La Rentrée

"Here in France, early September is known as la rentrée, and it’s a Big Deal. It’s when everything picks up again after the two month break that is summer holiday season – and as the French like to holiday en masse in July and August, it makes it well nigh impossible to get anything done until September. So now we’re all getting back to work, the children are going back to school with smart hair cuts, shiny shoes and new satchels..." --The Languedoc Review

La rentrée is not just for the French. La rentrée right here in NYC kicked my butt this fall. I have spent the last two months in back-to-school mode, all the way through midterms and one of the busiest seasons at work. I have no energy to blog or read or think or do anything besides sit on my couch and lazily flip through magazines on my days off from work when I found myself without a school project/paper/reading assignment to do.

And now that it's almost Thanksgiving, which leads to the holiday slide into my birthday, Christmas, and New Year's Eve, before January (another heinously busy time in the publishing world), I think it's about time I re-enter the blogosphere.

Because I freaking love the holidays. And I need to share these things with others.

My parents will be arriving at my teensy-tiny NYC apartment in about 20 minutes, and everything is sparkling clean, the fridge is packed, and the world's naughtiest kitties are currently taking a nap. It's just me and my parents for Thanksgiving this year, but I am so excited! It should be terribly relaxing for once, since I've left our schedules pretty wide open for food, shopping, and napping this weekend.

[the packed fridge - note, most importantly, packed with wine, cheese, turkey, and Snickers icebox pie from Magnolia]

I'm more than ready for a little holiday cheer. Operation Thanksgiving Dinner in the World's Smallest Kitchen 2.0 is a go!

[Hammie can't figure out what these lights are for]

Another rainy spring.

I seem to always mis-estimate how busy I am going to be. I feel like I've been even busier since school ended a few weeks ago. On top of that, I've been exhausted and it is so hard to get anything done!

I need to do real grown-up things that just keep getting put off.

But instead, I have been napping, shopping, and going to happy hour. All of which are VERY IMPORTANT THINGS, mind you, just not technically on my to-do list. And of course, I've been running around in the rain all of last week, trying to do fun things, but not dressed appropriately for the AWFUL weather that's been in NYC lately.

And of course, now I am sick... Just an annoying cold. But annoying nonetheless. And I am still at work today (but fading fast).

I have also discovered pinterest- which is now eating up my life. It's just so. damn. addictive. Follow me if you are one of the fellow recent addicts!

Coming up this week:

• Book Expo America (HUGE trade publishing convention in NYC, i.e. quiet time at work when everyone except me goes to the convention)
• Horrible, terrible, awful construction in my apartment - more on this later
• Summer class starts on Wednesday - ALREADY! Gross.
• My parents arrive in NYC on Thursday morning
• Weekend of eating out/bagels/tourisming/family junk

Epic summer tk.

I'm getting so excited for this summer. The Summer Friday schedule was just released at work (which, of course, just happens to work in my favor this year after the chaos that I walked into last year), and I am busy planning the next month/entire summer full of fun activities. Here's how the calendar looks so far:

5/7 - Kentucky Derby (actual plans tk, but no doubt it will be something fun)

5/17 - seeing HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING on Broadway, starring Daniel Radcliffe

5/18 - Theory sample sale at Clothingline

5/21-22 - the Taste of Nolita, including samples from 7 restaurants and drink specials at a few bars

5/23 - Young to Publishing Group happy hour to kick off BookExpo America at The Frying Pan

5/26 - my parents arrive for Memorial Day Weekend; we're seeing SPIDERMAN: TURN OFF THE DARK on Broadway that evening

5/27-30 - tourisming, good meals, brunch, family time, etc. with my parents & bro

6/23-26 - home to Minnesota for a weekend at the lake

7/4 - 4th of July at Coney Island, including the Nathan's hot dog eating contest. I must see this once in my life.

7/15 - Harry Potter 7 Part 2

7/22-24 - visit D.C.? Maybe?

8/?? - one week during the month of August will be the Central Park Film Festival, which I thoroughly enjoyed last year and CAN NOT wait for this year. I want to try and go to at least 2 or 3 of the movies this year!

9/2-5 - Minnesota for Labor Day weekend, which may just have to include a trip to the Minnesota State Fair

And lots more tk. These are just the bare bones of the fabulosity that is summer in NYC and Minnesota.

What are you looking forward to this summer??

The year in review.

I feel like this year has flown by. So, so much has happened in 12 months. January 1st, one year ago, I was freezing my butt off trying to haul all my clothes and furniture up four flights of stairs into my first apartment. Here are a few highlights from the year:

1. My first apartment, completely newly renovated before I moved in, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

2. Hammie & Misko. I have 2 adorable, naughty, smart, cuddly kittens. And I've had them for almost a year with no (major) disasters!

3. I started my first full-time job in May. After being an unpaid intern for 4 months, I worked my @ off to impress the right people and got the job offer. I now love what I'm doing everyday and love going to work.

4. I am halfway done with my Masters! As of fall 2010, I have completed 24 of my 42 credits toward my graduate work. Besides all the group projects, I really enjoy what I'm learning and can definitely see how it applies to the things I'm doing every single day at work.

5. New & old friends. I'm happy that I ended up in NYC because it's so easy to hop a train down to DC and visit my besties from college or for them to come see me. I've had some amazing times in DC, Maryland, and New York this year with amazing friends like Becca, Tamar, Endrit, Jen, Arden, Amanda, Jess, and so many more!

(me & Becca in February outside the Met)

(me & Krista before her wedding in Minnesota in July)

(with Becca & Endrit on top of the Kennedy Center for my graduation in May)

I've also made amazing friends this year at NYU: Gillian, Natalie, and Charity have really made this year great for me. I love my Subway rides and bagel dates with Nat, lunches all over Midtown and one epic trip to IKEA with Gillian, and all the wine and adventures (blowing off yoga) with Charity. (See The Birthday Weekend of Bad Behavior for more examples of fun with friends)

(me & Charity at the NYU SCPS Semi-Formal, i.e. Grad School Prom last spring)

(with Gillian, Erin & Natalie at Coney Island this summer. Charity was there too! She was taking the picture!)

6. Last, but not least, I'm so happy with how much I've actually seen my family this year. My parents and brother have come to visit me quite a bit, and I've made it home several times as well. When I moved last year, I had no idea how often I would actually be seeing them. And especially now that I have to take PTO every time I want to come home! My aunt & uncle in New Jersey have also made a big difference for me this year. They've really helped me out by bringing me groceries and such things or by picking me up and getting me out of the city for a night! It's been a very busy year, and I couldn't have gotten through it without the help of my family!

I have a lot to look forward to in 2011. In March, I'm meeting my friends from high school, Erika & Jenny, in Paris for 6 days, then visiting my friend, Arden, from GW in Copenhagen. I am planning to come home to Minnesota for a weekend or two this summer to spend some time out on the lake! And hopefully, I'll be planning a trip this fall with Natalie, perhaps to Las Vegas or somewhere else warm & fun! Also, hopefully various friends (like Krista&Brady!) will be coming to NYC to visit me.

And a happy New Year to all! I'll be spending the night out on the town with Jess, Amanda, Ashley, & Morgan (all from GW) & Gillian. Here's to a fantastic evening in the GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD!

Thanksgiving Part 2: The Big Day.

After a good night's sleep and fun morning watching the parade from the window of our hotel room at the New York Athletic Club (pictures to come tomorrow), we arrive back at my apartment around 1 p.m. to put the finishing touches on our Thanksgiving meal.

Thursday, 1 p.m. I lay out the appetizer spread. We have celery and carrots with T. Marzetti's dill dip, water crackers and pita chips with herb-shrimp dip and blue cheese-walnut spread, the goat cheese stuffed mushrooms, and an assortment of marinated olives and dill pickles from Agata & Valentina's. The mushrooms go in the oven for 20 minutes to melty-perfection. They called for red pepper flakes, and I didn't measure the amount... they were a bit spicy, but absolutely delicious! They were one of my favorite dishes of the day. The dips were both really good, too, and I'm excited for those leftovers the next few days.

Thursday, 1:10 p.m. We pop the turkey back in the oven to heat it all the way through and mix the rest of the ingredients for Martha's simple stuffing into a crock pot (borrowed from my aunt Diane). The recipe didn't call for sausage, but I thought that Italian sweet sausage might be a nice addition. The dried bread seemed to be taking up too much space, even with the 3 eggs, 1/2 a cup of wine, and 2 cans of chicken broth, so I'm a bit concerned about this. We can't get all the bread into the pot just yet either. At this point, we also peel and start boiling our 5 pounds of red potatoes (no recipe for this, I make great mashed potatoes on my own!) and start boiling our Minnesotan wild rice with a mix of sauteed mushrooms and onions.

Thursday, 1:50 p.m. The turkey comes out of the oven to rest, and the green beans go in to cook for 45 minutes. The potatoes are done boiling, so I mash them with my $7.99 hand mixer from Target with skim milk, butter, salt, pepper, and 4 ounces of cream cheese.

Thursday, 2 p.m. We mix some of the juices from the turkey in with the dressing, stir vigorously, add the rest of the bread, and pray to God that it will cook more in the final half hour.

Thursday, 2:15 p.m. Mom mixes up the gravy. I've never made gravy before and don't feel like trying it today... maybe next year! Mom also carves the turkey while I'm dishing up everything else into the serving dishes and heating up the rolls. I mix up a special drink in a big pitcher of 1 bottle of champagne, 2 cups of cranberry juice, and 6 ounces of grand Marnier, decorated with cranberries frozen in ice cubes. On the table in wine glasses, the drinks looked really pretty and festive, and they tasted delicious! Also at this point, my dad and uncle pulled out my awesome gate-leg table, flipped up the other side, pulled out the extra chairs and set the table.

Thursday, 2:25 p.m. I realize all the clean silverware is in the dishwasher still, stop the dishwasher mid-wash and pull out burning hot forks and knives for the whole family. No need to panic :-)

Thursday, 2:30 p.m. We sit down to the table, say grace, pass the dishes and dig in! The turkey and stuffing were actually probably my favorites. I don't normally like stuffing, but I really liked this recipe, especially with the extra sausage. Way to go Martha! Mom was worried that the gravy was a little lumpy, but it was delicious so no one else seemed to notice. Of course, I always love Minnesotan wild rice with gravy, but that's a given!

Thursday, 4:30 p.m. After cleaning up a bit, flipping through some of the advertisements for Black Friday, we serve up our apple pie from Agata & Valentina with vanilla ice cream for dessert. The pie was really good, also one of my favorites from the day.

Thursday, 5:30 p.m. My aunt and uncle get on the road back to New Jersey, we clean up a bit more, and then everyone (kitties included) is ready for a nap and some good old fashioned, American television.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Thanksgiving Part 1: The Preparation.

Because it's my first year in New York, and my first year in my own apartment, I had this crazy idea to host my parents, my brother, and my aunt and uncle from New Jersey for Thanksgiving this year. In my tiny apartment. My parents and brother will actually be staying in my apartment, and my aunt and uncle will drive in for the day. Fun!

Unfortunately, my brother, who is the real gourmet chef in the family, was asked to work on Friday and won't be able to come up now until Friday evening after work. So I'm all alone with my Martha Stewart recipes for the big meal! My mom is a decent cook, but she's not one for following directions. I think the phrase we heard a lot in her kitchen growing up was, "Good enough!" This will be an adventure.

To make things even more exciting, I have some sort of cold/flu that hit me over the weekend, bad enough to make me miss work on Monday. So I lost some valuable prep time this weekend.

Here's how it went:

Sunday, 10 a.m. Loads and loads of grocery shopping. Luckily, my crappy little market had everything I needed. I'm still shocked that one tiny little bottle of vanilla extract cost $6.99 in Manhattan, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore. I didn't have time to check other stores, so I just carted everything home in my old-lady-shopping-cart. And then I practically cried when I had to carry everything up to my fourth-floor walk-up.

Monday, 2 p.m. Drag myself off deathbed to move the 8.5 and 7.5 pound turkey breasts to the fridge to thaw. I decided to do turkey breasts because they're smaller and will cooker a little faster. Besides, I don't like dark meat anyway... For the five of us for dinner tomorrow, we really only need one, but I'm going to make a second while we're at, freeze the meat, and use it for soups, etc. this winter. Plus, I feel safer making a turkey breast "on my own" when my mom will be here to supervise.

Wednesday, 8:30 a.m. Drag myself out of bed to frantically clean my apartment before my parents arrive at 10:30. Play loud Christmas music to annoy the old hag that lives below me. Feed the naughty kitties. More cleaning.

Wednesday, 9:38 a.m. Take a break. Cleaning is hard!

Wednesday, 10:15 a.m. Not quite done cleaning... AND my parents arrive! Hugging ensues and the kitties snuggle their grandparents tentatively.

Wednesday, 10:30 a.m. My mom wants to get down to business. We're chopping and sautéing the vegetables for the dressing, the green bean casserole, and the wild rice. We mix up a shrimp-herb dip, a blue cheese-walnut spread, and prepare the filling for the goat cheese stuffed mushrooms for our appetizers. Dad's job is to keep the darling, curious kitties out of the kitchen. They've been known to jump up on a cutting board in the past and knock chef knives crashing to the floor... nearly missing my feet... so Dad made sure to keep them busy with a laser pointer while we were cooking away!

Wednesday, around noon. I completely botch the sauce for the green bean casserole, and we have to throw it away. I'm not too sure of my ability to make the roux for the sauce correctly, so we scratch that idea, and just mix some cream of mushroom soup in with beans and call it a day. We store the green bean dish wrapped in foil in the fridge, ready to bake in the oven on Thursday.

Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. We create Martha Stewart's herb butter, rub down the turkeys, prepare the pans with quartered carrots, celery, and onions, and pop our first turkey breast in the oven - only one will fit in my tiny oven at a time! We have about 3 hours to kill until it's done. We're doing one today and one tomorrow.

Wednesday, 2:00 p.m. Everyone's tired and ready for lunch. We head to Agata & Valentina's on 79th and 1st Ave. to pick up lunch and our apple pie and bread for tomorrow. The supermarket is a complete mess. There's a line all the way around the entire store à la Trader Joe's Union Square at rush hour.

Wednesday, 5:30 p.m. Turkey's all done, perfectly golden brown on the outside and smells delicious. We pop it in the fresh covered in foil and are all done for the evening.

We head off to the New York Athletic Club, where we rented a room just for Wednesday night/Thursday morning to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Everyone's tired after a full day of prep work and running errands!

Countdown to Thanksgiving.

My family is coming for Thanksgiving in 36 hours, and I have the flu.

I have all the shopping done except for a few things I need to pick up Wednesday, and I didn't pick up the wine/beer yet because, let's face it, that stuff is heavy, so I was going to wait until my brother's here to help me carry everything. I have a cooking agenda which is supposed to kick off tomorrow night after work, but now that also includes all the cleaning I didn't get done over the weekend because I was laying in bed.

On the other hand, I'm super excited for the parade and cooking with the fam on Thursday, dinner at Peasant on Friday night, brunch at Bar Boulud and the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular on Saturday. It should be a fantastic weekend with my family if I can rally from this little flu I have going on!

Oh, hey, it's almost August.

So the thing about being a young, single, working girl going to grad school... is that by definition, my life is SO busy. Also, because I just moved here in January, all of my friends/family are always coming to visit me, and thus, making me even busier.

My friends from NYU all refer to it as "revolving door syndrome." NYC is just a great place to visit for all of our families & friends, so we're constantly having visitors - which means constantly cleaning our apartments for when our mothers come to town, planning amazing weekends of tourism-filled-fun, going out partying hard-core when our college roommates are staying with us, and eating expensive, decadent restaurant food on culinary tours of the city when our foodie brothers come to visit.

Which is all great in moderation. But there is no such moderation in "revolving door syndrome." One visitor leaves, and the next one is already arriving. Don't get me wrong - these are all people that I love very dearly coming to visit me. But man, it's draining!

Notice, in the last 6 weeks of no-blog-posting, I've crossed about 10 things off my NY to-do list because my wonderful mother and best friend both came to visit recently and played tourist with me!

Up next for me: Looking forward to a relaxing August. I'm done with summer classes next week, and have almost an entire month off to catch my breath and focus on just work, hitting the gym, and sleep.

Top of the Rock.

For those of you who have done (or want to avoid) the top of the Empire State Building, I recommend hitting up the Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center.

1. It's cheaper (tickets are $20 for adults, as opposed to $40 for the top of the Empire).
2. You can gawk AT the Empire State Building.
3. After Top of the Rock, you can head down to Magnolia bakery for their famous red velvet cupcakes (supposedly the best in NY). Magnolia's at the corner of 6th Ave. and 49th St. and it makes for a perfect snack after a sunset trip to the Top of the Rock.

I did this with my parents and my aunt and uncle, and it was a really fun evening. Rockefeller has a really neat history behind it. It was built from 1930-1939, entirely during the Great Depression... not the kind of project you'd expect when half the country was in soup lines. There's some history videos in the concourse before you go up to the top, and I highly recommend pausing to watch them.

Grand Central Oyster Bar.

So, I haven't posted for a while because I was really sick over this past weekend/week, then this week was midterms. I have a few reviews from last weekend with my parents (from before I got sick Saturday night...) that I feel the need to share with the world.

First, let's start with Grand Central Oyster Bar. We went here last Friday night, it being a Friday during Lent, and the poor Catholics having to replace their steak with oysters and crab claws... It came highly recommended via various online reviews, and it seemed like a great place to take my Midwesterner parents: it's part of the history of Grand Central station, a seemingly real attraction, and one of the oldest oyster bars in New York City. The menu is really large and completely available online, and I was hooked.

Unfortunately, the food was utterly disappointing for the prices. My dad and I both had Florida Blue Crab Claws (basically enormous crab claws that are cooked, then served chilled), and while they were large, they weren't served correctly. They had clearly been made way in advance, and when you chill the crab for too long, it refuses to separate from the shell. So after basically picking out miniscule amounts of meat... not worth it. The Oysters Rockefeller were actually really good, but I'd say that was the one redeeming factor of the meal. My scallops were flavorless, my mom's shrimp salad was miniature, and well, my dad ordered fish n' chips... so he really had nothing to complain about.

Seriously, it might be a great raw bar. But the dinner menu was awful. It's definitely not worthy of all the hype. Skip it.

Snow again in the city.

My parents came in yesterday from Minneapolis to be greeted by a "monster Nor'easter." Kind of. There's only 6 inches accumulated in the city, but everything is shut down. No classes at NYU tonight, which is great for me.

We were planning a whirlwind tour of the city, but we'll have to see with the snow what we can do. First on the list for sure, though, H&H Midtown Bagel. As I posted a few weeks ago, it's the best bagel I've had. In my entire life.

We're planning on going up to the Top of the Rock, the observation deck at Rockefeller Center, then the famous Grand Central Oyster Bar later tonight (it's a Friday during Lent, so no meat!)

We'll see how this goes, but we might have to find a nice warm museum for the rest of the day!