You say it's your birthday (duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh)

That was my attempt at a guitar riff in a blog title. I'm not sure how successful it was.

Yes, folks today is my birthday, and what better way to celebrate it than by seeing a Broadway musical and then eating at a critically acclaimed restaurant? That's right, I saw In The Heights (for the 4th time, if you're keeping count) again today. Before you think "Lena, come on, there are other shows in the world," I was the chaperone for about 50 campers - that's right, today I was PAID to go see In The Heights. Love it. It was just as good as the first three times (although my seats were considerably worse). It is also nice to know that the lyrics were clear enough to understand from the balcony, unlike some shows (ie, Passing Strange).

Off I go to Blue Hill for dinner! Expect a full report, but few photographs.

I leave you with this birthday themed video:

Battle Time!!!!

Here we go, readers: Iron Chef Hudson: Battle Zucchini!!!!!!

Between our two CSAs, Meredith and I received several pounds of zucchini - big ones, little ones, long ones, round ones. What's a girl to do? Make two different kinds of zucchini bread (apparently). Meredith opted for regular (read about it here), while I decided to go back to a recipe that I've tried and loved before - Clotilde Dusoulier's Chocolate Zucchini Cake.

A side note - Meredith took and photoshopped all these pictures. Gotta love her. Please don't tell me that her pictures are way better than mine. I already know that. Really. Also, I can't quite get all of them to work right now.....I'm getting there, I promise - technical help is needed.

But back to the cake. You can check out the recipe yourself here. I don't follow it exactly - when this recipe was published in the cookbook "Chocolate & Zucchini," a few details had been changed and I followed them - you'll be able to see what they are as I go along.

First I grated up my zucchini! This is an action shot. Meredith took it. She's fancy like that.


Then I chopped up some bittersweet chocolate. Usually, I'd buy bittersweet chocolate chips, but I couldn't find any in Hudson. I did find a huge bar of bittersweet chocolate though...as you can see (or would if I could get my pictures to work).

I put them in a bowl, along with a half cup of flour and mixed it up. This is so that the zucchini and chocolate chips don't sink straight to the bottom of the cake.

Then you take a new bowl and mix your dry ingredients together - flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk it up good so that it's all even.

Then you set it aside and mix brown sugar and olive oil together. I know, you're thinking "olive oil? That's crazy." But you're wrong. It is perfectly delicious and way better for you than butter. Then you mix in some vanilla and 3 eggs, one at a time.

Slowly incorporate the flour mixture to the wet mixture. The batter will be really thick. Then mix in your zucchini/chocolate concoction.

Here's my batter and Meredith's batter, side by side.


And here's the finished cake! I baked it at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes.


It was very good. You can't even really taste the zucchini (which could be a plus or a minus). It was nice and chocolatey. Who doesn't like that? Meredith's was excellent as well - super moist and delicious. Here we are, competitors no more and friends again, pretending to toast each other at our fake wedding.

I'm not ready yet for battle

In fact, I'm pretty tired. Some nights are like that. I was tired last night as well, so I made these quick glazed veggies - specifically carrots and baby turnips and small potatoes. The carrots and the baby turnips were left over from this week's CSA - I rescued them from rotting in Michael's fridge over the next few weeks. The potatoes I picked up at the supermarket (shhh, don't tell anyone) along with some flank steak (I love me some flank steak - plus, Meredith said she wanted to see me make some side dishes and I am nothing if not accommodating to my readers).

Quick Glazed Root Vegetables with Dill

1 bunch carrots
1 bunch baby turnips
a few baby potatoes, red or white (or both)
about 1 cup chicken stock
1 tsp butter
some fresh dill
olive oil

1. Peel your carrots and trim and wash them, along with the turnips (are you supposed to peel turnips? I didn't).

2. Chop them up! You want them all to be about the same size.


3. Put a sauce pan over medium high heat and heat up your oil. Toss in the veggies and give them a quick sauté.

4. Add the chicken stock (you want to almost cover the veggies - but not quite). Cover the pan, turn down the heat and let it all chill out for about 20 minutes or until the veggies are fork tender and the liquid is almost all evaporated, but not quite.

5. Add the butter and the dill and mix it all up. Make sure to spoon some of the leftover liquid/butter mixture over your plate. Eat it! It's good. I like it next to this nice cut up flank steak. Meat and veggies...yum.

.......and we're back

Zack and I are back from Hudson! We had a very relaxing weekend that convinced me of the need of a back porch and a rocking chair in my life. If you've never been there, Hudson is a lovely place, filled with cute restaurants, used bookstores, touristy antique shops/chichi home decorating stores and nice people. Here's a picture of a stall at the Farmer's Market (you didn't think I'd go to a city and miss the Farmer's Market, did you?).


More posting to follow, including a very special dual entry with A Player and A Baker which I shall name (for now) "Iron Chef Hudson: Battle Zucchini!"

Tune in soon.....

Happy 4th of July!

I know it's only July 3rd, but I am about to be on my way to Hudson, NY to spend the weekend with Meredith, Michael, Gwen and Zack (and probably some other people. We'll see). Meredith goes to Hudson all the time (Michael, her bf, has a house there), but I have never visited, despite the fact that she's one of my closest friends. So, hello three day weekend, Hudson, here I come!

I don't know what the internet situation is up there, so don't expect a lot of posting. Hopefully, I'll convince Meredith to take a bunch of pictures for me and upload them with her computer cord that she can locate (unlike me and mine).

Enjoy this patriotic musical video in the meantime! Watch some fireworks! Grill something! Think about America (and yes, that is Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World playing John Adams).

My love knows no bounds

I love musicals. You know that already if you've met me. Or read this blog. Or are a discerning person and can figure out what the title of my blog is about. Sometimes, I think I am all alone in my love of musicals. I often drop little references into my conversations, like "Here we are, Sunset and Camden," or "Cracker Barrel went out the window with the milk pouch," and I am usually met with a weird blank stare (unless Becky is there).

But today I found hope. I went to see Wall-E (which was AMAZING) and was immediately treated to Michael Crawford's voice blaring out over the speakers singing "Out there....full of shine and sparkle..." My heart leap up, even though I've always hated Hello, Dolly! I'm weird like that. Then, I was riding the subway home and I pull out my Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight comic book and come face to face with a throwaway joke about Xanadu (the Broadway musical, not the movie). Here it is! Living proof that other people in the world secretly think about musicals. Even super cool people like Andrew Stanton and Joss Whedon. I realize that these people may not be "super cool" in a traditional sense. But it's good enough for me.

I'm ending this post with a clip of "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," since it's been stuck in my head all evening. Enjoy.

Opa!

Tonight I was too lazy to cook. Plus, it was nice out, I thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of the good weather and go somewhere where they would serve us outside. Zack and I chose here:


Zorba's Souvlaki Plus - I'd never been there, but my cousin Sam used to order from there all the time when he lived with us. The screens you see in the picture were nowhere to be found since it was so great outside (I didn't take this picture. I found it online. Shhhhh). I love New York in the summer. We tried the Zorba's Platter (souvlaki (kebabs), gyro and donner meat (which is some sort of pressed lamb meat), tzatziki (greek yogurt dip) and pitas. I liked it.

We also had this cool "greek pizza." I was going to take a picture of it but I forgot. It was spinach and feta over pita bread with grilled tomatoes and melted mozzarella on top. It came on top of french fries, which seemed crazy to me, but who am I to judge? Zack liked it.

More people should live in Astoria. Then we could go out to dinner more. Wanna move here? It's real nice.......