Madison Square Eats!!

  My friend and Tridelt sister Kay and I went to to Mad Sq Eats today for lunch. It's located in the square adjacent to the park on the west side of Broadway and 23rd Street. It was such a sunny New York thing to do and I feel like we should have been in the midst of filming a romantic comedy. On the way there shed waved to a bike riding Statue of Liberty. Our first stop was Asia Dog where Kay got the vihn dog, and I got the pulled pork sammy. We both love our hot dogs, but the ones I deemed safe to try were already sold out. Perhaps I will have to go back! It was so nice to get out for lunch and talk with a girlfriend, since we're all so busy usually lunch is just done solo. After our delicious lunch at a coveted table, Kay was sweet and got cannolis from Stuffed Artisan Cannoli for her office and I got a blackberry mint ice pop from People's Pops. The man who worked at People's Pops complimented me on my pink cotton dress and it made me so happy! I like when people make you feel good :) The cannolis reminded me of ones I read about in Kelsey's Italiano Blog, although those were in Italy. Hey, this booth was near Eataly...

  It was a great way to spend the day before summer's kick-off weekend.

It also appears that not only do I have the three musketeers (Ramish, Tony and Manuel) downstairs, but Alice and Connie (from 201) and now a new friend Seth from 204. We met in the hallway today and he's from Long Island also! Yay for new office building friends.

Iconic Fashion

I wish there was more of this elegance in the world.

reblogged from Bourbon and Pearls: An evening gown from Madame Grès in 1954

Wild Subway Ride

We're all wearing dresses and sandals, and soon white pants will make an appearance (at least for those who haven't already broken the no white before Memorial Day rule). You all know how much I love cupcakes and how I travel on my lunch break to different cupcake shops around the city. There is one I knew about but was reminded by from my LIRR-friend Bert's food blog (Phoodographs and Finds), called Little Cupcake Bakeshop. There are two locations, one in Brooklyn and the other in SoHo.

Since it's so nice out, I decided to go there on my lunch break, Prince Street on the N or R Train.
SoHo seems to always be crowded no matter what, but going west from the subway stop, it was more shady and tree-lined, and not so congested - really cute. I passed two restaurants I would love to try soon, one is called Soho Park and the other, right across the street, is called Delicatessan. They're casual chic restaurants with doors opening out to sidewalk patios, and both were hoppin'! I get on the 6 train at Union Square- it's weird they have moving plates on the floor because the trains are at a tilt, and there's a HUGE "mind the gap" worthy hole between the train and the platform. When the train stops the plates shoot under the train so people can get on and off! - and it says it's going to the Brooklyn Bridge...I know there are more stops before that so I thought I was ok. Turns out the train flew past all the other stops and ended up at the Brooklyn Bridge stop. Luckily Broadway and the R was just a short block away from there and so I made it to Soho, and walked to the cupcake shop!! The girl was lovely, we had a conversation about how she is sick of wearing sweats to work, I'm sick of wearing jeans to work, and we are both glad it's time for dresses!

I decided on a blue velvet cupcake since it was one I have never tried before. Its a mix of blueberry and cream cheese frosting, kind of like eating a smurf! It was PERFECT. Soft, full of flavor, the icing was the perfect consistency, and that was a great flavor too - not too creamcheesey. And I made it back to the office on time. Snaps!

(Enjoy some summer tunes- my friend Katie and I love this song: Corrs- Summer Sunshine)



Gold!! ....and other things

   As much as I have tried to fight it, not only have I become a coffee girl, I've become a Starbucks coffee girl. It's a relatively new thing, within the past year or so, that I have used a sweet iced coffee to cool me down, to save me from the doldrums, from falling asleep. I've embarassingly enough, gotten to know all of the workers in the Starbucks by my office in Union Square, one of three! In November I registered a Starbucks card and since then, it's been a total competition with myself to get those 30 stars. A few weeks ago, I hit gold!!!! I'm almost to my first free drink. Yesterday I came home and my gold card was waiting in the mail. It's so pretty and it has my name printed on it. Maybe we should write a press release at work about me claiming this awesome "piece of real estate" haha.

  Yesterday was so humid and my shoes were literally sticking to my feet, and it was terribly painful. I have to find a a cheap, pretty pair of those convenient roll up flats they sell for women. I went to the record store during lunch again, where the A/C was full blast...aahhh :) I looked through their $2 bins and found mostly old Barbara Streisand, Diana Ross and unheard of bands, but I hit gold again when I was at the end...the debut album by Boston. I originally heard about them through the CW show Supernatural, because Sam and Dean love to listen to this type of music on the road to their ghost hunts. For $2, it was so worth it, and Peace of Mind/More Than a Feeling never sounded better than they did on the turnstile. I love browsing the record store, it makes me feel like i'm in the Vinyl Crocodile from American Dreams.

  On the way back to the office, the Sabras hummus truck was there handing out free hummus samples with bags of Stacy's Barely Naked chips. YUM. The perfect combo of salt, texture and crunch was a nice afternoon surprise snack. Paired with my iced coffee of course. I also walked past this crazy woman on a bike with a basket full of junk yelling "don't raise a fist, be a species-ist".On the subway ride home, this man in a suit rambled on about how he lives in the subway and the MTA gave him this suit so he can preach to the riders about his careers. Then someone gave him money. I wonder if these people wake up and decide to be a crazy ranter, or its spontaneous.

Blue York City Building

http://elianatomas.blogspot.com/

Thought this photo I found on the blog (link above) was the epitome of "blue york city!"

Rumors

To all of you out there: I'm a Gleek.

The show that everyone has been watching for two seasons has finally seeped into my TV schedule. I caught the Glee season two marathon on Oxygen this Saturday, and I was hooked. I DVR-ed the whole second half of season two becasue I was in the city all day. The show is perfect. There's something about it that gives you a feeling you can't describe. I can't wait to watch the first season (what is a good place to do that?) and first half of season two.

One of the episodes I really enjoyed was the one where they sang Fleetwood Mac. I'm not what you would call a "fan" of the band, but everytime their songs come on, I get happy. I love the dusty sound of music from the seventies. Kristin Chenowith, of course, is amazing in the show and did a great job performing "Dreams", but I especially enjoyed Quinn and Finn singing "I Don't Want To Know". So much that I listened to the song on repeat throughout my commute yesterday!! What a Fleek. (Fleetwood Geek).

Since I dusted off my parent's old record player a few months ago, I decided to search for the Rumors album, which was the album featured in that episode of Glee. The crackle of vinyl is amazing. That is where the songs sound best. Yesterday during lunch I came upon this awesome record store called Secondhand Rose Records on 12th and Broadway. It's 2 blocks from my office so you can be sure I will be back many times. It's a narrow store that is filled with shelves of records, crates of records stacked on top of each other, and a very fun, knowledgeable store keeper. He found a few copies for me ranging from $25 to $40, but I saved the more expensive, dust cover clad copies for the real collectors. I loved looking through all of the baskets of 45's and 33's, wondering who owned these records and the life they lived before they came to sit in this store.

After almost forgetting the album on the train due to a distraction by a converstaion with a fine as wine older man and a chef, I played the record all night. If only my family would break into random song like the kids on Glee.

Happy "End of the World Day".....

 That's great it starts with an earthquake...

R.E.M's- End of the World as we Know It

Reader, Reader

Since I commute to Manhattan each day for work, I have an hour each way to catch up on my reading. I have always loved to read, and in college, I didn't have much time for outside reading. But now I devour about 2-3 books a week, which is fabulous!! I rent them from the library or share them with friends so I don't have to spend $20 on each story.

Summer is coming and everyone is looking for that great beach read. I've read tons of them and they are all very similar- some kind of love story in the Hamptons involving some sort of designer item of clothing. Yawn.

Here are two of my picks, and also my favorite two books in my life so far!
1. Summer Sisters by Judy Blume - a story about love, friends, and choices made during summers on Martha's  Vineyard.


2. Lucia Lucia by Adriana Trigiani - a story about family, love and New York based in the 50's.

Let me know whatyou think!

Share your favorite books with me :)

Cupcake Friday

In honor of a rainy friday in the city, I decided to treat myself to Baked By Melissa! .  It's this cupcake shop which has an assortment of cupcakes such as red velvet, tye-dye, S'mores, mint, chocolate pancake, etc, plus a cupcake of the month. These cupcakes are the size of a quarter, which is the perfect size. Lately, I have been venturing all over Union Square and the Village testing out cupcakes and talking about them all with my twitter friend, @uhlisuhann . I have yet to try Sprinkles, the LA based cupcakery which recently arrived in Midtown Manhattan.

I got the tye-dye, red velvet, and my favorite, S'mores. They were gone in four bites! Yum.

This comes after getting yummy pizza at Little Italy pizzeria on University Boulevard, where I could watch New Yorkers and see the rain through the open front. I started reading the third installment of the Hunger Games, Mockingjay. Have any of you read the books?

My First Post!

I run across so many beautiful, interesting and heartwarming blogs every so often and I always wanted to try to create my own. I think once I get the hang of it, hopefully it will be as lovely as all of yours! :)