restaurant week

What’s Making me Happy: Weekend Edition

March 27, 2011 by Kimberly Rae Miller Leave a Comment

Oooh, weekends. I love them. I want them to happen all the time. Especially weekends that I get to spend wandering around aimlessly with my bestest friends and eating super rich foods.

Awhile back I remember referencing my best-friend (which could actually be one of three people I have known the majority of my life) to someone in a conversation and having them say something along the lines of, Aren’t we too old to have best friends?

Uhh, no. I don’t ever want to be too old to have best friends, especially people I’ve known since the days of strict friend categorization.

Two of my three BFFs just happen to be engaged to each other. I find this extremely convenient for a number of reasons. One of which is that they usually come as a set and I get to get my quality time in in an a time efficient manner

Honestly, though, I haven’t seen them for a while and with all their wedding planning craziness I feel totally disconnected. Once I get the heads up that a wedding gown had been found I knew it was time for a little emergency bonding. Lucky for me they have a car and were willing to drive to Brooklyn for just such a bonding experience.

This experience included food, art, bad horror movies, and sumo wrestlers. Not bad for a Saturday.

It just happens to be restaurant week in Brooklyn. The Chip Shop had a three-course lunch for $10. Delicious, and kind of like drinking a gallon of oil for lunch.

Fried Mac & Cheese

Chicken fingers and chips

Fried Twinkie!

After lunch we seriously needed a walk, a long walk, so we headed to the Brooklyn Museum so I could practice my camera skills on my two new guinea pigs admire art with some of my favorite people.

Look, ain’t they pretty…

They’re also really patient. Strike a pose.

Okay, so there were some other things to take pictures of. Things like ceilings…

And this thing…

Whatever it was, it reminded me a lot of Great Expectations

Don’t worry, I spent a little time in front of the camera . It’s true. I do need to work on my game. I think I have a pretty good hang on winter, though.

Then it was time for some dinner. I was especially proud of this photo.

Saag Paneer, rice, and naan

Since it was inhumanly possible for us to eat anymore, we decided to sit back, thumb wrestle sumo style and watch bad horror movies. Did you know ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ was not originally a musical? In the 1960 version it was considered a horror movie…and Jack Nicholson was in it!

We also watched a horror movie shot in our homeland! Long Island is kind of like a younger sibling to me; I can make fun of it because it’s mine, but if other people do I will defend it till the end. Still, watching this movie made us laugh because it was obviously cast locally based on the accents.

That’s what I’m happytastic about this weekend. What’s making you happy?

Kim

Filed Under: Weekend Edition Tagged With: Brooklyn Museum, Food, Friends, Horror Movies, Long Island, Project Dalai Lama, restaurant week, Weekends

Project Dalai Lama

January 26, 2011 by Kimberly Rae Miller 5 Comments

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.

Dalai Lama

I had a special flower delivery at work today.

I’ve been thinking about this quote for weeks now. It’s so simple, and yet so fundamentally true. We get this finite amount of time to accomplish this very simple, and yet unbelievably complicated goal.

I may not be ‘happy’ right now; I’m battling my own personal sadness demons, but I have happiness on my mind. A friend wrote an amazing post on her blog about radical self care. Anything prefaced with radical scares me, but I’m thinking it’s time to re-examine what that means for me. What if I made being happy my number one priority? What would that mean? How would I do that?

I’m a bit of a responsibility junkie, but I don’t know that I’ve ever made myself or my own personal happiness my number one responsibility. I think it’s worth a shot. An experiment of sorts. What can it hurt, right?

This may be a difficult project, but I started today with the little things: I signed up for classes at a new yoga studio and scheduled a massage.

Are these life altering changes? Nope, but they’re a start.

What if I started everyday by asking myself what I could do to make today happy? And, What can I do to make my life as a whole happier?

I have no idea what the answers are but I’ll take it day by day.

As for today, well my plans for a girls night in Queens were cancelled due to inclement weather, so I’ll settle for playing Just Dance on my Wii and looking like an idiot in the comfort of my own home.

What do you do just to make yourself happy?

Lunch

Today was a one meal kind of day. I don’t so much have an appetite right now, but I had promised the girls at work that I’d go out with them for restaurant week.

Kim

Filed Under: Daily Confessional Tagged With: Friends, Goals, Happiness, restaurant week, Sadness, Yoga

Hair=Healthy?

February 3, 2010 by Kimberly Rae Miller 4 Comments

Today I did something I hardly ever do. I cut my hair.

This was the first time ever having a male stylist. His name was Starr, and he was way cooler than I; totally punk-rock-y with tattoos and black nail polish, and plaid pants. I was a little nervous he would think I was the lamest with my cardigan, commuter shoes, and hair that hasn’t been cut in over a year. He was great. Turns out, he loves long hair, and therefore was not quite as scissor happy as some stylists are when they see locks past the shoulders. I gave him free reign to cut what he thought needed to go, and he took off 3-inches, which doesn’t make much of a dent when your hair is almost waist length. He said I have Barbie hair (apparently a good thing), and that I need to change shampoo (apparently a bad thing). All in all, I left feeling pretty and more knowledgable.

Also, he wasn’t a talker, which honestly I really appreciate. I never know what to say during haircut banter. It’s always awkward. I kind of preferred the silence and quiet satisfaction that he was paying more attention to my split ends than idle chatter.

Isn’t it weird how little things like cutting your hair or wearing matching underwear make you want to take care of yourself more? I came home, did some work, made a healthy dinner and resolved to get more than four hours of sleep tonight. I should do this taking care of myself thing more often. Little things really do make a big difference. Hopefully my new fangled dedication to my well-being will last longer than my blow-out.

Breakfast

Oatmeal with banana and almond butter
Coffee with 1% milk

Lunch

For lunch, I met up with my aunt to get in one more Restaurant Week meal. It’s hard to not take advantage of affordable food at some of NYC’s most expensive restaurants. Today we went Greek:

Mediterranean Spreads

Grilled lamb chop and steamed broccoli & caulliflower
I had a couple of fries, but left most of them.

There was a dessert too, but I didn’t eat it. For the record cardimum ice cream is weird.

Dinner

Since lunch was on the heavier side I decided to go light for dinner.
This was my first adventure in spaghetti squash (which I tried because Lara raves about it on her blog). It does not in fact taste like spaghetti, it’s a bit crunchier, but pleasantly mild and a good vehicle for shoveling sauce into your face.

Spaghetti squash with Newman’s Own sauce, steamed asparagus and shrimp

Kim

Filed Under: Daily Confessional Tagged With: Cooking, Hair, Health, restaurant week, Spaghetti Squash

10-Course Kinda Thursday

January 29, 2010 by Kimberly Rae Miller 1 Comment

Okay, I’m going to make you a deal. I’m going to not eat today, and you’re going to not think I have an eating disorder.

Chances are I will eat, I just can’t imagine that reality right now.

It’s restaurant week here in NYC. For some reason I thought it would be a brilliant idea to schedule two three-course meals for one day. Why? Because if I’m going to indulge I may as well get it all over with in one fell swoop.

Hmm, now that I see it written that’s a pretty silly theory. I will admit that I cannot always trust my own judgement…either way, yesterday was a delicious day. A filling day, and based on my normal three-square-meals a day lifestyle I’ve eaten enough for 2 whole days (plus some). Yes, I am an overachiever.

I spent my lunch hour (ahem, hour +) noshing with my aunt. She took me to Brasserie 8 1/2, it was goodish. I thought the ambiance was a bit “upscale airport lounge”-ish, not really the type of restaurant that makes you feel comfortable and at ease. The dessert was a bit too sweet for my taste, but the lamb was lovely and the cauliflower soup that started the meal was good. I’ve never been so thankful for small portions.

For dinner, I met up with Anna. I met Anna through my blog! Hi Anna! We work in the same area so we decided to meet up for dinner at Dawat, a “fine-dining” Indian restaurant. Quotations because that’s what they call themselves, it was a nice restaurant but I hardly felt out of place which is how I usually feel at fine dining joints.

The company was lovely and so was the food. By the end though, I was struggling to stay awake (no reflection on you Anna), and hailed a cab which I promptly napped all the way home in.

I ate sooooo much yesterday, and now I’m feeling more motivated than ever to get back to my happy weight. I’ve gained quite a bit of weight this year, and honestly I think I’ve had enough indulging for a while.

Achilles lives in a building with a gym so I told him I may start using him for his treadmill. Tomorrow morning we’re going on a joint indoor run. Yeah, we’re romantic like that.

Here’s the food…all of it:

Breakfast