Inspired

 

Raw food

I've been on a raw food kick for the past couple of weeks and I have to say that I feel grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-ATE!. I think everyone should try adding more raw fruits and veggies to their diet. I mean, you really can't go wrong. No need to go 100% raw vegan, if that's not your bag (,Baby). But now that the warmer weather is approaching, it's going to be easier than ever to add more uncooked foods into our diets like huge green salads, fresh juices, green smoothies, etc. I've been really inspired by a bunch of people that follow a raw vegan lifestyle.

Check 'em out:














And I'm not gonna lie, next to raw food being super-yummy and of course, good for you (I mean, hello), it's also just nice to not have to COOK. I simply cut up some veggies and throw together a dressing and I'm ready to eat! I actually brought a salad with me to Yankee Stadium yesterday. No joke. The salad contained: kale, spinach, avocado, tomato, and sprouted sunflower seeds. I made the dressing from raw tahini (ground sesame seeds), lemon juice, water, cayenne pepper, and organic garlic salt. Simple, delicious and satisfying. That salad (plus a couple of raw brownies and a banana) gave me enough energy to run around all afternoon with Zack-ah-roonie. I might have received a few strange looks from the hot dog and chicken finger eater baseball fans around me, but fuck 'em! Not really. Ahem. I fully enjoyed my meal and I hope they enjoyed theirs.

There are also a ton of raw restaurants around now that sell wonderful creations that would probably take me much (much) longer to prepare (than a simple salad), so when I wanna splurge and get some fancier raw cuisine, I sprint over to:

Bonobo's (on East 23rd St.) and have the nut meat sushi with a chai coconut milk.
Or I go over to One Lucky Duck (on East 17th Street) and get the raw falafel salad and one of their many raw chocolate desserts and maybe a wheatgrass juice for good measure.
Or Caravan of Dreams (on East 6th Street) for the raw nachos
Or Rockin' Raw (in Williamsburg) for the Thai "Pasta" (I actually haven't been to this place yet, but a friend tells me it's amazing.)
Or Peacefood (on the UWS) and get their daily raw special and key lime pie (all vegan and raw!)

But ONE day I wanna learn to make the fancy stuff at home. I mean, if I knew how to make those raw nachos or that coconut chai?! I might not ever leave the house. So...hmm...maybe it's best if I don't learn how to make the fancy stuff at home.

Anyway, there's also an amazing raw ice cream that I got from Whole Foods the other day that I can't get enough of. Here's the website.

Oh and, if you go to any of these restaurants that I've listed (or find any that I haven't listed), let me know! I wanna hear about your experience.

Have a healthy and happy day! : )

Day trip to Philly

On Wednesday...

My spunky grandmother left and I'm missing her already. She's a pistol and a firecracker and a rambling fool. Here's a photo of Al and her heading out to see Rock of Ages which was the WORST musical of all time. I hated it. So did my grandmother. Al liked it. But that's only because there were scantily clad young women gyrating on stage. ANYway, it was bad 'cause the director/producer/choreographer or whomever was in charge of the music chose the loudest and most offensive and annoying songs from the 80s to play. Like: "Cherry Pie" by Warrant, and I can't even remember the other songs. I've blocked it out. Anyway, here are grams and the Al man. And if you're having trouble discerning Al from grandma, grandma's the one in the rain bonnet...

She was in NYC for almost three weeks. She's 93-years-old. She has a walker. Her friend painted silver musical symbols on the outside of it. My grandmother didn't like the look of it at first, but it grew on her. Al's 83-years-old. He likes to wear black leather motorcycle jackets and aviator sunglasses and four different watches at a time (two on each wrist). That's his thing. They are quite a duo. Grandma's an intellectual dynamo (don't cross her, she'll existentialism your ass) and Al's also a smarty pants and really who knew he was such a hip old dude, too. Check out that one pant leg up in the photo. Stylin', yo. Would've been a good combo with the motorcycle jacket, but he left that flashy number at home. I'm sure all of you guys remember Al, he's the guy I hang out with once a week? Yeah. That guy. Well, he's a friend, but my grandmother and I consider him family. We hung out all night and even though the musical was painful, the company was hilarious.

My grandma'll be back in a few months. Until then, I'll have Al to pal around with. I'm gonna try and convince him to go here next week. He's pretty adventurous, so I'm sure he'll be cool with raw vegan food (I'm on a raw vegan kick this week). He's totally open to whatever. I just love that. I'll give you guys a review of the restaurant after I go.

Bye for now...

Hip hip hurray! Ho! Heyyyyy! Ho!

Z and I are in Baltimore, Maryland for three days to go to a bunch of games and then we head over to Washington D.C. for a game on Friday. Truth be told, I'm not a baseball fan. I mean, it ayyite. But if I were given a choice between watching a baseball game or going to the dentist, I might have to think hard about my choice. I kinda like going to the dentist. The actual prodding and scraping isn't fun at all, but you leave plaque-free and with a sparkling smile, so that's cool. When you leave a baseball game (with Z) you're worn OUT from running from right to left field all night and eating crap (although I've kinda learned my lesson these days and have been bringing fresh produce and nuts with me to the game, so I no longer feel the junk food blahs anymore). Anyway, you leave a game feeling like you've been hit by a large truck (exaggeration), but what makes it bearable and even fun is being with Z and also that I get to take photos the whole time. I like to have a project...'cause if I were forced to watch the game for three hours, I might get bored out of my mind (no offense, Zee). I also love our pre-game meals at the Indian Buffet on Charles Street where we sit by the window and stuff ourselves and make fun of people walking by. We had a game we played yesterday where if a passerby was on our side of the street, we had to make fun of something about them (like what they were wearing or how they were walking, etc.) and we had to say something nice about people across the street like: "she has a lovely gait." Surprisingly, saying nice things about people made us laugh the hardest. Whatever we said just sounded so hilarious and phony and un-New-York-like: "I love the way his bag matches his pants!" Or, "Wow, that's a nice head of hair." We were laughing so hard at one point that Zack actually cried out that his face and belly hurt. I was leaking with joy. Literally. After eating all the dal, chai tea, and doughnut holes we could consume, we left and made our way back to the hotel with an hour to kill and took a nap. We woke up feeling refreshed. Well...Z felt refreshed, but I just felt more tired. Naps don't really work for me. I would rather just build up my tiredness for the night and recharge then, but it was nice to cuddle and take a snooze with the Z man. At 4pm we made our way over to the stadium. Zack was gonna be filmed for a TV station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, so my project for the day was to document like crazy...

Fun day.

Now (Thursday afternoon) I just got back from Whole Foods (which is 1.3 miles away from the hotel). I walked. The concierge claimed it couldn't be done by foot, but come on, I'm from New York City. One point three miles ain't nuthin for me. Anyway, I got there in less than 20 minutes. I'm kind of on a raw food kick right now, so as soon as I got there I looked for the raw food section. I found spicy kale chips, raw granola bars, apples, pears, bananas, a salad, and some whole wheat crackers to go with the freshly ground peanut butter that I brought from home. I bought it all. I'm gonna bring most of the stuff with me to the game today, so I'll be super-energized for the next six hours. Oh and I'm not bringing my fancy camera today. I'm gonna travel light (-ish) and just take photos with the iPhone. The camera on my phone has 8 megapixels on it, so the pictures should come out perfectly fine. Don't worry.

Until tomorrow!

Wonderful Tuesday!

The plan was to cook a huge vegan meal (pasta with alfredo sauce and broccoli and chocolate chip cookies) and have a picnic in Central Park with Zack and play Scrabble, but then I realized that I didn't have the necessary equipment (blender) to make the meal, so I said, "Damn!" and then: "Fuck it." and then decided we should just go to Sacred Chow (vegan restaurant in the West Village) instead where we could get THE most amazing dessert on earth and then I wouldn't have to do dishes. "Better plan!"

The dessert's called "sinnerbar" and let me tell you it lives up to the name. It tastes like a Snickers bar with added coconut and extra caramel sprinkled with pure vegan magic...

Zack ate his with a fork. Imagine eating a Snickers bar with a fork. Ridiculous. Anyway, we also had: beans and rice with vegan "cheese" (which the waiter RAVED about, but turned out to be eh), and a green salad with apple slices, yuba (soy fat crisps), and beets with a dijon mustard dressing (which I wanted to share with Zack but it turns out mustard disgusts him).  Z had an orange "chicken" hero. Yum! By the time we walked out of the restaurant we were so full that we were almost in a dangerous situation. We could've fallen into the street and been hit by a cab or mugged by a frail child. We were completely defenseless. Somehow we managed to get to the F train at West 4th Street and made it three stops to Delancey to volunteer with an after school program (as a part of NY Cares which we are both members). Zack played Scrabble with the boys and I read with the girls. I wish someone was there with a camera to take a picture of the scene. Meh! But no matter, I'm here to tell ya that we had fun. I sat with a little girl (maybe she was 9-years-old?) Her name was Priscilla. She had straight dark brown hair down to her waste and wore a pink tutu with Uggs (my kinda gal). She was a great reader. We got through three (picture) books (10 pages each with two sentences on each page) in 20 minutes, Then we made origami pop-up frog greeting cards with construction paper. But we were misinformed about the steps and accidentally gave our frog six eyes. Priscilla found a way to make it work, though and put a pink tongue in its mouth and a "Happy birthday, Dad!" (it was actually her dad's birthday) on the side and bam. Done. Then when the time was up for the kids to head out and say their goodbyes, Zack tried to steal a pink kickball from a 10-year-old. He did finally get a hold of it and then threw it and ran. Don't fret, though, the kid loved every minute of it.

By the time we left the recreation center, we were feeling much less full (and that just won't do), so we walked over a mile to a vegan ice cream parlor called Stogo. It has duh-lish-us ice-ah cream. They didn't have the key lime flavor that I usually get so I got a cookie sandwich with coconut based vanilla ice cream instead and Z got a medium-sized coffee-flavored soy ice cream which he thoroughly enjoyed...

We ate our second dessert of the day while we walked to 14th Street to catch the crosstown bus to the 1 train. 

When we got to the UWS, Zack decided he needed a third dessert, so we walked over to 16 Handles where they have 16 flavors of frozen yogurt and get this, it's a do-it-yourself yogurt place, meaning you actually find the cup yourself (small, medium or mega) and walk up to the frozen yogurt machines all by yourself and turn it on and put as much fro yo in your cup as you like...all without hardly any supervision. Then you walk over to a huge buffet of toppings (tiny reeses peanut butter cups and chocolate covered pretzels and gummy bears and bits of cheesecake and and and...) and put however much you like on top. Then you take your creation to get weighed and that's it. Genius. I couldn't fit one more morsel in my mouth after the ice cream sandwich, so I just oohed and ahhed the whole process. The place was PACKED and everyone looked so happy. People just had the look of: "I can't believe this place is real and this is really happening. This is a dream come true!" I'm really not even exaggerating. Then I threw Zack into a nearby wheelchair and rolled him home. (Not really. We walked.)

Flower sperm!!!

In the past five days, I've blown my nose every 600 seconds with incredible force and dedication. I have HAD it with Spring. I mean, I love looking at the flowers in bloom and all, but can't we get the same effect without this pollen nonsense. Ugh. It's 2011. Down with pollen! I need to be in a portable bubble.

*sneeze*

D.C. with the boys

Zack and Brandon and I took a last minute jaunt to Nationals park in Washington D.C. It's usually a four hour drive, but Zack was doing 185 the entire time, so we made it there in twenty minutes. 

We were scared for our lives.

"SLOW DOWN, BALLS!"

Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. Maybe he wasn't going 185, but he really was going close to 100 the entire time. I swear.

We listened to a LOT of oldies (Zack's music). A slew of doo-wop gems (good lord) and 80s tunes (ohmy). Brandon's a videgrapher for a rock band, so he doesn't know from oldies. Every time a new oldie came on, Brandon (and I) would roll his (our) eyes and sigh audibly. (FYI: Zack *does* have other music that I really like, but for some reason the S's didn't turn out to be a hip bunch of songs.)

Then Brandon tried to distract Zack with porn...

Luckily, Zack has an incredible amount of focus and will power, so he managed to not crash the car.

Here's Brandon (being a man of many colorful hats) cleaning off bird shit from the car window with great skill and precision (and Zack pretending he's trapped inside)...

And here's Zack overseeing the whole car window cleaning process...

Zack offered Brandon a buck for his efforts, but Brandon refused to take it. What a mensch.

We arrived at Nationals Park about three hours later.

Brandon had his fancy SLR and I had mine, so he videotaped Zack in action and I took photos.

Here are a couple cool shots:

Haha. Look at the ushers looking at Zack like, "What's happening exactly?"

And here's one of Z giving a ball away to a kid at the end of the day:

That kid was pretty stoked.

We made our way back to the the car shortly after that. We listened to Brandon's music this time. A lot of Kings of Leon (hell yeah!) and Paramore (aww yeah!) and Foo Fighters (eh). At some point in Jersey, we picked up some processed snacks: honey mustard pretzels, Ritz peanut butter crackers, and a bottle of water for me, pepperoni something or other, Fig Newtons, and honey mustard pretzels (copycat!) for Z and Doritos and an orange soda for Brandon.

We dropped Brandon off at his rock band bus outside of the La Quinta hotel in Clifton, New Jersey and then we said our goodbyes.

Zack and I hopped back in the car and continued driving to the city. We made it back to Z's place twenty minutes later. Zack drove at a reasonable pace, BTW.

Fun fun day. : )