Rice to Riches

 At first, I thought this place was a retail store. Some kind of chintzy place that sold red hat lady accessories, just judging by the name. Then I started to read the ridiculous signs on the outside...

 Where the hell were we? We stepped inside and found out that there really is a store in New York for absolutely everything under the sun. A restaurant with nothing but rice pudding? C'mon.

I had the french toast flavor with streusel topping. It comes in that adorable little plastic container that's re-usable with a matching spoon! I've lost mine, though...I guess that means I have to go back!

http://ricetoriches.com/puddy.aspx

http://ricetoriches.com/puddy.aspx

On Spring St in SoHo!

Some scenes from around NYC, taken by Ryan before I got here!

 A Polish Fajita Panini. Talk about multi-tasking ethnicity!

 A cemetery somewhere in Queens.

 I have no idea what this is.

 Bloomberg LP! Where the magic happens!

 A giant teddy bear!

This little boy was really excited about it!

Papacito's Mexican Street Food

 We have a place in Cincinnati called Senate, which sells gourmet-ed-up versions of street vendor food (hotdogs, burgers, poutine, beignets, etc). I LOVE Senate. My favorite thing is the Peanut Butter & Jelly & Fois Gras sandwich, which is fried in butter. I like to chase that with duck fat fries drizzled in truffle oil with some lobster mac n cheese on the side. I haven't found that yet here in New York, so I was eager to try Papacitos. What is Mexican Street Food? I had no idea. This place was the only one serving food within 4 blocks on a Sunday during the worst rainstorm New York has ever seen (nope, not Irene, it was actually 2 weeks previous, 8 total inches).

 What is that blob of saucy reddness and cheese?. The breakfast burrito comes with scrambled eggs, tater tots and tomatoes. You can order any burrito "enchilada style" which means it comes swimming in red sauce, slathered in cheese and topped with sour cream. OMG, it was amazing.

 I ate the whole thing. Clean plate club.

 Karlen opted for the daintier tacos, a pork one and a grilled fish one. They were O.K.

And I got a ginger pineapple margarita.. It was meh for a margarita and didn't taste like ginger or pineapple at all.

I will definitely be going back, though. I can't wait to try their Elote!

Papacitos

My first foray into Queens

Forget what you've heard about Queens! It's a great place. I used Karlen's visit as an excuse to explore it. We went to PS1/MoMA first. It was interesting, but since neither one of us has ever studied art, especially contemporary art, we had a hard time finding an excuse to stay for very long. The concept of the building is cool, though, and I would recommend seeing it.

 Then I wanted to show Karlen the awesome-possum graffiti that you can see from the M train. I found the location, but then couldn't figure out how to get on the roof, which is where all of the really neat and beautiful paintings are. We saw a few neat ones from the ground.

 Then I found the cabbage patch of roach coaches. All shiny & new! Ready to be born and serve knishes to the masses! Actually, I have no idea what this place was, or why all the food carts were there, but the door was open so I took a picture.

That's it! When we came home, we treated ourselves to some Papacito's, which I'll show you tomorrow!

Brooklyn Brewery!

 So many times I've imbibed in a tasty beverage from Brooklyn Brewery without giving any thought as to how or where it was made. Honestly, I don't think a lot about where my beer was made, unless it's something fun & new. I certainly never put Brooklyn Brewery + Brooklyn Home-Sweet-Home together, so when Karlen came to visit and mentioned she was a fan of the Pennant Ale, I knew where to head to entertain her! As a plus, we could walk the place!

 Above we have some malt. Honestly, we'd already done the tasting of 4 beers at this point, and I didn't take notes, so I'm not really sure what these pictures are of, other than where they brew the beer. They bottle & can it Utica, NY, though.

 A fun fact that I remember is that Milton Glaser came up with the name and logo for the company, and he gets a cut of profit for helping the two founders out so much in the beginning and a weekly allotment of beer, which he picks up every week!

They offer 2 kinds of tours at the brewery, one on Mondays-Thursdays from 5-7, which is $8 and includes a tasting of 4 beers and a free glass. On the weekends, they have a beer hall open and free tours, but it doesn't include tastings. Ryan was super jealous, so I might have to take him this weekend!

Peter Pan Donuts

 I first learned about Peter Pan Donuts from Sheryl, or more recently, Sheryl Yvette. She's a vegan now, though, so she probably isn't eating there too much anymore. She'll get her own post here soon. She's the reason we moved to Greenpoint.

How cute are their green & pink uniforms?

I think Tina Fey summed this place up the best:

"Fact: Peter Pan Donuts on Manhattan Avenue in Greepoint is the tastiest (and cutest) donut shop in all the land. (We'd rank the Donut Plant #2, and, speaking of Greenpoint, Anella chef Joseph Ogrodnek makes a pastry basket that's quite exceptional.) That Peter Pan dominates the donut game is hardly a secret, as demonstrated by the throngs crowding the register on weekend mornings. But now that Peter Pan has just scored a big Tina Fey bump, you might need to wake up even earlier to score one of their amazing whole wheat donuts. The 30 Rock star told Esquire recently:

The best doughnut? That's Peter Pan doughnuts in Brooklyn. It's a Polish bakery. We shot nearby once for 30 Rock. It's a white-cream-filled powdered doughnut. And I really believe, when I first tried it, if I had a penis, I would put it in this doughnut. I finally understand what you guys are thinking about and what motivates you guys.

For the record, those promiscuous little donuts made the first move—it's not like we forced ourselves on them. [Via Greenpointers]" -Gathomist.com

I Saw it and I Liked it

Here's some good stuff:

1. Another homemade laundry detergent post! This one is for a dry, powdered detergent. I can't wait to try it when I get to Brooklyn! One thing I've been doing with my homemade detergent is swapping out the zote soap or ivory for Dr. Bronner's Bar Soap. I love their crazy message, and I love mixing the scents up. I've done Lavender-Lemon and Rose-Almond to name a couple! Also, this post came from a blog called Oops, I Craft My Pants! How can you not love that?

2. A Pulled Fruit Sandwich by my real life BFF, Lara, in which she uses Jackfruit. I mentioned this a couple weeks ago and I can't stop thinking about it! I bet it's so much better for you than real pork! I crave BBQ all the time, too. Lara and I used to cook together all the time when she lived in Clifton.

3.The Honey Trees. I can watch youtube on our TV now, and I'll never go back to real radio. Sorry, bedside table alarm...you served me well. I'll save the emergency battery ones to take on picnics, to the beach, etc, but now that the sound actually travels to other rooms with TV radio, I don't need to fiddle with dials anymore.

4. A silicone steamer! This will be sooo perfect for making the whipped potatoes that were on Cook's Country TV two weeks ago. You steam the potatoes before mashing and then whipping them so that they're not totally waterlogged.

Charlie Kimble & Bridget Lancaster, will you guys adopt me?

Don't go misconstruing the topic of this post

Well, well, well. Here we are. Yes, we made it to NYC. It took a month to get the internet.

I should post pictures of our apartment!

Our new hood!

Our hangouts!

Ryan's office!

But no.

The first blog post as a brooklynite will be on the topic of the Pickle Eating Contest that Ryan participated in. Sponsered by Brooklyn Brine and hosted by Black Rabbit, which is one block away and made us feel quite at home here, we decided we'd invite the few friends we'd made so far to watch Ryan chug some vinegar-y delights. Ryan's friend from work, Justin, couldn't resist joining, too. Here they are, ready to go.

 This is the announcer with his mega-phone. He tells us that there was a cash prize last year, but this year, they will pick up the bar-tab for the winner as a prize. Last year's winner showed up, found out there was no cash prize, and left. Apparently, he was a professional eater. Whose profession is that? Seriously. I mean, I would love to eat professionally, but I would also like a toilet seat made of gold. That's our friend Arie, in the front, in the conductor's cap.

 The chow down begins.

 What are they looking at?

 Something has caught their attention and distracted them from eating the pickles at a winning rate. We're about 2 minutes into the contest at this point.

 There were 20 whiskey sour flavored pickles in the jar. That's a lot of pickles.

 Forget it. This guy here ate all 20 pickles AND DRANK THE BRINE in less than 5 minutes. He even enjoyed some fried pickles afterward.

 Who wants to do it next year? Me! It looked like so much fun! Ryan only polished off about 5. I can totally take him!

September 11 & Pizza

Michael (what we call the mayor, because calling him Bloomberg is confusing) told us New Yorkers to go about our daily business on September 11th, so that's what we did. Those 2 little blue dots off in the distance are the beams from ground zero. Below are photos of the Empire State Building lit up all red, white & blue. I took all of these photos from the India St. ferry pier.

Most of Sunday's ceremonies were for families of victims, and we were too paranoid about taking public transit, so we stayed in. We think we might go to the unveiling of the monument this weekend, which is open to the public.

And then we ate pizza at Paulie Gee's. Metromix claimed this as the best pizza in NYC (although, not traditional NYC style) and it's right here in lil ole Greenpoint!

Below is the oven they cook it in.

We had The Greenpointer with prosciutto. We like our neighborhood so much that we feel it's appropriate to eat it, too. This was covered in arugala, shaved parm cheese & lemon juice.

This had super crispy (almost fried) pepperoni and was drizzled with a special honey that is harvested in Brooklyn and fermented with vinegar & red chiles. www.mikeshothoney.com It's my favorite. You can buy the honey in bottles at the bar, which I want to do, so that I can make some kind of awesome coffee cake with it.

The pizza is baked with fiore di latte, which is mozzarella made from cow's milk, instead of buffalo.

And then there's the 2nd best part of Paulie Gee's, which is the bathroom. This picture on the wall indicated to me which room was for ladies.

 There is no fear that anyone will forget to load a new roll of T.P. on. I want this for my own bathroom.

No one is getting through the door with this lock.

 And a cute, dainty mirror on the wall.

 Where is the sink? Outside of the W.C. I washed my hands next to a dude. He commented on the all the cool fixtures in the bathroom, too!

I took some pics of us eating, but they turned out to be open-mouth mastication shots...so I'll spare you!

Karlen left for home today, and I'll miss her, but it's also nice to get back into the routine. Tonight, it's back on Weight Watchers for us. We're also excited about finding Battlestar Galactica on Netflix streaming! Getting Netflix has been a little dangerous for our social lives...