An Athletic May!

Wow! Things have been crazy the past couple months over here in Brooklyn. Not only has the photo business been crazy, (you are following the photo blog right?) but I've been involved in a number of super athletic endeavors through the city. No triathlons for a bit yet, but there's been a storm of running and biking feats!

On the Brooklyn Bridge on the way to the start.

First up, the NYC Bike Tour. My dad suggested this back in February or so, and I emailed my lovely friend Andrea to see if she'd be up for attempting it with me. Nothing crazy, just 42 miles through all 5 boros! :-) She agreed and off we went! Unfortunately I was in a rush to leave that morning and forgot my camera, but luckily Andrea saved the day and remembered hers!

Waiting to get rolling.

The tour was May 1st and both of us were pretty excited! We biked over the Brooklyn Bridge and to the start line in the financial district. Holy cow, SO MANY BIKERS!

The crazy amounts of bikers at the start!

It was bikers basically as far as you could see. We waited quite awhile to actually get started, and it was a bit of stopping and starting, but once we got rolling it was really fun to coast down 6th avenue without any traffic at all!

One of the many unfortunate traffic jams.

However, the ride did end up having a number of bottle necks, Central Park, getting out of the Bronx, into Queens, a bit in Brooklyn, and then a huge massive traffic jam on the BQE. Thankfully, it was a beautiful day, so it could have been MUCH worse, but hopefully next year they'll plan things out a bit better so there aren't the massive back-ups on parts of the course. It was pretty awesome to bike down the FDR and across bridges that aren't normally open to bikes! I got to see many parts of the city I'd never been to before.

Atop the Verrazano Bridge into Staten Island.

Biking Across!

After my legs had recovered from the bike, it was on to the running! This past weekend I got to run in the Brooklyn Half Marathon! This race had sold out in about a day, so I was excited to get one of the coveted spots! I also finished with my best time ever, 2:28! Crossing the line just in time to beat my goal of sub 2:30!! (I know that's not super speedy for most of you, but for me, it was pretty awesome.)

It was a beautiful day for a race, and the course was pretty much shaded the whole way through, so it made for a great run.

The best part of this race was the finish, all the runners make their way onto the Coney Island Boardwalk, running past the Wonder Wheel on one side and the ocean on the other before crossing over the finish line.


Alex managed to snap a photo just before the finish!


Hurrah!

Afterwards, Alex and I enjoyed a walk out on the pier to enjoy the view.

A little taste of spring...

I went for a little walk around the neighborhood yesterday evening to try out my new camera and catch a few glimpses of spring. Friday was 70 degrees! I'm not necessarily in a hurry for the heat of summer, but NYC is beautiful in the spring time!

Around the World in 80 Dates: France!

For more on the 80 Dates Challenge, click here!

This post has been due for awhile, but better late then never!

As a make-up Valentine's Day event, Alex and I decided to head to a local French bistro we've had our eye on for awhile. Jolie is an adorable little restaurant in the neighboring area of Boreum Hill and we've been hoping to find an excuse to hit up their Monday $25 pre fixe dinner. The week after Valentine's was Alex's spring break, so no night class, a perfect night to give it a shot.

One of the many things I love about dining out in NYC is that if you go to a restaurant that serves a certain ethnic or country specific food, the staff is almost certainly going to be of that background as well. Jolie was no different, the host and our server were most certainly French speaking, and even slipped into French several times while presenting our food, which made the experience all the more delightful.

We decided to get the pre fixe special, which for 4 courses for $25 is a steal in this neck of the woods. We also decided to splurge for the wine pairings, because, it was actually cheaper then any of the bottles on the list and would end up being more fun anyhow! (4 different glasses of excellent wine a piece later, this was definitely confirmed. :-) )

Because I’m lame and took forever to write this post and mistakenly thought the menu would be online, I don’t have the exact list of what we ate, but I do remember most of what I had and some of Alex’s…
They included tuna tartare, asparagus soup with crab and almonds, a beautiful scallop salad, and Alex had fish with sunchokes, and I had a delicious hanger steak with potatoes. For dessert we had some sort of awesome chocolate with raspberry sauce along with the most delicious crème brule ever.

We had so much fun dining here, I can assure you we’ll be back for more French goodness, especially when the garden opens in summer!

The At Home Version:
I had an incredible time trying to decide what to make as a. I couldn’t remember exactly what we had, and b. there was SO much good stuff, I was getting overwhelmed. Ultimately I decided to recreate the hanger steak and crème brule.

For the steak I search around and finally came upon this recipe on epicurious. It sounded really good and got good reviews, so I figured I’d go for it.

So much sadness. I was SO excited to make this because I love a good steak and it was going to be fun to have a fancy meal at home. However, this recipe failed me big time. For two reasons. A. The steak I got was much too thick and I should have trimmed it down beforehand, it didn’t cook well at all. B. There was no sauce. I followed the recipe pretty darn closely, but at the end, I just ended up with way too many wine colored shallots, and hardly any sauce at all. And I didn’t even let the stuff boil down that long at all. At the end of it, the steak did taste good, but it wasn’t the meal I was going for.



However, redemption! The crème brule DID turn out excellent. This was super easy and I will be making it again. Horray for delicious dessert! I followed this recipe along with the first commenter’s suggestions.

Snow Day!

I figured out today that I've had more snow days in the past two winters in NYC then in my entire 20 or so years in Minnesota. Not that I'm complaining. :-)

Unless you live under a rock you probably heard about the major thwomping of snow the east coast got yesterday. The airports shut down and the city came to a grinding halt. I ventured out around the neighborhood this afternoon and managed to snap a few shots of the white stuff.

Happy Snow Day!


Our block. My car is the third one back. Bad, but not nearly as bad as this guy...



These bikers also probably won't be going anywhere anytime soon...




Everyone was either walking or skiing down Court street since there weren't any cars going anywhere.



The bus got stuck.


And the ambulance.


More side streets, not plowed yet. They'll be under even more snow once the plow comes by...






This family had the right idea!

Manhattan by Night.

Chances are if you've come to visit Alex and I since we've moved to the new neighborhood we've taken you for a stroll out to the Brooklyn Promenade. It's one of my favorite parts of where we live and where I regularly head on my running routes.

I've been meaning to get out to capture some night shots of the city for quite awhile and finally managed to get around to it this weekend. I love the promenade at night and am always entranced by the glow of Manhattan in the moonlight. They recently finished some new sections of the Brooklyn Bridge Park, so a lot of the Brooklyn side is now flood-lit at night, so the effect isn't quite as dramatic, but I still think it makes for a lovely view.

Around the World in 80 Dates

While dining on sushi delivery (one of the wonders of living in Brooklyn) a few weeks ago Alex and I hatched the idea that we needed to try more new restaurants. Oddly, in Minnesota, we hardly ever repeated a place, but in NYC, sometimes the ridiculous number of options just kind of make us lean to the familiar neighborhood places. I mean, when the local pizza joint is good enough for Jay-z and Beyonce, I think that works for me.

Anyhow, it's no secret I'm a travel addict and love exploring new food in new lands. Since I can't always be getting my passport stamped, at least right now, we decided it would be fun to see how many different country cuisines we could sample right in our own backyard, and there's no better place to try then New York!

Thus, the Around the World in 80 Dates challenge was born. The rules are the following:

1. The restaurant must be country specific, no "asian fusion", etc. allowed.
2. At least one of us has to try something we've never heard of before.
3. It has to be a date, no take out. :-)
4. I will attempt to re-create at least one of the new dishes the following week at home.


Our first stop: Lebanon!

Alex: How did we pick Lebanon? Why, what better place to start than with the cradle of civilization itself? Wait, that's Mesopotamia, which technically is in Iraq. Where's Lebanon again? Oh: it's west of Syria and North of Israel. Still confused? If you look at your right hand palm facing up, and that represents the state of Wisconsin, then Lebanon is the equivalent of . . . some other body part. Either way, Lebanon is really more the tricyle or PowerWheels of civilization anyway.

But mostly we started with Lebanon because there is an authentic Lebanese restaurant named Tripoli a few blocks from our apartment that we'd been eying for awhile, so we spontaneously decided (after realizing that we didn't want to walk too far or drive anywhere) that that would be our first stop.

Nicki: Tripoli did not disappoint. Of course, like a moron I didn't have my camera with me for our first adventure, but oh well, I still want to count it! The inside of the restaurant is a little quirky, with kitschy sea murals and is decorated kind of like an old ship. The service was a bit slow but the food was delicious. In the spirit of trying something new and being authentic, we went with the Lebanese Traditional Maza, which then made me extra sad I didn't have a camera. It was quite a sight! The maza is a collection of 20 (!!!) different small plates, similar to Spanish tapas. It covered our entire table! I was pretty sure it would be too much, but then once we dug in it ended up being the perfect amount of food for the two of us, and a super fun dining experience to boot!
We enjoyed all of the plates, with the exception of one, olives. Try as both Alex and I might, neither of us can acquire a taste for them. Sorry mom :-(


For the at home version, I decided on three things, kibbeh, hummus, and tabouli salad. The kibbeh, or , kibbee mishwiye (I found lots of different spellings) was one of the more interesting things we tried, sort of a baked meat pastry. I couldn't find a recipe for exactly what we had tried, but something semi similar.


I apologize, I realize this is not super photogenic. But, it was REALLY tasty!

I used this recipe from All Recipes scaled back for 1 pound of ground meat with a little less salt. We used ground beef from the farmers market rather then ground lamb, as that's what I normally buy and was in the freezer. Otherwise, I followed the recipe, but baked it instead of fried.

I was a little worried about how this would turn out, but was surprisingly pleased! It was really easy and came together quickly, and, tasted really delicious! It wasn't as crispy as what we'd had in the restaurant, but close enough!

For the tabouli salad, I very roughly followed this recipe from Daily Unadventures in cooking, no green pepper and no scallions, but otherwise, more or less tossed the ingriedients together. Super easy, super yummy, and it even kept well for leftovers!



Finally, I whipped up my first ever batch of homemade hummus. Who knew this stuff was so easy?? Awesome, will be making this again. Light and fluffy and all around fantastic.

Lebanon success!



Stay tuned for the next adventure!

Parents in the City!

Two weeks ago my parents made their way out to the big city for some fun in the big apple!

We had a great time showing off our new neighborhood, Central Park, taking a sunset cruise around the harbor, seeing the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, and enjoying some fabulous eats!


We also went to the Dragon Boat festival in Queens, though not as cool as I'd hoped it would be, there was still some neat stuff.








Dad and I in Central Park.


View from the boat on the sunset cruise.








On Liberty Island.








Ellis Island Exhibit.




Brooklyn Bridge.



Thanks Mom and Dad! We had a great time having you for a visit!!