How to enjoy take-out on a tight budget

As a post-production assistant in reality TV, a big part of my job is to manage money for the show. Until the timing’s right to move up to production coordinator in the coming months, I’m on a really tight budget. Tight like two sizes too small. It pinches. My budget gives me a muffin top.

And of course I can’t have interests in things like dollar menus, sobriety, and staring out of my window, for fun. Given how much I love food, wine, travel, and nightlife (as demonstrated right here), budgeting has been hard. Especially with food. I’ve given up taking myself out on dates to nice restaurants, but I haven’t given up take-out. Here’s how.

It’s tradition: Malay Family Cooking Challenge 2009

I get a kick out of television and movie families’ holiday food traditions. National Lampoon’s Griswold family sips egg nog from souvenir Wally World cups. The fictional Constanzas have a sobering (also sober) meal of meatloaf for their Festivus feast; the TV writer who based the holiday Seinfeld episode on his own family’s actual Festivus tradition would have had a Pepperidge Farm cake topped with m&ms for dessert. Paula Deen’s studmuffin sons and Food Network stars Bobby and Jamie presumably get down on their hands and knees and thank God for their metabolisms.

And my family took its cue from TV’s Iron Chef when it came up with a new holiday tradition, the Malay Family Cooking Challenge.

A new first: durian

My durian vendor’s wares in Chinatown.

In nature, when a plant or fruit has a hard shell, is sharp to the touch, weighs the same as a rock its size, smells like rotting animal flesh, activates our gag reflex, makes us dry-heave, and finally empties a room of open-minded people until windows are open when it’s 20 degrees out, our instincts tell us not to eat it.

So against all odds in the natural order of things–it would seem–durian is a delicacy in much of southeast Asia. I mean no offense. I used to work with international students entering college in the US, and the kids from southeast Asia were leery of cheese at first. Totally fair. We in the west just aren’t used to durian, and only recently has it been available in the US, for the most curious of eaters to seek out. And if we’re lucky, we live in New York and can actually find it.

The list, as of today

I feel good, but not great, about my progress to date.

Breathing it all in: my picks for New York’s best scents

Mmm, a chocolate factory…

Our strongest sensory memories are attached not to vision but to smell. Yes really! Pass someone who looks like your significant other and you think, “they look like my gf/bf.” Pass someone who wears their cologne or perfume, and your nervous system has you feeling like you just bit into a popsicle on a hot day.

One of my favorite things about New York is how in the course of walking one block, aromas leaking out of stores and restaurants can elicit such distinctive and disparate experiences from my past. I can go from the fruit-shaped glycerin soap in my grandparents’ guest bathroom when I was 8 to the Beijing street food vendors I encountered two years ago. And on the same walk, I’m registering new scents that I’ll recall again much later in life–for better or worse!

Cold season be darned, these are a few of my picks for scents worth remembering.

Sentences and circumstances

Basil Twist’s Ballerina from Petrushka

I am a “festival person.”

Already I have to add an asterisk to that and exclude some festivals.

His name is Norman and I promise he won’t bite

All I knew was the Brooklyn subway stop where I needed to be at 2pm today. The sky was overcast, and it was raining just enough to need an umbrella as I made my way to the F train. I was ready for anything, I hoped. Almost anything, maybe. Was I? High-fiving strangers and staging an art installation in a subway station I would absolutely be up for, but could I really take off an article of clothing or two to pose as a model in an Abercrombie store or forego pants on the subway, in a winter snowstorm?

Let’s be honest: pretty much everything seems like a good idea to me at the time, as is blatantly obvious in this blog, so yeah, I was probably ready for anything.

To my surprise and delight, shortly after 2pm, a huge –huge– crowd of us were ushered into a fashionably decorated warehouse and given its brief history; originally a belt factory, built in the 1800s, the building was being converted into a gallery space. And, interestingly enough, that building was where the Invisible Dog toy was invented and manufactured for years. As many as 2,000 Invisible Dogs would be distributed to us to walk around Park Slope and Red Hook as we pleased for two hours. The trick was, of course, to stay in character, never to let on to people that we knew our dogs were imaginary.

I found inspiration for Norman the Norwich in, um, Norman, my parents’ Norwich terrier, and I had the best time with a writer friend walking him, and his spaniel Spike, around town. My Norman marked almost every fire hydrant and parking meter on Court Street, and if I’d had plastic baggies, I would have cleaned up after him, too. I was even surprised to find myself doing those annoying puppy-talk voices. Some things just didn’t work; narrating that your dog is checking out someone else’s dog’s tush and apologizing for it is pretty awkward.

I was tickled to read accounts of how some other participants acted. One reported the police threatened to ticket her for not cleaning up after her Pomeranian, but let her off with a warning.

Participants collectively found that strangers were excited, frustrated, curious, appalled, and everything in between, and our favorite run-ins were with people who were eager to play along.

The toughest in a group of three kitchen workers taking a smoke break looked leery as I approached, then all of a sudden acted as though Norman had jumped up to say hello to him, and he picked him up! I could barely keep up with the leash and assured him Norman was very friendly and loved the attention he was getting. Similarly, a gruff cafe owner stood with his arms folded at his door and told passerbys, “No dogs allowed!” –then broke into a toothy grin every time.

Children were fantastic, and so were their parents. One mom approached me with her 4 or 5 year-old son and told him it was okay to pet my dog, he wouldn’t bite. “See? He’s friendly!” she said, taking the words right out of my mouth. A mom pulled up to a stop light in her minivan with kids in the back and rolled her window down to ask where we got our dogs. My friend answered of Spike, “I rescued him from a shelter!” Hilarious.

I was actually kind of disappointed to return Norman to nonexistence at the end of the afternoon. Friends have heard me say repeatedly that as soon as my lifestyle allows for it, and reality TV production does not allow for it, I’m rescuing a dog. My lifestyle did allow for a couple of hours with an invisible dog, though, and today, it was just the trick.

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All Points West Music Festival

Sunday only. Pictures only.

Celebrating our anniversary

I don’t normally keep track of this sort of thing, but New York City and I celebrated our six month anniversary on Friday.

Taste of Malay

Apparently, a 3rd Avenue restaurant is serving up a taste of Malay goodness. I think it’s fair to say we’re an acquired taste. Brace yourself…