My absolute favorite thing about Thanksgiving is leftovers. If you've been following me on Tumblr, you'll notice that I adore figuring out what to do with last night's leftovers. Back in November, my friends Julia Sherman and Sarah Keough organized Leftovers Special at Flux Factory. Here were my entries:
Events
Crazy Collab for Cartoon Hangover's Bee & Puppycat Livestream
I’m a huge fan of Bee & Puppycat on Cartoon Hangover and we helped launch the show on the 24 hour livestream that took placeThursday, November 6th! If you love Sailor Moon, Adventure Time and grumpy pets, this show is DEFINITELY for you. WATCH IT BELOW!
Bee is fired from her job and happens upon a sleeping puppy…er…cat…thing in the rain. She takes him in and hilarity ensues. She also eats a whole pan of lasagna (relevantttt). I invited my good friend Emily Hanhan to put together a food segment for the livestream. Here are our recipes:
If you missed the stream, you can catch us at 3:34:
One Thousand Birds: LIVE Will Make You Aflutter
My friend Jessica was moving away and I already hadn't seen her in months. It's hard to keep up with good friends in New York, even if you live about a mile from each other. I promised to make her a random sandwich before she left for L.A. Our schedules clashed and smashed together, but we finally found a time. She invited me to a small, casual show she was playing with another band called Psychic Twin. I went to a nondescript loft building at the edge where Bushwick and Williamsburg kiss. Up, up, up about four flights of very long stairs and I found myself in a very welcoming living room.
I found Jess and she was loading in many keyboards. We caught up a little while she ate her bresaola sandwich. She introduced me to Erin, the singer from Psychic Twin and we hung out, sitting on the floor. What happened next was nothing short of a New York moment. About thirty people gathered around a small stage in the living room and a band started to play. All of their undivided attention. Not a clink of a glass or a tss from a beer can. How amazing it felt to be around these bands and people who love music.
One Thousand Birds is a mixing studio and sound design company who hosts this monthly get-together as "OTB: LIVE!" Three bands play 20 minutes, much like CMJ short sets but in this warm and intimate atmosphere. I had noticed that barely anyone descended down those four flights of stairs through the whole night. They must be hungry! I spoke to Laura and enthusiastically volunteered to bring food next time in exchange for donations.
Two birds but not quite a thousand, I had a brunch photo shoot scheduled for St. Patrick's Day with my friends Mo and Ramsey. Why not double everything and bring it to OTB later on?
- St. Patrick's Day Brunch Menu
- Tomato Confit
- Kale salad with lomo chips
- Beet relish
- Duck fat colcannon
- Shortcut corned beef
- The Marrows ginger molasses cake by Mo
Later on this past October, we had our first cold snap and I arrived with two batches of soup. I've found that people who are passionate about finding new music are also open to new food experiences. Upon entering the kitchen, people would exclaim that it smelled like fall.
Sign up for the OTB Live! mailing list here.
I owe it all to Jess! Check out her band Via Audio and latest album NATURAL LANGUAGE:
Other bands I've discovered through OTB:
A Sunny MoMA PS1 Potluck with Salad For President
I have a weird relationship with salad. Growing up, it was only ranch dressing, iceberg lettuce and croutons (my favorite part). My cousin Jonathan and I would skip right to the ranch with croutons at Sizzler. The plate swimming in dressing is what he called "ah-weet-waht." I'm still not sure what it meant, but there I was eating it by the forkful with a 3 year old. I guess that's it, isn't it? I've the salad acuity of a three year old.
Eating raw vegetables was somewhat of a foreign concept to my family and I. You only ate vegetables at fancy parties as cruditè, where the ranch was in a bowl in the middle. It was just a new appropriation of where to put the ranch! When I was 8 years old, on my first trip to New York City, my grandma Tita taught me how to make Thousand Island. It was lost on me because all I wanted to dip it in were french fries.
Fast forward to apartment life in Brooklyn. I'm an adult and I'm watching my roommate Jeff make a salad in his underwear. We have this set of mixing bowls and he picks the largest one. He chops a bunch of vegetables with romaine, makes a mustard dressing and proceeds to sit on the couch with this giant salad that takes up the whole of his lap. My job at the time was in the city and one afternoon, my coworker asked if I wanted to try that place "Chop't." I got stars in my eyes about adding fried chicken with ranch and arugula. When it rang up, the bucket of shredded mess was about $15. I was flabbergasted at our culture of "individual abundance." It took me about two meal sittings to finish the darn thing. There was a line out the door at this place and while the bucket salad is a relatively new trend, the idea of the "salad bar" is not. I'm not sure where the shift from side dish to full-on salad meal happened but I was suddenly starting to think I wasn't a salad person.
Yes, this blog is called "Randwiches," and I believe that we all have our choices what media in which we express ourselves. Cue the random email I got from Salad For President! I was excited to get an invitation to make salads on the roof at MoMA PS 1 with many rad food friends like Sarah Keough, Mitchell Kuga and one my idols, Alex Raij. Nervous like it was a first date, I over prepared a bunch of toppings and condiments. My results weren't so much salads but piles.
Here are my entries for that fateful evening:
- Edible garden pickings from the MoMA PS1 Roof
- Our hostesses from Salad For President: Julia Sherman & Camilla Hammer
- My Takotsubo apron
- Adobo Beef & Merguez salad pile
- Vegetarian salad pile
Perhaps if we redefine salads to be simple piles that aren't exclusively lettuce, I think we would be calling this blog Saladwiches, Ranchwiches or "ah weet-waht."
Photos by the most awesome Trinh Huynh.