Flour, sugar, butter, vanilla

= shortbread cookies!

 Cutting my own shapes!

Beautiful. FU for Fordham! Along with some A's for Amy,

C's for Chelsea and Cody and an L for Linds. 

Eileen Visits!

At the end of August my friend Eileen is moving to London for 14 months! She's enrolling in a year program and hopefully I'll be able to make it out to meet up with her (if not in London, than in another country). She came into town last week to meet her flatmate, who is originally from Queens. 

After meeting her future roommate, she headed over to my apartment! She spent the night and the next morning we headed downtown to check out the Blue Dog Cafe (thanks for the Groupon, Chad and Jess!!!)

 In the cafe. 

 We brought Cody too. 

 Walked by my old stomping grounds at Martha!

 Hanging out near Herald Square. 

It had cooled down to the high 80's, which felt great after a few days of 100 degree weather!

 Empire State. 

 Eileen hopped on the bus back to Philly and Cody and I went to Baked by Melissa.

Mmmmm! Perfect bite sized cupcakes!

What is this, a cooking blog?

After eating essentially the same things for 2 months straight (eggs, PB&J sandwiches, my usual pasta concoctions, cereal...and more cereal) I've finally realized that I must branch out my cooking skills unless I want to cry into my cereal and pasta every day. Thanks to Google (try searching 'different ways to cook pasta' ha) I've scoped out several easy looking recipes and am looking forward to trying them out.

Tonight was homemade mac n cheese!

I almost died while cooking the pasta, due to it being 103 degrees out at 7 pm and my kitchen not being air conditioned, but I drank lots of iced water and somehow survived.

The ingredients. Flour, butter, cheese, pasta and milk. Easy!

 There was lots of whisking involved. 

 YUM. 

MORE YUM. 

It turned out great! Nice and cheesy and gooey. I used a four cheese Mexican blend, which gave the mac an interesting cheesy flavor, but I loved it. And it was so fast to make! Look ma, I'm cooking! 

Recipe:

- 1 to 1 1/2 cup dried noodles

- 2 tablespoons butter

- 2 tablespoons flour

- 1 cup milk

- 1 cup grated cheese

Directions:

- Melt butter in pan over medium heat. Whisk in flour for about 1 minute until roux (the butter flour blend?) starts to darken but not burn. 

- Quickly whisk in milk and turn heat down to low. Keep whisking until any lumps of flour dissolve. 

- Stir in cheese and once it melts add the cooked noodles

Also to note: today was 103 degrees (PLUS humidity) and I got to walk around on the pavement in my black suit and flats at 3 in the afternoon. Interview went great though! Crossing my fingers for this one, I love the company. 

Beat the Heat

Here's a new smoothie for ya!

Peanut Butter Smoothie (YUM)

 The ingredients. 

 Mmmmm.

 It's a bit of a weird color, but tastes delicious!

Recipe:

- 1/3 cup of milk

- 1/3 cup of apple juice

- 1/3 cup PB

- 2 bananas

- 1 cup frozen/fresh berries

- Optional handful of ice cubes

BLEND! 

USA

I got a kick out of this map that Cody found online:

Museum of Natural History!

Yesterday it was almost a 100 degrees in the city. I had an interview at 9 am, down on Wall Street (cross your fingers!) and was back uptown by 10:30. I didn't want to hide away in my room with the ac on all day, so I decided to go to the Museum of Natural History!

Chad and Jess had two free vouchers, which they passed along to me to use - thanks again! The vouchers included entry and admission to 4 special exhibits. I called another unemployed friend in the city, Brian, and we headed to the museum!

Unfortunately, we got there about 1:45 and just missed the last IMAX showing. However, we got tickets for the Frog Exhibit (featuring live frogs!), the Brain and a space show in the Hayden Planetarium called A Journey to the Stars. 

We started out with the Froggie Exhibit - it reminded me of Bret and all his iguanas, lizards and frogs.

 Camouflaged! 

 They look fake!

Ribbit. 

Didn't one of Bret's frogs resemble this fat guy?

They had dozens of frogs, from all over the world, including a poisonous frog that could kill up to 10 people! They dubbed him as 'the most dangerous animal in the world.' I am now full of random frog facts and am hoping a Jeopardy frog category comes up soon! Haha. 

After the frogs, we checked out the Brain exhibit, which was very cool. That was a walk through with several interactive areas, including ways to test your own brain power. 

After the Brain, we checked out the planetarium, which I was super excited for! The theater was huge and watching a show on the stars was awesome. It was narrated by Whoopi Goldberg. 

We also explored the other areas of the museum, in between our designated exhibit times.

Herd of elephants?

All in all, a great way to spend the day in the city. Since it was a Wednesday, the museum wasn't too crowded either. The Museum of Natural History might be one of my favorites in the city, especially after seeing the special exhibits there. 

East River Views

83rd and the East River!

So many boaters. 

 Love this park. 

East River. 

 Will U Marry Me? 

This guy had 5 jets up there!

 Gorgeous day on Roosevelt Island. 

 

Island Beach State Park

Last weekend I was lucky enough to spend a whole day at the beach!

And a beautiful beach at that.

Island Beach State Park is technically part of the Jersey Shore (it's just south of Seaside Heights, which is where they film the show), but because it's a state park, the entire beach is pristine and uncrowded.  No guidos here!

I'm lucky enough to be friends of a friend with a car. Jeep owner Jon drove Brian, Paul, Charlie and I the hour and a half to the beach. We left at about 3:30 am on Sunday morning! We wanted to miss the Jersey Shore traffic, along with catch the sunrise over the Atlantic.

We drove from the city, south through Brooklyn, across the Verrazano Bridge into Staten Island, across SI and into Jersey, through Tom's River and out onto the Jersey Shore! We drove through the State Park, stopped, deflated the tires and headed out onto the sand!

Apparently you can drive along the sand to your heart's content, as long as you've got fishing poles on you. We drove a few miles down the sand, past a few sleepy fisherman and picked a nice spot all to ourselves. All we had to do was open the car doors and unload our stuff out right there! It was great, no lugging heavy coolers and chairs miles across hot sand. We cast a line into the ocean, stuck our fishing pole in the sand and were good to go.

 Waiting for the sun to come up. 

 Getting lighter. 

 Beautiful beach. 

Almost there!

 Sunrise!!!

 So pretty!

About 5:45 am. 

It was weird watching the sun RISE over the ocean instead of set into it! I can't decide which I like better. I think I may have burned my retinas a bit watching the sunrise, but it was incredibly beautiful. 

After we watched the sunrise, we all promptly passed out on the sand. I woke up around 9 am to put on sunscreen and splash around in the Atlantic, which was surprisingly warm! Waaaay warmer than the Pacific! The water was crystal clear and beautifully blue and green.

The fishing pole set up!

We spent the whole day at the beach, skim boarding, boogie boarding and swimming. The waves don't look big, but were pretty powerful for their size. I swam out past the breakers and could still see the bottom clearly - visibility was at least 8 or 9 feet! While out there I spotted several fish, along with felt myself being hit with hundreds of tiny things...I managed to scoop one up and discovered it to be a tiny little jelly thing with a small blackish brown speck in the middle. I figured it was some weird plankton, but determined later that it was actually a fish egg! There had to have been thousands of them out there! I probably swallowed a few on accident. Ew. 

Jon had also brought a mask and net, which I used to pick up a small dead crab off the sea-floor. Fishing bait!

And Bret - there were surfers out there, but they were a bit laughable. A few shortboarders managed to catch some very short rides. There was one longboarder, who I didn't see catch a single wave. Even boogie boarding wasn't great on these waves, they were just too quick to break, and crashed all over the place. It was perfect conditions for skim boarding though!

Such a beautiful beach.
(You can see the cars parked on the sand in this picture!)

We left the beach about 5 pm, which was perfect because we didn't hit too much traffic on the way back. I was definitely a bit sunburned but it was well worth it! I hadn't been able to swim in the ocean in far too long, and it was nice to float around in the Atlantic for a day. 

Hopefully we can make it back to the State Park again this summer!