Tasty Tuesday: Georgetown Cupcake SoHo

21 Feb

 

Remember those insanely delicious cupcakes I wrote about after tasting them at the Gabby Awards?  The ones that I was willing to bus it all the way to DC for?  Well, it turns out all I have to do now is hop on the subway.  On February 11, Sisters Sophie LaMontagne and Katherine Kallinis opened up Georgetown Cupcake SoHo at 111 Mercer St.

They’ve even whipped up special New York-themed cupcakes to mark the occasion:::

  • Apple Crumble
  • B&W Cookie
  • New York Cheesecake

They’re decorated with fondants in the shape of subway stops and taxi cabs.  Too, too cute.

Shhhh!  Can I let you in on a secret?  I’ve been Facebook stalking them and they always reveal their “secret” menu flavors on their social media accounts.  The first 100 to “guess” their not-so-secret-secret flavor get a free cupcake!

Can’t wait to try them all!

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My Culture Diary

20 Feb

Ran across literary editor Sadie Stein’s amusing Culture Diary on the Paris Review Daily via Poets & Writers.  Love her quips.  People are sometimes ask me about what exactly it is I do, so taking a cue from Sadie Stein, here’s an inside look into my day.

MONDAY*

7:00 AM:  My cell phone alarm goes off, and I blindly fumble for the phone and shut the stupid ringer off.  Ten minutes later the second alarm goes off.  Forty minutes after that I finally roll out of bed, toward the coffee maker.

8:30 AM:  Ooh, such nice comments on last night’s status update from writer friends on Faceback.  Maybe I do have something to say that resonates with people.  Listen to Mates of State.

10:00 AM:  Got to work and found out I had left my card key inside, on my desk.  Finally got in and restart my computer at work three times.  Ugh, ugh, ugh!!  Why isn’t it working?  It finally works but then I’m locked out of the server and have to call the home office.  It’s definitely a Monday.  I feel like Garfield.  Complete editing on a book project I’m excited to be working on.  Slice my finger open on a stack of paper.  Oh the hazards of the publishing business.

12:00 PM:  Forgot my homework for my writing workshop at home and now have to use lunch break to run back and get it.  Accidentally get off one stop too early, but enjoy the beautiful weather.  I love the smell of autumn leaves.  Someone follows me into my apartment building.  Oh good, he’s just my neighbor.  On the subway ride back to the office, I offer my seat to an older woman.  Her husband says, “That just got you two points.  You’re two steps closer to getting into heaven.  The woman sizes me up, “I don’t know about that!”

6:00 PM:  The cleaning lady tells me she didn’t throw out the bread in the ‘fridge because she knows it’s mine.  Hints that it’s wasteful to throw out food.  Oops, I’m one of those people that forgets about the food crammed in the ‘fridge.

8:00 PM:  Writing workshop gets emotional.  People lay their lives out for us to read.  It’s hard to critique work that’s so sensitive.  I feel like a jerk afterwards for doing it anyway.  Ride the subway home with a classmate, thankful to debrief.

11:00 PM:  I don’t care if it’s late; I’m eating a second dinner.  And I’m taking a second shower.  Watch Prime Suspect.  Man, I wish I was as tough as Maria Bello.  Watch Community.  This show has jumped the shark.

1:00 AM:  Conk out.

*November 14

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Clip: Maurizio Cattelan: All

17 Feb

 

Toe-numbing temperature didn’t stop the line from snaking past the Guggenheim and spilling out onto the residential sidewalk of the Upper East Side.  It was Pay What You Wish Saturday.  We’d wait in the frigid January night for that rate.  It would give us the chance to meditate on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, the museum’s architect.

No, it would give us reason to complain.  About the cold.  About the wait.  I don’t even know what we’re standing in line for! my sister finally admitted out of frustration.

We were standing in line for Maurizio Cattelan: All.

Read the rest of the story on Burnside.

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Happy Tsiknopempti!

16 Feb

Happy Tsiknopempti!  You’ve heard of Fat Tuesday, the French holiday associated with Mardi Gras.  Well, today is Fat Thursday, ten days before the beginning of Great Lent.

Tsiknopempti means Barbecue Thursday, Charred Meat Thursday, or Burnt Thursday.  It’s the evening Greek Orthodox believers consume massive amounts of meat because they start fasting from meat even a week before Great Lent, the forty days leading up to Pascha (Easter), begins.

I’ve been fasting from meat for six years.  I guess that means BBQ tofu and grilled veggies for me.

It’s my sister’s favorite holiday.  She’s such a carnivore!  I’d never even heard of the holiday til my family moved to Greece.  Then my sister told me all about a day where the sweet smell of charred meat wafts through the dusty roads of ancient villages.

What’s your favorite food to barbecue?

Here are a few recipe ideas:::

Skewered Grilled Fruit with Minted Yogurt Honey Sauce

Grilled Fruit Skewers with Spicy Maple Cumin Glaze

Coffee-Rubbed Cheeseburgers with Texas Barbecue Sauce

Lamb Chops with Lemon

 

You might also like these articles:::

Hello, Carnival; Good-bye Meat

Tasty Tuesday: Dinner at Souvlaki GR

Clip: Paintings of the Crucifixion

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Profile of the Greek Cupid

14 Feb

 

Out of the opposites-attract romance of the goddess of love and the god of war sprang forth Eros.  It comes as no surprise that his genes of love and war make him the god of passion!

Early depictions of Eros show him as a stunningly handsome man, but today he’s portrayed as a winged boy.  He is the Greek Cupid.  He has a bow and arrows, which he seems to shoot at random.

Eros is so handsome that he must shield his beauty from his own wife.  Go Greece tells the story:

Problems ensue when Eros (called Cupid in this story) falls in love with Psyche. His radiance is such that for her own safety, he insists that she must never look upon his face, and he only visits her at night. At first, she’s cool with this, but her sisters and family insist that her husband must be a grotesque and dangerous monster. Finally, to shut them up, one night she lights a lamp and sees his glorious beauty, which doesn’t blast her but does make her tremble so hard she shakes the lamp. A few drops of hot oil dribble on her beloved, burning him, and he flies away from her in physical pain compounded by the pain of knowing she doubted him.

The doomed romance of Eros and Psyche reminds me in some ways of the Japanese legend of the Crane Wife, which inspired the eponymous heartbreaking song by the Decemberists.

Provincial wisdom often says love makes you blind.  Too often that rings true.  However, these stories speak toward another type of love that is beautiful and sacrificial, and that sometimes we need to have more trust and more faith in the person we love.

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Chocolate Tasting at Chocolat Moderne

13 Feb

On Saturday, I went to an open house at Chocolat Moderne!!  Swoon!

You may remember the name Chocolat Moderne from my Gabby Awards post.  I was kind of obsessed.  That’s why I was so excited to take a little tour of the chocolate factory and meet the founder, Joan Coukos.  The Greek American chocolatier was so sweet.  We exchanged stories of where in Greece we’re from and chatted about other Greek Americans living in New York City.

 

I got to sample the many delectable chocolates Chocolat Moderne has to offer.  One of my favorites was the Cocoa Casbah Hot Chocolate ~ Kama Sutra, an exotic blend of cardamom, clove, and coconut.  It’s chai tea making love to hot chocolate.

 

I also sampled the champagne truffles, which I think would make for a romantic Valentine’s Day gesture.  This special chocolate has “rare collector’s Marc de Bourgogne pressed from chardonnay grapes and a layer of dark ganache scented with a mellow aged Pierre Ferrand 1er Cru de Cognac from the Grande Champagne appellation.”

As lovely as the champagne truffles were, I have to say I loved the Moderne ~ Red Fruits bar.  This bar is a “blend of fine dark chocolates from Valrhona, is a fresh breeze of red berries and red stone fruits.  The crunchy toffee nuggets sprinkled throughout the bar release the unique and fragrant essences of cherries, strawberries and raspberries.”  The dark chocolate was intense and the raspberry tart.

 

 

Chocolat Moderne has special Valentine assortments that would go lovely with a nice bottle of red wine or champagne.

 

 

The factory is located at 27 West 20th Street, Suite 904, and is open every day from noon to 6pm.  It’s definitely worth dropping by to see the chocolate-making action and to pick up some artisnal chocolates.  You can also inquire about chocolate tastings held at the factory … something I intend to get in on!

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Clip: Carsten Höller: Experience

10 Feb

 

At the local carnival there was always some kid who freaked out and made the wiry man who manned the ride’s controls stop the rickety ride mid-spin.

I was that kid.

Read the rest of Carsten Höller: Experience on Burnside.

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Writing Wednesday: Passion and Proximity

8 Feb

When I was an English major in undergrad, I didn’t have English major friends.  Most of my friends were premed or computer science (blame my proximity to Harvey Mudd on the latter) or a variety of random majors: history, American studies, French.  I was friendly with my classmates in the English department, but we weren’t a really close-knit clique.

That’s not to say I didn’t have any word-minded friends when I was in college.  I spent a lot of time in “The Dungeon,” what we called the basement office to the indie newspaper where I worked, and perhaps based simply on the fact that we had to spend a lot of time together, I cultivated friendships there.  When you work the graveyard shift, things tend to get a little silly around 3 am.  It bonds you, whether you like it or not.  Just recently one of the women I worked with came to NYC for a visit, and it was so much fun to catch up with her over brunch at Beauty & Essex.

When I graduated from undergrad, many of my relationships continued to be based in the literary world once again by virtue of my chosen career.  Work kind of dominates your life.  You spend most of your waking day at your job.  You might as well make friends there.  Outside of the friends I made at the publishing house, though, I gravitated towards people with very different careers than mine.  People who worked in graphic design, banking, real estate, you name it.

Being in a creative writing MFA now, it would seem natural that I should have a lot of writing friends.  Life doesn’t always work that way.  While everyone’s headed out for red wine after our classes end at 10:30 pm, I’m shuffling to the subway because I have to get up for work the next morning.  You can’t be bleary-eyed when it comes to editing books.  The friends I have made there, though, are awesome.  It’s so great to connect with writers, who understand the whole juggle of life and work and writing and who totally get it when you say you wish you didn’t have a passion to write.

I wonder if friendship is based more on proximity and circumstance or on mutual interests.  For some, those two might intertwine, but for many I don’t think it always does.  I think that’s because our passions aren’t always our biggest priorities.  I don’t mean that in the negative sense that our passion isn’t meaningful and important to us.  I just think other things can be as meaningful if not more meaningful, and we gravitate toward those who share our same values and personality over people who share our same activities.

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Hearts in the Window

6 Feb

One year for Valentine’s Day when I was growing up, my mother taped red doily hearts to the bay windows of our kitchen.  It set my girlish heart aflutter.  There could be nothing more romantic than red doilies in the shape of hearts!

My mother always had a way of making the holidays special at our house.  She would be the first person to denounce Americana or anything too craftsy as hokey, and yet she had precious decorations that only came out for the various holidays.

Living in a tiny New York City walkup with limited storage space, I’ve had to relinquish more and more holiday decorations with each move I’ve made.  It just never seems to make sense to pack up little trinkets that at most only get a few weeks of display time.

My “practical” decision making doesn’t bode well for my whimsical side, though.  The holidays seem to come and go without much fanfare, and New Year’s bleeds into Valentine’s Day, both vanishing into forgotten dreams.  I get wrapped up in my writing, in attending readings and visiting museums, and of course in shopping, and I forget to pause and really celebrate life.  I’m forever thankful for small moments, but I think sometimes we need to actually celebrate—even if it’s as simple as Scotch-taping a few doilies to the window.

xoxo

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The Rumors Are True

31 Jan

 

Life can be so surreal sometimes.  One day you can be reading a book — and not long after that you can be co-authoring a book with the very same author whose book you once read.

A few years back, I was reading Paul Maher, Jr.’s, Jack Kerouac’s American Journey on the 6 train in New York.  Now, as you can read on his website, we’re co-authoring a revised and expanded edition called Burning Furiously Beautiful.

I’m so excited to be working with Paul.  Here’s a little bit of his bio from his website:

Paul Maher, Jr., is a seasoned leader of Kerouac scholarship; what’s more, many of Kerouac’s family, friends, and contemporaries (including Joyce Johnson and David Amram) endorse the fresh, unbiased perspective he uses to retell the life and work of this great American writer.

…

Maher’s Kerouac: The Definitive Biography (Taylor Trade Publishing, June 2004), is the first biography to be based entirely on primary sources. It is the most thoroughly researched and comprehensive life of Kerouac to date. It’s been selected by both Biography magazine and Vanity Fair for their “Hot Lists” and has received endorsements from the Kerouac Estate, composer David Amram (author of “Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac”),  Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Historian and journalist Douglas Brinkley (Rosa Parks; The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey beyond the White House; and American Heritage”s History of the United States) has publicly praised the groundbreaking scholarship conducted by Maher.

Burning Furiously Beautiful will be published this year.  Stay tuned for more information!

 

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