A December to remember

Our Christmas tree - Amaranta.  We picked her up from the regular place that pops up every year by the subway station on Driggs.  And, like most years, we again misjudged the size of the tree when we bought it.  Trees just look so much smaller when they're outside, stacked against other much larger trees!  We got her home and set her up and took off the netting and she just kept expanding...and expanding...and EXPANDING.  When all was said and done she blocked half of the tv and half of the doorway into the 2nd bedroom.  But whatever - more tree to love!

 My friend's son sent me a flat Stanley as part of a school project so I had to take some pictures of him in front of typical New York scenes.  This is at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, overlooking winter market at central park.  Mike and I went to go see the "Red Hot Holiday Stomp" at Jazz at Lincoln Center and of course, I took no pictures except for one of Stanley.  Typical!

 Tiffany's 30th birthday party! And where is Tiffany? Off somewhere scavengering!  She had a pirate-themed scavenger hunt for her birthday party, and the crowd split up into 4 or 5 teams.  This was my team - Team Blue Pirates - pictured here at Barcade.  I don't remember why we were at Barcade.  Something we were looking for was there, but I don't remember what it was.

 Ah, this one I do remember - Union Pool.  We got points for getting kisses from strangers.  Which, is surprisingly easy to accomplish, as Joe Show discovered.

Fran, taking care not to abuse her power over the young males in attendance.

Joe, trying very hard to abuse his power over the young females in attendance.

Chris, trying to get in on the action with his...err...secret friend....

And yes, Guinness was on our list of items to finds.  Here Mike was nice enough to take one for the team.

Joe, still cleaning house in the strange kiss department.  At this point just for the fun of it.

Meeks!

 A photo booth picture was also required, which prompted Adriana and I to take a picture in the photo booth.  Of course, once we did that it occurred to us that we could have easily just USED the photo booth instead.  So, we did that too.



 Fran, getting smooched.

 We had to find an anchor too, which proved to be surprisingly easy since our friend Bravo happened to be working at Union Pool that night.

Fran the Pirate Princess, keepin' it real, much to the entertainment of the kitchen crew at Viva El Toro.

Meeks, slaying the mechanical bull.   After about 30 seconds he fell off and proceeded to get gored by the bull.  It was pretty amazing, to be honest.  You know, what with the bull being mechanical and attached to the floor by a post and all.

 Getting a sweet neck tatt at the Levy.

Fran, relying on the kindness of strangers to mutilate her pristine forearm with a lick-on tattoo.

 This one I still don't understand.  We ended up at Mulhollands, with a long line of pink plastic cord.  Someone said we were supposed to run it through our clothes, and once it was threaded through we had to share a Guinness.  Well, I don't know if that is what we were supposed to do, but that's what we ended up doing.

 Joe and Meeks, sharing a special pink bond.

 Fran, risking rope burns to bring us closer to glory.

Meeks, risking future generations of Slagles to do the same.

Cooking the Big Bird

Another beautiful bird from Turkana Farms!  Its was either a Narragensett or a Bourbon Red (hard to tell without the feathers on, but the ones I did find were black).  You may notice that the bird has a large breastbone and long gangly legs, something not usually seen on your standard Butterball.  This is because the birds from Turkana are heritage breed and raised without hormones, and thus take longer to reach their full weight.  They also run and fly outside, which gives them a leaner look in comparison to their factory-farmed brethren.  We had a smaller crowd this year so of naturally we ended up getting a bigger bird!  

Francesca, enjoying the house wine...

Fran, Tim, and Steve all showed up wearing slightly different variations of the same shirt. I think this means that maybe we have all been spending way too much time together.

Mike, making a MONSTER batch of mushroom gravy.  He added some red wine to it which resulted in a robust, almost beefy flavor - this despite it being completely vegetarian.

Carving up the bird with the fillet knife Mike bought up near Indian Lake a few years ago.    Its not the best for filleting a walleye, but it worked wonders on the turkey!

A harvest moon over the East River.

Distance Running

This past Sunday was the annual NYC Marathon, and being that the marathon route passes about 2 blocks from our apartment, Meeks and I decided to hop on the G train and travel south to Bed-stuy to watch it there.  To our credit, we were enticed out of our comfort zone by our friends Tim & Jen, who promised us homemade breakfast and bloody marys.  They didn't dissapoint either - they even met us at the subway with fresh-from-the-oven cranberry walnut scones.

 We got a good spot for viewing the runners, just about at the 15K marker, right where all of the runners make a turn onto Bedford Avenue. 

 Watching this stuff always makes me want to run the marathon too.  But then I remember that I actually don't want to run a marathon at all.  I just want to watch other people run one, while talking loudly to anybody who will listen about how much I want to run a marathon.

 Mike doesn't really want to run one either.  Do you know what the hardest part about the marathon is? Clapping.  Seriously.  I clapped, cheered, and threw two-handed waves for about an hour straight.  My arms were like dead weights by the end of it.

 You can't see it well, but down the street on the left side is the coffee shop that we desperately wanted to get coffee from.  Unfortunately, none of us wanted to risk being stampeded to death.  Especially not with the race being televised.  How embarrassing would that be?

We did end up seeing the Chilean miner guy go by, but that was the only pseudo-celebrity we saw.  We also saw a Superman, a rhino, an orange spandex guy, and a giant banana.  The stars of the show though, apparantly, were the NYFD.  They had parked their big truck thingy at the end of the street right in front of where the marathon route turned north, and so many of the runners would pause and take pictures of them, or wave at them or salute or whatnot.  It was very curious.

The Return of the Great Pumpkin (Empanada)

It's officially 100% Fall here in the city (and elsewhere as well, I suspect), and that means Empanada Time in the Slagle Household.  I know a lot of you out there may be more familiar with the meat or cheese filled fried empanadas that can be found being peddled down on Havemeyer Street in the late evenings, or in McCarren Park on most Saturday afternoons.  But, for me, there is only pumpkin empandas.  Flaky, sweet and spicy baked pumpkin empanadas!  I've made (and devoured) two batches so far, and during the first batch I got so tired of rolling out dough that in an act of frustration I decided to just use the remaining dough to make one giant empanada - much to Mike's delight.

 Here is Mike with the Great Pumpkin Empanada.  It actually turned out pretty good.  Just like a normal empanada, but much bigger.

 Here is the Great Empanada next to the puny normal (but equally tasty) ones.

Not an empanada-related photo, but a nice one nonetheless.  I took this up on Park Ave during my lunch break the other day.  I believe that is the old Metropolitan Life building on the right, with the U.S., New York State, and New York City flags a-flyin'.

This was taken last Thursday in Flatiron, en route to visit the galleries in Chelsea.  I thought the ESB looked quite eerie in its glowing green state.  It reminded me of Ghostbusters or something.

And lastly, Friday night at Esperanto in the East Village with my lady-friends.  And yes, that is my polka-dotted decolletage on the upper-right.  And yes, we were drinking some sort of passion-fruit concoction out of teensy fairy-sized copas. 

More Wedding Photos!

We're FINALLY starting to get some of our professional photos in.  Well, the proofs anyways.  Here are some of the good ones so far (they're kind of cropped weird since I just kind of illegally copied them off of the photographer's website):

La Sala Mala

 Promises of happy hour fun took us to Sala One Nine on 19th street yesterday, which is basically the same restaurant as the regular Sala on the Bowery/Third Ave.  But, for some reason I don't recall the staff at the regular Sala to be quite so...well, I wouldn't go so far as to say they were salty, but they definitely weren't sweet either.  The food of course, was amazing.  My favorites were the almond-stuffed bacon wrapped dates, and the fried goat cheese fritters drizzled with honey and loaded up with carmelized onions.  The sangria wasn't bad either.  They have a good 2-for-1 happy hour special, but only in certain areas of the restaurant (!?).

 Here's a pic of me and the Franimal, quite happy to have been kicked out of our table to make way for a reservation (despite the fact that there were two other empty and eequally-sized tables in the vicinity...)

 Sam and Ashley, pretending not to be crushing on each other.  Such darlings!

 And - oh- the infamous sangria glass.  Ashley almost caused a scene when she tried to slide one of these across the slippery granite bar to where Sam was sitting, only to have it trip along the way, shattering the glass and spilling sangria on the bar.  You would think that broken glasses would be a common occurrence at most bars and restaurants in NYC.  But, apparently not at Sala.  You could literally hear the bartender's heart shatter along with the glass.  He was so upset! And I quote, "It's not funny."

What was funny however, was when Ashley, not 5 minutes later, pulled the same move right in front of him only to have it land successfully in Sam's hand. 

My darling husband, who makes the best glasses of water ever!

Life is but a dream...

I had to be in Albany for work yesterday morning, and was sad to have to take a seat on the less-picturesque side of the train.  You see, for Amtrak trains travelling from NYC to Albany, the left side of the car offers stunning views of the Hudson Valley with the river and the mountains and whatnot.  The rights side generally just shows really close up trees and rock walls.  However, on this particular morning, those lucky left-siders were cursed with a dense morning fog.  Whereas us right-siders, had the brief pleasure of witnessing a lovely, misty sunsrise to the east...



Turd Transplant

I was reading Crain's Health Pulse this morning, as I tend to do most mornings, and I came across this article:

"Feces Can Fight Colon Infections

In a presentation of medical news at this week's meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Dr. Lawrence Brandt reported on a treatment for a persistent and life-threatening colon infection known as Clostridium difficile. The treatment, fecal transplantation, involves collecting donor material from a healthy person and delivering it by various means—including a nasogastric tube—to the patient. The donor's healthy intestinal bacteria restore the colon's natural balance. C. difficile infections are common in the elderly, usually patients who are on a regime of antibiotics that wipe out their healthy bacteria, allowing C. difficile to flourish. The treatment is nearly 100% successful."

Eww....!  In other news, I was meandering to work this morning, and when I was walking across the bridge I noticed this odd sight:

Its kind of a weird dark photo, and you can't see it from here but there is another tug boat pulling the thing from in front.   I saw it from way off and I the way it was sitting so low in the water I kind of guessed it was a gigantic submarine or something (since those are just sooo prevalent in New York's waterways).  But as it got closer, I saw that it was actually gigantic long redwood or maybe giant sequoia logs being floated up the east river by lumberjacks, who happen to use tugboats.  I don't actually know anything about modern-day logging, and while I know the nearest redwoods and sequoias are roughly 2,000 miles away, but for some reason this made sense to me.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that these were not lumberjacks floating giant trees up the river, but rather standard-issue tugs tugging the biggest, rustiest pipes I have ever seen up the river.  I mean, these things were LONG.  And you can't really see it well from the picture, but sitting on the front end of the pipes was this equally giant rusty metal ball.  Now, I'm no scientist, but I have three theories as to where these pipes are from:

1. The lost city of Atlantis
2. Something having to do with the Underground Railroad, or
3. Sealab

Just another Mayer Monday

Tiff and I went to the Music Hall of Williamsburg last night to see The Heavy and Mayer Hawthorne play.  Mayer Hawthorne used to be in a band with my friend's ex-boyfriend in college back in Ann Arbor, so its always funny to see people from back when kind of make it big.  Weirdly enough his music is 1,000 times different from back when he was rockin the Athletic Mic League.  He's got this kind of old motown pop thing going on that I kind of love.   



 The Heavy did the opening act, and I have to say that they by FAR stole the show.  They came on with so much energy (which was a surprise given that they were all in suits and bowties - they looked like an old brass band from the 50's) and did an amazing live show.

 The show was hosted by Mazda, which is kind of lame, but when you get corporate sponsors they always provide fun interactive stuff, like free photo booths and complimentary drink tickets.  I bet you can't guess what our theme was for this series of photos....ok, I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with "granimals."

 So, here's Mayer Hawthorne, playing with the County.  He's only put out one album in a couple of years and I guess he's just been touring that one steady ever since.  The nice thing about that is that I knew almost every song he played.  It was a good show, but The Heavy was definitely a hard act to follow.

Tiff and I, playing audience.  That girl behind me on the left was totally obnoxious and got a flying elbow to the abdomen about 15 minutes after I took this shot.  I have a good technique down.  I pretend I'm super into the music and dancing, and then I execute a calculated blow to the soft underbelly of the person grinding up behind me.  If they get angry, I play dumb and say "ohhhhh....I'm sorrryyyyy...."

Pottery Barn used to sell these giant letters for people to post their initials on the wall over their bed, or on a shelf in the foyer.  But, I never thought people actually bought them.