all your friends-- because if it worked for us, it will work for you too. haha maybe we can come up with our own secret ingredient to add to it and then patten the formula. We'll be set for life! How's that soundin' to you Fuzz?

Due to Inclement Weather. . .

This car was right in front of my appartment.

NEW YORK BLIZZARD CBS WEATHER VIDEO:

http://wcbstv.com/video/?id=138586@wcbs.dayport.com

Wow! Talk about Day of Drama- seriously. We knew that there was a storm coming, and were notified yesterday that the New York City public schools would be closed, and our ward temple night was cancelled because they found out the temple would be closed. This was not a good sign. We awaited the text this morning . . . telling us that work would be cancelled . . . due to inclement weather- I couldn’t get out of bed forever. I knew the second I got up and finished stacking on the layers the text would come. It never did. I knew that I would be fine getting to work as it takes about 20 min on the subway from my apartment. The majority of my colleagues live in Long Island, and have to take the trains in . . . and if it snows over 9 inches, the LIRR (Long Island Railroad) shuts down. We knew that going into work we would only have a few inches, but leaving work . . . not so sure. They could all be stuck in the city. I told them they could all sleep at my house! Haha
We all made it into work—everyone was trying to figure out what our game plan would be. Would we wait ‘till noon and head out, or would we wait ‘till it was just late enough that everyone would be stuck in the city?
In the meantime, we tried working. Almost every vendor that I deal with is in the New York area, and they were all closed due to inclement weather. . . The few that remained open were limited on staff, just enough to answer phones; they took our orders, but told us that due to inclement weather . . . they wouldn’t be shipping until tomorrow. There’s definitely tension growing in the office as we receive word of all these other places that are sending people home, and as we listen to the traffic reports of the blizzard hitting New York City that was predicted to continue through the night until tomorrow morning at about 6:00am, at which time we will have received an estimated 13 inches of snow—who knows how they actually come up with stat’s like these—needless to say . . . we were all getting a little bit nervous.
I was reminded of the movie “Miracle on 34th Street”, when that cute little girl looks out her building at the snow fall, (which was ironic because my subway stop just down the way is on 34th street—random!) We could see the snow falling out of the windows of our sky rise—I couldn’t imagine how something that looked so peaceful could be the cause of so much alarm! It was fascinating for me, because I’ve lived a life deprived of snow-filled memories. There are some . . . I confess . . . but, very few—and far between. I love the snow—really, I do. I think it’s beautiful. I just don’t like trudging through it. Most people here have to get from point A to point B one way or another, and here in the city, which is the greater evil . . . trudging through the icy, soppy sidewalks, or trusting a taxi to drive directly through it?
Amidst all the tension rapidly increasing within our office, due to inclement weather . . . my computer decides to start acting up, preventing me from getting ANYTHING done. I try to figure it out all on my own only to discover that my computer has been hijacked—yes, that’s what it told me. It was enough to get me panicking! All of these pop up’s come up—so many—so fast, that I can’t even click out of all of them! They’re scaring me too! All the words that they throw in there. . . Beware! Hijack! Abort IMMEDIATELY! Report threat! This could destroy important documents! Viruses detected! You’re infected! Unable to recover! Must scan Immediately! Scan reported hijacking! Order this antivirus software immediately--- or else . . . ok so I added the or else . . . but that’s essentially what they are screaming at me--all those darn pop-ups. So now I’m like freaking out! I don’t know what to do—my computer is out of control! I call my buddy Craig, who works in our building, to come and help me. He wasn’t answering his extension, so I assumed he was still in the conference room, at the pizza party—Oh yea, they though a big pizza party for us today for working on a snow day—such nice people. Anyways I walked in and saw Craig, just as I’d suspected, finishing up his lunch. I didn’t want to interrupt him, so I made my inquiry quick and right to the point. I didn’t realize how awful it would sound ‘till I said it . . . “Craig, don’t mean to interrupt you . . . my computer is being hijacked. Take your time, eat your lunch. But when you’re finished, if you wouldn’t mind . . .” everyone began giggling. And then I took a second to play that back in my head--- I guess I should have rethought the presentation of my request, before I opened my mouth.
Craig was finished in no time. It took him about a second and a half to conclude that my computer had in fact become infected with some sort of a virus. I was infected. I felt as though I had tangibly taken on that infection and I was becoming just what my computer had become . . . worthless. I can’t work without my computer, that’s where I think! It’s almost like my second brain—although it has a lot more storage space. I couldn’t call people, because they were either closed or their phones were disconnected—due to inclement weather . . . and now I was forced to sit facing my presently worthless, infected computer for the remainder of. . . well for as long as I would sit there until the weather got bad enough that we would kindly be asked to leave.
The drama continues as one of our stores call to inquire of my colleague expertise. He has the capability of accessing their computer from a remote location, by signing into a program called Log Me In, which we installed onto their computer so that we could access information from that computer at our leisure. It’s kinda fun logging on it when someone else is on, and wiggling the mouse around—unless they’re familiar with the program, it normally freaks them out. We caught someone on Facebook once, and typed out, “COHEN’S EMPLOYEES ARE PROHIBITED FROM FACEBOOK DURING STORE HOURS!” What was even funnier than that, was that they continued to show us their friends, look through picture galleries and just erase whatever we wrote! Haha we ended up calling them, but mysteriously no one claimed to be on facebook . . . right. Well anyway. . . Alan logged in to the Log Me In program to assess the stores computer problem . . . he was surprised to find a video playing of someone getting a tattoo. He called up the store and inquired about the video . . . but they claimed that there was no indication of any video displayed on their screen. What was going on? Hmmmmm. Then Watson started putting the clues together and solved our little mystery. . . Apparently, about a year ago, there was a man that stole one of our laptops from that store—right in the middle of a work day—he just grabbed it and ran! Incidentally he had kept it, or someone had, and we still had remote access to it! Alan started typing. . .” I know you stole this computer!!!” You could just feel the bullets of sweat drippin’ on the keyboard as man on the other end panicked trying to figure out what the heck was going on! He started erasing our messages and kept trying to close out of everything, which he eventually succeeded in, shutting down the complete system. But not before my wise colleague quickly copied down their IP address. With that information, and the aid of a computer program designed to find the exact location of the IP address . . . we were able to receive the latitude and longitude coordinates to locate the specific address of our thief! How cool is that?! We even Google mapped it, and saw that it was a residential area not far from us in Staten Island! We got a close up of the house and everything. That sucker totally got caught—soooo busted!
Wow . . . enough adventures for one morning or what?!!! I just got home as we finally received word that the trains would be closing soon . . . of course . . . due to inclement weather. What a day! Here are some fun pics I took on my stroll home from work ;)

You have be super careful walking up stairs like this. . . they get really slippery!

This is what I found when I came out of the ground from my subway. . . I'm sure you can imagine my anticipation of my trudging walk home:)

Rock & Soul and Edgars Cafe

Last night we had a girlss night with me, Lexi, and Bobbi- my neighbor from downstairs, seriously the funniest person I know! Bobbi has been here for longer than I have, and is actually moving out at the beginning of next month, so we decided to try out one of the restaurants she'd been dying to go to. Bobbi loves Soul food, because that's what she was raised on. Lex and I hadn't had a whole lot of it but we were curious to check this new place out. The restaurant was called "Rock and Soul."It was in a good part of the city, and was very tactfully designed and decorated; the ambiance was welcoming, but the food. . . not so much. Lex and I split our BBQ chicken meal; the half chicken came out all black, with just a little bit of meat on it-- not a whole lot of flavor either. This was a skinny bird. Cole slaw . . . eh-, mashed potatoes . . . they were actually the best part of the meal! The food was pretty expensive too, a fountain drink was $5.00 with tax-- for something that cost them about 15 cents. Not everywhere in New York is super expensive, and most of the time it's worth the price you pay. So needless to say, dinner didn't quite do me-- I suggested we check out somewhere close for dessert. Bobbi looked up on her phone the best places for dessert in our area. . . some of the places were closed, some were kind of out of the way. . . I was surprised at how many places that she read off that we'd actually already been to. We finally found a new place that sounded perfect, it was called Edgar's Cafe.

We didn't know until we got there and read the plaque on the wall that this name derived from the very Edgar Allen Poe, who was residing in the Brennan mansion-- at that very location, when he wrote "The Raven." The lighting was very dim, but crowded with people. There were a couple display windows filled with the most mouthwatering dessert creations! Everything looked Soooo good!

Oh and I discovered my new favorite kind of flower. . . it's called "Chocolate."

Lex decided on this amazing chocolate cake-syrupy dessert, Bobbie got this layered chocolate pudding-cheesecakey-bannana cream pie, and I got the classic Apple Crumb pie al amode. We had a test-taste all around, and Everything was amazing! We all scarfed down our desserts-- It was so good we couldn't waste any of it, but we all payed for it later. We had tummy aches for the remainder of the night-- I felt like I'd gained 20 lbs! It was so much fun though-- and I get two check off 2 new places in one night! That leads me to a total of 3. Although I was shooting for 5, I think that there are just too many fun places I'd like to see before I go. . . I might just have to explore more than I'd intended. . . oh, that "bites" haha.

Oh, I just had to take a picture of this. We stopped at the West Side Market between stops to make a quick grocery trip. I was looking for my New York medium sharp and came across this green cheese! I love green--green's my favorite. . but not when it comes to cheese.

Crepes on Columbus

I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about this awesome restaurant, but had never been able to come try it out for myself. Last week I finally received an opportunity to spoil my palette- by joining with a group of my friends for a night at the infamous “Crepes On Columbus.” There were so many different kinds of Crepes to choose from, varying from Ratatouille, goat’s cheese, and olives to the dessert crepes filled with Nutella, fruit, and whipped cream. Everything looked sooo good, but I finally selected the strawberry crepe. I love crepes- and so I wasn’t concerned at all about not liking it, but I must say I was shocked to discover that this crepe wasn’t like any crepe I’d ever tasted before. The crepe itself was thick, but not like a pancake, still absolutely a crepe—its contents spilling out, mmm . . . warm strawberry, mouthwatering goodness! It was beautiful. I would strongly recommend this place to anyone—though this is the only thing I’ve ever actually tried from there, every dish brought to the table looked like an edible piece of art, I wanted to try everything! Thank you Crepe’s on Columbus for a) giving us a tangible taste of Heaven on Earth and b) for being a restaurant that I can cross off my “Things I need to accomplish before I leave New York” list.

http://crepesoncolumbus.com/

Creamy Potato Soup

Mom gave me her recipe for her Creamy Potato Soup I’ve been craving. I have never made it before, and I figured if it’s something that I love so much, I probably better get that recipe and practice making it! I love when you don’t have all the ingredients and it’s Sunday, so you can’t just run to the store and pick it up – haha it gives you an opportunity to just be creative, just hopefully it won’t taste that way. I needed flour to thicken the soup, but all that was available was Kelly’s whole wheat oat and barley mix flour that she generously donated to the cause. It made it look like I’d scorched the soup, but when I made some more to add to the soup later, I was grateful to see that it looked the same and that it was just the special flour that made it look like that—but it still tasted the same, and it was a very healthy substitution too; I love healthy versions of foods that taste just as good! I also made some wild berry muffins, nothing special, just from the package . . . but because the water was hot when I’d added it, some of the berries had broken while it was being mixed together, and we ended up with pink muffins. It was perfect for the beginning of the month of Valentines! Haha anyways it is now less then my two month mark for coming home—it’ crazy! Fuzz just found out his tentative date is somewhere in the middle of March—I’m so excited for him to finally be finished—and kinda excited to be with him too;)