a summer hiatus

I am back from my summer hiatus in California--and I have brought pictures.
New Academy of Sciences in San Francisco
The Mister and I as Morrissey and Karen O, respectively, at my 21st birthday party.

County fair sheep
A breakfast of fresh farmer's market berries and cream
A beret for Amina!
A little hat for my new baby cousin, Parker Johanna!

I am back in NY now, having mostly nested in my new room: I have m benjamin's art on my walls, an East-facing, treetop window, and a non-college-issued mattress courtesy of one Miss Erin Perfect, and so I am quite content once again. Class are just beginning, and I am not quite yet in my routine, but for now I am content. This semester I am taking: a. French literature, focusing on Balzac; b. botany; and c. Renaissance poetry with a focus on the environment and imagination (with my beloved Bill Shullenberger). It promises to be a wonderful semester. The mister has moved into a new apartment in Park Slope with our good friends J, Erin, and Lucas, and we have enjoyed exploring his new neighborhood on our bikes. We have made a pact to take more field trips this semester, while the weather is still nice, and explore New York before we leave it.

Well I'm off to finish my breakfast of apple slices with chunky peanut butter, and then to the bookstore to pick up my Botany textbook. Hopefully, more posts and pictures soon!

p.s. while you are at it, you should check out this new musical project, which releases in the US on September 12th. We are planning to see them in NY at the West Park Presbyterian Church on October 30, and we are super excited about it!

the cloisters and a cake

With only two weeks of classes left, I find myself in good shape academically, and this weekend I allowed myself a little free time with my Mister to celebrate his birthday. Honestly, it was a nice break from the computer for a couple of days (it's amazing how tired, sore, and irritable just sitting in front of a screen several hours every day will make you). Here is a picture of the cake I made him (I apologize for the poor quality):

This was a mocha cake with a chocolate-hazelnut glaze, both recipes from the wonderful Complete Tassajara Cookbook, by Ed Espe Brown and it was to-die-for delicious. This is the best cookbook I have ever beheld--directions are simple, ingredients common, and every single recipe is perfectly balanced and delicious. Ed Brown is an inspiration and a wonderful chef.

Anyway, the cake turned out brilliantly and was completely stress-free (I often avoid making cakes because they tend to call for special flours, lots of sifting and whipping and then turn out only plain-tasting), and so I highly recommend the recipe, and will surely be making it again, on multiple occasions.

After eating half the cake for dinner, we got up to eat the second half for breakfast, then made a pasta salad to take with us as a picnic lunch to the Cloisters, the beautiful medieval art extension of the Met in Washington Heights. Both the collections (inside an old cloisters on a hill) and the vast gardens that surround them are beautiful, especially this time of year, and we were lucky enough to have the lovely weather to enjoy them:










So much beauty all in one day! The Mister and I noted how like the "complacent smiles" of the Classical Chinese and old Buddhist works were the smiles on the faces of the Virgin in many of the Medieval works. And how wonderfully Utopian these old interpretations of Christian allegory were. And the colours on the angels' wings--crimson, and lapis, so beautiful!

Back to the books now, unfortunately, but if all goes according to plan, I should be finished with all my work and have it turned in by next Tuesday! And then, the following one, back to California. More before then though--I have more pictures that I've saved for a rainy day. :)

A Hectic Week-End

As I sit now at my cozy little desk with my tea and a notebook, and the lovely Amiina playing delicate snow-music despite the sunshine, I cannot say that I could be more grateful for a quiet afternoon after such a hectic Manhattan week-end. I shall not go into great detail of each of my days, but I can say that I accomplished several "firsts" in New York this last week.

i. I went to my first East-Coast antiques show! Antiquing is an entirely different affair over here--the market trends are far different, the average age of the objets d'art is far older. There seems to be a much bigger market for folk art, curiosities, portraits (especially miniatures and silhouettes) and Americana over here. Also, the booths at the show were set up differently--much sparser and more decorative, as opposed to the full-to-bursting booths you see in San Francisco. No particular luck with finds, although we stumbled upon a fantastic dealer in art nouveau and arts and crafts glass and pottery that offered incredibly reasonable prices for works of greater quality than I've ever seen outside of Antiques Roadshow.

ii. Attended my first gallery-party thing in Tribeca, in a space that was part living arrangemet, part dance floor, and lots of splattered paint. The guy who owns it is apparently going to turn it into a gallery... we'll see, I suppose.

iii. My first-ever rock-opera puppet show, complete with puppet sex! Live band and puppets with ska-influenced music and silly drunken-puppet singing. Definitely a lot of fun... although I don't know quite what else to make of it!

Also, I want to record the delicious places I ate for future reference:

i. Stumptown Coffee and the adjoining Breslin Bar, where my sweetheart and I enjoyed some phenomenal espresso, a leek-and-goat-cheese tart, and an escarole salad with fresh pears and a light Gorgonzola dressing (great food, and a fun venue--both are attached to the lobby of the Ace Hotel in Midtown, with a funky '30's-modern space for eating, lounging, and free wi-fi)

ii. Cosmic Cantina--a cheap, vegetarian, organic burrito joint with four varieties of homemade organic tortillas (flour, whole-wheat flour, corn, and spelt) and kick-ass guacamole.

iii. Les Halles Brasserie, owned by Anthony Bourdain, a French brewery with good food, lovely help, a neat space. Moderately priced, with twenty-dollar steaks of every sort and a good "Paris-cafe" spread. The crème brulée was to die for...

Anyhow, that's my weekend in a nutshell. I may be taking a little day-trip in a few days to Montauk, if we get a snowstorm... M. Benjamin and I are dead-set on seeing a snowy beach! Meet you in Montauk, everyone....

Happy Birthday, Annette! We MacCrackers Love You!

Today is Good Buddy Annette's birthday, and the girls and I had a night out on the town last night in celebration. Here's a collage of our evening in words and pictures:

Exhibit 1: Massive quantities of Thai food at Aura on 9th Ave. consumed: Tom Ka, a soup of lime and coconut juice with herbs and mushrooms, Pad Thai, lemongrass chicken with green papaya salad, beef salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, and lots of chili, cashew nut chicken, and Thai iced teas and coconut juice. Here are Annette and Dana with the leftovers. They actually had to pull over another table to accommodate all our food. :)

Followed by coffee on Times Square's Red Steps. India provides Dana with her caffeinated sustenance.

My abnormally high body temperature regulates Jamie's abnormally low one. So does my scarf. I look like I'm giving her a power headlock, though.



Bright lights, big city.
India looking like a villain on the subway. Jamie looking pensive. That's Annette's arm in the red.
All of us on the Red Steps in Times Square: me, Annette, India, Dana, and Jamie. I wish Parisa had been there, as well, but she's home in California for her cousin's wedding. Sound familiar? Anyhow, that was our fabulous celebration of Annette's eighteenth in the city (New York is The City for me now. So intensely strange) and we had a lovely time. Happy birthday, my friend!

A Happy Samhain to All, and to All, a Good Night

Yesterday was Halloween, the overwhelmingly favourite holiday of myself and my peers. The holiday this year was made particularly pleasant by the presence in New York of my own darkling, one Mister Michael Benjamin Herndon. We spent the day at the New York Botanical Gardens, in the Bronx, with a couple of all-garden passes and pic-nic for two. It was a beautiful, mild, drizzly day and we ate a delicious lunch of goat's milk brie, baguette, tortellini salad with cherry tomatoes, and Bartlett pears before we meandered about the garden taking in the phenomenal autumn colours. Here are some photos--







You can see how bleakly beautiful October is here. I wish I could just bottle it up.

And, of course, it simply isn't Halloween without a party or two! My lady friends here on Campus invited me to a party at the Harlem apartment of a friend of theirs, so M. Benjamin and I dressed up (he as a Red Hat Lady, and I as Artemis, the goddess of the hunt) and went with Jamie into the city for the evening. We met Dana, Annette, India, and her boyfriend Nick there and stayed till nearly one before heading back home. Here are more pictures for you:


There's Michael Benjamin as a Red Hat Lady. Stunning, don't you think? I particularly like the post-menopausal whiskers he has going on there...


India and Nick getting sexy with the pizza.

The MacCracken Ladies, from left: Dana, India, me, and Annette. Jamie had already left and Parisa hadn't come along, but with those two, the six of us plan on living together next year.

So that's it! Hope your Halloween was as much fun as mine!

From the Top of the Rocks

Well, yesterday was Laura's birthday, so we spent the evening in the city. It's a funny thing, but the whole experience made me feel, for the first time, that I'm actually living here in New York.

We took a train into Grand Central and then hopped the Subway from there to our first destination, a lovely Mexican restaurant called Rosa Mexicano. While the entrées were priced a bit outside our budgets, we took advantage of their sizable and reasonably priced appetizer menu to build for ourselves a meal. Jamie and Laura each ordered the tortilla soup for a "first course," and were surprised to see it come to the table in two vessels apiece: they were each given a bowl with a little heap of chicken, fried tortilla strips, queso fresco, and avocado, and then our server poured in over the mound a thick, brick-red soup. I ordered the house salad to start off, which was a pile of mixed greens, shredded carrots and jicama, quarters red and yellow grape tomatoes, and a delicate, sweet-and-spicy vinaigrette with mint and sweet peppers.

Just when we thought it couldn't get any better, we got our second dishes. Laura and Jamie had ordered the flautas and taquitos, respectively, and I ordered a dish called "Zarape de Pato," which will go down in history as one of the most delectable dishes that has ever passed between these lips. It was made of tender, juicy, seasoned duck, shredded with spices and sandwiched between two soft corn tortillas and drenched over with a smooth, sweet, creamy puréed corn sauce. It was fantastic, sweet, spicy, smokey, and the duck was cooked as I've never seen it before--not chewy, not stringy, not tough, and not overly gamey. We left very full and very happy, and walked next to Rockefeller Square, where we had previously purchased tickets to go up to the "Top of the Rocks," at the top of the Rockefeller building. I need say not a thing--here are the photos:





Some of them are a little blurry, but I think it only adds to the charm.

You always here people describe the lights of New York City, the silver and neon, the sky that's never black, but it's another thing entirely to see it, and from above. Looking out over the city, with the golden September moon above me, I cannot say that I felt as though I were home. But I can say that this whole experience no longer felt like summer camp.

We walked about the city a little more after that and then caught a 10:30 train back to Bronxville. We were tired and our feet were thrashed, but we'd had a lovely time.

Calaveras Big Trees State Park

It has come to my attention that one of my favourite places from my childhood, one Calaveras Big Trees State Park, is under danger of being shut down. This place is one of so much magic and beauty in my memories that I can hardly come to terms with this unfortunate threat. My family and I took a day trip to the park, which lies just outside of Arnold, CA, on Sunday, and here are a few of the photos I took of these magnificent giants.