Didn’t think you’d ever hear me say that huh? This week, I’ve gone shopping at DSW, Lord & Taylor, and Macy’s. Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday (today). My mom and I were planning to head to another mall tomorrow but we both looked at each other and decided to scratch that plan. We’re all shopped out. That’s a rare thing for me to say but I think I’ve reached my limit for the week. I guess a big part of it is the lack of sales. Without good deals to bait me, I’m unimpressed. $50 shoes just don’t quite do it for me. Where are the sales?! Aren’t we getting ready for the Fall-Winter season yet?! Where are the Christmas decorations!? It’s August!

Months back I told a friend about Etsy, this website I love to browse. They sell handmade items, from clothes to handbags, to jewelry and paintings. Many of the sellers create the items at home as a hobby. I had never ordered anything from Etsy. I guess part of my reluctance was that it’s a conglomeration of sellers. I don’t know how reliable they are or the quality of the products. This friend I shared it with however went ahead and got addicted to Etsy and went on to actually buy things from there. She got these stacked fine silver rings and I saw them and had to have them. So here I got my own. They’re from a seller called buyhappiness. Indeed I’m happy. She even emailed me to ask me what my favorite color was so she could add the ring with stones as a bonus. How generous! I’m now hooked on this website. Uh-oh.

My dad is such a soccer nut. He went to Costco to buy a 19-inch TV just to watch the World Cup. With a 90-day return policy, he was planning to return it after the matches but I think they’re enjoying it too much so it’s going to stay. That return policy is such a marketing success. After 90 days, you’re too attached to the dang thing. Literally. He lugs it to work then back home to make sure he catches every single game. My mom is a good sport about his obsession and actually gets into it sometimes too.

New York City makes Washington DC look like the boondocks. As we stepped off the bus when we arrived, I was just amazed by the hordes of people and the tall buildings everywhere! Nut stands, hot dog and gyro carts everywhere. Going in, I thought if I could navigate the MARTA, Metro, and BART, there should be no reason why I can’t navigate the Subway.

I can not navigate the NY city subway. It’s wild. Multiple tunnels, lines, and levels. If not for our wonderful NY resident hostess, we would’ve been lost. But thankfully, she knew where we were going and we went everywhere!! Hudson River, Chelsea Piers, West Village, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, Little Italy, Empire State Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza all in the course of 1.5 days. Wow. When we arrived back and stepped off the bus in DC, it was so quiet and calm. What a difference, NYC and DC.

Friday, right off the bus, when we flagged down a taxi, this black Cadillac type car picked us up. We figured something was amiss when we didn’t see a meter, and everyone knows NYC cabs have meters. Well, he charged us $15 for what should’ve been $7 but I’m grateful we didn’t get kidnapped! After arriving and dropping off our luggage, we had dinner at Puttanesca, an Italian restaurant not far from where we were staying with our hostess. We shared dishes of monk fish, gnocchi, and goat cheese ravioli. So tasty. But the most memorable was the panna cotta dessert. I will return and I will get the panna cotta! It was light, cool, creamy, not too sweet, melt in your mouth.

Saturday. Food. Gluttonous amounts of it.

1. The Grey Dog’s Coffee. They have great (huge!!) sandwiches and breakfast items. We made a rookie mistake trying to eat the whole thing. We should have shared our entrees. It was a lot of delicious food and I couldn’t stop myself from finishing it all myself!
2. Bubble Tea at Chinatown. We all know how filling bubble tea can be. Ooof!
3. Banh Mi Saigon Bakery for banh mi. We shared this time, but I think I wound up eating almost a whole thing myself because I guess I was the only sardine fan. What!? They’re good!
4. Mamoun’s Falafels. Their falafel sandwiches might have been my favorite out of this entire trip. So flavorful. I will be back for this one!
5. John’s Pizzeria. Three of us shared a medium sized cheese pizza. I was already too full but managed to eat a slice. Fresh tomatoey sauce, thin crispy crust. Don’t try to soak up the grease with your napkin. It will pick up all the good cheese. Just enjoy! I will be back for more NY pizza but I do want to try others. Not that John’s wasn’t wonderful, I mean as full as I was, I still thoroughly enjoyed it, but there are so many choices, I figure I needn’t have the same one twice.

During the day, we went to two farmer’s markets and then Chinatown. I wanted to experience shopping the knockoffs and bargaining. And I did. Only I came home with 2 non-functioning janky watches. Ah street peddlers, it’s part of the experience though. We also walked by Little Italy. Then to the Empire State Building. Even at 10:30 in the evening, the lines were still a little over 30 minutes.

The views at night were spectacular though. You could see the city all lit up. In between, we took a break and played 5 hours of Fat Princess on the PS3. The object is like capture the flag. You have to keep the opponent’s princess in prison while rescuing your own princess. Meanwhile, you want to feed your prisoner so she gets fat and hard to carry. After you rescue yours you can also feed her so she’s harder to kidnap. “I’m hungry” she says during the whole game. It has cute graphics and yet it’s bloody.

Sunday we woke up and watched VH1’s Tough Love Couples. The drama is Jerry Springer-esque. I have it on my DVR queue now! After packing up, we walked out to eat on 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. We were expecting to just have a normal brunch but lo! There was a huge street fair.

I felt like I had won the vacation lottery!! So we shopped jewelry and ate along the way. It was the perfect combination of food and shopping. We shared pupusas with slaw, tamales, crepes, gyros, arepas, emanadas and the girls got the rings and necklaces. I know they’re tchotchkes but that’s the charm of them. I didn’t want to leave, but we had to catch a bus back and before that, I wanted to check out 30 Rock! We got a nice little tour of the NBC office building and checked out the Saturday Night Live set.

Tina Fey used this restroom!
For our trip back we grabbed a final lunch, reuben sandwich. I wanted a street vendor hot dog sorta, but I was afraid of being trapped on a bus and eating questionable foods. Maybe next time. There will definitely be a next time and another and another.

Visiting New York City was like taking a 5 hour bus ride to another country. I pictured myself having to live there and how my life would change. I’d have to walk up 5 flights of steps daily. If I forgot something, I would think long and hard about whether I really needed it. Laundry? Suddenly, handwashing doesn’t seem like such a hard task compared to lugging it to and from a store to have it done. Closet space is such a premium, I’d have to quickly learn how to shop judiciously and toss frequently. Grocery shopping would be different. Cooking in a limited spaced kitchen would require some creativity and resourcefulness. My herb garden would probably not exist. I now have a different appreciation for the slower paced life in Washington. It’s much more relaxed and spacious here. And this trip really made me see how little we really need. Maybe I do have enough shoes. And I won’t complain about not having enough closet space anymore. It’s all so spacious!

One of my resolutions for this year was to learn how to pare down the clothes and stuff. Stuff as in shoes and stuff. And bags. And whatever. Anyway, aside from some household items which were necessary, I’ve been doing a pretty good job. I guess it helps that my bank account is bare so it’s not like I have a lot to work with anyway. But that’s another sob story. Now with a trip coming up, it’s hard to control myself. I need dresses to wear! I need to make sure my tourist-look includes some cute outfits. So I went shopping last night. Nothing looked good! I wandered the store aisles up and down and over again and nothing caught my eyes. Maybe they’re waiting for their next shipment of goods to come in or I am just plain out of clothes-shopping practice! I walked out with a chocolate bar.

While every one was onto broadband, I was stubbornly, frugally clinging to $5/month dial-up. “I hardly ever use the Internet!” “I’m on the computer plenty enough at work all day!” One day, after much convincing and peer pressure from the sister, I finally gave in and got DSL. I got the low end (768 Kilobits per second upload, 1 mbps download). It was wonderful. I could even talk on the phone and be online at the same time! Years later, to last year, I was again hearing it from my sis about how unacceptably, inhumanly slow my Internet was. I told her to can it. Then Verizon started to bill my Internet and phone funny. $40 became $60 and I called to ask about it. That’s when the sales pitch started. After all was said and done, I became a convert to FIOS. After the Verizon guy left this past Saturday to install the FIOS, I tested the Internet. It’s amazingly fast. Here all along I was blaming my 5-year old slow computer when really it was the connection speed. I love it love it! Every saved minute is worth what I pay for it.

This past weekend I went to a couple of hardware stores looking for new sage seeds and a third rosemary plant to kill. The one we went to Saturday had sage seeds. After battling weekend traffic in the shopping centers, I got one packet of seeds. Sunday, we went to another hardware store and finally found rosemary plants. I also got new chili pepper plant seeds. Serrano this time. And on a whim, brussels sprouts. Yes, I am attempting one vegetable in a pot on the balcony. I got a big pot planter to go with it. I will find out exactly how big this plant gets and how many brussels it’ll yield. Experiment!

At this rate, my debt will never be repaid! I just blew through another hundred bucks for gardening supplies! But I needed them. Really and truly needed. Spade and trowel without which, how would I dig the soil? Trimmer and pruner for trimming and pruning of course. And in anticipation for lack of precipitation, a drip waterer -terer -terer -er -er -er. So that’s that. My two new favorite activities lumped into one.

Update on the garden:
Uh oh, my orchid is already looking a bit dry. Drying flower bud, yellowed dry areas on the leaves. I poured some water in there. Hope it’s not too late!

Something sprouted! I forgot to label the pots I grew, I think it’s sage. Sage is supposed to be the fastest to germinate of the seeds I planted.

They’re squarish on the outside and round on the inside. Rather interesting. Mom found them at an Asian market after I asked her to help me find something pretty. Yeah, that specific. Aren’t they lovely? I’m picturing myself eating cereal in them. Or noodles. Or kung-pao chicken. The possibilities are endless.

Well, it was neither rain nor snow. Maybe just a flurry, but wind! Gusts of it.

Behold, my latest kitchen gadget purchase: a grater, zester, shredder, slicer contraption! Mostly I wanted it for the zester/grater. Rather than get a zester/grater and then a separate shredder, I decided to get this all inclusive set which will save space too. I also got a can opener and am still hunting for a juicer – hand operated. Cuz I’m old-fashioned like that. Plus, I need more bowls!! So I can fill up the dishwasher rather than having to wash bowls every night. I’m considering Mikasa, TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Ikea, you know, the usuals. I only need maybe 6 or so. So I’m thinking I can get 6 different pretty bowls which would be more fun, or I can get 6 identical ones which would probably stack better. These are the kinds of conundrums and decisions that keep me up. Last night, I went to Home Goods to look for bowls and walked out with a can opener and 2 mugs. Then I went to TJ Maxx to look for bowls and found a grater, zester, shredder, slicer contraption, same make, different model, for about $4 or $5 less. I don’t wanna talk about it. I walked out with a pair of smokey topaz earrings. I don’t wanna talk about that either.

Left the house today at 9:30 AM and returned at 7:30 PM. It’s now close to 12:30 and I am plumb worn out. Started the day with brunch at a friend’s house to meet her family and have lunch with them. We had bagels and cream cheese, something she made called “Christmas Bake” (bacon, eggs, cheese… need I continue?) and spinach kugel. They have a mean cat, a super affectionate dog, and 2 cute little boys, 4 and 1. The 1 year old is a cuddlebug and couldn’t care less if you were a stranger or not, he’ll come up and cuddle or hug you. After that, it was shopping from one store to another. Balducci’s. Costco. An Asian market. Dinner at Cava (delicious!). Home Depot. Office Depot. Then after I returned it was Olympics and cooking. I have to shorten the description of my shopping because reliving it is tiring. As much as I enjoy cooking and shopping most of the time, doing these marathon shopping trips can be tiring. Especially the part about Costco on Saturday.

I wanted to make a few dishes tonight so they could marinade in the sauce over night. I’m hoping the flavors will have a chance to absorb and blend better.

The first was a bean salad. Canned beans (any kinds you like), chopped red onion, lime juice, salt & pepper, Adobo (optional), cilantro, olive oil. The recipe had called for edamame but all the ones sold at the Asian market were from China and you know I’m not gonna eat that.

The next dish was this curry which started out small and wound up being a potful as most of my dishes generally turn out. This came from desultory thoughts.
In a blender: ginger, onion, coconut milk, garlic, lime juice, salt, and curry powder. Or food processor. Add cayenne too if you want a bit of spicy.
Cook the chicken until it’s just done, set it aside, saute some onions, add curry sauce and more curry powder, then add carrots and peas, any other vegetables then chicken. Simmer.

Being the lazy cook that I am, I didn’t set aside the meat. I just pan fried it in oil. Then added onions, then the vegetables, then poured in the food processor sauce.*

Oh, look. From Home Depot. Them chinchillas are chewing on the wood around their room! But it was either the painter’s tape or …
This! Do I hear a collective “Awww…”? The wooden house chew toy has cut down on the chewing a bit but Marco is unstoppable, as shown here.

*Update on the curry: Veggies in the curry will add a natural sweetness to the sauce. Add some cayenne to balance it out. I like a bit of spicyness to my curries anyway. If you like a thicker sauce like I do, use some corn starch. Also, next time I might add lemongrass. And go ahead and make a ton of curry for extra leftovers. It seems to get better the next day, and the next day, and the day after that. The flavors just meld and absorb more.