Tag Archives: food

The Nutcracker!

I seriously cannot believe Christmas is this weekend. I think I’m getting old because I’m equal parts stressed and excited.

But yesterday, I took a break from the stress to enjoy The Nutcracker with my parents. We can’t remember if we went when I was a child or not, but it’s definitely become a tradition since I moved to NYC in August 2008.

I do remember that I went with my Russian class in high school. We thought we were so cool, coming into the city without our parents, pretending the teachers weren’t actually with us (but we were dorks who really kinda loved our foreign language teachers…) as we went to Lincoln Center and the Russian Samovar.

Lincoln Center is now just a short cab from my apartment, which my parents loved.

Honey, I forgot the eyeliner.

Afterwards, we went to Mercato, a cozy Italian restaurant in my new ‘hood. My body was crying out for some greens after a weekend of sugar and carbs, so I started with this salad. Spinach, goat cheese, apples and raisins.

For my entree, I got gnocchi with a beef and pork ragout.

I thought the food was great, but I’m relatively easy to please in a restaurant.

But…MY MOM LIKED IT. This is big, folks.

A Sweet Afternoon

This morning, I dragged my ass out of bed at 8am. I wasn’t running a race, I wasn’t working out with Joel, and I wasn’t heading out to Jersey or getting  on a flight. I wasn’t volunteering.

So why the hell was I up that early?

COOKIES.

I hosted my first cookie swap today, and I needed to grab some hors d’oeuvres and wine. And really any store in NYC the weekend before Christmas is not somewhere you want to be. The lines for every single store are out the door right now, but especially food stores. So I walked down to Chelsea to go to Trader Joe’s and then I continued walking to Union Square so that I could go to the Trader Joe’s wine store.

If it’s frigid outside and I still love walking everywhere, then walking everywhere in the spring will be even more amazing. I’m already so much happier with my apartment’s location—there wasn’t much I could walk to (quickly) from Wall Street. After grabbing 10 bottles of wine (hey, better to be safe than sorry), I rushed home to get ready.

Emily, one of my favorite people ever, came over early to help me finish getting my apartment ready for a bunch of girls and their cookies. I *still* can’t believe we met on the Internets, less than a year ago. I feel like I’ve known her FOREVER.

I made these peppermint cane cookies. I’m going to toot my own horn here—they were pretty amazing.

After decorating.

Meghan

Liz and Bailey

COOKIES!

PUPPY!

Heather, Ashley and me

[Why don’t I usually put pictures of my friends on my blog? I would never put up pictures without a friend’s permission, and usually I feel like a tool saying “hey, do you mind if we take a picture and I put it on my blog?” Blog friends? You don’t have to ask. They know that once the camera’s out, everything’s fair game for the blog.]

More puppernutter. He was so well-behaved for everyone! This is the first party I let him stick around for, and he did very well.

Thanks to everyone who came! I had a great time, and I hope everyone else did, too.