a little tokyo in nyc

one of my earliest and closest friends from tokyo, liz, arrived to the city last night and despite my usual 10pm bedtime, we stayed up until 1am catching up. living in japan was a bit like going to sleepaway camp - you build really strong relationships in a relatively short period of time, and spend all your time with new friends. while staying in touch is not that easy with a 12-13 hour time difference and 6000 miles, i really do cherish the opportunities we have to meet up around the world.

the weather was super nice out today so we grabbed dinner with another former tokyo-ite at bar primi.

dumpling night

avocados + organic multigrain bread + lemon = avocado toast.

wimbledon + calligraphy. saw a friend in the front row behind djokovic (!!).

排骨飯 (porkchop) and 鹽酥雞 (fried chicken) over rice at taiwan bear house. finally, a taiwanese cafe with some of our favorite bentos. definitely going back!

picked up a few new additions for our nursery: wheatgrass, schefflera arbicola, and one other whom's name i haven't found yet.

all hands on deck for dumpling night! a much needed get together with jay and kathy for a night of cooking and catching up together. note to self: must visit normandy!

2-gallons of kimchee go into the closet. learned that kevin's hands are too big to fit through mouth of jar. looking forward to checking up on these guys in two days!

through the looking glass

my childhood friend, julia, was in town from the west coast this week and so we spent the day together, starting with brunch with terri at brucie in brooklyn heights. in the afternoon, we trekked to the UES and i finally got to see the met exhibit, china: through the looking glass.

the exhibit was truly magnificent, and it was clear how influential chinese culture was in the evolution of fashion design around the world. one large part of the exhibit included an original work (often times dating back to the late 1700s) and a more recent design resulting from its inspiration. i included a few of the most memorable pieces below, including the grand finale: a gown inspired by buddhism by guo pei.

for dinner, we checked out a new neighborhood spot, co. the weather had cooled down and we enjoyed outdoor seating and a really tasty dinner! we shared the roasted beet salad, cannellini bean toast, chicken liver toast, and two delicious pies: stracciatella and boscaiola. it was all really delicious and the service was great. drives on eighth avenue, however, were a little bit crazy!

love wins

this weekend, specifically friday, june 26, 2015, will go down in history as the supreme court ruled 5-4 that same sex marriage is a right guaranteed by the US constitution.

even though i am personally little affected by this ruling, just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. as great as the US is, in some ways, we are a large slow dinosaur. in my opinion, no one should be able to or has the right to tell you who to love. 

don't even get me started on the mental and physical unfairness of not being able to marry the person of your choice. prior to this ruling, same sex couples could not enjoy the same federal advantages that we heterosexual couple have enjoyed, including benefits, rights, and privileges regarding property rights, benefits, and taxation. it's taken a long time to get here, but what an amazing feat it is to see the US effect change, even if it is super freaking slow.

a review of some significant dates in US history:

jan  1, 1863    emancipiation proclamation frees slaves

jun  4, 1919    19th amendment grants women the right to vote

jul   2, 1964    civil rights act bans discrim. based on race, color, religion, or nat'l origin

jun 16, 2015   supreme court rules same-sex marriage is a right

anyways, today we celebrated with a huge box of donuts from the doughnut plant, including a limited edition raspberry yeast triangle donut :)

i spent the afternoon preparing a nice dinner, something i really haven't done in a while, since we had kris and jessica over! i was running a bit late, so i didn't get a photo (sad!), but with the wine and desserts they brought over, i think it was a pretty fun and tasty night. there's something really easy and non-stressful about having neighbors over. or maybe it's the actual neighbors themselves that leave you feeling relaxed. 

the menu included: 

kinpira gobo

swamp morning glory (aka convovulus aka water spinach)

bittermelon with ground pork

shrimp with edamama

stewed beef with tofu skin

chawanmushi

haiga + white rice

i was a little worried that they wouldn't like the bittermelon, one of our favorite dishes due to its flavor and ease to prepare, but i think our non-asian guest was actually a fan! 

a fun way to finish off the weekend and thank goodness for our handy bosch dishwasher.

baby calvin!

today was russell recon day. it was pretty exciting to watch different parts of the trade throughout the day, but thank goodness it's over.

jaime, david, and baby calvin met us after work at the apartment! we had a nice dinner in the garden at trestle on tenth, a nice way to end the busy work week. one more week of madness (month/quarter-end), and hopefully in july things will get slower :)

sunday funday

we went out for what was supposed to be a nice and easy run, but ended up being, as kevin qualified it, a pissing match. haha ... he looked like he was running pretty smoothly and comfortably, so i just tried my best to keep up and finish with negative splits. the next time we go out for a nice and slow run, we'll have to stick to it.

we brought the kids to sullivan st bakery in the neighborhood for breakfast around 10am and stayed out all day!

• soft-cooked egg, sun-dried tomatoes, and crisp proscuitto sandwiches, cauliflower flatbread pizza, and chocolate bombolonis for breakfast at sullivan street bakery. love love love this place!
• a walk south along the highline from the nothernmost point at 32nd street down to the newly opened whitney museum in the meatpacking district. the highline was jam-packed with tourists, as usual, but it was my first time and breath-taking to reach the lower end of the highline and see the new whitney museum.
• stamping and heat embossing demonstration at the paper source. it's really fun and makes for creative cards and signage!
• plant browsing at sprout studio & home in williamsburg. we lived just up the street from sprout last october, but never made it into the shop until this weekend finally! they have a lovely assortment of plants, which slightly more options than the sill. i found the string of pearls succulent i've been looking for, but it was a bit larger than i was hoping for, so back to the search!
• lunch sandwiches (the captain's daughter, the little chef, and the balmy) at saltie, plus a slice of olive oil cake w/anise seeds and an iced mocha. also picked up a copy of the saltie cookbook yay!
• we took the east river ferry for the first time from williamsburg to 34th street via greenpoint and long island city. with the warm sunny weather, it was a relaxing and scenic way to get back to manhattan given the construction on the L train.
• finally, dinner and a nice walk in flatiron. we managed to grab a table and seats, and picked up mexicue, roberta's, and empanadas for a quick bite at madison square eats. jess and ben loved roberta's pies too yay :D

three's

the best things come in three's!

we got up on the earlier side and headed cross town towards the east river for our longest run in a long time (for me at least). weather was perfect - cool and crisp, and the running paths were relatively obstruction less. though the sun was already up, we were able to finish the run with a decent amount of shade from the FDR overpass downtown skyscrapers along the west side highway. i think kevin could have gone further, another 3/4 mile to our apt, but i was satisfied with 9 :p

jess picked up a delicious trio from the doughnut plant: green tea, blueberry, and coffee, in clockwise order.

i picked these aboriginal taiwanese keychains up for jess and jen when we visited yeh liu (野柳) in march.

jess and i spent part of the afternoon making these paper peonies in white, blossom, pink, and rose! final product photos coming soon :)

east village

it's been a long week of work, and the warmer weather is calling to us to be outdoors and not in the office! tonight kevin and i went down to the east village and visited the sixth street and avenue b community garden. it looks like a cute space with great potential in the warming weather. i found these little magenta flowers whose name i don't know, but i liked how they were hanging.

we finished off the night with dinner at cafe mogador just a couple blocks away. we shared everything - the mixed platter of babaganoush, hummus, arabic salad, and tabouli; roasted sardines; and a casablanca chicken tagine with chickpeas, raisins, onions, and a side of couscous. even though it's not taiwanese, it had a distinct similarity with my mom's home cooking.

and jess and ben arrived late tonight !!!!!!!!! :D

washoku day

it was a breezy, cool saturday morning. so chilly that i started off my day with my uggs on, quite a difference from the highs of 80F that we experienced last saturday at glenn's farewell luau.

my close friend and college roommate, winnie, was in town from phoenix so we had a nice brunch with a couple friends at upland, a starr restaurant showcasing the contemporary california cuisines of justin smilie, former chef at il buco alimentari. it's been quite a long time since we last saw each other, about 1.5 years, and there have been lots of changes since we last saw each other, so it was good to catch up. would be fun to end up in the same region of the US again one day in the future!

we met up with elyse & estella, who were hanging out at the union square farmer's market, and kevin who walked over from the apt, and strolled through the plants and flowers section together. estella was in a bright and cheery mood, and feeling very social, yet shy :) she showed us her favorite flower at the market - blue hydrangea - and kept her mom actively chasing after her throughout the park. she also made a wish with a penny at the fountain. yep, estella wished for cheese and her mom made her wish come true - GOUDA! it's been fun watching this little girl grow up the last 2.5 years so far.

in the afternoon, we watched a japanese food film at the cinema village, washoku, which was mildly entertaining and sadly a bit of a letdown. it touched on many areas of japanese washoku, which are japanese ingredients, preparation, and cuisine, but the documentary was a bit all over the place so left us wishing for more. there was an interesting bit on how washoku has been brought to the US, but it also felt a tad bit propoganda-ish for the ny mutual trading co, the largest importer of japanese goods into the US.

our saving grace was trying out ramen lab on the northern edge of chinatown, a ramen bar opened by the folks who brought us delicious ramen noodles which are used in almost every ramen shop in nyc, sun noodles. there are 10 seats available at ramen lab, and when i say seats, i actually mean, standing room. there are two ramens on the menu: i had the shoyu ramen with charsu and onsen tamago, and kevin had the xo vegetarian miso-based ramen with charsu and onsen tamago, and we shared an order of gyoza. the noodles were nice and chewy (QQ~!) and i really liked my shoyu ramen. it was flavorful, but not greasy or heavy feeling, and the gyoza was tasty as well. i think i still prefer my gyoza with vinegar though, versus the dipping sauce they provided. overall, an excellentexperience despite the 45 minute wait. 

i know, jen doesn't do lines but this was an exception :)

the highline

today was in the 50s, much cooler than saturday, and perfect weather for strolling through the city. with blue bottle coffees and cookie in hand and dennis in his babybjorn carrier, we walked the length of the highline from 14th street up to the jacob javitts center on 34th street.

we stopped by sullivan street bakery on the way back for a low-key, DELICIOUS lunch. i have to say, this is one of my new favorite spots for the healthy, flavorful low key breakfast/lunch, for parties of 3-4 or less. there are just 14-16 table seats and 6-8 counter stools, but there are also benches outside (doesn't hurt that it's two blocks away from our apt). allyson had a salad with poached eggs mixed in, and i had soft eggs and proscuitto on streci. so glad to have found and tried this spot!

al and i left with first to give dennis his nap, and we found some natural one-on-one time to catch up ... although we've not lived in the same city since the age of 11, it's one of those friendships where you don't have to explain anything. we always start off just where we left off somehow, or catch each other up. the last few years, we have been lucky enough to see each other one or twice a year, and i hope we can make an effort to continue this in the future!

this is the last photo we took together, and with the little man, dennis! :) it has been much quieter since he left, but not in a good way! i can't believe that the next time we meet, most likely dennis will be walking and possibly talking ...

in the evening, we stopped by the black door with rose and dustin to wish our friend, jessica, a happy 30th! kris/we did a pretty good job i think :)

aloha, glenn

it was a beautiful day today, the sunniest, warmest day all year, where temperatures were as high as 80F in the afternoon.

kevin was still feeling ill from the flu or food poisoning (we haven't been able to figure it out), and hadn't eaten a thing all day on friday. luckily he was able to keep down some 糜 (congee) in the morning, his first morsel of food in 36 hours. al and john went for a run together on the WSH while i watched dennis.

dennis hasn't begun crawling yet, so it was pretty fun and easy :) after returning, john and al made us a high-protein brunch consisting of eggs, asparagus, onions, and shitake mushrooms. it was super tasty!

in the afternoon, we headed over to saied's building to prepare and decorate for the surprise farewell luau bbq. while it was 80F bright and sunny everywhere else, in the common bbq area, we had shade, diffused light, and +100 ft of leis!

the guys took care of the bbq'ing and food, while susan and i coordinated the decor, signage, and desserts. i think it turned out pretty nice and glenn seemed super happy to not have been forgotten. 

after +15 years on the mainland, it's time to say good bye ... 

glenn was my closest male friend in college and after college. and while i'm not the type to show my sadness or cry when someone close to me is moving on, i definitely feel it deep inside. i prefer to think about a move as a better move for my friend.

i felt extremely lucky to have been known glenn, one of THE most laid-back people i have ever met in my freshman year at carnegie mellon in 1999. thick and thin, we've been through it all together. and to be able to spend his last day in the mainland together, with all our friends and new significant others, along with my oldest childhood friend, allyson, and her family, i am once again left feeling very blessed.

the last group shot we'll take for a while :) yep, that's a slideshow on the wall in the background!

meet dennis!

what's the difference between duncan hines "butter golden" and "classic yellow"? LOL. i picked up the latter to make for glenn's surprise farewell luau.

and welcomed my little man, dennis mahoney, to nyc!

green coffee

for the last few months, kevin has been preparing pourover coffee and packing it into our toppot insulated mugs in the mornings. i usually need more time than him to get ready for work in the morning, so i try to line up my hair, makeup, and accessorizing time with his coffee making time. LOL. usually i still need more time though and he's waiting for me with his jacket and shoes on at the front door.

i'd assumed that kevin was making artisanal coffee each morning in part because it tasted better, as a personal hobby, and to kill time waiting for me, but today he mentioned to me that it was also in part to save on buying coffee and wasting paper cups day after day.

this put a huge smile on my face ... we both keep nalgene's at the office for drinking water and i also keep a pair of chopsticks (as not to use the bleached wooden chopsticks from various food vendors). a next step would be to reduce the use of plastic cutlery at the office - currently i use one spoon and one fork a day at the office. if everyone did this, it would create a whole lot of unnecessary trash.

so maybe next week i'll bring in my own spoon and fork. this will require a little time each day to bring my cutlery to the kitchen and wash them, but it's the least i can do for mother earth :) we try to be as green as possible at home too, reusing and repurposing as many disposable containers as possible, and recycling the others. in fact, our recycling container fills up many times faster than our trash bin.

i talk about reducing reusing repurposing and recycling too much though :p

on another note, my friend from japan has officially moved to the USA!!! welcome, yvonne! i was so happy to bring her for your first officially american meal at chipotle ~ chicken burrito bowl ~ this afternoon! and i have a new friend for spa trips in flushing!

smorgasburg

another gorgeous cool day without a cloud in the sky, and like clockwork, i was up before 7am this morning. i don't know why this happens to me on the weekends in the spring and summer, because as soon as the weekdays roll around, i have serious problems waking up for work!

as soon as kevin left for his run, simon woke up and nursed his hangover after a late night of partying, and i spent the morning baking a new batch of granola (with pistachios and blueberries!) and prepping some of the ingredients for dinner that night. for the last few months, i've felt sluggish, sick, and jetlagged, but finally, this weekend i felt more like myself again.

as we waited for simon to get ready, i took a short walk to the floral district and brought home some new succulent critters!

around 1pm, we made our way over to smorgasburg in brooklyn heights. having eaten just a half cup's worth of rice porridge that morning, i was ready to buckle over from hunger, so we got maine style lobster rolls from luke's, the very first booth we saw. hahaha ... it was so so tasty! don't think i've had lobster since last may in maine. we also had deep fried anchovies from bonchovi, cookies n cream organic from ice cream from blue marble ice cream, chicken parm sliders from sunday gravy, and my FAVORITE, maple lemonade and butternut squash sugar donut from rockville market farm.

and after what seems like a week of eating out, finally an easy dinner for two :)

plant propagation

i spent a couple hours this afternoon repotting a few plants, and using the cutting method to propagate one of our snake plants. kevin had a little fun with his new canon g7x and here are the results.

best: spaghetti with parmigiano reggiano and parma prosciutto and linguine with uni are my unequivocal favorites at basta pasta. tonight we shared them with simon, one of kevin's best friends from college. and followed up with momofuku milk bar's cereal milk soft serve with cereal crunch. a delicious way to end the day!

worst: sunny blue skies and and earlier sunrises will mean setting my alarm earlier on the weekends to get our runs in. i think in july/august last summer, we were starting our runs/rides around 4:30am to avoid the harsh and sweltering rays of the sun.

smile: we met kevin's mother's sister's husband's brother (<-- hahaha), wife, and son, for brunch this morning at the midtown landmarc. they are total foodies and love exploring cafes ~ oodles of energy and so much fun. difficult to believe they're our parents' generation!

scotland run

we ran the nyrr scotland run 10k this morning, our first race of the season, and the weather turned out pretty nice! 48F and 61% humidity. kevin now starts in a faster corral than me, so we no longer start the race off together or run any portion of it together. i miss running with him, but it's better for him to be competing with faster peers who can challenge him to improve and it's working!

since i haven't really done a run longer than 3 miles in a couple months, my plan was to take it easy and treat it as a long training run. the first mile went quicker than expected though, and i hate increasing splits, so i tried my best to hold on for the next five. since we ran clockwise in the park, we did harlem hill backwards to our benefit, but i still wasn't able to pick up the pace for miles 5 & 6. finished the race with 7:40 mile splits, about the same pace as when i raced it two years ago. haha ... no improvement :p

after the race, we ran into brian yuen for coffee and a fun post race recap & analysis at bouchon at the time warner center. it was the perfect way to spend a saturday morning.

met up with glenn and nick (in town for the long wkd from chitown!) for brunch at the dutch, where i had the fresh cheese omlet with a side of bibb salad and ale bread, and kevin had the smoked salmon & bagel with soft scrambled eggs and trout roe. our meals were delicious, and relatively healthy feeling too - not greasy at all, which is my kind of meal! i paired my brunch with a clean green juice blend, which contains kale, spinach, cucumber, lime, pineapple, and mint, and kevin had his third cup of coffee for the morning. LOL.

for dinner, we met up with glenn and nick again, as well as a few other cmu friends, at jack's wife freda's, to welcome grace and dallas back to nyc. it was a nice reunion for us all, as we haven't seen dallas since last summer before his most recent and last deployment. after dinner, we hosted an impromptu gathering at the loft to watch wisconsin kick some kentucky butt in the final 4s. 

wisconsin vs duke REMATCH on monday for the 2015 ncaa championship!

best: malva pudding at jack's wife's freda's! it doesn't look too special, but it tastes oh so good and relatively light. it's basically a soft caramelized muffin-texture dessert with a side of creme fraiche.

worst: still jetlagging this weekend ... we were able to keep ourselves up by doing mind-numbing activities such as box folding though. managed to clean up the office after an hour of box folding and paper shredding.

smile: one of kevin's colleagues at work was also running this morning's race and, for some reason, felt the need to hype up the race and start a market with all their former colleagues about their race times. what was supposed to be a fun race ending up being somewhat of a stressful pissing match as former colleagues were betting on kevin beating this guy by as much as 8 minutes. i was very annoyed because now kevin would be stressed out about the race and had people pinging him all week long about how much money they had on him, this spread, and it was basically our first race of the season. in the end, kevin kicked that guy's ass big time and beat him by 8:05 minutes :) regardless of how he performed next to that jerk, im proud of him for the vast improvement in his time!