Cumin Scented Carrot Salad

My sweety Rick asked me to make a slaw this week. Then he clarified he wanted a carrot slaw. With raisins (eeuuww!). I looked at about a dozen recipes on line, and considered my girlfriend Ann's Mom's fruit cole slaw (haven't got that recipe yet). I thought about using my regular slaw dressing, but I was kind of in the mood for something else. So I mixed and tasted and added stuff until I had something I liked - raisins and all! Give this one a try - quite tasty and low calorie.




2 lbs carrots, peeled and grated
a few handfuls of raisins - about a cup
a 6 oz can of pineapple tidbits
juice of 2 lemons
1/2 t cumin
1/2 t ground coriander
1/2 t freshly ground black pepper
3 T good olive oil

Add the carrot shreds and raisins to the bowl - try to separate the raisins so you don't have big raisin clumps.

Pour the juice from the pineapple in a bowl to make the dressing. Add the spices, lemon juice and olive oil.

Dice the pineapple bits and add to the carrot mixture.

Pour the dressing in to the salad and toss.

Enjoy!

Kandinsky at the Guggenheim

I was pretty disappointed that both my camera battery and Rick's camera battery were dead yesterday morning. We plugged them both in for a charge, and headed out the door to the Guggenheim for the Kandinsky exhibit.

The Guggenheim restoration was completed last winter, and it's so nice to see Frank Lloyd Wright's composition without scaffolding. It's very unique inside and out - the building itself is a treat.

Our favorite part of the exhibit were Kandinsky's drawings on paper (usually done in watercolor, india ink and pencil). Rick used to have a print in his office at home in Portsmouth that may have been a replicated print, or something inspired by Kandinsky, so when we saw the advertisements for the show, we knew it was a "must see".

It seems obvious that Kandinsky was inspired by geometry, but not so obvious his musical genius. One original I saw I thought should have been named Jazz - just the feeling it evoked and thoughts it inspired. We had a great time talking about what each drawing said to us. I'm glad Rick was able to go - althought I would have gone on my own, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun :)

Natural History Museum

After Dannie woke up at noon today, we puttered a bit and made our way to Isabelle's for lunch. I had an amazing scottish salmon with corn succotash - so delish! Rick had a chicken wrap, and Danielle had most of a burger and fries. I'm glad we got to try it :)

We walked around the corner and went to the Natural History Museum. We focused on the ocean room, the mammal room and the african mammal room. I was pleasantly surprised with how cool the museum was, and how much Danielle enjoyed it.

Central Park Zoo

Yesterday Rick and I made our way to the Central Park Zoo. $8 for adults gets you into the park, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at the animals and the habitats created for them. We started in the Tropical Rain Forest - there was a building created to keep the heat and humidity in for birds, snakes and stuff like that. The flowers were pretty and we were able to see the well known Jungle Chicken. It was well known to Rick - I had never heard of a Jungle Chicken, but he assured me it was nice to be able to see one :) We also got to see the Jungle Pigeon, but I didn't get a picture of that.

There were many many beautiful birds in different hues - almost like someone had pulled out the crayola 64 box and spend a few afternoons coloring them in.

Next we came upon the turtle pond - there was quite a little turtle party going on - I thought I saw them smiling and satisfied :)

I think my favorite was the polar bear. Although, he too may have been in his habitat too long, he spent all the time we were there swimming back and forth, back and forth. He starts at the waters edge - smells to the left and and right, and once satisfied he is alone, leans back in to a Nestea-plunge. You can see in the shot below he even occassionally will let his tounge lol around.

We also saw the sea otters being fed, and the sea lion came out when we got to his pool to swim for us.

After spending a couple of hours looking at all the exhibits, we found a nice bench in the shade, and had a hot dog. The souvenier trolley in front of us did a brisk business - I was surprised that all the boys wanted the stuffed bats (they were cool), and the girls went for the spray bottle - slash - fan (??? no idea why). I would have gotten the polar bear myself if I had a place to put it :)

Floating Art Over the City

Today was a really nice day - summer warm with out that unbelievable humidity that seems to always hang over the island of Manhattan. I wanted to go do something outdoors, and read about the Jeff Koons exhibit at the Met in the NY Times.

The Met has been on our list as this summer there is a special exhibit about superhero costumes.

Rick loves to play City Of Heros ( http://www.coh.com/ ) and he spends quite a bit of time designing the costumes for the heros he creates. Currently he's playing Swordmaster. I thought he'd enjoy seeing the superhero exhibition, and we both did. They had the original costumes from Superman (a la Christopher Reeve), and Wonder Woman (a la Lynda Carter), and 2 Spiderman costumes (Tobey McGuire) and even the Batman costume from the recently released Dark Knight movie. These costumes were interspersed with fashion which was inspired by the character's costumes - some from the 60's, 70's, 80's and even current. Interestingly, some pairings were reverse - maybe the hero's costume was inspired by the previous couture.

Rick's feet were killing him after working all day (not mine since I live a life of leisure these days) so we went to the roof for the Jeff Koons display.

The dog is the first thing you see when you come out on to the deck - this was in the ad on the website and in the paper. Kinda cool to see it with the tops of buildings and trees in the background.

There were 3 pieces displayed on the roof, along with a martini bar on a Friday night. Quite a few folks were up here, but still plenty of room to take pictures and mill about. We got ourselves some very overpriced Coronas (who can drink a martini when it's 90 degrees out?), and milled about.

This piece looks like one of those Italian chococlate Easter eggs - that's alotta chocolate!!

I think there was only 1 bench on the entire deck on which to sit, and it was taken. Nice view of the park and the skyline though....

We made our way back to the apartment to put up our feet :)