36.9

That was the total number of inches of snow in NYC this February... as of Friday night. That's an average of more than an inch per day!

Yes, I know that February is a short month, but it would still average more than an inch per day if it were December.

Speaking of December, these photos are actually from a snowstorm in the second half of December, but I think they are perfectly appropriate to use for this blizzard, don't you?

The only difference between then and now was that there was LESS snow in December.

Since the total snowfall in Central Park for THIS storm was 20.9 inches (no, that's not a typo) and it was 4th biggest in city history, hey, I just wanted to give all of you far away folks a sense of the fun fun fun.

The preceding (and following) snowstorm factoids are all brought to you courtesy of my fascination with NY1, by the way. (I am sticking to snow as my natural hazard of choice, and avoiding entirely all of the earthquakes and tsunamis that have been occurring worldwide this weekend,)

Can you believe it snowed for 31 hours?! It started 6:30 AM on Thursday and lasted until 1:30 PM on Friday afternoon. For only the 4th time in 10 years (and the 2nd time in a month!) NYC public schoolchildren got the day off. (I keep thinking of my sweetie's comment about the simultaneous reactions in households across the city: shrieks of "YES!" by the kids and "NO! Not again!" by the parents.)

Not surprisingly, considering the public schools closed, (1) my office officially closed at 1:00 PM on Friday, and (2) I have picked up an annoying cough -- an annoying and productive cough, as they say. Yuck.

Since I slept a full night last night, and then napped for 4 hours, and then AGAIN for 90 minutes today, I think that counts as officially sick. Bah!

So I stayed home today and did not join my sweetie when he visited his parents, whom I am also really fond of. However, since his dad is still undergoing chemo, we both thought that it would be best for me to keep my coughing self here.

Come to think of it, I was planning on visiting my mom this week, but I think I should put that off too. Sigh.

Although I know that weather doesn't really = sickness, you can't tell me that this miserable (seemingly neverending) series of snow and slush and rain helps people remain healthy, can you?

And did I mention there is snow forecasted for the middle of the week (which at least is March)? Even the perpetually perky blond weatherman on Channel 2 looked a bit like, "Er, I don't want to even think about this right now, especially while it's still snowing!" when he was on TV Friday night.

I can't even remember what snow-free streets looked like anymore! Let's have a reminder from December 17th, shall we?

On to more cheery topics, like this meatloaf I made for my friend Sam on Friday (the early office closing gave me plenty of time - heh).  This is pre-oven time.

It was based on a Cooking Light recipe for Barbecue Meat Loaf (hence the vast lakes of fat that puddled around the finished product) and I broke open a bottle of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Sauce I had previously ordered from FreshDirect.

It's an all beef meat loaf, using egg whites (since I used 2 lbs of ground beef instead of 1.5 as per the recipe, I used a little more of all of the spices, and 4 egg whites instead of just 2, on the theory that it needed more binder). Using red onions instead of yellow was fine taste-wise, but I had forgotten that the red onions sometimes turn sort of black when cooked. Oops. (We'll just cover that in sauce, shall we?)

Sam agreed that it still tasted yummy, and was moist, but unfortunately, since it was rather a large slab of 'loaf, it was taking forever to cook (over an hour). So I sliced it in half after an hour and thus, the kind of odd shape.

I've been having meatloaf sandwiches this weekend (yum) and yesterday, my sweetie made himself an Alton Brown avocado and sardine sandwich that I am now dying to try...

Okay, past time for bed, and then, back to work manana (unless my coworkers kick me out again -- we'll see: I don't want to make 'em sick, but I don't want to be a slacker either, especially with our asinine new performance review system, a topic for an ENTIRE other post).

P.S. I forgot to say...

... that part of the revelation for my lack of joy in ceramics was that I missed Sara, and all of my other pottery friends, all of whom are now gone from the class (career change, in Ireland for grad school, stationed in Malawi with Doctors Without Borders, just plain busy, etc.)

The people in the class now are perfectly nice, but they're just not my buds.

So after I finish my current semester at Brickhouse Ceramics (in Long Island City) in late March, I will start taking classes at Earthworks (in the Upper East Side).  For those of you not from NYC, neither of them are remotely near my home / neighborhood (heh) which does have a nearby studio, Mugi Pottery.

All of which goes to show that in pottery, as in life, it's not the STUFF (facilities, equipment, etc.) which is really important. Nope.

PEOPLE are what count, and I am blessed in my friends and family (but not in my time management skills... bye!)

Blue is the new grey

So lately, I've just been feeling kind of BLEH, you know -- the lovely midwinter blahs, especially with the delightful weather we've been having this season, where below freezing and wet were the norm. Speaking of which, we are due for -- yes, you guessed it -- another winter storm this week. (The above photo is from our LAST storm. I couldn't take any photos this morning because my screens had frozen solid against my window frame. Whoops. So I could open the windows, but not remove the mesh, and shooting through a fine grid is really not conducive to a sharp photo, eh?)

I don't know if the whole lack of coordination, concentration, and motivation is just the usual winter woes, or I am just learning to readjust to my post-chemo, post-amoxycillin, tamoxifen-for-5-years world.

My attention span these days has definitely suffered, since I barely read anything longer than a magazine article, blog post, or the free newspaper. Apparently, this is not so unusual, according to one of my books, Your Brain after Chemo: A Practical Guide to Lifting the Fog and Getting Back Your Focus, which was co-written by an oncologist and a health science writer who, ironically, became a breast cancer survivor.

(Speaking of which, I discovered Monday that a former coworker has passed away this weekend. She had been a breast cancer survivor for several years. After a life-threatening battle with advanced beast cancer before I knew her, she and her husband had drastically changed their priorities and appreciated the truly important things in life (e.g., seizing any travel opportunity they could, not letting the turkeys get them down, etc.). Her attitude at work was always helpful in reminding me how to balance dedication with perspective. I had not know her cancer had recurred, andnow I'm sorry that I can never tell her how valuable her sense of perspective was to me when I worked with her. I will just have to tell her husband instead, via a card -- all that I can do now...)

So yeah, I know that I have many things to be grateful for, and I regularly remind myself that if losing my last 10 pounds of chemo/treatment weight is my worst problem, life ain't bad.

Having said all that, I will now return to my whining. ;-P

For example, although getting out of my nice cozy bed is usually a half hour process every morning (at least), this morning I woke up at 4:55 AM (that is just SO wrong) and realized I had turned on one of my bedside lights in a bizarre autopilot mode.  While pondering that oddity, I had an excruciating cramp in my left calf.  So much for rolling over and going back to sleep. (Ironically, I had made the decision to NOT stay up late watching ladies figure skating on the Olympics... so I wouldn't be tired!)

On the bright side, that means I had time to make myself some McCann's oatmeal (with currants and honey) from scratch this morning, not usually a feasible task on a workday, considering it takes over 30 minutes. (Yes, even when mopey, I can be perky -- are you getting mental whiplash yet? [heh]) Oh, and to watch BBC World News while ensconced on the Green Monster in my robe, while eating said oatmeal, which gives me a pleasantly nostalgic feeling for my trips to Asia (the watching, NOT the oatmeal!) now that it's been a few years.

In any case, not even my beloved ceramics classes were giving me joy.

I thought that meant that I was just being droopy, as with everything else, but then I took a slip decoration workshop at my friend and former teacher Sara's new studio on the Upper East Side, Earthworks. (The studio and shop has been there for many years, but she is now the [new] owner.)

What a revelation!

As you can see, I really dug learning about different slip decoration techniques (just a bit) which gave me a whole new appreciation for the multifaceted uses of infant nasal aspirators! (That would be baby snot remover bulbs to us childfree folks. Ladies -- you too can recycle 'em for craft projects! Hee!)

My favorite technique was the feathering / feather combing, as evidenced by the predominance of my attempts. (That link was to the definition, while THIS link shows a truly crisp example.) The designs remind me of Florentine marbled paper, but there are so many other feathering / marbling techniques to try too!

Just remember when looking at these photos of the unfired tiles that the grey blobs will actually turn blue after partying with the kiln fire.  Then, after its bisque firing, it's time for choosing the flaze colors, which will have a significant impact on the tints of the final results. These disk-shaped sample tiles below, for example, are all exactly the same slip colors, but underneath different glaze colors.

Okay, time to get dressed and trudge off to work through the multiple inches of snow.

Duck season

Wabbit season! (Sorry, have been seeing that Elmer Fudd Geico ad too often lately.)

But really, there's a reason for my duck-luv-fest, in preparation for which, my sweetie and I each had hearty servings of McCann's steel-cut Irish oatmeal on Monday morning.

He observed (without much hope) that perhaps the cholesterol-fighting properties of the oatmeal might help us prepare for the onslaught of duck fat headed our way that afternoon. (Please -- snorting in derision is so undignified. I can hear you all from here, so stop that. ;-P)

There were 8 of us so it seemed only reasonable to order to ducks to prevent any unseemly squabbling over the squab. (Okay, they're not really squab, but hey, poetic license.)

After presentation of the goods, the chef came tableside to carve 'em up for us. We kept him busy with our platters of poultry, but boy he was FAST!

Et voila! Platter # 1, which died a quick death at one end of the table. Platter #2 did not live much longer at the other end of the table either.

Afterwards (I am completely skipping over the platters of: sauteed spinach with garlic, salt and pepper shrimp, Grand Marnier shrimp, and vegetable lo mein [long life lo mein] which we also devoured) we wandered around Chinatown, as it was a pleasantly warm --for February-- and sunny holiday Monday. Here is some dried seafood, which my mom and I are not fans of, as we both think they merely bear a passing resemblance (when reconstituted) to the deliciousness of FRESH seafood.

And of course, no trip to Chinatown is complete without a gluttonous descent to one of the Aji Ichiban locations (a/k/a Munchies Paradise -- literally). I managed to snag one snap before one of the clerks told me there were to be no photos (?!)

My sweetie and I discovered another outpost of our dearly departed Hong Kong Supermarket, but neither he nor my Mom (for of course she has already scoped it out) feel that it compares to the original location in selection (or price). Sadly.

Still, it was entertaining enough to wander around and find veggie duck shelved right next to seasoned pork stomach in the refrigerator case. Heh.

Finally, I just had to stop and take a photo of this restaurant's signange. Notice the amusing oxymoron here?

And now, lunch time (back at the office) is OVAH!

Happy New Year!

Today begins the Year of the Tiger, which I believe is 4709 according to the lunar calendar. (We will completely ignore that other holiday, which my sweetie and I both despise for different reasons.) Although the new year officially began today, my engineer and I started it off on Tuesday night, the 9th, with a FABULOSO dinner at Mom's.

The menu (pictured lovingly above, clockwise from the upper left) consisted of:

1. tofu enoki soup with shiitake and liver
2. prawns with heads on (I don't know their English names, but it's a special type)
3. veggie duck, enoki, and shittake, with bamboo shoots
4. wheat gluten, black fungus, and bamboo shoots
5. bok choy with shredded pork
6. braised fish (something flounder-like, but not quite -- dunno the English name)
7. boiled salt chicken
8. butterflied shrimp/prawns with xiaoxing wine (droooool...)
9. braised pork belly (more drooling)

My sweetie is a smart man, and loves my mom's food. My mom is a happy woman because my sweetie enjoys anything she puts in front of him. (Much of the menu conversation with Mom prior to the dinner consisted of " ...he likes that dish, right? He seemed to last time...") I am relieved because they both like each other.

Today we spent curled up watching the Olympics (who knew cross country skiing could be exciting?) and shortly, I will be enjoying a delicious dinner prepared by my multi-talented engineer (chicken vindaloo, Sichuan eggplant, and scallion pancakes -- I love this man for more than one reason, heh) followed by more Olympics and then tomorrow: PEKING DUCK with the gang!

Life is good.

Slush Day

We didn't have a snow day today so much as a slush day. Since the temperature hovered around 32 degrees, most snow immediately converted to slush when it hit the streets of Manhattan, resulting in forbidding lakes of slush at every curb. (YOU try crossing a street without getting ankle deep in the ooze. Thank goodness for my trusty Lands End boots.)

That's why, despite NYC public schools being closed for maybe only the third time in a decade, I did not call this post "snow day". (Personally, I only got ONE measly snow day in 12 years of public school, a fact that still clearly makes me bitter apparently. Heh.)

So despite the deceptively white and fluffy photos I've posted, the streets are actually disgustingly grey, with an extremely brief (blink and you'll miss it) transitory phase of prettiness.

The photo up top was taken early in the morning, before I left for work. (Look! I live at the end of the world!) The photo to the left was taken around lunchtime, after they had officially closed the office. (Click on it if you want to see the driving snow in a non-miniaturized photo.) Normally that plaza is filled with people at that hour. Today, not so much. Heh.

On the bright side, the weather encouraged people to sensibly stay home if they could (the subways were emptier than any Jewish holiday and shortened work week combined, to put it into New Yawker perspective) and so I was able to finally sample the famous burnt ends during lunch at RUB in Chelsea with my friend Sam.

The burnt end, according to their menu, is the twice-cooked fatty end of the brisket, and almost invariably runs out before dinnertime at RUB. Did I mention that it was 3/4 lb of brisket tips?! A little more than half came home with me (yes, I have a blissed out smile right now) but I polished off their delicious mixed greens (collards, spinach, and some form of pork fat, I'm sure) and 2/3 of the refreshingly tart vinegar-based coleslaw (they have a mayo version too, but I needed SOMEthing to cut through the yummy beef fat). The pickles died, but the Wonder bread (a mystifying Southern BBQ tradition) I skipped altogether.

Speaking of ends, I leave you all with a postcard shot taken early in the day in the West Village. I was on my way to the eye doctor (yes, they were still open) and it was on a quaint street, before the temperature warmed up imperceptibly, resulting in insta-slush.

And now, it is WAY past my bedtime... as I suspect tomorrow will NOT be a snow day, and I am also starting it off with (bonus!) a 9:00 AM doctor's appointment.

Tastes Like Chicken

Dignity. Raw, plucked chickens really have none, do they? Come to think of it, cooked chickens look goofy too.

However, since I have been obsessed with various versions of roast chicken or chicken in a pot lately, there have been quite a few floppy birds passing through my kitchen, dressed in nothing but salt and pepper.

This one below, for example, had a recipe (thank you, Americ'as Test Kitchen -- a/k/a the people from Cook's Illustrated) which required it to sit in the fridge overnight with a mixture of kosher salt, pepper, and baking powder on its skin, resulting in a funky looking bird the next day.

It really did make a super-crunchy skin. I could literally hear it shatter as I cast WW protocol to the wind and ate the skin -- first. HA! I think it was worth the experiment, don't you?

And of course, my demented brain couldn't resist this shot, which came about after I was checking out how well everything had cooked and whether the juices had reabsorbed inside after resting the bird for 20 minutes, as directed. Can you see the neck opening? (And no, I decline to answer how many glasses of sauvignon blanc I had tonight.)

I do think, though, that over the past few weeks, my favorite recipe has turned out to be French Chicken in a Pot, also from the folks at Cook's. It provided a fitting inauguration of my new Mario pot, no?

It's a really straightforward recipe which yields sublimely juicy chicken, though the skin is a dead loss, since it's not crunchy at all. (On the bright side, I could save WW points by throwing it all away.) Having tried both types of birds, I have decided that the FreshDirect (antibiotic-free) bird wins over the Whole Foods chicken.

Of course, all those chicken carcasses have yielded an abundance of materials for homemade chicken broth. Yum! (More use of the Mario pot. Yay!)

And when I was recovering from my triple infection, what more could you want than chicken soup, especially one made from super-succulent chicken? Here you see the base: carrots, celery, onions, and a "gourmet mushroom mix" I bought from Fairway before I got sick.

Et, voila! My soup (some of which now resides in my freezer -- yippee!) had all of the above and some fresh spinach and scallions as well.

Tomorrow night, my sweetie and I are off to Mom's for Chinese New Year dinner. YES! (The actual new year is on February 14th, and will be The Year of the Tiger.) Sooooo much more food p*rn to come. Heheheheh...

Panda and Pranna

Well, despite succumbing to a recent craving to make (whole wheat) linguine with spinach and gorgonzola sauce (and you know those recipes always serve 4 people), I managed to (a) actually make it last for 4 servings, and (b) lose 2.0 lbs since my last WW meeting a few weeks ago in January pre-vacation. Of course, being ill for a week probably had something to do with that dip, but hey, I'll take it.

I think I'm still kind of worn out or tired or something because I'm just completely unmotivated to do anything: clean (no one gets to come in, not even my sweetie, but then, we're still both on antibiotics), go to tonight's condo meeting (I decided to be an irresponsible homeowner and avoid the stress of two hours of screaming arguments), do laundry (there's a reason I'm starting to wear suits again), take walks or go to the gym (free money for them), get out of my nice warm bed in the mornings (of course, I woke up withOUT the alarm every day while I was out sick -- doh!), or even open mail (I know, I know -- the sooner I compile my W-2s and 1099s, the sooner I can ask for my $$ back).

Today though, I discovered that a week off due to illness is not the same as a week of vacation. The latter leaves me amused / bemused by idiotic work stuff that I can shrug off. The former just leaves me aggravated and wanting to clock the offending party / parties. Hmmm. Maybe it's PMS. I hope. Better that than a funk.

But on to more cheerful topics, like random panda bears. The person shown above was just hanging out near the office, with a tip jar, in sub-freezing weather, bringing smiles to several cranky New Yorkers on their lunch hour just in the few minutes I was nearby. Since I took a few cellphone snapshots, I gave the very friendly and fluffy bear a dollar for his (her?) plastic panda tip bucket. (Sadly, I forgot to take a photo of the tip jar. Darn.)

Other smile-inducing topics: date night with my sweetie was last night! Since we're both still dosing ourselves with different antibiotics, we decided to meet on neutral, germ-free territory instead of doing our usual dinner at my/his home routine. I wandered across a listing for Pranna on the NYC Restaurant Week website. Their South Asian menu is really interesting (and what my sweetie ordered from) while even their Restaurant Week menu was intriguing, which I consider truly impressive, since most RW menus are perfunctory at beast: steak, roast chicken, grilled salmon, NEXT!

In fact, their regular menu (check out their website) had me so gridlocked with indecision, that I fell back to the RW options, and even then, had to ask our server for help. Ah, such a luxury problem to have.

Sorry, the following photos are kind of dark (I was trying to be discreet by not using flash) until I figured out my ISO and shutter speed settings.

My engineer had a combination of crispy pork belly with Asian pear, and lamb meatballs with turmeric and ginger, all accompanied by their dipping sauces (Salty Kaffir Lime Mint / Spicy Peanut /Sour Mandarin Galangal / Sweet Lemongrass Caramel):

Then he followed up with a heapingly large appetizer as his entree, green papaya salad with soy lime dressing:

My vegetarian appetizer, Wok Fried Hokkien Noodles (“Mee Goreng”), was also gigantic (and spicy!), but didn't photograph well at all. So, onward, to my RW entree, the pan-seared cod with spicy ginger caramel sauce and asparagus and long beans, all of which was FANTASTIC! The long beans were crisp, the fish was light, and the asparagus was tender. My engineer was intrigued by the sauce and said he thought molasses might have been involved after he sampled it.

By dessert, I was seriously on the verge of hurting myself (the night before WW weigh in naturally) but no way was I passing up green tea cheesecake. SO GOOD, as was the topping. So rich that the small slice was more than enough. Even my sweetie agreed that it was tasty, and he's not generally a dessert fiend like me. Yep, we;d both go back -- there's still the rest of the menu to sample!

The restaurant itself was glossy, sleek, and roomy, but still warm in tone. And best of all, since we dined at the geriatric hour of 6:30pm, we had a table by the window, far from the other tables, but as you can see, the spacing is really quite decent.

As you may be able to tell from the photo above, they have a unique chair design. In fact, I thought it was such a brilliant design that I snuck a (non-flash) photo on the way out:

Oh, I forgot to mention that they have happy hour wine specials (my sweetie had a pinot noir) and I nursed a delicious cocktail the bartender recommended called Fallen Apples: Jim Beam Bourbon, Calvados, fresh Lemon Juice,Agave Nectar, Whiskey Bitters, Clove and Cinnamon. I was so busy sipping it (slowly -- so I didn't fall on my face) that I completely forgot to take a photo!

And now, it is way, WAY past my bedtime!