the men who built america

three solid hours of "the men who built america."

this is one of our favorite history channel series that we watched a few years back, but am revisiting. it's amazing to think about how much vision these capitalists had, and what the world was like before antitrust regulation and maintaining standards for work environments, basically the beginning of the industrial revolution.

also this time around, though only two episodes in, or halfway through, i noticed how a few capitalistic and visionary entrepreneurs' need to beat their competition often times did it at the expense of their workers and the general public. an unregulated capitalism.

orange is the new black

after a long day at work and a 2.5 hour design committee meeting, i started this tonight ...

saltie's olive oil cake

every part of my body was sore this morning when i finally dragged my sad self out of bed! and it was still miserably hot and humid outside. kevin and i made our way to dimsum in chinatown, but hurried back after we realized we were both exhausted from saturday's run and the heat.

what do we do on a day like this?

kevin set up a time-lapse of our fiddle leaf fig tree, which is growing three new leaves, took a couple naps, and spent most of the evening working on some pet project which involves pythons, pandas, and data structures. hahaha ... i love how quirky computer-related stuff can be.

i ... was very random. after finishing the series finale of gossip girls (6 seasons x 22 shows/season = 130 episodes ahhh), i caught up on a recently acquired book about famous woodblock prints, and got cracking in the kitchen. we made one batch of granola and used the last burdock root with carrots to make kinpira gobo.

lastly, i was craving a big slice of rhubarb pie or something to stuff my face with, so i decided to try out the saltie recipe for olive oil cake. their OOC is super tasty because it has anise seeds, a crunchy outer crust, and unexpected bursts of kosher salt! i've tried making olive oil cake a few times, but it never comes out as tasty as i'd like, or as tasty as saltie's. their recipe is interesting because it includes unequal amounts of egg whites and yolks (more yolks than whites), anise seed, and lemon zest (instead of orange zest/liquor).

bon appetit! i will post the recipe tonight!

sociale

we grabbed a quick tasty dinner at sociale in brooklyn heights tonight. it's a small italian restaurant at the corner of orange and henry streets, just a couple blocks from the brooklyn waterfront promenade. it was only a quarter full when we arrived at 6:15pm, but the restaurant was totally packed by the time we'd left. despite our expectations for a low key quiet dinner, the restaurant actually felt a bit prim and proper and the service was much more attentive than we'd expected. we shared the burrata salad, and kevin had the lasagne alla bolognese and i had the special of the day, lobster ravioli. the burrata and lasagne were delicious, although i thought the lobster in the ravioli was a little disappointing. i could barely taste the lobster ...

after dinner, we followed the signs and volunteers littered all over brooklyn heights to pick up our race bibs and tshirts at pier 2 of brooklyn bridge park. airbnb had been hosting a three day pre-party and the music was PUMPING!! we got our race bibs - kevin was 3133 and i was five-thousand-something, which meant we were both in the first wave, but different corrals (the lower your bib lower, the faster the corral).

it was a quiet night of gossip girl and relaxing after that so we could get a good night's rest for saturday's race. @_@