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.

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).

mixed results

So I'm feeling the desire to get moved sooner (meaning next weekend) rather than later. Except that I do not want to pack. I picked up four egg boxes from Key Foods today and I've packed one full, the other over halfway. But, conveniently, I ran out of packing tape after 9 tonight. So I'm waiting to go to Staples tomorrow.

Instead, I cooked - lunch for this week maybe? This was a game of "What's in Emily's Fridge?" + "Let's Try Something New!"



So, I had a block of extra firm tofu in the fridge, and I want to make some macafoni and cheese, but I know that I get tired of the same food over and over. So I split the block in half and decided I wanted to fry some up and maybe make lo mein since I have shirataki in the fridge. I've never really made tofu at home besides the macafoni, so I figured, why not waste a few hours?

I started with this recipe/website - I cut the tofu into strips, dry-fried it, and marinated it in lots of garlic, ginger, scallions, 1/2 cup soy sauce, less than a tablespoon of oyster sauce, a squirt of sriracha, and maybe 1/8-1/4 cup rice vinegar.

I let that marinate for an hour, and then fried it up a la Cooks Illustrated - dusted in a bit of cornstarch. Once it was fried nicely, I added the glaze from CI - a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tablespoon of brown sugar, two tablespoons of chicken broth. Once that was tossed together - at the high heat it glazed up very, very quickly, I threw it in a bowl and added pre-cooked shrimp. (I had half a bag from Trader Joe's left over in the freezer.)

The lo mein has mushrooms, scallions, edamame, and a decent amount of a napa cabbage-carrot-scallion-cilantro-mint mix. I had the cabbage mix left over from another recipe and it was about to hit the trash otherwise. I added the tofu marinade with water and cornstarch at the end, along with the shirataki, and let it come to a boil. I pretty much followed the directions in this recipe. I then topped it with more fresh scallions and cashews.

Why mixed results? The mint permeated the dish a bit more than I expected. Also, the tofu probably only needed 30 minutes in the marinade - since they were smaller strips, they sucked up the soy faster. And, since I made the mistake of adding ALL the marinade to the dish, it's a bit on the salty side. It's not bad, but it's not perfect. I'm thinking of drizzling just a teeny bit of honey on top of it when I eat it for lunch or whatever, to help cut the salt.

It's sort of a clusterfuck of ingredients:
shirataki (tofu) noodles, tofu, shrimp, cremini mushrooms, scallions, edamame, napa cabbage, carrots, cilantro, mint, ginger, garlic, cashews, soy sauce, oyster sauce, rice vinegar.

If nothing else, it's a learning experience. The tofu is divine - the glaze is yummy and almost burnt, and it fried up nicely without actually being so "fried". I would definitely recommend it.

mmm...

Homemade nachos. Tonight, I walked away from the Haagen Daaz freezer at the bodega, even as the rainy cold weather was calling to veg out. Instead, I made some nachos at home.

Trader Joe's makes some delicious spicy soy flaxseed tortilla chips that have a nice protein/carb/fat balance. Top with leftover rotisserie chicken (I had to at least attempt to make it healthier) and LOTS of Trader Joe's light three cheese blend.

Ripe avocados, red onion, garlic, lime, lots of cilantro, salt and red pepper thrown in the blender gave me a nice guacamole. Although it's definitely not as good blended, I was too lazy to chop. The flavors were sort of off - I think the lemon juice I added and the lack of jalapeno, replaced with the red pepper flakes, weren't quite right - but the spicy chips helped.

Throw a few tablespoons of salsa into some fat free refried beans, warm it in the microwave, and there's dip option number two.

I must say my super-loaded nachos were yummy and not too horrible for you. I could have eaten the entire bowl of guacamole (two avocados), but I resisted, which is better than normal!

- - - - - -

Anyone feel like sponsoring an apartment broker? Working full-time (and not having access to gmail at work) is making the apartment search crappy. But I really can't afford another month's rent to pay a broker. >.< I just want to find a place soon, especially because I can tell the roommates (well, it seems like one in particular) is getting tired of the situation. And I'll be honest, I'm sort of ready for the change.

I really don't want to move (in terms of the physical process and money it costs), but the one roommate that seems over the brother situation is also a bit anal in general, especially about the kitchen. I'm tired of coming home at least once a week, if not more often, to find the kitchen looking bare. Which means that anything of mine that was on the counter is now thrown into the cabinet. Seriously, there was a glass bottle of olive oil just casually put on top of a basket of stuff. On a diagonal, pretty much ready to fall out when the cabinet was opened. It's just like, really? I much rather have a place organized than just "clean-looking". But I also just don't get the bare-kitchen look. I'm sorry, but why keep your oil, salt, etc in the cabinet if you're using it everyday? But I'm not so surprised...the bare kitchen look is what most upper-class white families who aren't big into cooking go for. I'd MUCH rather my kitchen be friendly to cooking than look totally and boringly uncluttered.

So, like I said, I'm sort of ready to move, if an affordable apartment in a safe area of Brooklyn (or even better, Manhattan) were to find me. And hopefully I can find some affordable movers, because I'm not doing this myself. Blah.

WOW!

I don't think I can put into words how excited I am.

I got a paid winter internship in New York City!!!!! Like, meaning I'm starting February 9th. :eek:

I've also got an apartment already arranged! My aunt Susie's neighbor's daughter works for Ralph Lauren in NYC. She has friends from college that were looking for a third roommate for an apartment in Astoria. They found what sounds to be a nice house - big den, good kitchen, three bedrooms of three different sizes (perfect for our three different budgets), porch and backyard of our own! For what sounds like a small bedroom with a wall of closet space, (storage FTW) it's $725/month including utilities.

One girl said she has most of the shared furniture taken care of, which is awesome for me. All I'll need is a bed and mattress, along with a few things like a nightstand, maybe a bookshelf?

I'm so incredibly excited, but I still have to talk to my dad about it, which sort of freaks me out. He pretty much nixed the idea a few weeks ago, when it was still just a baby idea. But considering that my pay can cover rent and food and that, right now, I have a good 2/3 of the money I'd need for the first month (725*3), I'm not as worried. Really, just the cost of moving/driving up there and a bit more is what I have to worry about.

Seriously, two weeks. To finish and print out my portfolio, to figure out how we're getting up there and back, etc etc etc. Exciting, stressful, crazy. And I'm still a bit worried about not having seen at least a picture of my bedroom, ya know? I can deal with small spaces, but it would just be nice to have an idea of what I'm getting.

So, YAY! And worries about the logistics. But mostly YAAAAAAAAY!