potatoes
Shopping at Trader Joe’s is a dangerous game. You could be perusing the frozen foods section, looking for some fruit to improve your smoothie game when suddenly it catches your eye - the chocolate covered something that you’ve been trying to avoid but your willpower is simply not strong enough.
One of the perks of living in a massive city is that it is CONVENIENT. Unless you work in an office, it is now totally plausible to never have to leave your apartment: you can freelance from your couch, order everything from coffee to toilet paper (in under an hour!) to pet food straight to your door, and access movies and TV shows at lightening speed. Skype your parents every once in a while and your fortress of solitude is complete.
I really try to not rely on these services. Even when it's pouring rain and the last thing I want to do is run errands, I make myself get off my ass and into the pharmacy. There are times, though, when the prospect of bagfuls of groceries magically appearing on my doorstep is too appealing - since we started the blog, we've needed a lot more flour and sugar than I will ever be able to carry, so sometimes I cave.
During my senior year of college, I noticed that I was peeing all of the time. Like, all of the time - upwards of 20 times a day. I couldn't sleep through the night without getting up to pee, and having to go up and down a lofted bed made it a whole ordeal. I drink a lot of water so I thought that was why, but something seemed amiss. I went to the doctor to get a check-up for my summer job and mentioned my issue. He sent me to a urologist, who sent me to get an ultrasound. It came back abnormal, so off to outpatient surgery I went.
To make a very long story short, it turned out there were cysts in my bladder. And they weren't even paying rent to live in there! The doctors had never seen anything like it before, which made me very special, but also made me very scared. When I woke up from the anesthesia I was crying because of how freaked out I was. I couldn't really see, so I can't picture this part very well, but one of the nurses gave me a bag of cheez-its to eat post-surgery, either because I asked for them or she intuited it because nurses are SAINTS, but then I started crying more because my mouth was so dry that I couldn't eat the cheez-its. It was a rough day.
I was talking to my parents on the phone last night, and I started the conversation with a cheerful statement: people are terrible and girls are growing up with habitual predators literally everywhere. Everywhere! I knew this before the Harvey Weinstein news hit, as did every other woman on the planet, but now that we're openly acknowledging and condemning sexual assault, it feels simultaneously better and worse. Better, because people (ahem, men) are finally, FINALLY listening and believing, but worse, because, well, after seeing man after man after man whom I admired be accused of sexual assault, the little faith I had in humanity is pretty much shot. Bye forever, grain of hope. It was nice hosting you for a while.
I do some bat mitzvah tutoring on the side, and lately I've been thinking about how to empower girls of all ages in a realistic way. When Hilary Clinton lost the election, it was a major fuck you to the idea that a girl can grow up to be anything she wants. She can try, but if a man, regardless of his qualifications, is vying for that same position, she's screwed. So what is there to do?
Thanksgiving at my house is a bit of a scene. Depending on whether the Michigan-Ohio State football game is in Ann Arbor or Columbus, we usually have between 20 and 35 people at what I can only accurately call a Thanksgiving feast. Even though my mom complains about hosting, I know she secretly loves it. Family from both sides come into town along with a few old friends and college pals - what's not to love? It's certainly a joyous occasion filled to the brim with laughter and lots of carbs.
Ah, carbs. If Thanksgiving was a Jewish holiday, I'm pretty certain it would be a mitzvah to eat carbs. Between the stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and rolls, you've got all the starch you need to hibernate for the rest of the winter. My mom loves to complain about the carbs. In fact, she chooses her carbs wisely (and dutifully reports back to me) usually opting for stuffing over mashed potatoes. I'm more of a little bit of everything kind of girl, myself, but I will admit that in recent years the mashed potatoes have been so lackluster that it's been hard to make the case for multiple carbs.
Enter this celeriac mash.
I so wanted to save this recipe for Thanksgiving. The idea of bringing a rich and comforting bowl of love to your favorite meat-eater's house in lieu of turkey was just the compliment my favorite holiday needed. But then, life happened. Rina and I have been swamped, as of late, between the Jewish holidays and fall kicking into full swing (though the weather would beg to differ), we haven't been able to cook and shoot as much as we wanted. Thankfully, we had this killer recipe in our back pocket. And you know what? Today might not have been Turkey Day, but it was the perfect day for a bowl of cheesy carbs. If you're in NYC, you'll know that this weather has been absolutely dreadful. Skyrocketing levels of humidity that dare any straightened piece of curly hair to withstand its wrath accompanied by the most depressing grey skies is enough to make a case of Mondays take a turn for the worse. And I know I wasn't the only one feeling a bit anxious and blue today, it seemed that all my friends and coworkers were in the same boat as I was. So, this recipe is just what the doctor called for, and if we're being honest, it's the perfect way to kick off the week.
Hi, my name is Rina, and I'm addicted to potato chips.
"Hi, Rina."
Well, maybe a more accurate statement would be the following:
Hi, my name is Rina's uterus, and I'm addicted to potato chips.
"Hi, Rina's uterus."
There we go. Much better.
When Rina and I first started this blog, one of our early debates was regarding the most superior potato style. I mean, what an an impossible question, right? Think of the wonderful forms potatoes take - crispy french fries, greasy hash browns, sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows, salty chips.
While I have yet to meet a potato I don't like, I find that versatility is key and lot of these potato styles (i.e. sweet potato casserole) don't really go with everything. Enter this recipe. I was playing around in the kitchen after getting a ginormous bag of potatoes in my weekly CSA (if you're not already a part of one and are looking for fresh, local produce, I highly recommend you look into a CSA. More info here). I needed a potato style that could last me many meals over multiple days. I also had some dried sage from a past CSA, so I quickly doctored up a new kind of roasted potato - a cross between home fries, roasted potato wedges and parmesan truffle fries (ish).
I bet you'd never guess eggplant, mango and hard-boiled eggs go well together. But I'm here to tell you they absolutely do.
Culminating a three day virtual street-food journey through Israel, I'd like to introduce Sabich. Everyone knows about falafel and shwarma. You hardly need to hound the streets of Manahttan for one of these tasty sandwiches –they’re sold on every corner. But this extra-special sandwich, found only in Israel, has made a home for itself at the top of my favorite street eats list. In fact, I'll go as far as saying this is my favorite G | G recipe made to date.
The post-college, pre-kids stage is a time when friendships feel crucial. Especially since I'm living in a separate state from my family, I rely on my friends (and boyfriend, but that's for another time) for the day-to-day social interactions and trouble-shooting. Over my time in New York, my friends have accompanied me to various doctor's appointments that have felt scary, and I have done the same for them. Yes, we are adult women who are perfectly capable of going to the doctor's on our own. That isn't the point; the point is that we are there to support each other through the parts of life that are happy and exciting of course, but also scary and upsetting.
We decided we wanted to make purple potato knishes six months ago.
Six. Months. Ago.
Six months ago I lived in a different apartment, with a different roommate, in a different bourough. I had a different job. I had a different life.
And yet. AND YET. These knishes haunted my dreams through it all.