Kangaroo Meat

#12

Why did I put kangaroo meat on my list? Well, I saw it somewhere and had never tried it, so why not. I used to get a lot of questions on whether I’m a vegetarian. I think it’s because I’m a runner. My response is, “my dad is a hunter”. So yeah, I’m a meat eater. I’ve had all the traditional meats—venison, pork, beef, steak, chicken, ect. I even tried alligator sophomore year of college down in Ft. Lauderdale. I figured kangaroo meat wasn’t really readily available so I added it. It would be a challenge to find it and then actually eat it.

My friend Nick had found a place that served it and I figured I could get some guy to take me out for #8. Well that didn’t happen. And the restaurant apparently had stopped serving it. I kind of forgot about it. A few months later, Nick and I made plans to meet up for dinner. I am moving soon, so we had to hang out one last time. Luckily he was thinking of my list and googled and searched on menu pages for a place that served kangaroo in NYC. And we were in luck.

Public on Elizabeth Street has a kangaroo appetizer dish. So of course we made reservations and met up last night to try this exotic fare. We started with some drinks and dove right into it. It was grilled kangaroo on a coriander falafel with lemon tahini sauce and green pepper relish. Pretty good. It tasted like beef. I thought it would be a white meat (as did Nick), but it was red. We ate it up. I would definitely eat it again (although it’s endangered in some parts). We moved onto our main dishes and caught up. We finished off with some dessert at Rice to Riches. I tried a new food, so why not a new dessert. I got the chocolate chip flirt. It was good. But ice cream is definitely better.

It was a good night of catching up and trying new things.

Anna Karenina

I finally finished the 2^nd book on my classic list! I bought a kindle a couple of months ago and downloaded a bunch of free books. I figured I could get a bunch of classics downloaded and read them throughout the year. Well since it was organized by alphabetical order, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy was at the top of the list. That may or may not have been a good idea. I started reading it a few days before I went to London back at the beginning of March. Now I was quite busy during my month in England, but read pretty steadily. Since I was on the kindle, the length of the book was very deceiving. I tried googling it but it didn’t specify the number of pages. Well I found myself in a bookstore in Camden Town and found the actual book. Well it’s more than 800 pages! No matter it took me so damn long. I did have to take a break once I got to part 6, but picked it back up a week later when I finished I Don’t Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson.

The book was long. Longer than it needed to be. There were parts I liked, and other parts that kind of dragged on. Some parts were sad, and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected. Some people really like the book, others not so much. It was good, but I was glad I didn’t have to write a paper on it for English class.

Pie!

#20

You may think that I’ve made a pie before and I have. So why is it on the list? Every year at Thanksgiving I make a pumpkin pie. Now anyone that makes pumpkin pie knows it’s pretty simple. My brother Zach and I go to town on the pie after dinner. I decided to be a bit more adventurous and make an legit pie from scratch.

First of all I don’t cook. I live by myself and my job doesn’t allow me to cook on a regular basis. I’m really familiar with the various delivery places near the office. When I’m actually at home, I just throw something together. Pasta is my main dish and luckily being a long-distance runner, this comes in handy a lot.

I decided to make a strawberry rhubarb pie. I haven’t had rhubarb pie since I was a kid and thought it would be a good choice. I figured my mom would appreciate being a part of my 30 list and asked her to assist in the pie making. On Easter Sunday, my brother Levi and sister Em made our way to our mom’s. Now I asked my mom if I should bring a recipe and she said no; she had one.

We almost couldn’t make this pie since mom was unsuccessful in finding rhubarb. Luckily we stopped at Tops in Skaneateles and they had some. Vegetable oil was also missing and we had to quickly grab some—after I had begun to make the pie crust. Mom cut up the rhubarb and Em cut up the strawberries. Levi drove to Tops. So as you can see it was a team effort.

A couple of hours later, we all tried a slice. And it was yummy. Some of the filling had oozed out, but still delicious. We brought some back to my dad’s and my kid sisters also tried some—after they finished their dinner of course. Too bad we didn’t have vanilla ice cream.

Baseball and Beer

#5

I wanted to put something on my list baseball related. I’ve been to plenty of games at both the old and new Yankee Stadiums. I did a tour of the old stadium before they knocked it down. Ever since I moved to NYC in 2005, I was determined to go to the Ticker Tape Parade, and finally got to when the Yanks won the World Series in 2009. I thought maybe I should do a tour of the new stadium. I tried last year, but getting tickets seemed near impossible. I had it on the list, but I removed it at the last second and replaced it with a visit to Cooperstown to really see where the Yanks rule. I was trying to avoid putting things on the list that I’ve kind of sorta done already.

I made plans to come home for Easter weekend. Now, this is something I never do. Church? Not so much. Baseball? Yes. As my friend Andrea says, her religion is the Yankees, and I have to agree. So I grabbed my brother Levi and my sister Em and we drove to Cooperstown, about 2 hours from where we grew up. It was a cold, rainy Saturday morning and I of course didn’t bring proper footwear. Upstate NY hasn’t realized May is practically here.

 

We headed straight to the Baseball Hall of Fame when we arrived in Cooperstown. There were many other fans of the game milling around. I could see Phillies fans, Red Sox fans and of course plenty of Yankees fans. Right before we entered, the current standings were on display—Yanks 1^st in the AL East and the Red Sox last. The way I like it.

During the tour we gravitated to all the Yankees memorabilia—Babe Ruth memories, the Pinstripe Wall, many World Series rings. All the greats were there, Yogi, Jackie Robinson, Babe, Mickey Mantle. Every team was represented by a locker. In the Yanks one, we had Jeter’s gloves, A-rod’s cleats, a ticket for opening day at the new stadium

After spending a couple of hours of reveling in baseball glory, we headed outside of Cooperstiwb to drink some beer. Cooperstown Brewery was up first. We did a quick tour and tasted a bunch of varieties—Nine Man Ale, Old Slugger, and Benchwarmer to name a few. We were beginning to run out of time and made our way to Ommegang Brewery. Unfortunately google maps failed big time and we couldn’t find the brewery until they were closing. We squeezed in a couple of tastes of Belgium-style beer, like Witte and Hennepin. Since we didn’t get to taste too much, we made our way to Bear Pond Winery since they were open until 7pm. We then had a few tastes of upstate NY wines.

For dinner, we may our way back to Cooperstown and had dinner at the Doubleday Café. Burgers and beer. Yummy. All in all a good trip with baseball, beer, and burgers. And the Yanks beat the Orioles 15-3.

To Infinity and Beyond

#6

I’ve been meaning to learn how to knit for years. Really ever since college. Somehow knitting became cool—not just for your granny—and everyone was doing it. Some friends offered to teach me, but we just never got around to it.

I went home for Thanksgiving back in 2008 and during that weekend we went to Wal-Mart in Auburn (where without fail I run into someone from high school), to pick up a few things. I saw the teach-yourself-how-to-knit instruction kit and decided to finally learn how to do this.

Once I got back to the city I immediately got started. At Thanksgiving every year my siblings and I always exchange names for our Secret Santa. Well that year, I got Emily and I figured a scarf would be a nice present. I knew she would appreciate it and would definitely wear it. Well my grand notions of giving it to her a month later didn’t pan out. I did not make as good progress on this as I had hoped. I thought maybe I’d finish sometime during the winter. Nope.

All of a sudden it’s over 2 years later and I hadn’t finished the damn thing. Don’t get me wrong, I'd pick it up and knit for a little bit—occasionally. But then I would forget about it. Of course going months without practice wasn’t the best idea. I definitely made mistakes. Oh well. I was a beginner.

I was coming up with my 30 list and decided that I needed to set a goal for myself to finish this scarf. If I can finish it by my birthday this year, it would have only taken at most 3 years to do.

A few months ago I was actually making good progress and realized that not only did I somehow add stitches to the rows, but I was going to run out of yarn. Damn. I’m going to have a short, fat scarf for my first attempt.  How would I wear it?? Luckily I noticed my friend Sandra had an infinity scarf and decided that this is what this scarf was going to become.

I got close to the end of the yarn and enlisted my friend Pam to help me finish yesterday afternoon. She provided direction on how to finish the last row, and then to connect the 2 sides (a garter stitch?). My scarf isn’t perfect. There are a few holes due to missed stitches and one side is fatter than the other, but,it’s actually not so bad. I will wear it with pride. It only took me 2 years and about 5 months to finish. Too bad it’s April and snow (hopefully) is gone for another 8 or so months.

P.S. It took Pam 2 cameras and about 10 photos to get a picture of me proudly wearing my scarf. I kept blinking at the flash. Apparently my eyes are sensitive.

Frames

#26

Most of you know that there is an inner photographer fighting to get out with the number of pictures I take. There are literally thousands on my computer since I bought a digital camera. I have actual photos printed from the first 22 years of my life. Back in the day of film cameras. It was pretty easy to get my film developed and then frame a few selected good photos. And because of this, all the pictures in my apartment are from when I was younger and from college—nothing from my post-college life in NYC. I’ve made some great friends and have had some great memories. I’ve been meaning to capture them for a few years now. Well many years later, I decided to get my butt in gear and add it to my 30 list.

So I went through my photos from the last 6 years and found some good ones to frame. There are so many to choose from and I found a ton of frame-worthy pics. Some will have to wait until the next round.

Starting with family pics, I had to frame a picture of all my siblings at Yankee Stadium back in 2007. This was the first time we all watched a Yanks game together in person. And it was in the old stadium before they tore it down. We are missing the little ones, but I don’t think my dad would have let them on a Greyhound bus to NYC when they were 7 and 5 years old…

I then had to frame the twins and me after the finish of the NYC marathon last year. We wore our medals proudly!

Of course there have been many memories with my friends over the years. First one up was of Jen, one of my really good friends from college, when she got married in 2008 in Pittsburgh. I had to get a photo with the pretty bride. I of course put it in the frame she sent to me after the wedding.

Next up was a montage of some other friends in NYC. Dinner with Donna and Pam a few years ago, Sue and I during the Ragnar Relay last May, the guys (Mike, Tynan, and Brian) during our birthday wine tour last fall, and lastly Sandra and I at our work party at Chelsea Piers earlier this year.

Lastly, I went through my NYC pictures and created some B&W images to frame in a series. I chose the old Yankee Stadium, Sheep's Meadow, Wollman Rink, and the NYC skyline. This is how it looks up on my wall.

Time to make more memories to frame.

Classy Ladies and Gents

I checked off #28 Friday night! I know it’s been over a month since I’ve actually checked something off my 30 list… I have a feeling April will be full of checking things off.

I'm totally a beer and dive bar sort of girl. I don't do fancy so much. I prefer wearing jeans while drinking a Bud Light. Although recently I've been upgrading to imports. However, it is fun to dress up and pretend I'm a bit classy occasionally. I decided that I should at least have a fancy drink somewhere fancy in NYC before I turn 30.

I had a lot of suggestions of good places to go to, but decided on Campbell Apt as it kept coming up in conversation. First of all it’s inside an amazing NYC institution—Grand Central. Second of all, it’s just gives this old-school New York vibe and is hidden in a corner off Vanderbilt Avenue. I actually couldn’t find it at first.

My sisters Ambreleah and Alysia, and my friends Mike, Amanda, Jen, and Tynan met up with me after a long week of work. We snagged a table upstairs with prime view of the bar downstairs. The decor was lightly lit and dark-paneled, with a view of the fabulous people.

Between the 7 of us we ended up trying pretty much the whole cocktail menu. Over the course of 4 hours, I tried 3 different fancy drinks. I started off with Flapper's Delight, moved to Berry Royale, and finished off with a huge glass of Prohibition Punch. All pretty delish. After getting our Gossip Girl on, we decided to end the night in typical NYC-fashion—with a couple of slices!