Week of Fun: It Begins

Uggghhh. Today I slept until 3:30 pm. The only other time I can remember that happening was after the most raucous and rowdy New Years Eve of my life when I went to bed around 9 am. But the past 2 days of drinking, rabble rousing, etc, have really taken it out of me.

I do have a couple of photos that document intermittent moments of the past few days, which is kind of like my memory of the past few days...
Saturday I got up and made TWO (2!) smoothies, one frozen mocha and one spinach-banana. Pretty crazy! On the week of fun docket for this day: Brooklyn Brewery, in Williamsburg BK, followed by a pub crawl in the East Village/Lower East Side with my high school friend S and his girlfriend and grad school friends. The Brooklyn Brewery offers "tours" at 2, 3, and 4 pm on Saturdays. K and I were shooting for the 3 pm tour, but as usual we were running really late and didn't even make it to the subway until 3, so we caught (barely) the 4:00 one.
On the way we stopped at Absolute Bagels (the best bagels!). I got an everything bagel with veggie tofutti. When I first tried this I thought I was breaking out of my old habit, but I think I just formed a new habit.
Anyway, the thing about the brewery tour is that it's not really a tour, so much as an explanation of who started the brewery and how. It all happens in one room where there are a bunch of tanks of beer in the brewing process. Still, I like to see where my beverages come from, so I thought it was worthwhile. And you get 6 beer chips for $20, so K and I each tried the summer ale, the weisse beer, and the pilsner. We both liked the pilsner the best, but the summer also had kind of an interesting, but very bitter, taste.

Then it was off to Alphabet City, to meet up with S (the boy -- I need new nicknames for people on here since the initials are starting to overlap) and co. I had 2 1/2 amazing lychee martinis at Rue B (by this point I'd had enough drinks that I wasn't remembering to take any photos and pretty much forgot I even had my camera). Most of the other folks had the "strawberry patch" which was vodka lemonade with muddled strawberries. It was happy hour so they were all 2 for $10 (a steal in NYC). Really tasty.

After that, we had felafel sandwiches, which were certainly not the best felafel sandwiches ever, but for $3 on that day, they were the best idea ever. Then more drinking (wine, vodka sodas, a bit of a friend's very strong margarita), garlic knots at the pizza place, and my friends introduced me to a friend of theirs that they wanted to set me up with. With less than 2 weeks to go in NYC, I'm not really looking, but this chick was very cool so maybe we'll at least be friends.

Sunday -- prom day! My roommates were busy little ants running all over upper manhattan to get things into place for their anti-prom prom party. S (the girl) reserved a space in her building where she and her boyfriend N able to set up a full bar, plus tons of homemade tasty snacks. There was pool, a trivia game that my team TOTALLY DOMINATED and beer pong. And I made cupcakes!
This is a cupcake I had when I woke up today. These ones are the cookies & creme from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and this time I made them with almond extract for the first time. I really am not a huge fan of the almond extract. In some recipes (e.g. red velvet) it seems to make sense and add some depth, but with these chocolate ones, I'd rather stick with the less nuanced flavors and let the chocolate and vanilla shine through. I also made the margarita cupcakes from the same book, which I have to admit I kind of don't like anymore. They're just too sweet and too limey for me.

See, many cupcakes remain -- if you are one of my NYC friends reading this, that means you should come over tonight or tomorrow and scoop some up so that I don't have to eat cupcakes for every meal the next few days.
So, that brings me to this afternoon, when I got up at embarrassingly late o'clock and made myself the hangover breakfast/dinner of champions. Scrambled tofu, toast, and a peach-mango coconut water.

Scrambled Tofu (based, vaguely, on the recipes in Vegan with a Vengeance and How it all Vegan)
Serves one very hungry gal after a very long sleep, or maybe 2 regular people. Easy to double it and serve 3-4.

• 1-2 tsp olive oil
  
• 1/2 of a small onion, finely chopped
  
• 1/2 lb firm tofu, drained and squeezed lightly to expel water
• giant handful of fresh spinach
• medium tomato, coarsely chopped
  
• 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp ground thyme or oregano
• juice of 1/4 of a lemon
  
• pinch of salt, maybe 1/4 tsp
• dash of freshly ground pepper, to taste

1. In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Toss a small piece or two of onion in there, and when the oil starts to bubble around the onion, put the rest of the onion in and stir with a wooden spoon.
2. When the onion is cooked through and has turned translucent, crumble the tofu into the pan. Mix it around, and then add the spinach, tomato, lemon juice, and spices. (Note: you can use really any vegetable combo in this recipe. Bell peppers, zucchini, frozen corn kernels, mushrooms, whatever's in the fridge. Hardier veggies like these should go in at the same time as the onions.)
   
3. Mix the spices in well (the turmeric will turn the whole thing very yellow) and let it cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 mins, until the liquids have evaporated and the spinach is totally cooked down. Serve with toast, as filling for a breakfast burrito, or by itself. Yum!
   

Along with the super electrolyte power of the coconut water, this did bring me back to life, more or less. Tonight's plans involve: drinking copious amounts of water, doing laundry, and probably watching Twilight, which I've got from Netflix. And maybe dealing with all the urgent emails I've been not answering while I drink my troubles away the past week.
I'll leave you with this: the awe-inspiring vagina art that was at the anti-prom party venue. Look closely: the clit is made of sequins! Hilarity. N moved it out of the main space because he said it was "ruining all the photos." Ha!