A Lunch Adventure

Yesterday, Misha and I met up for lunch in Harlem. We originally planned to go to Tea and Things of that Kind, a new tea place/restaurant on Adam Clayton Powell and 137th, but when we met there at 1pm it was closed. For some bizarre reason, they open at 2pm on Friday. YET, on Thursday they open at 11am. And on the other days there are different opening times. *sigh* So, we couldn't eat there and proceeded down the street to check out a Mexican place.

On the way to the Mexican place we passed by a soul food place, Mischelle's, that looked clean and had a little seating area. We thought, this might be promising, but decided to keep walking further down the street. We got to the Mexican place, and they were closed too! *shaking my head*

We kept walking and came across Muddy Waters Cafe. It was cute in the sleek, modern dark brown wood and stainless steel kind of way, but seemed more appropriate for grabbing a quick bite, or enjoying a coffee, not for sitting down and having a chatty lunch. The menu wasn't that extensive either, so we decided to move further down the street, but noted the cafe as a place to check out. I need to make more of an effort to leave my desk for lunch, so I think I'll be checking out Muddy Waters soon.

We proceeded down the street, and decided to check the times for Gospel Uptown. Of course, they too were closed for lunch, but we got a good look at their menu and added it to a list of places to check out.

So after covering over 10 blocks of Adam Clayton Powell Blvd, we decided to return to Michelle's. There were some lunch deals listed for $6, but I didn't like the side items and one option just came with dark meat chicken, so I had to choose something else. I opted for the Fried Chicken Breast with Macaroni and Cheese and Collard Greens ~$13. Misha chose Fried Tilapia with Rice and Peas and Collard Greens ~$14.

We took our seat and proceeded to wait...and wait...and wait. I wasn't starving, but if I had been, I would have be truly angered by the wait. I was just annoyed this time. Take out orders were heading out the door, so we assumed they must have had a lot of those to do, which was why ours was taking so long But they weren't out picking the collard greens from the garden, or making home made pasta for the Mac and Cheese, so what was the hold up? It doesn't take that long to fry fish and chicken.

Our food finally arrived and the first thing I noted was that for $13 I should have had more mac and cheese on my plate. But fine, I probably didn't need much more than what was given and would likely still be satisfied. I cut into my first piece of chicken and found it to be ok. It wasn't dry, but the batter wasn't that flavorful. Misha noted that collard greens looked a little dry and after we sampled them we realized that also had NO FLAVOR. The greens tasted like they had just been cooked in plain water and that's it. Where was the seasoning??? My mac and cheese was ok, but also tasted very simple -- like only one cheese had been used, plus the pasta was a little too soft. I tried Misha's Tilapia and it tasted just like Flounder to me. I had never had Tilapia before, so maybe it's similar, but I hoped they weren't trying to pull a fast one. Anyway, we did our best to spruce up the food with hot sauce, ketchup, and salt and pepper, but that was only a temporary fix. And then, I cut into my second piece of chicken breast and what did I see??...PINK and BLOODY JUICES!!!! ILLLLL!!!! I showed it to Misha and she confirmed...it looked pink. Why? Why? Why? So on top of their food being bland, they were trying to give their patrons salmonella poisoning too.

I got up and showed them my chicken. They took it away and proposed giving me a new piece. I said I didn't have any time to wait and just wanted my Mac and Cheese. The front desk person came back again and asked me if I had 12 minutes. I said No and that I had waited enough as it was. Then they offered to give me fish...I said fine. Out comes the fried catfish, which at that point I didn't even want and it was bland as hell too! I mean, come on Mischelle (who, by the way, wasn't back there cooking, though I believe she made an appearance and apparently is the person who drops off the take-out order) get your act together. Catfish batter should have some seasoning, and chicken should be cooked!!

I finished my side items. Misha picked at, but left the majority of her food on the plate and we bounced., completely unsatisfied and borderline disgusted. During the meal Misha made the astute comment that while it seems that every black person could feasibly open a Soul food restaurant just on the basis of their being black, that does not mean they actually know how to cook Soul food. And that if Soul food restaurants like Mischelle's persist, people might begin to think that their constitutes GOOD Soul food.

To the owner(s) and chef(s) of Mischelle's in Harlem, 1st, you are not Harlem's Finest Soul Food Bistro and 2nd, I, I who barely cook, could show you how to do Soul Food. At the very least I should be your taste tester, Lord knows y'all need one.

My culinary Harlem quest carries on and I hope to continue to avoid food poisoning along the way...sheesh. :/

6 Months to Go!!

Given that I'm officially 29 and a half today, how can I not do a blog post.  I've got six months to go until the big 3-0.  This is made even more real for me because today I also purchased a ticket to Vegas to celebrate Nicole's 30th!

So I'm going to be doing Vegas, staying at Mandalay Bay, in June. And hopefully doing a side trip to Cuba right afterwards.  Keep your fingers crossed that I'll have more to say about that in a later blog post.

I'll be cruising to the Bahamas, with a stop in Florida, on the Norwegian Jewel for my birthday in October.

I've got the travel bug and want to celebrate with my other almost 30 year-old friends, even if they aren't planning a trip...have a party, invite people over for dinner, go to the spa, whatever, just do something special!

Carla, Rita, Maya, Maya...start planning!  Consider that an order ladies!! ;)

And if any of you out there want to go to Florida and the Bahamas with me, give me a shout. HOLLA!

To internet or not to internet…

A few weeks ago I was talking to Maya about the possibility of getting the ability to check my email and get internet on my phone.  Just considering something like that made me feel like a traitor and heading down the slippery slope toward the land of Blackberries and iPhones.  I work at a non-profit and no one needs to contact me at the drop of a time and I check email enough as it is.  Plus, I always liked the idea of being internet and email free for at least a few hours of the day when I was away from my desk at work or not at home.  
 

So why am I changing my mind?  First, I’m trying to get my voiceover career moving and it seems like in the VO industry, if I wait too long to return an email, the job could be gone and offered to someone else.  An agent she said a guy took three hours to respond to her inquiry about a job and that was too long.  Three hours was too long?? Damn. If she had called the guy she probably would have had a more immediate answer, but I digress.

Second, recent events have led me to see the light about the benefits of having internet access and email on my phone.  This past weekend I chilled with JYC in Queens.  I wasn’t checking my email a lot or anything, but I knew I could if I wanted.  I went back to Mt. V on Saturday evening and tried to get on the internet to do my usual (email, FB, Gchat) and the internet wasn’t working…gasp!  It was late, so I shut down the comp and decided to try again on Sunday.  Sunday morning rolled around, and I tried once more to get on the internet and again, NO LUCK!  ARGH!!!  Clearly something was going wrong.  I texted JYC and Maya to let them know I didn’t have any internet and that I was feeling out of sorts.  There was no Pandora, no Hulu....no Blogger.  I actually had an idea for a blog post (these ideas don’t come that frequently) that I had to put on hold because I didn’t have the internet.

I contacted Verizon and began the process of getting our internet going again.  I cut off the power on the router, hit reset using a paperclip, waited to see if the light would change from yellow, pardon me, “amber” as the Verizon folk say, to green, and in the end they determined that it was “problem with my router.”  I questioned this because coincidentally, my mother had upgraded our internet only days before.  She hadn’t gone on the computer for three days and didn’t know that the internet wasn’t working.  Can you believe it?...she went a few days without even bothering to turn on her comp.  But I was completely reassured by Verizon that it was purely a coincidence that my internet wasn’t working…yeah, riiiiight.  I was told that I was going to get a new router by Tuesday and everything would be working fine once I set it up.

Well, it’s Tuesday night, the new router came in, I hooked it up and surprise, surprise…it didn’t fix a damn thing.  I’m writing this post in Word, then uploading it, so really it's Wednesday now.  I can only assume that Verizon is working tirelessly to fix this problem.

I can’t tell you how incapacitated I feel when at home without internet.  I wanted to check the hours of a store, thought about printing a coupon, actually wanted to do some work from home and of course, check my email and I couldn’t…I can’t!  And I don’t like it one bit.  So it’s settled, at age 29 I will creep into modern times and get internet access on my phone…I think it’ll cost me an extra 10 bucks a month.  Notice, I’m not getting a BB or an iPhone.  I don’t like the look of BB’s and I don’t want Blackberry thumb. As for the iPhone, I just don’t really do Apple stuff.  I’ve never had a Mac or an iPod, so the iPhone means little to me, but maybe I'll be singing another tune in a few years.  In the meantime, I’ll settle for a regular phone that lets me check email and do some websurfing.  I’m trying to decide which one to get, so feel free to let me know which one seems more my style. :)

 Samsung Rouge, LGenV Touch and LG enV3

Harlem Days

As many of you know, I now work uptown at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.  Since moving back to NY in 2005, This is the first time I've worked outside of the midtown/40s blocks.  There were some adjustments made to my commute and I had to get an unlimited metro card again (not happy about that added expense) but overall, I'm happy to be working up there.

I came across my grandparents' birth certificates and saw that my great-grandparents, lived in the same area, and at one point, down the block, from the Schomburg.  My grandparents were Harlemites up until my father and uncle were toddlers, before they moved on up to Mt. V, so it seems appropriate that I'm getting to know the area that my dad's side of the family called home for a good portion of their lives.

The first way that I am trying to get to know Harlem is through my stomach. So I'm just going to talk food ...

Harlem is a VERY dangerous place for food, especially, if you like Soul or West Indian food.  I feel like you can't walk two blocks without encountering a Soul, Fried Chicken or West Indian place...cuisines that I happen to really enjoy.  When I'm feeling hungry and I haven't brought my lunch to work, I have to resist the urge to get macaroni and cheese or a beef pattie, and I'm frequently left craving a Cosi Sandwich or soup from Hale and Hearty.  But then again, I manage to get a sandwich for $5 bucks or a whole meal from one of the soul food buffet places (not Mannas...I'm through with them...see below) and spend at a maximum $6, so it's balances out, sort of.

These lunch time challenges made me eager to find good lunch places in the Harlem area, and if I'm trying out lunch, I should find good dinner places too!  (I'll talk about dinner in a later posts) This quest to explore Harlem began when I started working up there in November and continues today, so I'm going to bring you up to speed.

Oui, Oui Crepes and Pizza - They had just opened when I stopped by in November, and I wanted a crepe, but the guy who makes the crepes wasn't there.  So I got a slice of pizza.  It was mediocre, but now that they've been open for awhile I'm going to check them out again soon.  Hopefully the crepe maker will be there.

Spoonbread - I've gone there multiple times.  The first time I got the chicken salad sandwich, fries, a slice of cake and punch.  Based on that order, I hope you understand why I say it's dangerous to have lunch in Harlem.  The sandwich was really delicious and tasted like my mom's chicken salad.  I don't remember the cake and the punch was just spruced up fruit punch.  But the two other times I've gone to Spoonbread they haven't even had the chicken salad.   How hard is it to have chicken salad everyday?  And if it's difficult, make it a special, not a regular menu item.

Manna's - Probably the most prevalent Soul Food buffet franchise in Harlem has a location down the street from the Schomburg.  On the whole their food is fine, but I got their macaroni and cheese twice and both times it was SWEET.  Mac and cheese  should NOT be sweet.  So I'm done with them.

Jacob's - I heard from one of our volunteers that Jacob's was opened by a guy who was a chef for Manna's.  It's another soul food buffet place.  I was nervous that their mac and cheese was going to be sweet, but it wasn't so they are my go-to buffet place.

Trattoria Amici - Misha and I made a lunch date and strolled down Lenox and paused by the door to consider this place.  At first we thought it was closed, but an eager young guy, who actually was the chef, greeted us with a smile and convinced us that the restaurant was indeed open.  I got the penne a la vodka and thought it was really tasty.  I wish it were a bit cheaper, but it was good.  I've gone back a few other times because the chef, Modu, is friendly and they have $5 drinks during happy hour.  I'm not eating cheese right now, so I need to stay away from Italian places, but I'll go back at another time for lunch and try something different. 

88 Chinese Restaurant - I hadn't had Chinese in a while and needed something without cheese. My colleague recommended this place and I was pleased with what they offered.  The lunch special is good.  For $5 I got my usual, Broccoli with Garlic Sauce and plain Fried Rice, and Chicken with Rice Soup.  I wasn't blown away, but I certainly wasn't disappointed.  It wasn't oily and had a nice sauce.  When I'm in the mood for Chinese I will turn to them.

Oh and there is a place across the street in Harlem Hospital.  I was a little nervous about eating there, because I didn't expect anything in the hospital to taste good.  But they make very very delicious grilled chicken wraps. I  round out my sandwich by adding some onion rings from a Halal truck that manages to park itself right in front of the Schomburg everyday.  A grilled chicken wrap with a side of onion rings...yum yum yum yum yum...my preferred lunch time meal.


Ok, those are all of the places I've visited for lunch.  For all of this week I'm going to be brown bagging it to work, but there are many more eateries to try.  Slowly by surely I'll get to know the neighborhood, one meal at a time.  :)

I'm BAAAACK!

Yeah, it's been awhile since I've blogged. *hanging head in shame* Blogging has always been difficult for me. If any of you read my other blogs, you know this. And once Maya stopped hounding me, it was like I had a free pass to chill, hence the months long hiatus. But...I'M BAAAACK!


I started thinking about why I had not been blogging. And the answer is clear...I was busy! Here's a quick run-through of what's been going on since my last post...

I was promoted to a new position at the Libs, I was dating Mr. Meet Up (some of you might remember him from "What Would Matthew Say?"), and I was trying to really dig in and get my voice-over career going, in addition to other random activities...blogging just wasn't fitting in. Plus, you know me, I like to tell and share stories and frankly, I didn't think that I had any good ones, or at least not ones that I should be writing about in a blog. ;) Anyway, I realized this blog is all about me and my journey to 30, and I don't need any special stories.

So...I'm a little over four months into 29 and moving full steam ahead toward October 22nd! There have been some challenges and disappointments these last few months, but this happens and I know great things are on the horizon. In fact, I've already got great things to report...

On February 22nd, exactly eight months to the big day, I booked a cruise going to FL and Bahamas, and I'm trying to plan another trip before then because I don't need to wait until October to take a vacation. So I hope to go to Europe with a friend, and hopefully see my Granny in MS at some point too!

Oh and I've been cooking! *gasp* I made a New Year's resolution to cook at least one new dish per month. Yes, only once per month. I've had people roll their eyes or turn their noses up to say that wasn't a big deal. But I don't cook at all and would sooner make a sandwich than turn on the oven, so cooking a new dish per month is BIG. Thus far, I have not broken my resolution. In January I made a pasta dish with red peppers, broccoli and parmesan cheese. I just went in the kitchen and threw some stuff together...it wasn't too bad, but didn't knock my socks off. But February was a knock out month for me -- I made two - two - new dishes, and an old standby, my ground turkey breast roll. Of my new dishes, one was a tuna pasta salad, which required the use of the blender (!) to make a red pepper puree sauce. My second new dish was a smothered pepper steak courtesy of Emeril. I had never worked with beef before, but I had my gloves and got clearance from my mom that some of the beef will be that red raw-looking color and other portion brownish (I thought I had been sold bad meat). Anyway, the dish was sooo flavorful and the meat very very tender. If you eat beef, you need to add this recipe to your repertorire.

Well, I think that's enough from me. I've brought you up to speed and there's only more to come...more recipes, more travel plans and more NYC explortion...spring is coming so I've got to get to know my new neighborhood -- Harlem awaits me! Stay tuned..

Always respect your elders...

Let me start off by saying that I think elderly people are great!  In my current position I talk to elderly people a lot...even though I sometimes have to increase my volume and slow my pace, they are easy to speak with and they have actually witnessed so many things I've only read about. For example, I recall when I was on a tour of the Bronx Library Center with members of the Bigelow Society (Library donors). I was making conversation and I asked an elderly lady whether she had seen Lincoln Center's South Pacific.  Her response was, "No. I saw the original."  The original debuted in 1949!  Old folks are cool...she saw the original South Pacific.

Anyway, on Thursday I went to the theater, a regular past-time for the elderly, and saw Part 2 of the two-part The Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney at The Public Theater.  I'm not going to comment on the plays or give a review except to say I enjoyed the shows (Part 2 contains two plays The Brothers Size and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet), I recommend that you see it, and Andre Holland (one of my favorite young black actors) is wonderful.

So during intermission I went to the bathroom.  The Public's bathrooms are terrible - entirely too small with only three short stalls and two sinks.  I was at one sink and two women (one elderly and one middle-aged) left their stalls at the same time and had a little "dance" over who would use the second sink.  The elderly woman elegantly gestured for the younger one to use the sink.  I was already in the process of washing my hand, my sink's water was running, and the elderly lady dashed her hands under my running water.  I thought, "Oh, she's wetting her hands before getting soap."  But no sooner had I thought that, she was reaching for a paper towel.  I was shocked, so I said,

[Sweetly, almost sing-songy] "You must use soap."
"Soap?"
"Yes, soap. In these times, you must use soap."
[Hesitation] "Oh, well I'm not going to be eating anything."
"Well, remind me to not touch any door knobs that you touch."

I mean, there is H1N1, the regular flu, colds and all kinds of germs and this old lady, who is at risk of dying if she gets most illnesses,  had the nerve to reach into my water, then not use soap!  I never say a contrary word to the elderly but her nasty act completely blew me away and I couldn't keep my mouth shut.  She should know better!  I know men leave the bathroom without a proper washing (GROSS!!), but LADIES, and elderly ladies at that, I expect better, especially when other women are around.

But of course elderly folks don't care one bit about what anyone has to say, so true to form after her two second hand-wetting, she slowly eased her way out of the bathroom, despite my mini-lecture.


I went back up to the theater and took my seat, and then as punishment for saying a negative word to that woman, I was stricken with an elderly affliction - falling asleep during the middle of the play. *sigh*  The play was good, so I don't know what came over me.  What I do know is that I won't reprimand another elderly person again...I don't want to fall and break a hip or experience some other common elderly ailment.  Ha!

I'm a New York Socialite!

Each year the Library does its big benefit, Library Lions, and as a member of the Development staff we're asked to work the event.  I love getting dressed up. But in previous years we've been forced to wear all black. UGH.  I love to dress up, but black is not what I like to wear - I like color.  So last year I had to break out my old prom dress...GASP(!) because that's the only fancy black I had.  Thank the lord I had been going to the gym, because ten years later, it still fit.  But I know what you're thinking, you wore your prom dress from 1998??? Sounds like it could be a disaster.  Well, it wasn't because I have a good eye and try to choose classic pieces. As you can see, it's an elegant Nicole Miller dress (purchased for $50 from TJ Maxx) that is as good today (last year) as it was then (eleven years ago) and will be good into the future (to Infinity and BEYOND!). 

But this year, I purchased a new black dress (I don't repeat) only to learn three days before the event THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE TO WEAR BLACK!!!  I was estactic, but also annoyed because the person organizing the event had the nerve to say, when asked what we should wear, "I don't mandate color. It's a formal event, so what you wear should be appropriate to that."  I turned to my colleague and said, "She's a damn liar, she mandated color all last year.  What is she saying?"  But I took her at her word and decided to not wear black. And I think that was a good choice, because BAM...

Here I am on the New York Social Diary, courtesy of photographer Patrick McMullan.  Yeah, I'm working (literally working...I had to staff the silent auction table) the event and we were Patrick McM's test shot, but it's a good picture and my dress looks really pretty! I decided to go for something more playful this year.  So if someone is ever googling me, they'll probably come across this NYSD page, admire my dress and then concoct a story about my social life. Maybe they'll think I'm a B.A.P...LOL!