Catching up

Why yes, I am still alive! What happens when life is so crazy, enjoyable, frustrating and simple jam-packed? I can't even separate the thoughts or find the time to write them all down. The place of employment is good and yet hectic and frustrating and such a daily learning experience, life is fantasmic and wonderful and yet so full of stress. So, basically, life as usual. I love it, I truly do, but I cannot wait till April.

Why? Oh right, amidst all of this, I'm moving. Our current lease ends March 31st & Omar wants to move in with some work buddies back in Astoria, so that's fine and dandy and now time to find a roommate. Or two. Newish friend Biana is also looking to move, and once we took a gander at our budget and our options, three bedroom apartments are quite a bit more affordable.

So here we go with this little jewel. What do we do to find this dear third roommate? The internet of course. This is the ad we posted on Craigslist today. Spread the word that we're searching for a third roommate for reaaaally affordable apartments in Brooklyn. Please do, thanks?


Are you a personable, relaxed Brooklynite looking for an affordable apartment with a few awesome roommates? B & E are looking to move into a three bedroom apartment (at the max budget of $700/person), but need that important third person. While a specific neighborhood isn't extremely important, our budget puts us mainly in Clinton Hill, Bed Stuy, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights. Both "young professionals" (we hate that phrase but it's pertinent), we're fairly socially active so we want an apartment that feels like home. We also hope to host gatherings in whatever space we find (brunch is a big part of our lives), so we would love the third roommate to hopefully enjoy said activities.

E is an avid cook & baker, and tends to keep lots of random spices and foods in the pantry and kitchen gadgets around. Fluctuating between being a social butterfly and vegging out at home, E is definitely looking for a space that can be totally relaxing when desired but also a great space for hosting friends. E is sometimes messy, but tends to keep it to her area. She also has Southern, motherly roots that come out time to time, but usually NY sentiments.

B is a social media consultant and can usually be found tethered to her computer and/or BlackBerry. She often works from home and yes even in her pajamas on occasion. B is very easy-going and she don't want no, no drama, no no no no drama. B also hates the Black Eyed Peas. B learned in kindergarten that sharing is caring, but she likes to be asked first. B is a fan of keeping communal spaces reasonably tidy. B is not a foodie so much as an eatie, which means she does make use of the kitchen frequently.

You are also a young professional, willing to take an equal part in apartment cleaning fun, male or female, straight or gay, petless (unless you have a clown fish named Nemo, then that's cool), willing to smoke outside if you are a smoker, able to contribute or help pay for some communal utilities and furnishings and available to move April 1.

Hope we haven't scared you off, just wanted to give you a better idea of what to expect with us. Let us know if you're looking for a room, we would love to meet ya.

And check out the actual posting with the email contact here.

Story Time

Last night I had a deja vu experience that was quite interesting for being so new to New York and Brooklyn particularly. It begins last year, at the end of my internship with Indigo Handloom. My boss and the owner Smita wanted to take the two interns left at the end of the summer (the third had started earlier in the summer and left mid-July) out to dinner. Along with the Tina (the assistant designer) and a few friends, we ventured around Brooklyn in Smita's car on a Friday night trying to find a restaurant that could take the six of us.  The intended restaurant had about a two hour wait, so we just decided to wander around this new (to me) neighborhood of "Fort Greene".  We found some dark, romantic little Mediterranean place in an otherwise residential part of the hood (maybe 2-3 blocks from a buzzing area). I remembered it was good, with lots of Greek style tapas and sangria. You know, typical chick fare, I guess. Not specific retails I could remember, but lots of general memories of a nice evening.

Well, last night, my brother wanted to go to dinner and had a few ideas of places, all in the same general area, he "might" want to try. Aqualis, Deniz (which we have eaten before, via delivery) Pequena and Olea (which are owned by the same people, who also own a decent comfort food joint, Maggie Brown). All in the true "heart" of Fort Greene, around Lafayette and Fulton - definitely a place I'd love to be able to move to. I do believe a solid 50% of restaurants in Brooklyn are closed on Monday, and so was true for Aqualis. We knew where Deniz was, and it was sort of the fallback option. We walked by Pequena and, well, it lives up to its name. Off to Olea, except as we started walking, we realized it was a bit separate from the others. "We may end up eating here by default," Omar said as we were almost there.

What do you know? As soon as we approached, the darker, moody vibe from across the street, in this residential spot, was indeed where the end of summer girl dinner was. Being so relatively new to Brooklyn makes experiences like this interesting and surprising for me. Sometimes, you know certain places so well, and yet don't even know it. And yes, this time around, dinner was good too. Quite good.

Time flies when you're having fun..

Um, how long have I been in Brooklyn? It feels like months, and days.

I am growing to love the area - Fort Greene and Clinton Hill are very cool. I'll be honest, the area we actually live (on the edge of Clinton Hill and BedStuy) can look a touch sketchy at times. But I've never felt afraid or anything here, but some people might not be completely keen to live here.

We've gotten settled into the apartment nicely, with a BIG help of my mom and Aunt Teresa. They came up to New York last Thursday night and stayed until Wednesday. We had a serious bootcamp weekend of shopping - Ikea and Target - and decorating. I owe my mother so freakin much, in money (yes, I am going to work on paying her back) and just in life, period. And it makes me feel horrible that I'm not getting her anything for Mother's Day. She'll get a card (late) but that's it for now. :-/

Work is about the same - no real progress (on, you know, a permanent job or anything), but hopefully by next weekend, I'll have updated my resume and I'll restart the job hunt. While there's no rush, I don't think, I need to start again for the sake of making the effort.

crazy month, slow morning

The month of April has been...crazy, to put it lightly.

I'm officially moved in to our Brooklyn apartment - got some awesome movers last weekend and they were done in ~2 hours, for $250 (including tip). Tomorrow, I'm going back to Astoria one last time to do a general clean up, pick up anything I forgot, and give the girls the keys.

Work is oddly slow this morning, but both Tom and Sue aren't in today, and Lori (supervisor) is in a meeting. It's been somewhat nice to relax this first hour.

- Aaaand, just as I said that, I was given stuff to do. Which is fine by me! -

Yeah, so there's not really a lot to blog about - busy but nothing remarkable. I did slice my index finger nicely a week or so ago with an exacto knife. Fortunately, no stitches were needed but it took the corner chunk of my nail with it.

I've been doing some cooking and plan on doing some more this weekend. The only remarkable thing from this week were some delicious ginger poached noodles inspired by Heidi at 101 Cookbooks from last night. Wednesday night, Omar cooked up a flank steak marinated in soy, sriracha, garlic, and ketchup I think, roasted some asparagus with olive oil, salt and pepper and topped with lemon zest and Parmesan, and did a simple olive oil based potato salad with scallions and parsley. With the leftover steak and asparagus in mind, last night I cooked up some noodles.

Basically, I boiled up water and vegetable broth cube, tossed in ~2 oz sliced ginger, 4-5 smashed garlic cloves, 1 jalapeño cut into thick rings. I was lazy and didn't want to seed it, but the pepper was a lot hotter than expected, so I recommend seeding. I let it boil and infuse for probably 5-10 minutes, while I chopped up 3 scallions and a handful of cilantro, shaved some carrot (literally whittled at a carrot with a knife - hey, most of my utensils are still packed up), cut up the roasted asparagus (8ish spears?) and sliced up 2-3 oz of the flank steak.

Toss in drained shirataki noodles and let boil. They only really need 2-3 minutes to par boil, but I let them go for at least 5 (maybe 10?) minutes in hopes to infuse them with the flavor. I didn't know if they would absorb any flavor because I had never tried this method.

I added a few handfuls of frozen peas into the mixture a minute or two before draining. Drain, pick out whatever big chunks you can find, particularly the pepper. I saved some of the broth, following the original recipe, but because I didn't seed the pepper and it was QUITE hotter than I ever expected, the broth was too hot to use. Advice: don't expect the jalapeños at the Korean market to be as wimpy as Key Food jalapeños!

Throw the noodles and peas in a bowl, add the other veggies, and toss with 2-3 tbsp soy sauce, a drizzle of sesame oil, and lemon juice. (Lime would be better, but they were still packed too. Oh, and I used about half the life of one half of a juicy lemon.) I added the steak to my final plate, on top of the mixture, because there was more noodle salad than one serving.

Om nom nom!

Ideas for this weekend? "Stuffed shells" meatballs - ground beef, chopped spinach, either ricotta or cottage cheeses? (Just an idea I'm throwing around in my head because of slightly freezer burned 85/15 ground beef waiting for me.) Some of Eggface's protein muffins - but maybe mocha chip? Hazelnuts, coffee, some nsa dark chocolate? If anyone has any other cooking ideas, pass them this way. I have some red and green curry pastes I picked up from a great Thai place in Chelsea Market that I may have to play around with some too, especially since Shira has been raving about the curry she made (which I made in February).