Merry Christmas!
Christmas Eve buffet
Cleaning out highlights
In the process of decluttering childhood items (toys, art, clothes, etc), I saw these two unique pieces by my little sister A:
And one by me (I think).
A trip to the Cloisters
My parents visited us in New York around Christmas last year. For one of our outings, we went to the Cloisters in Washington Heights.
The museum is an assortment of old European art and architecture that some guy imported. At that time (late 1800s through the 19-aughts), there were a bunch of old abandoned and half fallen-down monasteries and churches that no one was using. I assume people would be more interested in them now, but maybe there are just soooo many old religious buildings in Europe that these would still be considered dregs.
The collector assembled all of the partial monasteries into one eclectic building.
It’s a good place to take your parents 🙂
Last year’s birthday dinner!
For my (N’s) birthday last year, we ate at Claro, a Oaxacan restaurant in Brooklyn. I was originally interested in them because they make their own masa (and downstream products, like tortillas) from specially-sourced heirloom corn and use some amount of local produce and meat. They aren’t fully vegetarian (unlike For All Things Good) but do have a good selection and a fair amount of seafood.
J liked the idea of going to Claro because they have a Michelin star.
I don’t really remember what we got. One salad offered that we didn’t get had ground grasshoppers in the dressing.
Everything was really good! We also got to sit in the restaurant’s nice backyard garden.
Mooncakes for the fall equinox
Friend A who I went to grad school with (also likes cheap/free food, has been climbing with us recently) gave us some mooncakes she made! :’) They were presumably for the Mid-Autumn Festival, which happens around the autumn equinox and is coming up! The days are definitely getting shorter.
The mookcakes are actually the “snow skin” version (recipe that Friend A used), which uses a mochi-esque wrapper. Apparently snow skin mooncakes are easier to make than the traditional baked kind, so a better choice for at-home creation.
Garden update!
I got a melon!!! I didn’t even see it until the other day.
I started the garden pretty late this year, so the plants didn’t have a super long growing season and had to deal with hot weather early on in their lives.
The late start might have also made bug threats worse. The radishes mostly succumbed to some small gray bugs. I was able to harvest three bottoms but the leaves had been sucked dry.
The fence needs some shoring up, especially at the curb. Cars aren’t very careful with their doors and the fence isn’t incredibly sturdy…
Central Park and warmer weather
We’ve braved going out more now. Especially with the warmer, sunnier weather, others are venturing out too.
Spring bulbs
Early on in the season we saw crocuses and snowdrops, and some grape hyacinths, but the majority of the bulbs in New York seem to be daffodils and tulips.
They seemed to come up quite late despite early warm spells.
In other holiday news
