New York City: Inside Organized Chaos – beautiful short documentary explores “one of the most intense, populous and fascinating city in the world” through the singular perspectives of a jazz musicians, a taxi driver, and an architect. The best thing since this cinematic love letter to New York.
We bought this painting from NY, before moving to Dubai. I actually met Yvoni (the painter) and her husband at their Union Square stand 2 years ago. I loved the paintings so much that I bought one immediately and it was our first artwork in our new apartment on Wall Street. After deciding to move to Dubai, we knew we had to buy another painting before leaving. Since we arranged a container to move all our stuff, we had plenty of space and that meant we had the chance to get a bigger painting.
I assumed that we would definitely miss the winter here in Dubai, so that’s one of the reasons I chose this one :) Yvoni now has a new shop at the South Street Seaport and here’s their Facebook, Twitter and Flickr accounts.
We were their first customers at their new place! This is a photo from the day we bought the painting!
My other favorite paintings were the “Loneliness in the City (Winter)”, and of course, the “Chrysler Building” —that’s the one I’ll be buying next time :)
Pancakes
I love making pancakes. My mom made them for almost every Sunday breakfast when I was in Istanbul. When I went to NY, there were pancakes everywhere, of course, but I still used my own recipe when I wanted to cook a home-made brunch on the weekends. It’s not all different from the basic pancake recipes you find online, but still I think it tastes different :)
The photos below are from a Christmas brunch we did with friends back in NY —as you can see, the menu was a mix of Turkish and American :) You can also see the perfectly round pancakes I made ;)
Here’s the recipe:
In a large bowl, you mix up the following:
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
1 egg
1 cup milk
In a smaller bowl, you mix up the following dry ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
Then, slowly add the milk-egg-oil mixture into the dry ingredients and stir. The result is better if you wait for about 15 minutes before you start making the pancakes. Heat a lightly oiled griddle (over high heat), scoop the batter onto the griddle and let them brown on each side —you know that it’s time to flip the other side of the pancake when there are lots of small bubbles formed on the batter. You can make the pancakes as big or small as you like, so the amount you scoop each time is up to you. Just make sure the griddle is really hot during this process, since the first ones always come out pretty bad if you don’t. Before serving, you can put some butter on the pancakes while they’re still hot, and they’ll be even more delicious!
Boqueria
We went to Boqueria this March. After we decided to move to Dubai, and we learned that my husband’s company was going to pay for the container shipment from New York to Dubai, we started doing a lot of shopping. There was this one day where we first went to West Elm, then to Bed, Bath & Beyond, and we got hungry after all that shopping. Yelp offered great help and pointed us to this restaurant called Boqueria. It was a very delicious surprise! We decided to go with the tapas menu, and everything we ordered were super tasty.
I especially recommend the peppers, the shrimp and the squid!
Here’s what we had:
Pimientos de Padrón (Blistered Shishito peppers, coarse sea salt)
Espinacas a la Catalana (Sautéed spinach, garbanzos, pine nuts, garlic, raisin)
Txipirones (Baby squid a la plancha, frisée, romesco vinaigrette, tomato confit, crispy scallions)
Gambas al Ajillo (Shrimp, garlic and Guindilla pepper in olive oil)
Bombas de la Barceloneta (Three beef and potato croquettes, salsa brava, garlic allioli)
Ladurée, New York, March 2012.
Wall St. & Pearl St., March 2012.
“Nassau Street, looking south from Fulton Street, on March 3, 1926.”
In Focus: Historic Photos of New York City
Top: View of Manhattan from the Brooklyn Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge, on April 24, 1933.
Bottom: Lower Manhattan skyline at night, seen beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn end in February of 1938. See this scene today in this Google Map street view.
See more. [Images: E. M. Bofinger and Eugene de Salignac, courtesy NYC Municipal Archives]
“Max Cohen is a cab driver in New York city and he is documenting his every day work life with great photos. Some stuff is weird, sometimes crazy and sometimes just beautiful.”
The photos are taken from his blog.
Missing New York juuust a little bit… :)
