Life, Home, Work, Cocktails, Cooking and a Blog

Work is busy. Life is busy. Blog is neglected. Freelance writing requires lots of time juggling/multi-tasking prowess… I. IS. TIRED.

But let’s attempt a real update, shall we?

In life updates, I stupidly made the decision to go back to spinning and irish dancing at the same time. This means my body has been sore for the entirety of a month. Normally, the pain would ease off after one or two classes of either, but since I’m doing both, and  averaging two spins and two dance classes per week, my body is basically angry at me ALL THE TIME. The sense of accomplishment feels great, the pain..not so much. But regardless, I’m really excited that I’ve started back with irish dancing in particular and actually stuck with it. It’s easy to do it once or twice and then be too tired after work, have a headache, etc. so the fact that I’m being consistent is pretty awesome. It also helps that I’ve started over from the beginning. It’s very no pressure. I know what I’m doing and by the time it gets really hard I’ll be determined to keep going.

In other news, we painted one wall of our kitchen with chalkboard paint (see above photo) so we could start listing our weekly meals on the wall. Beyond it being kind of ridiculous (but cute and charming!) it helps us (okay, me) stay on track with cooking. If I have a plan I am good to go. If I get home after work (and after dance class) with no plan for dinner it’s pretty much guaranteed that take out is happening, and that gets old real fast.  So the board is helping. And I like crossing things off lists so it’s just all around good fun for my planner brain!

Also, I mad a new cocktail. With gin! I’m usually a vodka girl but I’m branching out like a real grown up. My first gin at home creation – a lavender honey cocktail. I’ll post the recipe once I get it just right. But basically it’s gin, fresh lemon juice, and a honey lavender syrup. I mix honey, water, lavender, and lavender bitters together and let it sit for a half hour and then use it as a syrup basically to add to the gin and the lemon.

YUMMMMM

Topped off with a sprig of lavender and you have this gorgeous little cocktail:

so pretty – almost too pretty to drink…ALMOST.

The weather (except for the rain today) has been pretty exquisite here and we’ve been eating outside almost every night enjoying dinner and cocktails. It’s a little piece of heaven in the midst of all the chaos of this city. And while our rent check keeps us at home instead of going out most nights, I gotta say, I can’t complain that much. Home is pretty fucking awesome.

Home is also soon to be more awesome as we are painting the back bedroom this weekend! My mom will be visiting in two weeks and the goal is to get the room nice enough for someone besides the cats to actually sleep in it. So this Saturday will be all about painting.

Sunday meanwhile will be all about cooking – hopefully a new roast! I’ve been struck by a strange desire to roast a duck but that might prove to be too expensive. But expect a roast update soon! Perhaps it’s time to take on a roast chicken…the most intimidating of roasts for me as I have never tasted one better than my father’s. And I’m not glorifying his memory here. It was just THAT FUCKING GOOD. UGH. More evidence that I should have been paying attention!

Finally, in other VERY important news – today is apparently National Moscato Day! Made up no doubt by some random alcoholic! In honor of that alcoholic I give you my favorite moscato – La Caudrina Moscato d’Asti. It’s perfection in a glass. It’s usually available for anywhere between $17 – $20 a bottle – but bear in mind that’s half a bottle. Delish.

So there you have it – a lengthy update that could have been various blogs over the past two weeks if I actually had the ability to multi-task. Blogger of the Year – CLEARLY.

Sole Meuniere – Well…Sort Of

I have a francophile confession to make. I cheated the other night. I made sole menuiere sans a traditional ingredient.

Okay, here’s the big confession – I didn’t use any parsley.

I realize this is deeply shocking and might take some time for the French to get over. But it’s true. I did it. And I think the cooking Gods kinda punished me for it.

It wasn’t really my fault. I’m on a super strict budget this week because I stocked my fridge like a grown up upon return from California. So I got items I knew I could use for various dinners but forgot that some recipes I might want to try required little additions – like parsley. And not to sound too American, for risk of being executed by the French, but parsley is kinda pointless. It doesn’t actually taste like anything…does it? And as far as sole meuniere goes it’s really just a garnish. It’s seemingly just to give the fish a bit of color and pizazz…non? I know, I know. I’m American. I suppose I just can’t possibly understand.

Anyways, I saved myself $4 at the grocery store and compromised my “Frenchness” and made sole meuniere without the parsley (insert gasp).

This was my first time making it and whether it was the French food Gods punishing me for my slight change to the recipe or the simple fact that I had just never made it before, it didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. Flavor wise, it was delicious. Presentation wise, it was an epic fail. And presentation counts my friends. If your food isn’t pleasing to the eye you are much less likely to want to eat it.

But overall, I’d say I did good. I tried a new recipe and it was good enough to eat. Next time I just need to make it pretty enough to eat:

the very basic ingredients. Love the French for their simplicity

Fish covered in flour cooking in butter. Yup…that’s ALL butter

The finished dish. Fish broke while cooking. Le sigh…delicious but not so pretty.

Next time will be better, I hope. Either way, I am definitely enjoying this week’s foray into sauces. They really are simple things of beauty.

Also worth mentioning on the cooking front – there was a big market/festival down the street from me on my return home from California and there was such a super sale that I had to buy this:

PRETTY

I just couldn’t resist. It was so pretty and like 75% off. And since it’s Fall, it’s the perfect time to experiment with soups and more sauces. And now I have a beautiful fun new toy to do that with.

The goal this weekend is to make a soup, perhaps a minestrone. Then the goal is to get my Mom’s recipe and make her Irish stew, which everyone else in my family seems to know how to make but no one seems to be able to give me a recipe for it.

Also, I made banana bread again last night. After making myself dinner. Because apparently that’s what I do now. I cook. For fun.

When did I become this person?! It still shocks me to my core. But I suppose I should just ride the wave and enjoy it.

Weekly Roundup

Another week, another roundup.

Let’s start right where we left off, shall we? After a suprisingly busy Friday last week I went home to Brooklyn and decided to do as little as possible for two whole days. This resulted in me committing a good chunk of my Sunday to watching Girls, the new HBO show that everyone seems to think is either amazing or utterly horrible. We just added HBO to our cable and by Sunday I’d watched EVERYTHING else, so I thought why not give it a go?

And after watching the first season in its entirety, I can’t decide if I wasted my time or not.

Is it as culturally relevant as everyone in America seems to think it is? Yes. Does it represent a part of our culture that I have anything in common with? That would be a big fat fucking NO. It represents a generation of whiners in my opinion. And why would I want to watch that? Now, to be fair, it’s a very honest representation of the whiny, entitled masses our country knows so well. You know, the ones who move to NYC and expect a fabulous career to be handed to them just because they went to college showed up for an interview. It represents that extremely well.  But, that’s why I can’t seem to decide if it’s worth watching, because it’s basically just a a bunch of spoon fed female characters in their early 20′s wondering why the world is so unfair while they have really awkward and horrible sex.

Then again, where do I get off judging or deeming it unwatchable? I mean, I watch The Real Housewives franchise. And I say franchise, because I watch more than one of them. It’s my guilty pleasure. Not because I  have anything in common with them but because I find their particular whining and bitching entertaining. So why couldn’t I find the characters on Girls just as entertaining and ridiculous?

I still haven’t decided. I’ll likely tune in for Season 2 since I’m now a bit curious, but whether or not its got my full attention still remains to be seen. I will say that the episode in which Shoshana accidentally smokes crack was fucking hilarious. That episode, I truly enjoyed. And that is why I will give it a go next season. The quality of writing is there, I’m just not sure if I care about it.

This week I started my Hebrew class. Oy. That shit is hard. In my first class I learned how to say “my name is”, “how are you”, and “where are you from” in Hebrew  so that’s a good start. But then I was introduced to the alphabet and the “vowels”. I put vowels in quotes here because they don’t actually exist in Hebrew. You know, just to make it MORE confusing. So I now have to master a new alphabet, reading and writing right to left, and pronouncing vowels that don’t actually exist. Fun times! But this is what I signed up for right? I’m just going to consider it my summer challenge. I have no idea if I’ll make any real progress or if I’ll be at all inclined to learn Hebrew past Level 1 but at least I’m trying to better myself and learn something new. Although I do feel like I’m being a bit naughty. Given that my Mom is Irish, if there’s any hard language I should be tackling, it should really be Gaelic. Perhaps that will be my fall challenge, just to keep things interesting.

Other than that, there’s not much going on. Today is payday (praise Jesus!) which means I have one day where I feel like I have SO MUCH money and then the next day it’s all gone after my bills clear. But at least I’m able to take care of a few things that need desperate attention. I, for one, need a haircut and can’t wait to take care of that in the next week or so. And my adorable shih tzu Rocky also desperately needs a haircut so there will be a trip to the groomers in the next few days. It will be nice to actually see his eyes again…poor wee thing is a mess. I’ll try and remember to post a pic here once he’s all pretty again.

So there you have it, the weekly roundup, exciting as EVER. Hopefully I’ll post other stuff this week with my down time. I’ve got quite a few places to review from the past couple months. Time to get typing!

Back to Life, Back to Reality

God bless the Irish wake. I just spent three days with my enormous Irish family celebrating the life of my grandmother and I am exhausted. In the best possible way, of course.

There were lots of tears and snatters (as the Irish say) and everything was truly lovely. No really, everything. Because that’s the only word the Irish know how to use. The casket was lovely, the funeral home director was lovely (so lovely I do believe a few Irish women proposed marriage), the meals were all lovely, so and so’s boyfriend was lovely, someone else’s husband was lovely, and so on, and so on. Because all things Irish, apparently, are lovely. Or Love-LEH as they say.

For me, the loveliest part of the trip was that for the first time in years, we had almost all the immediate cousins in the same room. There are sixteen of us, 12 girls and 4 boys, ranging in ages from 8 to 36 (I think) and this time we only had one missing.  In her defense she was in Australia so it was too difficult for her to fly in with all that was going on with her there, but she was the only one missing. Thankfully my  sister managed to fly in from Prague last minute and hitch a ride with us from NYC for the best family reunion we’ve had in a long time.

But I am so, so tired. Story telling till the wee hours is exhausting.

Now, it’s back to life in NYC. My sister is here through Sunday which is lovely (obviously) so there are of course plans for lots of eating and drinking to celebrate her last few days in the States before her return to Eastern Europe. Then next week is Thanksgiving – an excuse to eat more than your weight in turkey and drink to your heart’s content. Not that I need an excuse. I mean, really, let’s be honest here.

So there you have it. Next week lyrics of the day will recommence as will the locations of the week and general NYC information and musings. For now, I see a lavender tequila cocktail in my very near future for an unwinding of epic proportions…3 hours and counting.

Lyrics of the Day

I’m off to a big Irish wake for my grandmother and I am sure her favorite Irish song will be sung (while drunk) many times over the next few days, so in honor of that, the chorus of the song will be the Lyrics of the Day:

“If you’re Irish come into the parlour,

There’s a welcome there for you;

If your name is Timothy or Pat,

So long as you come from Ireland,

There’s a welcome on the mat,

If  you come from the Mountains of Mourne,

Or Killarney’s lakes so blue,

We’ll sing you a song and we’ll make a fuss,

Whoever you are you are one of us,

If you’re Irish, this is the place for you!”

If You’re Irish Come Into the Parlor, Shaun Glenville and Fred Godfrey

Oh Canada…

In my travels this week work and school have sadly overwhelmed tourist goals in each city I’ve visited. I suppose that’s the nature of traveling for work. Then combine that with finals week, lack of funds, and general exhaustion and travel kinda loses all of its sexiness.

While I intend to elaborate on my week in blogs to come all I can say for now is that I’ll be revisiting Montreal and Quebec City to do them up right. Neither got the attention I believe either of them deserved during my time there and let’s be honest, visiting new places is always better with a partner in crime, and next time around I’m bringing Erik.

For now, I’m thrilled to have gotten out of the city and am trying to just relax and enjoy the weekend with my family. Tomorrow should include wine tasting (expect a blog on Canadian wine!) and if I can manage it something resembling a mani-pedi, and Sunday will be a day full of all things Irish including a new play being workshopped and watching the latest Irish World Champion dance. Not too shabby.

All in all, it’s been a great week, if not completely exhausting, and the blog has no doubt taken a massive hit on the priority list. I intend to do better in Paris and get back to the everyday commitment of it all, but for now I’m proud I’m still a functioning human at all given all the things that have been on my plate lately.

But I suppose that’s the way I like it. Busy, productive, and ultimately interesting. I’d rather have too much to do and too many stories to tell than none at all.

Always an Irish Dancer at Heart

Growing up half Irish and half French, my parents tried to balance the scales in terms of cultural exposure from the equally vibrant cultures they both carried with them into our house. Both sides were drinkers, party people, story tellers, and general loud mouths, so all that was naturally covered. But certain things had to be insisted upon so we knew where we came from.

For my father, it was most important that we spoke French. And as I am now getting my Master’s in French Studies I think it’s safe to say I did him proud in keeping a connection to my heritage and learning and speaking the language.

For my Mom, all she is asked was that we learned how to Irish dance. My sister and I did it for a couple years here, then a couple years there. We went, we quit, we went back, we quit again. Typical behavior of teenagers wanting to commit to something and then realizing that it’s hard work and you’d rather be lazy.

But Irish dancing and Irish music, like speaking French, feels like home to me, and I hate myself a little bit every day for not committing to it when I had nothing but time when I was younger.

And then I saw the preview for a documentary called JIG and all of sudden I was reminded why I always quit – the intense and ridiculously serious competitions. Seriously, if you take the intensity of ballet dancers and mix them with the ridiculousness of American beauty pageants, you get Irish dancing competitions.

The results? Crazy stage moms and very intense little children. It’s a charming kind of crazy, but it’s still crazy.

Thankfully, my mother was very much not a stage mother, and in the era before the wigs (I kid you not, watch the trailer below) when we had to actually curl our hair I remember my Mom in her thick Belfast accent hemming and hawing about how ridiculous it was that she had to curl our hair and how the hell do these things work, it’s not enough that we had to buy the silly costume and the expensive shoes, Jesus, Mary and Saint Joseph!

Needless to say, it was a horrible scene in our house the night before the competitions. Lots of curler carnage and sleep deprivation.

And we hated it with her. All the pressure, the competition, it just wasn’t in our blood. Even at the age of 10 I thought it was a silly thing to stress about. But watching this documentary I know I have to go back, officially, and with real commitment, because as crazy as that competition world is, I miss the dancing.

So once I have done my part for my French side and officially have my Masters, the focus is shifting. Classes will no longer involve cultural theory and French intellectuals. Instead they will be about drum beats, jigs, treble reels, broken in shoes, and sore muscles.

But no wigs. Or hooker makeup. Or thousand dollar sparkled costumes.

I gotta draw the line somewhere.

Until then, I have this documentary to keep me entertained. Watch the trailer if you want to see all the charming crazy people Irish dancing produces. At least they all know how to throw a good party.