my birthday week

a week of birthday presents from seth:

1. gift certificate for a week's worth of coffees from my favorite coffee shop, oren's daily roast
2. a killer bouquet of sunflowers
3. my first downloaded book for my new kindle (thanks mom and dad)
4. bacon, egg whites and cheese on whole wheat bread with coffee for me to bring to work
5. a marc jacobs t-shirt i have coveted for 6 months
6. gift certificate for a manicure from my favorite local nail salon
7. tickets to see explosions in the sky in central park tomorrow night

pretty awesome list of my favorite things - yay for presents!

Food Club Takes It on the Road

What is food club you ask? First off, food club is genius. Everyone should have a food club. In one quick sentence, food club was created as an excuse to eat out with great friends who like to eat as much as we do. We try a new restaurant in New York about once a month and rotate turns amongst members (5 of us) to pick new restaurants. Guest members are allowed, but only if you are fun. Applications and bribes are currently being accepted. (Note: Jamie prefers bribes in the form of shoes.) Food club has been around for over a year and we have eaten everything from Ethiopian food to fried chicken (Korean and American) to Italian.

Yesterday, we took the show on the road. A car was rented, maps were printed and we set off to Jamie's old stomping grounds, Philly. Our mission is probably obvious -- we went to eat cheesesteaks. And by eat I mean visit three different cheesesteak places to determine our favorite. Total consumption of the day: 6 cheesesteaks, one order of cheese fries, one soft pretzel, and multiple beers. By the end, one of us was slumped over the table and declared that her beer tasted like cheesesteak. We viewed that as success.

The trip down was long. Fil mentioned he hadn't eaten yet and became slightly delirious while we sat in traffic and downpouring rain. After a two hour ride we found parking (triumph number one) and made our way into South Philly.

First stop, Geno's. In spite of the humidity (the rain mostly held off for us, triumph number two) the lines were long. Fil gazed longingly at the line cooks making the cheesesteaks while the rest of us tried to distract him from his growling stomach by naming the various "celebrities" whose pictures were posted all over the walls and ceiling. Among notables were Rocky and Cher, and by notable we mean the lone recognizable faces. We observed how incredibly obnoxious the family who owns Geno's seems to be upon seeing the sign that requires people to order in English. As we got closer to ordering, strategy was discussed. After a democractic process, we decided to order two cheesesteaks at each restaurant, one "whiz with" and one "provi with." In non-Philly speak this means that one cheesesteak would have fried onions and cheese whiz and the other would have provolone and fried onions. Since people in Philly are crazy about how to order a cheesesteak, Jamie was placed in charge of ordering because she had mastered the lingo in high school having spent many late nights at these fine establishments. By the time we got our food, we were so hungry we didn't really taste the cheesesteaks. In spite of our hunger, we weren't that impressed. The cheese whiz was watery, the provolone was bland. The best part of the sandwich was the bread, which isn't saying much. Geno's got some explainin' to do.

After a brief huddle, we decided to immediately move to Geno's across-the-street-competitor, Pat's King of Steaks. Pat's is the self proclaimed originator of the cheesesteak in Philly and had a noticeably friendlier vibe. There was no requirement about ordering in English but there was a helpful sign posted about how to order. Seth and Micol procured a table while Fil and Jamie were in charge or getting the food. We stayed on the same track with a last minute spontaneous order of cheese fries by Jamie (triumph number three). The cheesesteaks at Pat's were much better than Geno's. It is obvious Pat's takes pride in its sandwiches. They are bigger, more carefully made and better flavored. And the cheese fries. Well, let's say Pat's wins for best whiz ever. They should patent it.

We took a short break from our cheesesteak crusade to venture into the Italian market, which is just steps from Geno's and Pat's along 9th Street in South Philly. The Italian market is basically all things good that are food, as you walk from cheese shop to butcher to fishmonger to greengrocer. The food is fresh and the prices inexpensive. Seth walked away with a sliced hot sopresetta (that's personal) and Micol picked up some Italian cookies that reminded her of growing up in Venice. We lost Seth a few times in the fish market and we giggled our way through a visit to a butcher shop. Scrapple was discussed and in our first good decision of the day we did not stop to try it.

After perusing the Italian market, we headed back to our car and drove to Olde City for our third cheesesteak venue, Campo's. Campo's is consistently voted "Best of Philly" for cheesesteaks and is Jamie's favorite. Once again our order was duplicated and a soft pretzel was added (by Jamie of the "eyes bigger than her stomach"fame). The provi with was definitely the best of the day at Campo's and the whiz with was a strong second. Jamie and Micol had a difficult time finishing their share, given their extra indulgence on Campo's soft pretzel with whiz. (or maybe it was the previous two cheesesteaks they had eaten but who is counting). They were gross. But perhaps Fil and Seth got even grosser, taking it upon themselves to finish what Jamie and Micol could not eat of the cheesesteaks. Delicious!

At this point, we waddled over to Triumph brewery (also in Olde City) to sample some of their housemade brews, though Triumph had a tall task to face in the midst of our food comas. Flash now to Micol opining that her beer tastes like a cheesesteak as she loses consciousness at the table. There was a lot of giggling and discussions of cheesesteak. After the votes were tallied, we had the following winners of the day:

Best Whiz With: Pat's

Best Provi With: Campo's

By now, none of us were speaking coherently. Another cheesesteak might've been the antidote, but instead we did the smarter move and got back in the car to NYC. After a brief stop in Newark for wine and dessert (yes, we ate even more and the tasty Portuguese pastries Fil introduced us to were well worth it), we made it back to NYC triumphant by our successful adventure.

and one month later

we are pretty much the same as we were before the wedding except someone has a new last name. and it isn't seth. despite the extreme frustration of changing my name at work and at the dmv (a place no one should ever have to visit), i am officially a lieberman. (cue the applause and extreme relief that my ethnicity is no longer a mystery).

yesterday was exactly one month after our wedding, so naturally seth and i decided to go out and eat an enormous meal. rarely do we need such an excuse but we decided to try a fancy little place on downing street calling mas. it's a cute little french restaurant that features what they call "farmhouse cooking." i still don't know what that means, but whatever it is, it is yummy. when we got to the restaurant i had already scoured the menu and had every intention of eating in moderation, meaning sharing an appetizer and ordering a main course.

our server was charming and had a lovely british accent. naturally when she suggested the six course chef's tasting menu with dishes you can't get on the regular menu, we couldn't resist. don't forget, it was a wednesday night. at 8:30. and we just committed to eating 6 courses of food.

it turned out to be the right choice. the food was quite lovely and the service was excellent (british accents make everything better). not to mention that the servers synchronized their placement and removal of each plate of food so neither of us ever had more food than the other, which turned out to be a very cool impact on the meal. mas smartly scaled down the dishes so we ate tastes of everything instead of grappling with 6 large portions. surprisingly i didn't feel awful at the end and seth was actually full (the timing was also well done). my favorite dish consisted of poached lobster over a bed of fava beans, spinach and tiny pearl onions. seth loved the fried zucchini flower stuffed with shredded pork.

and for the dessert - we got quite the treat. as you can see from the picture above, we got a message from the chef himself. happy anniversary to us! (p.s. that dessert was a chocolate cheesecake with brown crumbles and poached cherries - swoon).

hard to believe it...

but we have been home from our honeymoon for a week now. almost makes me miss the spaghetti, egg roll, greek salad dinner at the holiday inn in athens. almost.

we have been slowly pulling together pictures from the wedding weekend and the honeymoon. so many people have shared the fantastic pictures they took over the wedding weekend and our photographer just sent us a cd of the 700 pictures he took. i also had to go through 1000 pictures (my own fault really) that i took while we were in greece. i managed to narrow it down to about 250 which you can find on our picasa page here: http://picasaweb.google.com/pookie.mcguire/HoneymoonPics#

this weekend in new york the weather was gorgeous and a great change from the incessant rain of the past week. seth and i tried to spend as much time as possible outside (we can't let our tans fade completely). at separate times over the weekend we found ourselves in central park, surrounded by about 50 screaming kids, and hudson river park, surrounded by couples and girls in bikinis. quite a funny contrast but we had loads of fun at each park. we caught up with friends, happily ate thai food (i.e. the opposite of greek food) and tried to readjust to "real" life. we also finally tried co., the pizza place on 9th avenue started by jim lahey that has garnered serious buzz causing the lines to go around the block. apparently people don't want pizza on saturday morning at 11:30am because we were able to walk right in. the pizza was great, the service not so great and the company perfect. i am still dreaming of the ham and cheese pizza and seth mumbled something about fennel and sausage pizza in his sleep last night. now if it was only the weekend again already...


<---- ham & cheese pizza


<---- sausage & fennel pizza

A Sampling of Wedding Pics from our photographer Agaton

Our brilliant photographer blogged about our wedding, a total honor in my book. Check out his post below and see some pics of the big day! (the link might take you to the bottom of the post, just scroll up if you don't see pics)

http://www.agatonstrom.com/blog/2009/05/bout-time.html#links

We are currently totally jet lagged but will be posting more pics once we emerge from this fog of sleepiness.

Athens to New York - Day Fifteen

After all that, we made it!   We are officially home, jet lagged and trying desperately to stay awake.  We ordered Chinese food in an attempt to eat food that was the opposite of Greek food. By the time we go to sleep tonight we will be awake for nearly 24 hours but in order to make it to work tomorrow, we need to push through.   Hopefully Chinese food plus Daisy of Love on the DVR will help us to get to 10:30 without falling asleep.    

Crete to Athens to Athens? - Day Fourteen

This morning we wake up early at 5am ready to catch our flights home. We have a 7am flight from Crete to Athens then a noon flight from Athens to Newark. We find the airport in the dark, drop off our rental car with the parking lot attendant (no mention of the scratches on the Accent) and are sitting at the gate with plenty of time thinking how happy we are we didn't get lost. Then, the Greek insanity began.

At around 6:45am, there is announcement informing us that our flight is delayed. No reasons given but we hear a bit later that there is low visibility. We don't worry because we have a 4 hour layover in Athens, plenty of time to deal with delays. How naïve we were. Around 7:30, the locals get restless. There is some yelling, in Greek of course. Gate attendants shrug and say they have no information (demonstrating the universal nonverbal sign for cluelessness). More yelling in Greek. Note - no yelling or information in English. We then discover, through a fellow traveler who speaks a little English, that the plane is out of fuel and still in Athens but is coming to Crete by 8:30. 8:30 comes. No plane. 8:45. No plane. Around 9:00 there is still no plane and the Greeks are furious. There is screaming, yelling and desperation but no one knows anything. We sit at the gate, helpless because no one is saying anything in English.

Then, our second saint of the trip appears, Poppy (saint one being the taverna operator / boat owner from Sweet Water Beach). Poppy is Greek and lives in Athens but studied in the States and speaks flawless English. She takes great pity on us and starts translating while still shouting in Greek at the airline employees (a real multitasker). She is fiery and we love her. We learn the flight hasn't left Athens yet. More screaming. Now we are nervous. There are people on a 10:45 flight from Athens to JFK that they are sure to miss. The airline just shrugs and repeatedly suggests we just wait and fly tomorrow. We learn that many of the Americans flying from Crete are military personnel who are on leave for just a short time and are losing precious days with their families. The airline just shrugs and we wait. We hate them and start imagining stealing a plane ourselves to fly the 35 minute flight.

Finally, the plane arrives at 9:45 and we start to board. It will be tight but there is a chance for us to make our noon flight. But of course, Aegean Airlines completely ruins that chance because they decide to handwritten vouchers for a free flight for each passenger due to the lateness of the flight making the plane EVEN LATER. Amazing. But it gets better. We get on the flight, are ready to depart, when we hear more commotion in Greek. People get up to leave the plane. Poppy comes over and explains they boarded people on the WRONG FLIGHT so there are not enough seats. We couldn't make this up.

We finally take off and arrive in Athens at 11:45. Seth goes to get our bags and Poppy and Jamie race to the Continental counter only to see it empty and the sign saying the gate is closed. We missed our flight. Poetic justice for a day of frustration that seemingly cannot get worse. But it does.

A representative at the Continental informed Jamie that because Aegean Airlines is the cause of us missing the Continental flight, Aegean will need to rebook us. While this makes sense to us, this logic is lost on Aegean, as its representatives and Poppy got into a screaming match at the Aegean ticket counter. Aegean essentially says that because our final destination (according to Aegean) was Athens, and they have no record of our transatlantic Continental flight, their job is done. Of course this logic conveniently neglects the fact that the Aegean flight was 4+ hours late, which caused us to miss our Continental flight and Jamie was assured by an Aegean representative in Crete that the Continental flight was being held for us on account of Aegean's tardiness (a lie, one of many we hear). After much screaming (and near Greek violence), Poppy convinced the Aegean representatives to put us up in a hotel for the night (a Holiday Inn), rebook us on the same flight for the following day and pay for our transfers and food. Two lessons learned: (1) Poppy rules and (2) Aegean Airlines stinks.

Defeated we leave and head to the hotel, exhausted due to only 4 hours of sleep and starving due to no food. We end up in the taxi line (after waiting for the hotel shuttle bus for more than an hour) and discover that the other Americans on the Aegean flight are in the same boat as us, all headed to the Holiday Inn and rebooked on flights to the US tomorrow. After a harrowing cab ride where we are convinced we are going to the wrong hotel, we arrive and are surprised to find that the Holiday Inn is actually nice. Unfortunately it is in the middle of nowhere, so we find ourselves stuck in the hotel. We explore a bit, find computers where Seth sees his 800 plus work emails for the first time and grab lunch. At this time, we officially meet our new friend Shannon and the day starts to take a better turn.

Shannon is an officer in the Navy heading home to her family in Florida after being away for the past three months. She is super cool and we become fast friends (she looks a little like Jamie's friend Mary Ann which makes her instantly fabulous). During our time at the Holiday Inn we share all of our meals and some necessary drinks with Shannon and have a great time chatting. Dinner deserves its own separate mention as it consisted of a buffet which included greek salad, egg rolls and spaghetti (Jamie managed to have that unholy trinity on her same buffet plate -eww!). We also meet the other people staying in the hotel and find out they are also in the Navy. We get the coolest crash course ever about the Navy and learn all about their lives and the places they go. As much as our delay was frustrating, we feel lucky to have met such great people and are sure we will stay in touch with Shannon.

Crete - Day Thirteen

Today is actually the thirteenth day of our honeymoon, not yesterday, although obviously it seemed like it should have been. After our experiences yesterday we decided to scrap all plans to leave our hotel and just sit on the beach and relax. Driving in Crete is a generally stressful experience and definitely a bad idea on the last day you have to relax before heading home. (We will be traveling all day tomorrow and will be back in New York around 5).

So we sat on the beach, we talked, we read, we ate and we reflected on this amazing trip. We have seen so many new things, eaten some great food and met some lovely people. We felt sad to leave this beautiful country but excited about the things coming up, like the summer, friends' weddings, a new job, a new couch and a new name. We talked about all of the pictures we have from the wedding and the honeymoon and the projects that Jamie will undertake. We also talked about how lucky we are to have such great friends, families and each other. It was a lazy, shmoopie kind of day and the perfect way to end our trip.

After sunset we headed to dinner, Greek style (meaning 10:00) at the restaurant in our hotel. We ate and drank and stayed up way too late chatting with Poppy, who runs the restaurant. Finally, at midnight (just 5 hours before we had to get up) we said our good-byes with one last shot of Raki (Jamie too!!).