Kamran was in California all last week being a lawyer, so I spent the week at my apartment, stretched diagonally across my entire bed and eating as many hot dogs as I wanted. My roommate/landlord/co-worker/friend, Jack, and I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (super-entertaining) and Prometheus (ridiculous (abortion machine!) but fun to watch) on his giant 3-D TV, and then I watched The Great Gatsby (teeeeerrible and so, so sweaty) and Martha Marcy May Marlene (amaaaaazing both in acting and cinematography and creepy as hell) in my immense free time.
Saturday night, my friend Ash had a bunch of us over for Early Thanksgiving at her apartment in Queens that has a kitchen big enough to cook a multi-course dinner in. The menu included gougeres, clam chowder, turkey slathered in herbs, shepherd’s pie, cornbread and chorizo stuffing, Brussels sprouts salad, pumpkin Gorgonzola flan, and caramelized apple spice cake decorated with marzipan pumpkins she had formed and painted herself. It was insane. She is insane.
Yesterday, Kamran came back to town, and his friend Gary from back home came to stay with him, and we all went to Jean-Georges for a tasting menu. We’d had a hard time figuring out the best place to take a tasting menu virgin, so I’d made a reservation for J-G and put us on the waiting list for Per Se and Torrisi. J-G called on Saturday afternoon to confirm the reservation, and then, literally two minutes later, Per Se called to offer us a spot. FOILED! Poor Gary only got his first tasting from a three-Michelin-starred restaurant and not the BEST three-Michelin-starred restaurant.
And tonight, I’m going home to Ohio for Thanksgiving. Pretty good livin’.
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So basically it’s safe to say that the month of November has been a free for all for you. No work, lots of play and diagonal sleeping.
You win.
I hate to brag or anything…
but I do know quite a bit about bird-law myself, ‘Old Sport’!
(Have a safe and fun trip!!!)
:)
omgawd Prometheus was so bad. That was some lazy-ass story-telling. The abortion machine was the best part of the whole movie.
Ash sounds fabulously nuts. I wanted to make cool and awesome new things for thanksgiving but I was told NO IT MUST BE TURKEY AND MASHED POTATOES ETC, not even au gratin and now I’m like fine but there will be wine so OK. Have a great holiday.:)
This is why I love hosting this thing! I can do weird things instead of mashed potatoes, and opt to not make green beans or sweet potato pie (though this one I actually regret), without judgement. But of course, there will ALWAYS be turkey.
Oh, and hi I’m Ash. :)
Marzipan pumpkins?? That’s beautiful.
I vote that henceforth, when Kamran is in California, we spell it Kalifornia.
Too much?
I do get a little crazy with food! Honestly half my life is spent, thinking about what to cook next, where to eat next, taking photos of food, editing photos of food, daydreaming about food. The other day I realized if I didn’t obsess about food and became some salads-only strict dieter I might have to kill myself. I once went vegetarian for a month and it lasted that long only because it became a challenge to find delicious vegetarian places to eat in the city. I hate arts and crafts but will shape and paint marzipan pumpkins myself, because it’s food-related.
I’m a little freaked that you went to Jean Georges after that dinner and probably realized super expensive tasting menus are still THE BEST, but I’ll comfort myself in the knowledge that, from your reviews, I believe I used way more butter in my cooking than you probably had there.
Have fun in Ohio (as usual)!
We rented Prometheus in our hotel room in Pittsburgh on Thanksgiving evening. It cost us $17.99, and the bottle of really bad cheap hotel wine that we ordered to go with it cost us $39.99. In PITTSBURGH! Anyways, that whole scene with the machine and her running around with her stomach stapled shut was weird. When she ran into the room with the old man, why did no one bat an eye at her stomach? I guess those things just happen on alien planets, right?
You should talk to my roommate. He keeps watching Prometheus because it’s in 3-D and he just likes using the 3-D function on his TV, but he totally haaaaates the movie and loves talking about how many plot holes, dumb decisions, and unlikely reactions there are in it. So sorry about that $40.