Butterball

After the late-night emergency room debacle on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, I caught a cold and still went to work Thursday and Friday. My bosses kicked me out early today and I have been spending the afternoon catching up on DVRed shows, but felt like I should be doing something productive.

I made butter.



Glorious fresh butter.

I remember shaking a jar of heavy cream in my first grade classroom, every student taking a turn shaking the jar and eating the butter we all helped make. Yes, I had to Google the directions, but they're pretty simple. Put heavy cream in a jar, fill it about halfway, and shake. The shaking will eventually create whipped cream that practically fills the jar and there's no more liquid-y sloshing, but you keep shaking and the sloshing returns because the butter has separated from the buttermilk. Pour out the buttermilk, and then pour in cold water to shake a bit, pour the (now) cloudy water out and repeat the rinsing until the water is clear. Take out butter and mix in salt if desired and you have fantastic, fresh, soft, and creamy butter.

I didn't have any homemade bread to do the butter justice, but it tasted pretty good on the store bread I did have. I plan to make a loaf of bread this weekend just because of the butter.

Updating the kitchen

Josh and I finally unloaded the trunkload of bridal shower presents we received, and it made this huge stack on the dining table, so I set off on a kitchen cleaning spree (only got to half the kitchen, calm down) so I could rearrange the counter items and make room for the new food processor and toaster oven. I has been over a year since I had a toaster oven, as we chucked the crappy one we had for four years because it had the dumbest crumb tray (it swung out from the bottom on a hinge!) in history, and we didn't want to have a possibility of bringing roaches from our old apartment to our nice new one.

After much tidying up, here is our right-hand kitchen counter. I love that we have real counters and I no longer have to stack the toaster on the microwave like we did in the Park Slump apartment. I used the toaster to make broiled figs with fennel seeds and wrapped in prosciutto appetizer (see here for unedited fig photo), and the food processor had its maiden voyage when I made my turkey meatloaf. By the way, the 14-cup Cuisinart classic food processor is HEAVY. And the Boos cutting board from Annette and Mark was involved in the making of all of today's edible delights. It is a fantastic cutting board, the stuff of dreams, and I like to think that it makes me a better cook.

My least favorite episode of "Say Yes to the Dress"

I watch "Say Yes to the Dress" on TLC, which features the Kleinfeld, the salon with the biggest selection of gowns in NYC, even after finding my wedding dress. My dress didn't come from Kleinfeld, although I did have an appointment there. The show makes it seem like the consultants and managers will be your buddy and lower prices if you make a sad face, but when I went, I found out that dress prices start at $2000, and they push you to purchase way before you need. My knot.com calendar was telling me I had until March/April to purchase a dress for a late November wedding. My consultant was pushing me to purchase the first week of January, saying that I was already late.

Perhaps that's the way Kleinfeld works, as so many of the post-purchase brides they show at first fitting talk about how they're not sure if they remember their dress, and worry whether they'll still like it, because it's been A YEAR since they saw their dress. I bought my dress elsewhere for less than $1000, and it has attributes that would sell for over $3000 at Kleinfeld. It's so ridiculous how some brides on the show want a ballgown but want to stick to a $2000 budget. One particular bride was told that if she wanted a ballgown, she'd have to up her budget, but she could've found one at a less ritzy salon easily.

My least favorite episode of "Say Yes to the Dress" is titled "The Art of Negotiation," where one bride, Melanie, bought a dress a year earlier, but cancelled it because she had second thoughts. For once, I took Kleinfeld's side. Melanie wound up choosing the same dress she purchased in the first place! Why didn't she come back to the salon and try the dress on again before cancelling the order and losing the 50% deposit she already paid? It turns out the dress increased in price from $5000 to $6300 since she first purchased it, and Melanie and her mom are outraged. They complain that they should've been told that the price would increase when Melanie called to cancel the order, that Melanie cancelled the order the way they told her she should. How was the store supposed to know that Melanie would come back and want the same dress again (crazy bride, anyone?) and that the price would actually increase? In the end, the store didn't want to lose the sale, so they discounted the dress down to $5000 and gave her a free veil worth a couple hundred bucks. But ha ha, Melanie pretty much paid $7500 for the dress because of the deposit she spent on the first dress.

A wedding in Flushing

Josh and I attended our friends' wedding last night out in Flushing. The traffic was horrendous. A trip that should've taken only half an hour took an hour and a half. Josh kept saying that we were going to miss the ceremony, but we got there just in time to see the bridal party lining up.... from behind. As they departed, I realized that I should take some pics because there was no one else with this perspective of the bride and her father.

It was my first traditional Chinese wedding banquet for someone NOT related to me, and it was a lot of fun. I loved the ways they incorporated modern ideas, and it was so cool that their dog was allowed to walk around the ballroom during the reception. I do think that our waitperson was looking down her nose at us for not eating all the very traditional dishes. Hey, I did my part, eating double portions of jellyfish and shrimp in Japanese mayonnaise, but I draw the line at abalone.

The bride did stop by our table quite often and when she took a picture with us, she said, "You're neeext!!" and also shared the tip not to let the small projects slip by the wayside, or it will bite you in the butt closer to the wedding. I think I'd better get started on knitting Josh's yarmulke.

To change or not to change?

I've been pretty frustrated with Verizon customer service over the last three months, and have found out that the early termination fee is prorated based on how many months you've been in your contract, so I'm seriously considering leaving for another carrier. That said, I've been looking at Sprint and AT&T as my replacement. I crossed T-Mobile off the list when I visited a store and all the phones were fake display models. I heard some bad things about their new 3G service, and the fact that you aren't allowed to try out the phones makes it seem like they're hiding something.

I hear tons of bad things about AT&T, but all my cousins have that service and don't have a problem, and when I had it for two years, I didn't notice anything bad. I hear really bad things about the iPhone, but it wasn't even on my list of phones because I want a keyboard. My brother highly recommends Sprint and his smartphone doesn't have problems when he's visiting me in Manhattan or Brooklyn. I'd hate to stay with Verizon because they have a monopoly on NYC - it makes them seem more evil to me in a "Ha ha, you have no choice" way.

Lo and behold, I discovered this site that shows users' cell phone signal strength and dead spots. It pretty much shows that no service is flawless in NYC. I'm thinking of a Blackberry Curve 8900 or the new Palm Pre from Sprint at this point, unless AT&T gets a new iPhone that has decent coverage, a realy QWERTY, and MMS capability.

Remembering SF

We finally framed three of the photographs we bought in SF this past weekend. These were done by Sarka-Trager Photography and we actually met Richard Trager when we purchased the photos. I think these photos are my favorite souvenir from SF (as we've consumed almost all the wine we shipped back home), and every time I walk by, I think of that lovely day at the Ferry Building.

I can't wait to go back! But you know, gotta save money for the wedding and all.

Frozen yogurt at home

Yesterday, Josh and I were shopping in Red Hook and on the way back, I begged for him to swing by Park Slope so I could buy some frozen yogurt from Oko. Oko's froyo is fresh and tangy like Pinkberry, but is made from Greek style yogurt, which results in a richer taste and consistency. The frozen yogurt was delicious, a large (I shared with Josh, so I'm not a total piggy) topped with strawberry, kiwi, and mango.

When I got home, I searched for a froyo recipe similar to Pinkberry and immediately, this one popped up in Google. The recipe is actually from David Lebovitz's cookbook, Perfect Scoop, so I'm not going to display the recipe here due to copyright issues. I'm explaining myself because I'm tired of people accusing me of plagiarism because they didn't bother seeing I linked to the actual recipe.

The recipe is super easy and requires just Greek yogurt (I used Fage) and granulated sugar. I skipped the vanilla extract because I wanted the plain flavor that I normally order at Pinkberry or Oko. I was concerned that the granulated sugar wasn't going to dissolve in the thick, cold yogurt, but the next day, the sugar was all gone, leaving me with a sweetened yogurt base to pour into my ice cream maker.

Twenty minutes later.... a dreamy, rich frozen yogurt. It's definitely not Pinkberry because it's way richer, so I think it's more like Oko. The results, topped with strawberry and a drizzle of honey, got an enthusiastic thumbs-up from Josh and my tastebuds.



It's so dreamy, it gets a fancy photo-edit-makeover!