My Secret Love Affair

I'm not going to lie. It's not really that secret. But it's love. That part, I know.



I walk through the Union Square GreenMarket almost every day on my way to work. And a few weeks ago, as I was strolling on my merry way, I noticed the berries. The succulent, beautiful, fresh juicy strawberries. The first day or two they had a stand or two of them, and they were just much too pricey.

However, last week, the price came down and nearly every stand has them on the table. As I passed by one of the stands, I could actually smell them, fresh yummy strawberry smells. I literally walked past, and then turned around, and they had me. I bought a box, went up to work, and accidentally finished all of them before noon. Opps!



I've had strawberries before, good ones even, but I haven't had fresh from the farm berries before. (Now, all you kids who are cool enough to have picked berries actually from a farm yourselves, well, you're just much cooler then me.) These are seriously the best strawberries ever, and I love them. And I bought more, and now am addicted. Thus, the strawberry shortcake.



I have to say, this was a mighty tasty recipe, and was pretty simple as well. I just had to make hard boiled eggs, which, oddly, as I hate them, have never made before. I didn't do anything to the berries either, just sliced them and threw them on top. I also used the leftover cream to make real whip cream, which was delicious. And reminded me of my grandmother. She's the only one I can think of who I've seen actually whip cream, and I have so many fond memories of baking and making real whip cream at Grandma's.

Chicken Gyros

I was so very excited to make these. Mostly, I was really psyched to make the pita bread. I have no idea why. I guess I'd never really made any sort of bread and I don't have a stand mixer, which most bread making requires. Hence, when I saw I could actually make the pita bread, without a mixer, and Alex and I usually love gyros, I jumped at the chance. Annie at Annie's Eats where I got this recipe, raved about them, so I was more excited.

However, I'm sad to say, this might be one of the first recipe reports on the blog, that, well, wasn't that good. Basically, it was kind of like grilled chicken with yogurt sauce. Which is fine, if that's what you want, but it wasn't anything at all like the chicken gyro's I've had in New York, or from the all fabulous Holy Land in Minneapolis for that matter. It was, quite simply, very plain. And we added lots of feta cheese and other fixings.



Now, before you go all crazy and say, But wait! Your gyro isn't even on a pita! You'd be correct. That's because, in all my excitement, I forgot to read the entire recipe for pita bread. This stuff takes a LONG time. So, we were much too hungry to wait. I did have the leftovers in a pita the next day though, still, grilled chicken, not gyro chicken.





I will say though, this was the best pita bread by far ever that I've had. So that part, at least was a success. I finally finished making them at like 11pm, so, though dinner was done, I did get a very tasty dessert. Behold, the clearly authentic, pita and nutella! Yum! :-)

BAM Souq Festival

This past weekend I headed out to another festival at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the same place that held the Dance Africa Street Fair 2 weekends ago. This week they are having a Muslim culture festival and put on a Souq as part of the festivities. A souk is basically a market place, Emily and I made our way through lots of crazy ones in Morocco.

Though this one, being as that is was held basically in a parking lot, couldn't compare to the real thing, it was still fun to walk through. It was also a much nicer day this time around and I managed to get a few pictures.



They had some fun dancing as part of the cultural portion.







Arts and Crafts.





Perfumes and oils.





Drums.



After the souk I made my way over to Fort Greene park and enjoyed a nice walk and some time in the sun!

Wilderness!

Although I am certainly getting to like New York more and more as time goes by and finally starting to get a feel for things, I still think you can only have so much concrete, so many taxi horns, so many breaths of bus exhaust before you really can use an escape. A chance to remember what quiet sounds like, what clean air smells like, what fresh, cool creek water feels like on your bare feet.

This weekend my lovely friend Louisa provided me with such an opportunity. Little did I know, small town USA, with its cute little houses and little tiny shops was just a short train ride away.

We boarded New Jersey transit (though we ended up in New York) from Penn Station early Sunday morning and headed off on our hiking outdoors adventure. Forty five minutes later or so we got off in Sloatsburg, one stop past Suffern for all you Sex and The City fans, and headed on our way. A short walk through town and we found our trail and headed off into the woods.





We spent the day hiking through Harriman State Park, which was beautiful! We hiked along this lovely little stream that reminded me a lot of Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis. and then made our way to a huge lake. I was almost tempted to go for a swim, but didn't quite take the plunge.



We had a little picnic by the lake and then made our way back to the train station, stopping along the way for a much deserved ice cream and nice cold beer. Back in the city by about 6:30, still not believing how different things are just a train ride away!

Anniversary Picnic

This weekend Alex and I celebrated our one year anniversary! Hard to believe how fast the year has flown by and how different are lives are now then just one year ago!



To celebrate, rather then a fancy dinner, as we're going to Boston in July kind of as an anniversary trip, we decided we'd just have a fun picnic. This plan semi worked. I was all excited for picnicing, and perhaps got a little over ambitious with everything I wanted to make. Second, we slept in MUCH too late to get an early start. Finally, after we finally made it out the door, we were running late, which was stresful as Alex had to get home to study for an exam (BOO summer class), we got to the park, had food for half an hour, and then got rained on! Crap. Oh well, it's the thought that counts right?

In any case, the food WAS really good, it's just too bad we couldn't enjoy it properly.


The food:
Chicken Cashew Noodle Salad
This is from one of my new favorite food blogs! She's got lots of tasty stuff and nice photos!



I made this with regular oranges as our grocery doesn't sell mandarin oranges. This salad was delicious! Even better for many days this week for lunch, this recipe makes a TON of pasta salad. Be forewarned!

Mango salsa chicken sandwiches.



I used this recipe as a guideline, but nixed the red onion, used half roma tomatoes, half cucumber, though less then the recipe called for; and only half a jalapeno. It was delicious. Sorry mom.

And finally, fresh baked cookies, mom's oatmeal chocolate chip and The Chewy! I have to say, I never really make just plain chocolate chip cookies, but The Chewy was pretty freaking good.





Additionally, there was enough leftover mango salsa to have it over salmon for dinner that night, which was really delicious. Coincidently, this is almost exactly the same meal we almost chose for our wedding dinner. Except, this was way better then the kind we tried at our venue.

Shades of Green in the City

Alex and I managed to get out and explore quite a bit of the city this weekend. On Saturday, we made our way into Greenpoint, a neighborhood just north of Williamsburg for a BBQ Pub Crawl. This neighborhood is heavily Polish, and had a lot of fun little bars and shops. The pub crawl offered free food at each bar, and then discounted drinks as well. We managed to even find a new Alligator Bar (The place that gives free pizza with each beverage)!

On Sunday, we headed out to another new neighborhood in Brooklyn, Fort Greene, for the Dance Africa Street Bazaar. This was really interesting, and a fun carnival to see. I brought my camera, but didn't manage to take any pictures, we were doing lots of browsing of the great art and crafts and licking our fingers with tasty BBQ. It then started to rain, so we headed home. As we made our way out of the subway and back into Bushwick, we found our neighbors having a huge BBQ in our front yard. They invited us to join and we had a good time spending the evening speaking a little Spanish and enjoying a ton of tasty food!



Today although we were supposed to be on a rooftop in Tribeca, plans were canceled. We ended up heading into Central Park and had a great afternoon relaxing, throwing the frisbee, and enjoying the sun! I did manage to finally take some pictures today, it's so nice to enjoy some green now that it's summer in the city!

Lentil Walnut Burgers

Alex and I decided to go vegetarian tonight, and it was delicious! I personally think you can't really ever replace the juicy-ness of beef, however, as far as veggie burgers go, these were great! Infinitely better then the black bean veggie burgers I made previously and were much less time consuming. The flavor in these had just a little bit of spice and went really well with the yogurt sauce and some fresh avocado!


From Martha Stewart, Great Food Fast

Burger
3/4 C lentils
3/4 C chopped walnuts
1/3 C plain dried breadcrumbs
3 garlic cloves, pressed or finely chopped
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 - 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
4 TBS olive oil
1 large egg

Yogurt Sauce
3/4 C plain low fat yogurt
2 TBS chopped fresh cilantro
1 TBS fresh lemon juice



Coriander Seeds... which I couldn't really grind as I don't have a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder.

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Measure your lentils into a small saucepan and cover with water by about 1 inch. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer. Cook until the lentils are tender and the water is pretty much gone. About 15 minutes or so.

2. While your cooking your lentils, spread the walnuts on a cookie sheet and bake for 5-10 miuntes to get them nice and toasty.

3. In a food processor, combine the walnuts, breadcrumbs, garlic, cumin, coriander, red pepper flakes and a little salt and pepper. Process until finely ground. Add the lentils and 1 TBS of olive oil. Pulse until coarsely chopped, you'll have some lentils that are still whole.


Pre-Burger.

4. In a large bowl, whisk an egg, and then add the lentil mixture. Mix well. Divide the mixture into 4 equal parts, and make into patties.

5. Heat the rest of the olive oil in a skillet, add the burgers and cook over medium low heat until browned, 8-10 minutes.

For the Sauce:

Mix together all ingredients! Enjoy!



Delicious!