“Further cultural experiences,” or “But did you have a ham cake for Christmas?”

Photo courtesy of Publix in Jacksonville.  This was meant to be a cake for Christmas.  I’m assuming that I don’t understand because I don’t celebrate Christmas and I’m from NY.  Does Santa bring hams down your chimney in Florida?  I hope so.

Do you like waffles?

Yeah we like waffles! We were already excited to discover that the diner around the corner would make a waffle big enough for us to share for $4.  But then the more enthusiasm we got for waffles, the more we needed to make them at home so that we  can eat them and watch Degrassi.  But this presented a problem.

I love our kitchen, but its pretty small. I would say at maximum capacity it fits two small ladies, a chihuahua and a big burly man.  Anything else and its a clown car.  We like to cook (alot!) so we’ve become very adept at moving appliances around, as we have very little in the way of counter space and not nearly enough cabinet space.  It is probably good that this is true, as it prevents me from being the crazy lady with all the kitchen appliances. If we are going to introduce a new toy into the kitchen it needs to be small and its needs to be essential.

Enter our new waffler!

Our waffler (for real that’s what it’s called) has made us so joyously happy. It calls for parties (Saturday) and the invention of new kinds of waffles. We made pumpkin ones for our inaugural use of the machine.  All that were missing were the flax seeds.

Pumpkin waffles

Ingredients

* 2 eggs
* 2 cups whole wheat flour
* 1 3/4 cups soy milk
* 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
* 1 tablespoon sugar (whatever you have around)
* 4 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat your waffler and spray it with cooking spray. In a bowl (obviously), mix the wet ingredients first and then add the dry. We learned that if you accidentally add too much vanilla extract it does not matter in the slightest. Pour it in the waffle maker and try to contain your excitement for just a few minutes. Probably about 4 minutes, but on the waffler a green light goes on to say its done. This made like 6 servings. By the way, pancake syrup is not allowed. Go buy yourself a jug of real maple syrup. You won’t be sorry.

Sunday Brunch Recipe

You will need:

• eggs

• Whatever’s leftover from Indian take out on Friday (our’s was from Seva which is at 30-07 34th St

in Astoria.  We had leftover chana saag.)

• 2 pieces of bread (preferably sprouted grain hippie bread.  white bread is bad for you.  Please don’t eat it.)

• toaster oven

• optional: chihuahua under foot

Step 1:

Toast your bread

Step 2:

Make a sunny side up egg.  Ask a grown up person for help if necessary.

Step 3:

Drink some coffee and think about whether you will go to the gym today or watch Degrassi.

Step 4:

When your toast is ready, spread your Indian food on your toast.  Caution: Don’t trip over the chihuahua under your foot!

Step 5:

Put egg on top of toast and Indian food.  Make a sandwich.

Step 6:

Eat this.  Smile and thank your roommate for inventing a new breakfast.  Digest and go to the gym.

Blood Oranges and other important snacks

We are making a very slow crawl into the beginning of spring and the end (FINALLY) of winter.  You may find you need a little something special to keep you going.  Might I suggest that you stop reading this (STOP NOW!) and go find some blood oranges.

You actually do need to hurry because the blood orange season is ending pretty soon.  But really, when you bite into a blood orange its like a burst of magic in your mouth.  When you open your eyes there are chihuahuas, smiles and rainbows everywhere.*

If you saw TONY this week, you’ll know that Astoria on 30th avenue was mentioned as being one of the New Yorkiest blocks in NY.  That’s cool, but they missed alot of awesome places, which luckily you can read about here on the blog and of course at Joey in Astoria.  They mentioned Tereizzi bakery, which is pretty cool.  But right now we are pretty obsessed with the almond horseshoes from Frank’s bakery . You’ll want to hurry and eat that.  Passover starts Weds evening.

vintage plate from Aunt Janet not included

*Not true.

Astoria food enthusiasm

I moved to Astoria from good old Staten Island in February. I get behind Astoria, but more to the point of the blog, I get behind food in Astoria. Believe it or not, Astoria is not just about Baskin Robbins. I present to you be a (far from extensive list) of Astoria food I think is awesome.

Before we get to that, I’d like to try an experiment. Last night I was speaking to my friend Jordana who told me that use of the word “awesome” tells people what generation you are from. Apparently kids these days are using words like “popping” to express enthusiasm. It has something to do with lip gloss. So for this installment I will retire the dated word “awesome” and describe things as “popping.” I will try to do this as often as possible . It’s sort of the secret word. And what do you do when you hear the secret word boys and girls?

Astoria popping food:

1) thai restaurants

In Astoria we are ankle deep in poppin’ Thai restaurants. New ones pop up every day. I am literally swimming in pad thai and I could not be happier. Yajai is Ms. Myagi’s favorite and I like Thai pavillion. It makes sense that there would be so many Thai restaurants coexisting with so many Greek restaurants because of how close Greece and Thailand are geographically.**

2) JJ’s Sushi

I should stop writing this blog and go there right now. Just the letter’s “J’ and “J” cause me to have a Pavlovian response where I want to stop what I’m doing and eat lots and lots of sushi. They have this amazing…er….poppin’ sushi and literally everything on the menu is great. They have these amazing*** edamame dumplings as well. You should probably stop reading this and go.

3) the taco truck

The taco truck on 30th avenue and 33rd street is magical. They use actual mexican cheese and the rice and beans are delicious. The guacomole is not real, but they squeeze it out of a tube and for some reason I think that’s poppin. Supposedly the truck also delivers, but we’ve never tried this.

4) feta cheese

So you are probably going to ask me, Oh where oh where can you get yourself some feta cheese in Astoria? How about EVERYWHERE? There are so many wonderful Greek markets that I cannot even begin to name them all. Did you know that Bulgaria has a different kind of feta than Greece or France? Personally I think the French feta cheese is poppin.

5) Michael’s Restaurant

It’s a poppin diner. Everything is awesome, even non-diner foods.

** Clearly this is not true.

*****There are other words that kids today are saying but I am so unhip that I don’t know. Please leave comments with your favorite words.