I somehow forgot to post this column, and I actually liked it. Enjoy!
Trusting Your Own Gut
Getting my friends to try a restaurant that I have raved about is a lot like a sitting in a pressure cooker. If the meal is great, applause and cheering may ensue. But, if the meal goes sour, I wonder if I may be left with the bill.Today, with the abundance of informational sites like Yelp, Menupages, and billions of food blogs, this pressure is alleviated. We now have a scapegoat. If someone’s burger is served charred instead of medium rare, I have the freedom to just shrug and say, “Thanks for nothing Nymag.com!”
But it also causes me to question, with the abundance of opinions and reviews out there, who’s perception is now the authority? Why am I trusting my palate to anyone with a keyboard? Continue reading →
My 26th also included a bar crawl in the Greenwich Village, a Men and Whales rock show at the Trash Bar in Brooklyn, dinner at Diablo Royale in the W. Village, and concluded with bourbon on the rocks, but for this column’s sake, this is a recap of birthday events that happened in the one and only, Hoboken.
It took me a solid hour to finish the top of my Cookie Monster cupcake. Brought home in a box wrapped in that classic red and white string, the cupcakes from Carlo’s Bake Shop were a gluttonous experience.
Though the a pound cake texture broke up the intensity of the rich, vanilla icing piled high to make up the Cookie Monster’s head (complete with a cookie wedge in his mouth), indeed this task was a marathon, and not a race.
The way I see it, when eating something in the shape of a Sesame Street character, why not embrace it head on, and demolish it as I would have when I was the age of the show’s demographic. Fearing a sugar shock, I lobbed off the monster’s eyes and took a recess in order to finish what I started. It was as messy as it sounds. I believe some blue sprinkles are still in the slipcovers of my couch.
At 26 years of age, I ate like a four year old, and it was delightful. With whipped icing and yellow cake in between my fingers and my lips and eyes wide from the sugar, I was a pig in heaven, as I should be on my birthday.
The trip to Carlo’s Bakeshop was the conclusion of a Monday off from work, spent moseying around Hoboken for the big day to celebrate 26 years of me, and of course, my twin. While last year’s birthday consisted of a brunch at The Elysian and cupcakes at Sweet, this year the twin, my mom, and myself switched things up and met at Anthony and David’s Dining Room, a quaint and cozy place tucked into the corner of 10th and Bloomfield. Usually tinted with low lighting and candles at night, this early afternoon it housed a quiet neighborhood charm. When I lived uptown for a year, a few blocks away, I yearned for a meal there, as I snuck peeks at delicious-looking entrees while I walked home from the bus stop with a gut full of peanut butter and jelly and empty pockets. Needless to say, a lunch here was a true treat.
To walk off the meal, there was shopping. A few stops at the boutiques, including People, a new shop near 8th and Washington, resulted in some new accruements to my garment rack, finally culminating at a stop at the Carlo’s Bake Shop. Though the shopping was a treat itself, my sis and I were due for something decadent.
Back at my apartment, mid sugar coma, and with the smell of blown out pink birthday candles still hanging in the air, my face hurt. The entire weekend was full of friends, silly antics, and toasts. I’m pretty sure my face hurt from smiling. Yes, I’m almost positive it was from laughing, and not a toothache from the icing.
Ladies and gentlemen—last week, I stepped one small foot by turning 26, and one giant leap away from my generation by becoming the proud new owner of a……TYPEWRITER.
Although a bit frustrated that I can’t even use the “Courier” font in this blog to type the word “typewriter,” I believe most of you know what this machine can do. It types. Loudly. And it dings when you hit the….the thing…well, I’m still learning the terms. All I know if that it has ink now…and that in the future I will have to refill it with a ribbon. That’s all for now.
It was similar to getting a Ouji board for my 12th birthday. Pulling it out of its case, I set it on a table and just stared at it. I know what it supposedly did, but I still thought…what does it do??
It’s quite fitting how the first message I typed was this:
Ahh yes. No “Edit:Undo.” Keyboard shortcuts are no match for this grandmother of print.
Still figuring out its age, I’m not quite sure if I feel like a Veronica Corningstone from Anchorman, due to my typewriter’s mustard hue, or if it dates a bit further back, but I’m sure after some more researching I will figure this out. It helps to feel in the moment with the machine, and so while I may be donning a modern “lob” (a longer bob) I envision myself with my hair flipped, biting a pencil in between my teeth with horn-rimmed glasses as I punch out timely articles or thank you notes. This will also come greatly in handy for all my complaint letters that I’ve previously mentioned.
She (name to be determined) may feel uneasy next to my Mac, Blackberry, and Nano, but will surely make friends with the following replicas of archaic items I have in my room, including a rotary dial-styled phone and a clock radio that looks like an old-time radio. At least she’s not a replica. She’s the real thing, which will help with her self-esteem.
In Pretty in Pink, Molly Ringwald’s character, Andie, tells her friend who is slow dancing in her prom dress from the ’60s, “Iona, you’re gonna OD on nostalgia.”
While I may not be OD’ing on my own nostalgia, I’m definitely tripping on past lives.
This past weekend, I participated in one of the most gluttonous experiences of my life, and so completely worth it and even better than the time I practically devoured an entire chocolate cake…but that’s another story all together.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Baconstock ’09: one night of complete bacon debauchery. Porkapalozza and Pigtopia were runners up in the title race, but we decided that adding the “stock” was the strongest contender and the best way to convey the potential awesomeness of the event.
And it surely delivered. After a few nights/slow work afternoons of searching the internets for inspiration, we planned a sort of tasting menu around the wonderful, fantastical pork product, and after short stop at the grocery store, got down to work. I forgot to jot down portion sizes for the ingredients, so we eyeballed pretty much everything, but overall, the ingredients, tools and baking techniques required were pretty simple.
After much deliberation, and a few beers, we decided that the winner of the night was the Trifecta Cookie: a mix of chocolate, peanut butter, and bacon, a combination born out of some indecisiveness between making a chocolate chip bacon cookie recipe, or a peanut butter cookie recipe. Believing that all three ingredients taste good enough on their own, we dared to combine all three into a holy trinity that blew our minds. If only this theory applied to more situations in life.
Mission:
To celebrate the glorious existence of the salty, smoked meat by eating it.
Rule #1:
No burning of ingredients.
Rule #2:
Bacon must be used in each recipe, and incorporated in each bite.
Rule #3:
More rules may be made as necessary, especially if beer or bourbon becomes involved.
Menu:
Appetizer: Bacon-wrapped Bananas
Entrée: Inside-Out BLTs
Dessert: Peanut Butter, Chocolate Chip, and Bacon Cookies
We. Did. Good.
Plus, this is all even funnier by this Jim Gaffigan clip:
Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer 
