Manna from Heaven
Key takeaways today:
- Sandwiches made out pancakes are kind of cool.
- Ube is Filipino purple yam paste and it is really good.
- Go to the New York Botanical Garden ASAP
As far as the first point goes, yeah, I made pancakes again this morning, and made a little more so I could take some to school, because I had tickets to an exhibition at the Botanical Garden right after.
It was cool being able to expand the recipe without freaking out about exact ratios. I kept flour/milk at 1/1 but upped the total flour to 1.5 cups while still only using one egg. I doubled the butter---not proportional, but really nice. I added quite a bit more baking soda this time too. They bubbled a little more than before. They got really big and tall, in any event.
For the ones I ate this morning I mixed yoghurt and peanut butter together.
It was almost really good, but to be what I was imagining in my head the whole time, it really should have had... tons of sugar, ha!
I guess I didn't take a picture, but the other two pancakes I had, I used like sandwich bread for a peanut butter sandwich. I'll tell you what, when you're starving at lunchtime, it's really comforting to pick up a peanut butter sandwich that weighs like a pound and a half and is laden with butter and egg, rather than some airy white commercial concoction. Some jelly would have been nice but it fed me and was more or less delicious.
Then I headed to the Botanical Garden to see an exhibit on "Mexican Modernism", which highlighted Mexican modernist architect Luis Barragán, and also every kind of orchid under the sun. BG itself was INCREDIBLE, and I can't believe I had never been there before. The weather was perfection, absolute perfection, not a cloud in the sky and perfect room temperature whether in still air or a gentle breeze. The orchids were very beautiful and the info about Barragán was very interesting; I suppose it just wasn't spectacularly well synthesized; the orchids took center stage, appropriately for a garden, but the architecture part was limited to sporadic historical signs with a few pictures, and, notably, some of the "props" of the exhibit, which were made to resemble the architecture of Barragán.
Don't get me wrong; I loved absolutely everything, but there was maybe not enough Barragán for an exhibit ostensibly about Barragán. The multicolored rectilinear sculptural thingamabobs, though, were wonderful per se, and they absolutely succeeded in making me want to take the next plane to Mexico City to go see this man's real work in person.
Everything about the Botanical Garden is indescribably pleasant and well-curated, and the weather is perfect, and the trees are in blossom, so I can't recommend going there enough!
Nice as the day was, I was so hungry and tired coming home to Queens from the Bronx that all I wanted to do was cook (though I didn't strictly want to do that either) and collapse in bed. To my dismay, when I stumbled in the door, the kitchen was full of people that my landlord/roommate has over for his monthly prayer meeting. I was so focused on eating and sleeping that, standing in my room, I was almost despondent about what I was going to do. Should I just go to bed starving? As I was considering doing just that, my landlord knocked on my door, and when I opened it, he pointed at the mounds of food on the kitchen table and said "eat!" Boy did my mood change quickly. I could not have been more grateful. I had a heaping plate of dumplings, chicken, noodles, rice, and spring rolls, then another one when the gaggle of Filipina women wouldn't take "I already had some" for an answer. Haha! I could have hugged them all. I wound up getting dinner after all, and instantaneously! Dinner ex machina... Laus Deo.
The best discovery was this pastry with ube in it. It's some kind of Filipino purple yam filling. It was shockingly, shockingly good. Like, I'm going to dream about it. Just slightly sweet and heavy and filling.
Headed to bed full of food and gratitude.