dwyn reviews: fruit stand carts
Spring brings one of my favorite phenomenons to New York City: The fruit stand guys. Everyone in Manhattan (maybe outside of Manhattan too, I don't know) has their guy. Usually, they hang out on a corner with a big stand with sort of a random mix of fruit. Depending on where you live, there's also sometimes a hot dog cart or a breakfast pastries cart or something like this. I fucking love the fruit stand guys. I've got a few in my neighborhood and I love stopping by to pick up something fresh and cheap on my way back from class. Plus, because it's usually the same guy every day, you get to know your guy and you're more likely to get bargains or price breaks this way. When I lived in Gramercy, the fruit stand guy there would give me free stuff all the time or give me something discounted if I only had change. Being the way I am about saving money, you know I dug that.
Pros
- Much cheaper than most other produce options in the city
- Usually pretty fresh, good quality food
- Almost always nearby, most every neighborhood I've been in in Manhattan has at least one and usually more stands around. I have at least two that I pass by in my neighborhood
- Friendly service. You get to know your local stand and have friendly little chats. It's a nice homey feeling
- Pretty much no lines
- Pretty good variety of food and if one cart doesn't have what you're looking for, it's not usually too long a walk to a different cart which probably will
- You need to have cash, these guys don't take cards
- While they are all over the place during the spring, summer and most of the fall, winter sends all but the hardiest of these guys packing. You can still find a few around (the Gramercy guy I used to go to never went away) but it's a harder game come winter
- Hours are unreliable and they aren't necessarily there every day
dwyn reviews: d'agostino
D'Agostino, or Dag, as it often gets called around here, is the closet grocery store to my apartment. It's your average store, generally no more overpriced than most. It's got a rewards program of some kind, the green card, which of course I have become a member of in search of deals. There's a few locations around as far as I know, though I only know where the one near me is. So let's talk pros and cons.Pros
- It's close, so always easy to grab last minute needs.
- It has a rewards card program, so it's theoretically possible to save money through the program.
- Like most grocery stores, it has all commonly used produce year round, so you're not sort of guessing what there should be in that day.
- Generally no more expensive than any other run of the mill grocery store
- Worst rewards program ever. It works on a system of getting points by spending money and then redeeming those points. Most of the time, you don't have enough points to save any money. Last time I got a points statement, I learned that since I started using the card, I've saved like $35. I've had the card for a year. Stupid.
- Produce is often almost bad or actually rotten. I've opened heads of lettuce to find the insides putrid.
- While not more expensive than anywhere else, still pretty expensive. Tomatoes can be between $4-$5 a pound, usually closer to $5.
location location location
I live in the neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen in a tiny little apartment I share with four lovely roommates. It's a nice little place, though I am up on the fifth floor with no elevator, so hauling my things up the stairs is perhaps not my favorite thing. But our kitchen is nice and we're not far from lots of interesting places, so no real complaints here. But let's chat about the food resources within walking distance of me.
There's Whole Foods a few blocks off, Morton Williams is somewhere in that direction too. Closer still there's D'agostinos and the Westerly Market. Plus, there's about five billion little delis and a few fruit stand guys and a Duane Reade around here too. Oh, and the Amish Market, that's pretty close too. Lots of food to go around. And that doesn't include restaurant row, which is the billions of restaurants lining 9th Ave not far from where I am.
So plans: I'm going to start reviewing the food places around here. Talk about how I manage food shopping. That kind of thing. And then I'll chat up recipes. But I'm not there yet. Anyway, stay tuned. First review should be up today. Maybe two?
the way to cook: college apartment style
Ahhh, hello abandoned food blog! I'm back. For reals this time. However, I come with a new mission. While I do love buying my fancy fresh produce and making extravagant meals, I'm also a student living on a budget and I'm in New York City, which is not really known for cheap student friendly prices. Plus, I live in Manhattan and everything here is more expensive. Awful really.
So the new goal: I'm going to be doing a lot of talking about how to eat on a limited budget in a place like this. I've developed all kinds of systems. See, the thing is that while I'm living in an expensive city, I still have tastebuds. Living on ramen for the next few years is not a good option for me. And during the winter, Manhattan becomes a wasteland as far as cheap produce is concerned and I'm a big fan of salads. So this blog is going to be the chronicles of me, living on a student budget with a gormet palate.
Stay tuned, see what happens.
basically i just have a huge sweet tooth
First things first. Over the holidays I decided to play with a recipe I found on Bakerella. I made cakeballs, which is mostly easy, just time consuming and kind of a pain in the ass. They came out awful cute though!
So first, you make some kind of cake. I ended up making one chocolate cake and one yellow cake, both from box mixes. Don't worry about making it look nice, since as soon as its cool enough to touch, you'll be crumbling it right into a bowl and mixing it with a can of frosting. Actually, this is what the recipe says but I found that a little less is better. Too much frosting makes it too sweet. You basically want enough so that the cake stuff sticks together when you roll them into bowls. So yes. Add at least enough frosting to hold everything together and more if you like it sweeter.
So after you mix everything together, start shaping the cake into quarter sized balls. Put them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper
You can do other shapes. I took the yellow cake and made cones
Then, take your sticks and put them into the balls. For the cones, I just poked small holes and didn't leave the sticks in.
Afterwards, pop everything into the freezer until it's all firmed up. I actually just put everything in the fridge since I wanted to go to bed, so things went in there to wait till the morning.
So by this point, you'll need to decide what design you want to do. I did santa hats, since I was taking them to a Christmas party (I know, I know, I'm a terrible Jew. Menorahs next year?). So that's what I'm showing! First you take either white candy melts or white chocolate and melt it. You'll need styrofoam blocks or something to stick the sticks into near by. First, take a cone and dip the wide part into the white, just a little bit, just to get a ring of white around the bottom. Put it on a stick and stick it into the styrofoam block and leave it to harden. While you're waiting, melt the red candy melts and set it aside
Once the white part has dried, dip the cone in tip first into the red candy melt, dipping just to where the white starts. Put it back in the styrofoam block and let it harden.
Ok, now you can do one of a few things. If you happen to have small white candies of some kind, you can attach them to the tip of the cone, using the white chocolate as a glue. If you don't, you can do what I did, which was sort of mush some white chocolate and the sugar together into ball things and attack them with more white chocolate. Not the most elegant of situations but it works! Next, take the sugar crystals and pour some out on a piece of wax paper. Take a cone and drizzle a little white chocolate on the white part of the cone. Roll it over the sugar till there's a good coating there.
And you're done! Excitement!
ah, a new venture, a new exploration
Greetings and welcome, friends, food lovers, bored people cruising the blogosphere. This is my blog of the food variety, which I am finally getting around to writing for because I keep getting told I need a food blog. So here is one. FINALLY. But first, some information about me.
I'm Dwyn, I'm a college student living in an apartment in NYC. I've got four lovely roommates, a metric fuckton of cameras, and more cookbooks than I know what to do with. I also rather like to cook and I've got some cooking know how, at least enough to come up with interesting dinners every now and again.
So hang on folks, let's see how this newest venture goes!
