eGfoodblog: Live It Up

[Live It Up]

On to today's breakfast--coconut tea cake.

I would have liked some fruit with it, but I didn't buy any so, no dice.

Here's a pic with my coffee, so you can see where I eat my breakfast. Just insert me right behind the desk.

On days that I open I drink my 2 cups of coffee in the morning. I grind my coffee at home and bring it with me to the store in this tin.

My purse(s) always smell like coffee from bringing the tin back and forth. It's better than all my clothes and hair smelling like coffee, like they used to though.

[Live It Up]

Wow, I'm fascinated by your coffee roasting -- I thought there was a lot more to it.

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That is exactly what was going through my mind as I was reading that post. I always assumed it was a much more complicated process. I think I might be giving this a try. (After the summer.)

Great blog.

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With the pan roasting method, it's not complicated, it's just that you have to get used to controlling the temperature and judging when the beans are done. The first few batches I roasted were pretty bad. Even for months into my roasting I was still having pretty inconsistent results. Now I'm very happy with the coffee I roast, even if it might not be up to snuff for the snobbiest coffee people.

I have to admit, I have a bit of a complex about my coffee. I'm completely embarrassed of my espresso machine because it was so badly taken care of before I got it. If I was a true coffee geek, I feel, I should have completely taken the thing apart and descaled the boiler, replaced all the gaskets, added as pressurestat, etc. I should be recording temperatures and times in the quest for the perfect bean. But that's just not my style.

[Jamie Lee]

"I have a thing about cute cartoon animals with buttholes."

I'm not sure if I should chuckle or cringe!

If you've ever owned an animal, the "butthole" becomes the bain of your ownership! If you're not scooping it's output, bagging it, burying it, avoiding it - you're a lucky pet owner!

I realize that was totally OT. But I did want to say I LOVE YOUR STORE! The serving pieces make me want to weep from jealousy I'm not a "young hippster", but I could so enjoy some of your more "mature" items!

[Live It Up]

Thanks again to everyone for your kind words about my store. I put my whole life into this enterprise, so it's really nice to get the encouragement

Lunch today was takoyaki!

Takoyaki are fried dough balls with octopus inside. Then they're covered with some sort of brown sauce, bonito flakes, and mayo (we got it with no mayo). It's been at least 3 years since I last had these, and they were really good.

I wanted to mention the topic of beverages. If I'm not drinking coffee (always hot), or something alcoholic then it's pretty much water for me. I've always been a tap water drinker in NYC 'cause our tap water is some of the best in the world. But the water from our tap here at the store is disgusting--I can't even stand to smell it. To top it off, the sink it really tiny, so we can't fill from the sink into a brita or something. So we buy bottled water. It seems to wasteful to me, especially because Josh and I go through about 4 1.5 liter bottles a day.

At home we recently got a pur filter because I wanted to use filtered water in my espresso machine, but it's so damn slow I have basically given up on it.

[Jamie Lee]

Oops ... forget my msg about cute pet butts... you have cats, and live in NYC, so you know all about butt output!

BTW ... I love the skinny kitty/plump kitty reality. I had two boy cats - also one thin and one "no-so-slim" but I couldn't do anything about it! I tried feeding them separately - but like a true foodie, my big boy just bullied the l'il one out of the way and ate his fill. My "baby" just got out of the way 'til "fatty" was sated, and seemed totally okay with the arrangement.

Great and interesting blog - pics of you and hubby would be a plus!

And - BTW - is the owner of the unique garden a 20-something pierced artist or a slightly demented widow? (No disrepect intended to either demographic - I love both types!)

[Live It Up]

So, here are some more pictures of stuff around my house in case anyone is interested. Sorry there haven't been more pictures of markets and restaurants and things, but as I said in my first post, my life is a little claustrophobic.

This is my wine/stemware rack.

My lovely mother, as mentioned before, brings me stuff from the places she travels. Lately a lot of that stuff has been wine, which is really great, but I'm running out of room. She just called and told me she's on her way back from Buenos Aires with 8 bottles of wine for me.

Conversely, I have barely any wine glasses. We're working on breaking the 2 remaining glasses from a batch of 8 or 9 we got 2 years ago. The blue glasses (not the flutes) are 3 left from a set of 6 I got in France. It's pathetic, I sell stemware, but I can't find any that I like for myself.

Here's one of the bookshelves where I keep my cookbooks. The bottom 2 shelves were the only storage I had for them for a while, but now they're multiplying at an alarming rate.

We found this shelf on the street.

I gave away a few cookbooks this year, but I have a very hard time parting with any of them. And I want more.

Gotta go to kickboxing in a bit, then Lakeside. Later.

[Shelby]

I love reading your blog!

It's such a contrast from my rural Kansas farm life. Have you always lived in a big city?

[Shaya]

This blog is really cool. I love your store, love your city, ...reading with great interest.

[MarketStEl]

My purse(s) always smell like coffee from bringing the tin back and forth. It's better than all my clothes and hair smelling like coffee, like they used to though.

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I don't understand. Did you wash your clothes and shampoo with the coffee before you bought this tin?

[Live It Up]

I love reading your blog!

It's such a contrast from my rural Kansas farm life.  Have you always lived in a big city?

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Thanks! Yup, I've lived in manhattan my whole life.

My purse(s) always smell like coffee from bringing the tin back and forth. It's better than all my clothes and hair smelling like coffee, like they used to though.

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I don't understand. Did you wash your clothes and shampoo with the coffee before you bought this tin?

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No, I was referring to when I worked in a coffee shop. I didn't have to carry coffee back and forth from home when I worked there, but I worked with coffee all day, so my hair and clothes smelled.

[petite tête de chou]

Hi Jessica. I noticed your cat plate immediately! I love the whole set for the same reason you sited. Nothing like a hamburger with a lil kitty butt to keep it company.

Your kitchen has such bright, friendly colors. Did you choose them yourself?

[lucylou95816]

Hi Jessica,

Loving your blog and your kitties! NYC is the one East Coast city I would LOVE to live in. Have fun!

[Pan]

I'm enjoying this blog, both for your unique lifestyle and for recognizing all the places you're getting food and drink from. Too bad about alt.coffee. That was a comfortable place to hang out, especially after the no-smoking law was passed and went into effect.

[...]I love my neighborhood, but there are some serious annoyances here. The biggest one for me is the total lack of any good supermarkets. Avenue A is completely gentrified at this point, but the key food (which is the only real supermarket on A) is truly pathetic. There's one gourmet market called Gracefully a few blocks down that is disgustingly over priced, but it's the only option if you want to buy something like carnaroli rice, or sherry vinegar, or non-packaged bread.[...]

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Have you found any of the supermarkets on Av. C useful at all?

I go to Key Food only late at night (2, 3 in the morning), because the lines or horrible at peak hours, and I usually get only a few items. I often go to Met Food on 2nd Av. between 6th and 7th, because it's around the corner from me, but their hours are shorter, their prices are higher, and I caught them putting price tags over several containers of yogurt with expired sell-by dates, complained to the manager, and considered trying to find out where to report them. They do carry some decent yogurt, though: Fage, which I find almost overly rich and which is very expensive, and Omur Yogurt, a Turkish-style yogurt that I like a lot but they don't always have. I like to get the full-fat version with cream on top.

[MarketStEl]

Hi Jessica,

Loving your blog and your kitties!  NYC is the one East Coast city I would LOVE to live in.  Have fun!

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Pardon the drive-by posting, but:

We're just 90 miles down the road, we've got a lot of yummy food all over the place, and you can afford the rent or mortgage here. Which leaves you more money to spend on things, including visits to New York whenever you feel like it -- there's frequent and cheap train and bus service if you don't want to drive.

Okay, back to the real New Yorker.

[Live It Up]

Hi Jessica. I noticed your cat plate immediately! I love the whole set for the same reason you sited. Nothing like a hamburger with a lil kitty butt to keep it company.   

Your kitchen has such bright, friendly colors. Did you choose them yourself?

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Josh and I chose most of the colors. We painted the yellow walls in the kitchen, but the green wall behind the red and white hutch was already there. I have a problem with white walls. I grew up in an apartment and I was never allowed to paint my walls, so now it's my mission to never have white walls again. So far it hasn't been a problem with landlords.

[Live It Up]

I'm enjoying this blog, both for your unique lifestyle and for recognizing all the places you're getting food and drink from. Too bad about alt.coffee. That was a comfortable place to hang out, especially after the no-smoking law was passed and went into effect.

[...]I love my neighborhood, but there are some serious annoyances here. The biggest one for me is the total lack of any good supermarkets. Avenue A is completely gentrified at this point, but the key food (which is the only real supermarket on A) is truly pathetic. There's one gourmet market called Gracefully a few blocks down that is disgustingly over priced, but it's the only option if you want to buy something like carnaroli rice, or sherry vinegar, or non-packaged bread.[...]

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Have you found any of the supermarkets on Av. C useful at all?

I go to Key Food only late at night (2, 3 in the morning), because the lines or horrible at peak hours, and I usually get only a few items. I often go to Met Food on 2nd Av. between 6th and 7th, because it's around the corner from me, but their hours are shorter, their prices are higher, and I caught them putting price tags over several containers of yogurt with expired sell-by dates, complained to the manager, and considered trying to find out where to report them. They do carry some decent yogurt, though: Fage, which I find almost overly rich and which is very expensive, and Omur Yogurt, a Turkish-style yogurt that I like a lot but they don't always have. I like to get the full-fat version with cream on top.

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Honestly, I rarely go to any of the supermarkets in the neighborhood anymore. I used to always shop at key food after midnight, but now, if I do go, I usually go when it's most annoying. My schedule is so tight that I hardly ever have time for detours--I leave the store, get right on the bus, get off by my gym, and then I walk home. So, I do my shopping on the way home from the gym, mostly at this one market on clinton. It's pretty new and it's open til 9:30, which means I can actually get there. I would love to shop at essex street market, but they close too early for me to get there.

[Smithy]

Josh and I chose most of the colors. We painted the yellow walls in the kitchen, but the green wall behind the red and white hutch was already there. I have a problem with white walls. I grew up in an apartment and I was never allowed to paint my walls, so now it's my mission to never have white walls again. So far it hasn't been a problem with landlords.

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This cracks me up, because I can relate. I remember when I bought my first house and was installing the hose-style shower head that had moved with me through several rentals. I looked at the old fixed shower head, tried to figure out where to save it this time, and realized "Hey! It's MY house! I can throw this old sprayer away! Yahoo!" (I didn't do it, though, and 8 years later when I moved to a new house, the original went back into place.)

I can't decide whether it's the leek pie or the coffeecake making me drool most, or just the idea of roasting my own coffee. I am very impressed with the amount of cooking you manage with so little counter space. What kind of accommodations do you find yourself making for that? For instance, do you try to minimize the number of dishes you dirty, or do you clean as you go along? Or do you just use whatever you need and then do a big washing-up later?

I also want to know about the garden-owner. It looks as though Godzilla was a paintball target.

[Live It Up]

I am very impressed with the amount of cooking you manage with so little counter space.  What kind of accommodations do you find yourself making for that?  For instance, do you try to minimize the number of dishes you dirty, or do you clean as you go along?  Or do you just use whatever you need and then do a big washing-up later? 

I also want to know about the garden-owner.  It looks as though Godzilla was a paintball target.

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This is actually the biggest kitchen I've ever had, so it doesn't really feel like I have to compensate for the lack of counter space. I do try to minimize the dishes that I dirty, but that doesn't always work out. Lately I have been trying to be better about cleaning as I go, but I used to just always do a big washing-up, usually the next day. The major problem I have is that my sink is really shallow, so if you put one pot in it it's completely full. So, I often wind up stashing dirty pots and pans in the oven or on the kitchen table. There's also a lot of cooking equipment I rarely use because it's such a pain to wash in my useless sink.

About the garden--I did some investigating (ie, looking at signs) and it is a community garden. It's called "relaxation garden" and it is supposedly open every weekend. Here's the sign.

I have no idea who is responsible for decorating the garden, but I've never seen anyone in it. If I ever manage to get a picture of some of the neighborhood bikes, though you might see some similarities.

Edited July 13, 2007 by Live It Up (log)

[Live It Up]

I actually have work I am supposed to be doing, for a change, so I'm not going to put up my pics from last night yet. But here's a photo of breakfast: toast with avocado and coffee.

That is a mountain of baby clothes behind my breakfast that I'm supposed to be sorting and pricing.

I really like this brand of bread--it's pretty much the only brand I will buy. Normally I like their seeded bread, but it seems to be harder to find. This is the first time I've tried the sunflower rye, and it was pretty good. The problem with this bread is that because it doesn't have any preservatives in it, it goes moldy pretty fast, especially in the summer. Seems like I can only find the bread in the stores here a day before the expiration date.

So, I'm going to try to get some actual work done. Be back later.

[Live It Up]

OK, now that I've gotten some work done, back to the food. I was really, really glad that I started my pasta sauce the night before, because I was ravenously hungry when I got home from the gym last night. All I had to do was chop an onion and saute it with the veal and add peeled (with a peeler) chopped tomatoes. That's what I have here.

I let this cook for a few minutes and then added the peppers that I had already cooked.

That's it! It was done by the time the pasta was done cooking. I always make this dish with percatelli, but I think Marcella recommends a fresh pasta with this. We had some salad, but I didn't take a picture of that. Here's the pasta with some cheese on top.

One thing that makes this pasta so delicious is the use of butter. I had never made a meat based sauce with butter before this one, and it really adds a great flavor. Mmmm, wish I had some right now.

After dinner we went out to Lakeside, as we usually do on thursdays. My friend Lara who works there got me hooked on Campari recently, so that's what I had--campari and soda.

These are way too easy to drink, and I had a lot of them. Josh had a widmer hefeweizen.

and when I say "a" I mean 6 or 7.

Yeah, not sophisticated drinking, but fun anyway.

I usually choose either monday or friday to skip kickboxing, and since I went on monday, that means I'm not going tonight. I prefer it this way because I go on saturday morning, so it's good to have a little break. That means that I get to devote a little bit more time to dinner tonight, and I might even get to take some pictures around the neighborhood. And tomorrow....I'm not working at all!!!!

My youngest sister is going to fill in for me at the store, and I am going to grill in bushwick (brooklyn) with some friends. So, lots of exciting stuff to look forward to. I am a little nervous, though, because I have never used a charcoal grill. Being confined to the city most of the time, I haven't grilled very much at all in my life, so hopefully I won't humiliate myself in front of all the veteran grillers out there.

[Chufi]

The veal sauce looks so good.

Oh and I love Campari, too.

I really admire you for cooking such great meals with your schedule. Oh and I REALLY admire you for going kickboxing 4 times a week after working in the store all day! You're superwoman!

[Live It Up]

^^^

Thanks, but most days I don't feel like a superwoman. Today I'm exhausted from staying out too late drinking too much campari. Cooking is what I love to do, I only wish I had more time to devote to it. But I also do it because I hate ordering in. I mean, we order in for lunch, but I feel like it's a waste of money. At least for lunch we usually get something cheap or a lunch special.

Speaking of lunch, we just had ours. Last night my mom and youngest sister went to this newish BBQ restaurant called Hill Country (thread here). My mom is from Texas and she feels compelled to try every new BBQ place that opens, despite the fact that she is usually disappointed. Anyway, she brought us a sampling of the meats, but no sides and no sauce. So Josh picked up a veggie plate from Mama's for us to share with our meat.

Here we have a piece of sausage, 2 pork ribs, 3 slices of brisket, and the veggie plate: mac and cheese, zucchini, and string beans. We also shared one beef rib, and we still have 2 left.

The ribs, both the pork and the beef were really good. Nicely smoky and very flavorful even without any sauce. My mom got the "lean" brisket which, as everyone in the thread mentioned, was dry. The sausage was the most disappointing, partially because I was expecting it to be really good. Neither of us liked it much, and I only ate a bit or 2. I can't say I'll be running to Hill Country anytime soon, but it was the best BBQ I've had at a restaurant in NYC. (The best I've had in NYC was at Miss Feigenbaum's house last week )

OK, going shopping now and then home. And no work tomorrow. Yippee

[Jamie Lee]

Melissa,

Where did you go? I hope all is well.

Jamie

[Live It Up]

Wow, so yesterday was much crazier than I thought it would be. I have lots and lots of pics to catch you all up, but I'm going to wait til I get to work to put them up. So, sorry, but I'll be back in a couple of hours.

[Jamie Lee]

I was just worried, hope today is saner for your sake!

Thanks for all the hard work you've put in this week - with your schedule, it couldn't be easy, but its been one of the great blogs. I've enjoyed this glimpse into your life, and I'll miss it when it's over!

J.