cuteness

frozen coconut lime balls

coconut lime balls for something a little different, with really no baking required (except toasting the coconut)

awesome things

a simple tomato and mozzarella salad.
I make the best, fyi! :)

I especially love when the different colored tomatoes come out! I chop them up, chop up fresh mozzarella (that kind that is in water, not the shrink wrapped kind - that works best for pizza, not fresh mozz!) toss with great quality extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, and basil.  A staple of my summers.  Sometimes I add cut up watermelon, only if the watermelon is perfect though.  The sweet really brings something good to this.

Mario Batali - my hero

I have two really favorite chefs Mario Batali and The Barefoot Contessa I like a lot of other people, don't get me wrong, but I really love love love these two and I cook their recipes all the time! Well, funny thing, I've never even eaten at one of Mario's restaurants and I am in nyc all the time! My friend Jess was visiting from LA, so I took this as the perfect opportunity to eat somewhere in the city at one of Mario's places. I picked otto because I've made this pizza at home (you just get the otto cookbook) and I really wanted to try the real thing, and then somehow I finagled Jess to also eat at babbo, I really wanted to try some of his pasta!

We met at Otto, it's hard to find the door to this place! It's a really nice little place, it reminded me a little bit of Italy (ps, where I want to die) and the table next to us where all older Italian men, which means I was in my glory, hahaha. I loved when I was in Italy how they lingered at lunch, and sipped their coffee for hours. We got a drink first, which was tasty and decided to order the pizza with prosciutto.

The pizza was great.  It was thin and the toppings were perfect  It was all I dreamed it would be!

Next I had really psyched up Jess to go to momofuku milk bar to try the Compost Cookie.  And I really wanted the Crack pie.

 

We entered and it had that very typical village feel to it.  I loved the display case with the different kinds of milk!

Oh they had butter in there too, which of course I bought! And I tried a cereal milk too (very very sweet!)  We got the cookie and I got my crack pie.  Listen, the cookie is good, but I wouldn't go back to this place for the cookie.  It has everything under the sun in it, chips, chocolate, coffee, butterscotch.  It sounds amazing, but I think the coffee threw me off.  I drink coffee everyday, but I don't like it in my baked goods.  The crack pie, on the other hand, I would walk from Egypt to get this little buttery filled piece of heaven.  It's literally like biting into butter turned into the most fabulous sweet creamy pie.   Oh and I loved their packaging! (I am a packaging freak)

After our dessert we found our way to Babbo for dinner.  Okay generally I am a reservation nut.  When I go on vacation I am forever booking reservations for every night and it usually drives my traveling companion mad because it never gives us a chance to be spontaneous, but if there is good food to be had I need to make sure I have it! But for some reason I didn't think to make a reservation at Babbo, so we got sat at the "clearly these people didn't make reservations table."  It was a little like being in time out.  But anyway, this is a cute little place with lots and lots of pasta to choose from! I was originally going to get Chianti stained pasta with wild boar, but the person next to me was having pasta with lobster and I had to have it.  It was literally just pasta with sauce and lobster, but let me tell you the pasta sauce is to die for.  There is something so sweet and savory about it.  It was exactly what I think Mario Batali is.

(All of these were taken with my IPhone so forgive!) All in all it was a great food filled day.  I would tell you to go to any of these places if you are traveling to NYC.

My Little Maxy

I very unexpectedly lost my first born dog this weekend, Max.  You've seen me blog about him before.  He came down with a cough on Friday and it just tragically went downhill very fast, by Sunday he was gasping for air and I wanted to die just watching him suffer so much.  I called the vet and she said to bring him in overnight, and I knew in my gut and my heart he wasn't going to make it through, but I wanted him to be comfortable and for them to try and help him so I brought him in.  As I was in the shower getting ready to take him, I heard him battle the stairs so he could come sit outside the shower - our daily ritual - even though he couldn't breathe, he still came up the stairs just to be next to me.  When he got into the bathroom he started to couch pretty badly and then proceeded to throw up blood.  He sat there and really fought falling down.  His body so desperately wanted to lay down and I think give in, but he really kept fighting it.  He was such a little fighter, he got hit by a car when he was a puppy and nearly died.  I have another dog Pazzo, but Max was my baby.  Max never left my side.  Max followed me everywhere, and was the first to great me, cuddle with me, follow me to bed, follow me into the bathroom, lay outside the shower, wait for me by the door.  He really truly loved me.  When I got really sick before my first transplant he never left my side.  He looked at me every time I coughed.  He would lay in bed with me for hours, and forgo cookies and food.  I will miss him very much, and I will miss him even more when I get that sick again before my second transplant.  I'll miss little Maxy watching over me like no one else.  I wrote this a few years ago and I would like to share:

  I knew everyone wanted me to get new lungs for them.  But the credit is owed to two individuals that aren’t even human.  I have two dogs Max and Pazzo.  When I came home from the hospital the first time—before the very last time, Max started to obsessively lick his paws to the point that they would bleed.  I could see the worry in his eyes.  I knew he sensed how sick I was more than any human ever would.   My mom brought him to the vet, as I didn’t leave the house much anymore, and she told her he was chronically depressed.  Imagine that.  When I was in college and would go home for weekends and return to school, before I got really sick, my mom would tell me how Max would sit at the door and just wait for me.  He would sit there and sleep there and never move until I came home.  She even took a picture of him once sitting by the door staring out of the glass.  I realized at one point that if I died everyone around me would have the luxury of grieving.  They would know the fight I put up and understand what happened to me.  Not Max and Pazzo.  It broke my heart more than anything in the entire world to think that Max would sit at the door the rest of his life and wait for me to come home when I wasn’t going to.  I needed new lungs for Max and Pazzo and even though I felt like I wasn’t going to wake up sometimes, that I would stop breathing in the night, I would fight for them because it would not have been fair to them if I didn’t.  They would always be the first reason that I would fight.  

Miss you little Maxy.   

 

Martha Fricken Stewart

Tomorow Laura and I go to see a taping of the Martha Stewart show!

Details to follow on Wednesday!

Cooking on hold

All of my cooking has been on hold for a few days and it is killing me! I didn't even realize how much I love to cook! I have been having SEVERE stomach pain after I eat the past couple days and I do not know why.  Tuesday I had a check up with my transplant doctor, and I had an ultrasound on my belly - turns out I have gallstones.  EEK.  But this may or may not be what is causing my pain.  I will go back for an endoscopy to check for ulcers and to see if my fundoplication (aka stomach wrap) is maybe too tight.  But I really miss cooking so much.  So today I am going to cook anyway even if I can only have a bite.  In other news my lung function has held pretty steady around 40% the last few months which is good news! So I am not back on the transplant list yet....even though a small part of me wants to be.  I can't explain it, but now that I know what it is like to breathe normally my tolerance is pretty low when I get short of breath or cough or struggle.  But at the end of the day the more time I get out of these lungs the better...