Topless in New York

I apologize again for the lack up updates but once again, I have a valid excuse. I’ve been doing many o’ interesting things so I have something to blog about!

Last week, I made a pilgrimage to my personal Mecca, aka SoHo, in New York City. What happens in New York stays in New York — unless you buy it. I spotted a few things that you book lovers (and foodies) will like there:

I spotted a man with a Granta book bag after getting lost outside of my friend’s swanky gym, Crunch. Granta is a student-run magazine at Cambridge University that published new authors once upon a time. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were both published there.

I recently picked up a copy of Summer at Tiffany about one woman’s dream job as a Tiffany’s sales girl in 1945 at their flagship location. Not exactly my dream job — I’d rather be buying Tiffany but she does get to meet celebs and look at pretty shiny things all day.

At the MoMa gift shop, I found the Kill Time notebook. There are pages full of pictures that encourage doodling. I bought it for my friend with ADHD and told her to quit her job.

An old friend from a previous life let me crash on her couch for the whole trip. And she also took me to Casa Mono, a spanish tapas restaurant where we proceeded to try sweetbreads. Casa Mono is a Mario Batali restaurant. Batali is, of course, an Iron Chef!

My friend Mimi who works in health care wasn’t thrilled to be dining on lymph nodes but we agreed it tasted like oyster. While we were dining, I saw a woman walk by topless – but that didn’t stop her from wearing a sun hat, sunglasses and a pearl necklace (save your dirty jokes). When in New York…

What’s even stranger is that I discovered Mario Batali wrote a Spanish cookbook with Gwyneth Paltrow. Judging by her blog, Goop, I thought she just drizzled truffle oil on everything.

Photo credits: etsy.com, nytimes.com

Oishinbo: Comic book food porn

I watch it every night. I curl up in bed and wait for it. I love my Iron Chef. It’s called food porn for a reason. There are way too many unnecessary close-ups and it’s highly addictive. And everything just looks SO much better than when you do it yourself.

Oishinbo: Izakaya: Pub Food puts all the excitement of spectator cooking into manga so it’s no wonder that it’s hugely popular in Japan and around the world. It follows Shiro Yamaoka, a lazy reporter who’s been put to the task of collecting all the best Japanese dishes to be placed on an “Ultimate Menu”. I imagine this would the kind of journalism that would face cuts after the recession but hey, this is a comic book and the Japanese take their cuisine a little more seriously.

For those of you who are familiar with comic books, this one features no heros, no blood, no fights. Oishinbo is a domestic adventure just as Virginia Wolfe wrote domestic epics. I was pretty amused by all the unique Japanese cuisine the book showed though. However, visuals are important to food and I wished it was all in colour but I guess that’s the norm with manga. Oh and the book reads right to left which may throw you off in the beginning.

Also, the recipes were far too simplified for me to actually try. (I’m a terrible cook) If you enjoy food porn or the simple over dramatization of the wild wild world of cooking, add Oishinbo to your menu.

Photo credits: google.com, google.com

Beautiful Book Sighting: La cuisine est un jeu d’enfants

I was looking up tips for hard boiling eggs (I’m a really bad cook) the other day when I saw a beautiful cookbook titled La cuisine est un jeu d’enfants, or “Cooking is Child’s Play”. It’s an adorable French cookbook for kids first published in 1963! Clearly, they didn’t have Swanson microwaveable dinners back then…

What’s more, it looks like the recipes are pretty yummy too. Check out simplerecipes.com for a translated (and more detailed) recipe from this adorable cookbook!

Photo credits: simplerecipes.com