Whirlwind Weekend

Whew!  K and I have been gone to NYC for the Labor Day weekend, attending my college friend’s beautiful vegan wedding on Sunday (really, I can’t separate the vegan-ness out, especially as the favors were a donation to Farm Sanctuary).  It was beautiful and very them – what more could you ask for?  And I got to meet up with college friends I hadn’t seen in almost 10 years.  Eek! Has it really been that long?  Close to it!

The bride and groom looked stunning and ecstatically happy.

Jonathan and Rachel

The hubby and I also extended our anniversary celebration through the weekend as well.  Unfortunately, I only had my iPhone for pictures most of the weekend, so the quality isn’t that good.  We came down Saturday night for dinner and a show and had a terrific night. Originally we had planned to stay in the city for the weekend, but the U.S. Open and the holiday drove up prices beyond which we could afford, so we took the train in from his brother’s place in White Plains, and it worked out really well.

Aburi sushi (1 piece cut in half)

Before the show, we went back to one of our old favorites, Japonica. I used to go there for special occasions in college and I had taken K and some friends visiting from London back around 5 years ago, and K hasn’t stopped raving about it since.  I’m sure there are better restaurants in the city, but we love their sashimi.  This time, we started off with with a piece of aburi, which is a thicker cut of raw fish that is seared quickly on each side (which leaves most of the piece still raw).  We chose the fluke, as the menu told us it had a stronger flavor that most natives prefer, and we were not disappointed.

K ordered some sake in a box, which was interesting. I don’t know much about sake, but he said the wood of the box tempered the sake.

K and his sake

Instead of pondering the quality of wood and alcohol together, I enjoyed K’s green tea.

Me and tea

After we whet our appetites with the aburi, we moved on to some of the best fried oysters I’ve ever tasted.  They were big, succulent and deliciously breaded – worth every penny.

Fried oyster appetizer

For dinner, K and I split a sushi/sashimi combination. Is this not gorgeous?

Dinner!

The pieces of fish were huge!  It really made us miss living closer to NYC because sushi in Albany/Schenectady is just nowhere near this sushi. K was like a little kid in a candy shop. 🙂  It was tough going, but we managed to finish this.  Then we were stuffed!

But the management gave us little shots of plum wine (for free!) when we were done.  mmm…I love plum wine.

Plum wine shots

We rolled out of the restaurant and caught a cab to the Golden Theatre, where we watched one of the final performances of Avenue Q!

Sneaked a pic in the theater

Avenue Q is basically Sesame Street for adults.  Well actually, post-college kids – about 25 to 35 – which I would think is a pretty limited demographic, but maybe it’s for those of us who loved Rent when it first came out and are now older.

Look at the names of some of the songs and imagine them in the context of an episode of Sesame Street:

• What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?
• If You Were Gay (first line starts with – If you were gay, it’d be okay)
• The Internet is for Porn
• Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist

All set to the lovely Sesame Street-type jingle songs.

We loved it! Its run is ending September 13th, but I think I really want to see it at Proctors when it comes to Schenectady.

Our weekend was wonderful, and it’s a bit of let down being back home, but what are you gonna do?

I’ll just finish this point with some of the lyrics to one of the songs in the show –

♫ ♪ For Now ♪ ♫

♩Everyone’s a little
bit unsatisfied…♩

♩Everyone goes ’round
a little empty inside…♩

LOL!

What I Did This Weekend

Man, I ramped up the activity level 150% this weekend and right now I’m paying for it.  But, it was fun for the most part anyway.

K and I went out to dinner for the first time in over a month Friday night. Not only dinner, sushi – it’s been too long. We tried a new roll called a Tournador roll (I’m sure Ichiban just made it up) that had softshell crab and cucumber wrapped up in spicy tuna wrapped up in a soybean wrapper. Got that?  We also got a couple pieces of tako nigiri sushi, and crab rangoons.  Add a couple of bottles of sake, and it was a good night!  I’m so mad I forgot to bring my camera, but I managed to grab a pic of the sake bottles the next day at least.

After dinner, we went back to the house to rest a bit (for me) but then we went to see the new Harry Potter movie. Holy cow, dinner and a movie on the same night?  Now I’m just gettin’ crazy!

So, what did you think of the movie?  I love the Harry Potter books but I didn’t love this movie.  It was missing something, but I’m not sure what.  I could say what most people are saying – too much emphasis on the “young relationships” but I didn’t begrudge that – I just thought it needed more of something else.  More Alan Rickman?  I melt with that voice 🙂

Saturday we took Zöe-cat to the vet to get her stitches taken out.  Poor thing had surgery a couple of weeks ago because the vet THOUGHT she had a blockage in her colon…but um, she didn’t. I’m currently very unhappy with said vet, so she’s very lucky she didn’t try to charge me for taking out her stitches. (On a side note, I don’t think I ever need to go to a doctor/vet to get stitches taken out again.  I can use a scissor and pull them out just as easily as a tech).  I’m looking for another vet, but one thing I’ve loved about the one we have is that it’s a practice solely focused on cats.  Still, $1000 for a surgery my cat turned out not to even need?  And in the end, it’s not even the money, it’s that my cat underwent unecessary sugery – poor thing. She looks quite pathetic with her belly, side and paw shaved.

After we dropped the kitty off at home we headed to our local deli to get lunch and picked up these for a treat!

That’s right, zucchini flowers are in season! Anna and Mo (short for Modesta), two lovely Italian ladies that run the deli with their family, have hundreds of zucchini plants and this time of year sell them in bunches for $2 each.  Can’t get more local than the backyard! K and I bought a bunch and enjoyed them that night.

The flowers were a little wilty by nighttime.

We cut the stamens out (pollen doesn’t taste very good), then dipped them in our homemade batter, then fried them.

A little parmesan cheese, a little pepper, and it’s delish!

Today was Farmer’s Market today, so of course we hit that up and came home with this:

• 1/2 gallon of low-fat milk from Battenkill Creamery
• 1/2 gallon of apple cider from Migliorelli Farm
• 1 loaf honey wheat bread from Our Daily Bread
• 1 pint blueberries from Migliorelli Farm
• 2 ears of  corn from Barber Farm
• 1lb chicken sausage from Coopers Ark Farm
• 1 small fresh mozzarella from Hemour Farm

We enjoyed more fresh mozzarella, basil and tomato with oil and balsamic vinegar for lunch. Yum!

Later on today we went to the garden and finally got the sugarsnap peas properly staked with chicken wire we bought at the hardware store yesterday.  They’re almost done, so there was no real point, I guess, but we picked a few more and we can always reuse the wire and stakes next year.  We looked for more zucchini but they don’t appear to be growing right. We picked one, but the end was all yellow and bad.

Then I thinned some of the carrots out. We also pulled one of our garlic stalks to see how far along the garlic is.  It was small, but usable, and we still have 6 left in the garden.

We used the garlic scapes from last week and made a great steamed mixed vegetable side dish with dinner tonight.

Baby carrots!

Garlic

Sugarsnap peas and partially bad small zucchini

Look how yummy!