Perhaps I don’t say it enough in this blog, but as much as I fully love NYC, for me to enjoy playing in such an urban playground, I live in a little town across the Hudson River in Hoboken, which some refer to as the Boken, but my fellow Hoboken friends and I have adopted “Hobo” or “Hobokia” as our term of endearment.
I love Hoboken. It’s quaint. It’s cute. It’s historic (Frank Sinatra’s birthplace, first game of baseball). It’s a perfect mix of small town and urban living all in one.
And then there are my own chronicles of Hoboken that I have collected ever since moving here in August 2007. The musical hippies I love that congregate for open mic night institutions like the Goldhawk and Maxwell’s uptown, my favorite low key bar Louise and Jerry’s, and where I live, 2nd and Adams, which I refer to as a Little Italy because of the famous Fiore’s Italian deli with their fresh, hand-made mozzarella, and the fact that my own living room smells of marinara sauce on a daily basis, that wafts in either from the Leo’s Grandevous restaurant on the corner, or the Italian deli that is connected to my apartment building. There’s nothing like waking up to the smell of gravy (I threw that term in there for my Italian friends).
Lately, one aroma that I do not appreciate comes from the creepy culinary skills of one of my roommates. I live with two roommates. One is one of my besties, Ria, and the other is a Craigslister. I mean, she’s fine. She keeps to herself. She never uses the living room unless Ria and I are out. Whatever. But what really amazes me is her cooking.
The other night, while I was working out to a cardio dvd, I really, truly thought that she was cooking garbage. Honest to jeebus. I mean, the girl is a bit of a health food nut, so who knows. I don’t know if she burns the beans sprouts, or wax beans, or whatever she prepares, then consumes in her room, but I literally thought that she was cooking trash.
Again, the other day, while watching some bad television, thank God my nose was semi-stuffy because I think she was saute-ing some litter. Maybe she is. Maybe she is an eco-genius, who has found the answer to what the world is looking for: a way to turn trash into sustenance. If so, I have a future Nobel Prize winner in my kitchen. If not, I have the makings of another chapter in “the characters I have come across in my life” book. She will be placed next to the woman I worked with at a publishing company a few years back, who wore a different Christmas-themed sweatshirt to work for every day in December.
Bizarre.
Oh, and the other day, Ria witnessed her mixing a can of tuna with prunes and broccoli. Sunday morning, I saw a tupperware vat of what looked like chunks of tuna or some other canned meat floating in a red broth. I think I heard her tell a friend she was making jambalaya. Honey, what is lingering in that plastic bin is an insult to the French Quarter.
Maybe she’ll get two chapters in my book…
Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer 