Mango Sticky Rice!

I met a friend of mine in midtown for drinks the other day. We caught up on what we'd been working on since the last time we saw each other, he showed off his new iphone, and then, of course, we started talking about food. Somehow he managed to gather the seemingly devastating information that I had never had the pleasure of trying Mango Sticky Rice.

"We're getting some tonight!" he said. "Ugh," I said.

Pre-Party Food

Whenever my brother, Alex (a different one than the one mentioned in the post about Rice), and I are in New York at the same time, we always end up going out with his friends from college. Growing up, I always wanted to tag along on what my brother was doing, and he was usually pretty great about having me around, if you disregard a couple of years during his mid-teens when he needed space.

Luckily, as a grown-up, he's no different and loves to have me come along. Alex's friends are always a blast to go out with because they know how to do it right; there's never any chance that we'll end up sitting around at the end of the night regretting that we put the effort and money into the ordeal.

"Rice" is nice!

I'm helping my brother out for a few days down in Soho. He's editing a commercial and I'm acting as his assistant. It's awesome of him to bring me on, because it means I can earn some extra cash while looking for a job, and he's also in this really fancy building with lots of other production companies, so I'm in the middle of where things are happening.

Whenever my brother and I try to eat anything together (usually food), we have the toughest time figuring out what to eat. This is because both he and I are extremely lazy, meaning that it's too much of a hassle to really care too much about what we end up eating, as long as it's yummy. Or maybe we just care a little too much that it's yummy, and making the wrong choice about what we eat for a meal could be devastating.

Indian Cooking Lesson!

I'm staying with my brother, his wonderful Indian wife, Gagan, and my two baseball-crazy nephews while I look for a job and a place in New York. For a couple of days now, my routine has been to go to apartment showings in the morning, then come back to my brother's place and make phone calls about jobs and hang out with my sister-in-law during the day before I go explore the city at night.

Gagan has promised me that she'll teach me how to cook Indian food while I'm staying with them, which is something I've always wanted to be able to do. From what I can tell about Indian cuisine, the biggest challenge is finding the right ingredients because most of it is made with spices that aren't in your typical North American (or European!) cupboard. Gagan tells me that there are a bunch of Indian stores on 23rd street in Manhattan where you can get ahold of the spices that you need.

The Pie Shop

A few of my friends and I went out to Prospect Park in Brooklyn this evening because Bob Dylan was playing there. I'm not a Bob Dylan fan. I mean, he can be good background music, but his nasal voice has never done it for me. He was obvioulsy not playing for free, but he was playing outside, so although there was a fence up to prevent anyone who wasn't paying from seeing him, we could hear him pretty well. We sat with hundreds of people outside the fence, and basically just enjoyed sitting outside, goofing off with some nice background music. And he's a legend, and living legends are the kind of people you have to sit outside a fence to hear every once in a while, even though they're not your thing.

The Other Two Birthday Cakes!

Here are the other two cakes that my mom and I made for my birthday! I don't know exactly what cookbooks they're from, but I know the blueberry one had beautiful pictures in it. So just go look for the cookbook with the beautiful pictures in it, it should be in there.

4 birthday cakes

About (or exactly) 7 days ago I turned 23.

Birthdays mean cake. There's really not much other reason to celebrate and the most important thing to make sure a birthday child gets is cake in their stomach.

For my birthday, I had a bunch of friends over. My mom and I made 4 cakes. And no, that's not overdoing it.