Busy 2017

Happy Belated New Year!  I wish you all had the chance to see Agnes Martin in Guggenheim.

Holiday

I love the holiday season so much because the weather is getting colder and it is the time to get together with friends and families inside and preferably around the fire place and the most important part is having good food and good wine (I don't have a fire place in New York City but I like the whole image of it anyway).

This past weekend, we went to a fantastic child's birthday party.  It is located at outside of New York City and it involved kicking around soccer balls, hiking in the woods, having bbq and drinking delicious wine! What more can we ask for when we have all of these??  Never mind the hiking was led by the birthday boy and somehow the whole gangs went into the thorn bushes.  

One day at a time!

I don't know how time just flies and November is around the corner and the election day,  Oh boy, I have been listening to this campaign circus for several months now and I am kind of glad that it is going to be over and finally I don't have to hear his voice again.  

Now, the weather is getting chillier and the leaves are turing red in the backyard of the apartment which means the holiday season is here.  I love the Thanksgivings and the winter break because it is the the time of drinking hot tea, red wine and hot soup.  Besides the food, it is also the time of holiday sale in the ceramic studio.  Every year, I have hard time deciding whether or not to participate at the holiday sale at the Brick House, but inevitably I joined the party.  This will be the third year.  

I think the hesitation of participating is that I do not have enough works, but in the end,  I say to myself that if I ever stop, then I would have harder time to motivate myself to restart again.  And the truth is that if I were stuck (which happens pretty often), I just have to force myself to continue going.  Because it all works out in the end.  I have to contribute this motivation to James victore. I love the way he just go right to the point and no sugar coating about any of the nonsenses.  

Back to reality,  I got up very early involuntarily because Ev got up at 4:17 a.m. Is it even possible that his brain is still developing?  I asked him the question and without hesitation, he said NO.  I have figured out that I should not be worry about what he is learning or what he should do and what not, because I have a more fundamental issue here that I cannot solve, WHY DOESN'T HE SLEEP MORE?  

So,  I made him lunch, and the funny thing is that I am not sure whether he would eat it?  On the right side of this lunch box is cheese sandwich because he does not want the cheese and ham mix together.  At the end of the day, whenever I discovered that there are left over, it always make me a little nuts.  The excuses are always (1) I was full, (2) I don't like this or that, or (3) I do not have enough time.  sigh... I wanted to tell him that there are people in the world who are starving and yes,  I am turning into my parents (somewhat).  

I also took a day off to clean the apartment and prepare for the lunch get together for some of my pottery ladies from the studio.  As much as I was sleep deprived,  I baked a pumpkin cake, one of my favorite things to do.  It turned out delicious and I did not put a lot of sugar!  

Baking

For the longest time,  I tried to take bagel and pretzel making class and never gotten around and do it (also the fact that I was trying to cut down the carbohydrate intake and that does not help either), but  I decided that this is the year to learn to make it because I just love carb too much and why not.  

It is relatively easy to make these delicious treats, especially with smoke salmon and vegetable cream cheese and I think the secrets is the pure ingredients.  Although there are many good bagel stores in NYC such as Pick a Bagel, Murrey's, Essa to name a few,  after my handmade bagels were out of the oven and I had it right away, I decided that mine is the best!!  Maybe one of these days,  I will make it at home.  

Family

Over the Easter long weekend, we went up to the cabin and decided that we needed to repaint the floor.  After all, it has been 9 years since we have this place.  While we were discussing this, it seemed to be a good idea to repaint the wall as well because terra cotta color wall is just not working out for me anymore.

The person who was most excited about this was Ev because it sounded like a fun thing to do, just using a big roller and roll all over the wall.  That only lasted about 10 minutes, then he was off to play his own toy.  He went outside and found some leafs and traced that on papers which was the thing that he learned at school, while we painting the basement wall.  Of course, we ran out of paint half way thru and had to drive into town to get more paint.  Hey,  this is the country, and it is a whole day event to get into town and get the stuffs.  We are not in Manhattan anymore.  We took our time painting, talking and also grilled meats in the meantime, had wine and relaxed more.  That was our weekend and it was great.

I have learned to slow down a bit and just enjoy the parts (talking and eating) and knowing that there are choirs need to be done (painting), but we were doing it together as a family.

I want...

Today is the perfect day to have a good gelato.  I was really craving for the type I had when I was in Italy.  I guess Grom comes close to that.  Not quite the same.  I think when gelato comes to the states, it tends to be sweeter then the one in Italy.  

How to roast a chicken

Over the years, I have collected so many roast chicken recipes and I love flipping thru them thinking one of these days,  I would go ahead and roast one.  But I live fairly close to Citarella's and the roast chicken there is not so bad (not as great as the Chirping Chicken on the upper west side) and it is so convenient, so we have roast chicken once a week from Citarella's.

But yesterday, the weather was so great (low 50s in this time of the year), we walked across the Central Park to the museum for Ev and went to the farmer's market outside the museum hoping to find Russian Kale (this family's favorite).  I did not find the kale but there is an organic, free running chicken stand.  Inside the ice cooler, there were few chicken left and I thought that today is the day to roast that chicken.

$28 dollars later, as my husband carried that chicken across the park home, I was thinking how in the world that organic free running chicken is that heavy (almost 7 lb.).  I had to defrost the chicken and it was 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon and there just wasn't enough time to have dinner ready in 2 hours.  So we headed over to Citarella's.

This morning,  I told myself that today is the day to roast that chicken.  As the defrosting process continued,  I expedited to put the chicken under the water, went to run some errands (always tons of them), had Korean food first in Korean town (I can't get enough of Korean hot soup).  At 1 p.m.  I followed the advices of Michael Ruhlman of The Splendid Table and Melissa Clark, cleaned the bird, dried the bird, stuffed it with lemon and herb, tied the legs (it took me awhile to find the twine and tie the legs together, hey not that easy), heated the oven, checked the instruction again because I could not figure out which side of bird I should face up.   Now it is in the oven and my kitchen is a mess.

I forgot to mention that I did not use the cast iron pan because I don't have one.  Although I intended to get one yesterday online.  Then I started doing extensive research of the pan and found out that there is a brand called Griswold and it was a legend and people collect this cast iron pan.  This Griswold pan is supposed to be lighter than the Lodge one.  Why is that we can't find this Griswold in the store if it is so much more superior than Lodge?

Anyway,  I want to show you the picture above is the view of laying underneath the big blue whale in the American Museum of Natural History.  It was great.  Now, I want to have a vacation in Mexico.