Whats Fa Dinna?

I’ve had a pretty interesting weekend of ingesting mind-altering substances and kicking it with the pals in Brooklyn.

Friday was a rainy bummer of a day, so I met with some friends at the hippest spot in Bushwick hell, Wyckoff Starr coffee shop, for a cup of DAMN good coffee, and HOT. Wyckoff Starr like Northeast Kingdom down the street, makes me feel very confused because it is so clearly a hangout for the white hipsters in the neighborhood, but also the only place to get a cup of coffee that doesn’t have that kitty litter aftertaste. We were en route to Main Drag Music in W’burg, so that I could attempt to trade in corny old Warwick bass for some cash dollars to buy myself a SansAmp or something.

It looks just like this.

DENIED. Main Drag= WAYYYY too cool to have a Warwick bass hanging around. He told me to go to Guitar Center, which was sort of insulting until I remembered that I got the bass years ago at a Sam Ash. So it goes. I’ll do it eventually. In the meantime if anyone wants a mid-grade active pickup “Rock Bass” I’ll sell it real cheap. Like 100 bucks.

We then ate some delicious and inexpensive Thai food on Bedford. Of course I ordered Drunken Noodles with Veggie Duck, the best thing ever. They are named for their large, irregularly cut wide noodles (as if a drunk person cut them up.)

We then decided that to soothe our rainy day blues, and because we are young and reckless and didn’t have to go to work that day, we would go back to my house and make some special tea.

Boy was that fun. Totally mellow and funny. Sometimes it takes a psychedelic experience to snap me out of my grouchy whining super neurotic inner monologue and be reminded that I’m 24, have great friends, live with my nice boyfriend and cat in a nice apartment, and basically get to do whatever I want, like play music, eat Thai food and screw around all day.

Today is Dibs’s birthday, so we celebrated yesterday by having a brunch with friends and dinner with the family.

We met with about 10 folks for brunch at Moto, a really nice and slightly fancy bobo kinda place off the Hewes ST stop of the J. It’s decorated in a “distressed antique” way, but not bad. Lots of rust, old mirrors, random French advertisements, black and white photos, etc. At night, bands play there and they seem to serve pretty decent wine, but I’ve never been there for dinner. The brunch food there is always fantastic, not too expensive, and there are several appealing vegetarian options. It is conveniently located, off our train, and most people like to go there. The only drawbacks: They don’t serve regular coffee, only Americano, which are delicious but are not free to refill. Therefore a brunch at Moto will require supplementary coffee later in the day. Also, there are usually a couple of really unbearable vampire-looking hipsters scrounging around, nursing coke hangovers with the grilled donuts ($4, plate of 3) and espresso. They won’t bite, but will sneer.

Anyhow, I always get one of two things at Moto brunch: the baked apple pancake with crème fraiche and real maple syrup, or the house eggs in creamy tomato sauce with grilled bread and mixed greens. Oh yes, Mot grills their bread and it’s pretty good. Then they put butter all over it and serve it to you with a place of eggs over easy cooked in butter, and doused in a sweet, tomato-y cream sauce. It is goddamn good and this is what Dibs had, so I had bites. I enjoyed the baked apple pancake, which is so buttery that each of your teeth has a little heart attack as you eat it. It’s real good. We settled up after a leisurely hour and a half brunch, just as the place was starting to fill up.
Then we went home to play with our beautiful new kitten Rose.
The fam showed up around 4, and we hung out and opened housewarming/birthday gifts. We now have an officially awesome Cuisinart blender, and I will commence to drinking smoothies and fancy drinks any day now. We decided it was too hot to cook in the house so we went out.
The challenge was to find somewhere nice but not super outrageous, with veggie and meat options, and a fun, hanging-out-with-family-in-NYC vibe. Original plan was to go to Flea Market on Ave A and 8th, where we went for brunch once. It seemed too pricey and also very meat-centered (French cuisine- duhhh.) So we gave a shot to Yuca Bar, catty-corner from our home away from home, the Sidewalk Café. This place definitely isn’t “cool” but it actually did the job quite well- we all got something good, drank some ridiculously boozy sangria (I opted for a Blue Moon). Even though they had a few veg options, we decided it was a splurge and eat fish kinda night, so we did. Curiously, the women all ordered the yucca-encrusted salmon, which came in a saucy mixture of sundried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, corn, tomato, avocado and a bunch of other things. It was quite delicious and very savory. The men ordered the mahi-mahi, which came over a bed of coconut rice with pineapple jalapeno salsa. Very sweet, also very spicy. Mahi mahi is really good, so is salmon for that matter, and having fish once a month or less makes it an even better treat.
All in all it was a pretty fun day. We ate well, hung out with good peoples, etc.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a week, dear reader(s?). I have been very busy at work, doing all kinds of actual work at the computer, using my break time to actually eat meals instead of just hanging out and blogging.

I’ve eaten many things since the last post,and while I’d love to share them all with you as promised, I can’t quite remember what all of them were. I’ll try keeping a diary and at least posting a “Digestive Digest” regularly.

I have not had any homecooked anything since yesterday afternoon. Monday morning, we enjoyed some delicious homemade Italian wheat bread from a newly discovered local bakery. I am a fan- the Polish bakery, while on our block and very cheap, does not make bread that compares to this stuff. And even this stuff ain’t great. We also had the usual French Press coffee and bleary-eyed early morning conversation.

For lunch, I brought delicious leftovers of steamed millet and red lentil dal. Many of my coworkers ogled my dogfood-looking food with curiosity and a fair amount of disgust, but only one had the courage to ask. Sometimes you just have to be the weird hippie in the office who’s eating a mushy pile of ancient grains and pulses, seasoned with Bragg’s and nutritional yeast, that you bought in bulk from the co-op.

Anyway, that was the most wholesome and nutritious thing I’ve eaten all week.