Going Without: What I Miss, What I Don’t

This is me, obviously. I always look gorgeous and happy when I hand-wash the dishes.

A fellow recent New York transplant commented that she found it so interesting that this city, while so cutting-edge and modern in many ways is also so…old-fashioned. Like how all prewar buildings don’t have central A/C and the only heat comes from radiators that cannot be adjusted and are ultimately controlled by each building’s supervisor (although there are city laws about when heat must be provided to residents).

In the past four months, I have learned how to go without a lot of things. Some of these things are by choice, and others? A little less so. But I’ve learned a lot. Here’s a list of things I’ve learned to do without, and how I feel about it:

1. A dishwasher. As in, those crazy newfangled contraption where you put the dirty dishes and glasses and cutlery in with some soap, and they come out sparkling clean. For the most part, I don’t mind not having one because the things that are most annoying to scrub clean (pots, pans, the cheese grater, wine glasses) would have to be hand-washed anyway, and plates, forks and the like take two seconds to suds up and rinse off. What I do not like is the drying part of the process. Although Sean and I have been pretty good about alternating washing vs. drying-and-putting-things-away duties, sometimes I just look at that mound of sopping wet items sitting on our drying pad on our ONLY built-in kitchen counter, and I just cannot bring myself to deal with it.

Hey, look, it’s me again! Don’t you just adore my darling apron?

2. A microwave. I don’t miss it all, actually! I like having one at work for the occasional leftovers I bring with me, but it somehow always smells like curry and then makes my food smell like curry, too, which isn’t cool. Even though Indian food is one of my ultimate favorite cuisines. We’ve mastered the art of reheating food on the stove top or in the oven (a lot of foil has been used in the process), and the food always stays hot longer and retains more of its original texture. I have an old-fashioned tea kettle to make hot beverages — which is what I used in college — and it’s much more effective than zapping hot cocoa or water in the microwave. Gas stoves are incredibly efficient. I do long for microwave popcorn on occasion, though. But that’s about it.

Ooh, look! An advertisement from the future!

3. An elevator. I mean, I have lived in a third-floor dorm room, a fourth-floor dorm room, and a third-floor apartment before, all without elevators, so this isn’t really a big deal. I think walking up the stairs in my building and in the subway is good for my health. I like living in an upper-story unit because it makes me feel safer, even though we already live in a very safe neighborhood of Manhattan. The only times I resent it are when I’ve carried a full load of groceries from my favorite supermarket a half-mile away and then have to lug them up the stairs, and when I am doing laundry and have to add another flight of stairs down to our basement laundry room (which I am so grateful for!!! no laundromat!). As long as I don’t have any drastic falls, we’re all good.

True story: I fell up the stairs one time in middle school. No one was around, so it wasn’t embarrassing, but my books went everywhere and I banged up my knees pretty badly. Mainly my self-confidence hurt because I did not know that anyone could possibly be that clumsy. I was clearly mistaken.

Another true story: One time in COLLEGE I fell down the stairs in an academic building after class. The friend I was engaged in conversation with at the time, God bless him, did not laugh or even comment when I bounced back to my feet like nothing happened and continued descending down the stairs. He also was a guest at our wedding, which I guess means he isn’t too embarrassed to be associated with me, even though there were other people around during that fall. People are so nice.

4. Central A/C. We have now adapted to the “New York version of air conditioning,” which is to say, a very weak version of hardcore Southern A/C. We learned not to turn on our unit unless it was stifling outside, and usually just as a fan to dehumidify the rooms. But those first few days when we moved in and didn’t have A/C? Brutal. I hate the heat because I feel like even if you take off all your clothes and sat around in your birthday suit, you’d still sweat through your clothes. Yeah. Figure that one out.

5. A doorman. Who is supposed to pick up my packages and food deliveries? Who is going to open the front door for me when it is windy and snowy, like tonight? Who?!? (Kidding. But truth be told, I aspire to have a doorman one day. It will probably never happen. But you know that’s when you’ve got it made. That, and when you no longer have to take the subway because you have a PERSONAL DRIVER.)

Why, thank you, Jeeves! Because doormen obviously have Butler Names.

6. A car. Do not miss at all. I hate driving. I hate automobile traffic. I hate navigating in a car. I don’t care if I have to stand close enough to a stranger that I can study the pores on his face and hear every lyric coming out of his headphones, while another stranger stands close enough behind me that I can practically feel their heartbeat and every exhalation of breath, IT IS STILL BETTER THAN DRIVING. The only time I don’t like it is when I have to sneeze because that could be catastrophic in such close quarters. You just gotta follow the No. 1 Unspoken Rule of Public Transportation: Never make eye contact with anybody. Ever. (The other rule is to give up your seat for pregnant women, the elderly, and the disabled. And sometimes children.)

Do you know how hard it is to not make eye contact with people who are quite within your personal bubble?

7. Cable. This was a purely personal decision between Sean and I, to stop unnecessary expenses. We’re not TV people. We have Internet and a good Netflix account, so we don’t have to watch stupid commercials and we don’t ever waste free-time flipping through channels “just because.” I prefer to read the news online or in print, anyway, and I can see the weather forecast on my phone. I didn’t have cable my sophomore year of college, either. I sometimes miss the Food Network, and Sean wishes we could watch the A&M football games without having to trek out to a sports bar, but other than that? We don’t miss it a bit.

8. Space. Our apartment is 400-sq-ft, more or less. In our living room we’ve managed to fit a three-person couch, an armchair, a TV stand, two end-tables, a bookcase, a small two-person dining table and chairs, a desk and desk chair, an ironing board (weekdays), a guitar, a cat scratching post and cat bed, and still somehow not blocked off the doorway, the fireplace, or the three windows. One corner of our bedroom makes me laugh because there is a filing cabinet/endtable, litter box, laundry hamper, laundry basket, and several storage containers of extra toiletries and medications. There is enough room in that corner for a person to stand and sort through laundry, or clean the litter box, or retrieve some ibuprofen. But there is no way two people could fit into that space at the same time. And our kitchen looks like this:

Easy-Bake Oven: Grown-Up Edition

You don’t get the full comic effect unless you see it in person, I promise.

I like that having a small space forces us to be tidy and organized — and that it takes very little time to clean because it is so small. I like that it prevents me from buying things I don’t need, especially random snack foods.

I don’t like that it means when the cat gets all nocturnal and chases her toys around at night, that she must literally run into every piece of furniture in the process. And as I learned after being stuck inside for most of four days during Hurricane Sandy, a person can go mad staying in this small of a space for too long.

I hate that on TV shows set in NYC, like How I Met Your Mother (which I love!, see left) have the most unrealistic apartments EVER. The apartment that our beloved narrator Ted lives in on the snazzy Upper West Side could never realistically be afforded by the characters. In the first season, Ted is around my age and has a fairly entry-level job as an architect at a smallish firm. He lives with a law student, and sometimes that law student’s public kindergarten teacher fiancee, and sometimes his late-night small-network TV reporter girlfriend.

There is just no way they could live in that apartment AND go to the bar downstairs every night for beers (which will cost you about $6+ a piece in Manhattan) and overpriced pub food.

And it just really bothers me because all these naive teenagers are sitting out there going, “Wow, I want to NY and have an apartment like that!” Yeah…try winning the lottery.

The apartment in HBO’s Girls is 1,000x more realistic (see left). Probably because the writer/creator of the show, Lena Dunham, has ACTUALLY LIVED IN NEW YORK. Crazy, huh? New York shows made by New York people. I think we’re onto something there.

I think I’m veering off on a tangent, but I love this blog post about famous TV NYC apartments, from Jerry Seinfeld’s to Carrie Bradshaw’s, and how likely it is the characters who live in them could afford to pay the rent in real life.

What do I miss about non-NYC life, aside from family and friends, like anybody who lives anywhere these people are not would? Tex-Mex. So bad. I miss it. My heart longs for it. My stomach needs it.

I would give up my foolish dreams of having a doorman for a decent Tex-Mex place in the UES.

P.S. Since I mentioned How I Met Your Mother, please click here for the biggest piece of Halloween adorableness you’ve ever seen. That is Neil Patrick Harris (Tin Man) and his too cute family! I can’t even handle it.

Recipe: Tex-Mex Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Recently, I was on Pinterest searching for healthy recipes, which if you know anything about Pinterest, is not so easily accomplished. I eventually came across this recipe for “Healthy Mexican Sweet Potato Skins” from the food blog Pinch of Yum. This instantly caught my attention because I’ve really been missing spicy Tex-Mex food since we moved up here. I’ve had spicy Thai food and spicy Indian food, but no spicy food of the Mexican variety or its Texan equivalent.

And although I know it’s not exactly sweet potato season, I love how nutritious they are! These little guys are packed with Vitamins A and C, potassium, and fiber. Best carbs ever. Plus, they’re an exciting orange color. I bought mine (and the onion) at my favorite neighborhood establishment, U Don’t Know Nothing Produce. It’s like something straight out of Sesame Street: there’s reasonably priced, farm-fresh produce; the aisles are really narrow; and the same man and woman are always working at the cash registers. It’s cute and healthy and only a couple minutes’ walk away!

I had never been a fan of the traditional marshmallow-topped variety of sweet potatoes served at Thanksgiving, but my college roommate Erica changed all that for me. Erica shares my somewhat illogical dietary philosophy that if you make healthy eating choices most of the time, it is perfectly OK to eat more than your fair share of baked goods and ice cream. She taught me how to “bake” a sweet potato in the microwave, which was the perfect healthy dinner fix for a busy college student.

Anyway, my version of Pinch of Yum’s potato skins recipe did not turn out to be potato skins. It turned out to be, well, this:

Not exactly potato skins.

I swear I’m not a bad cook! This is the first time I’d baked sweet potatoes since making oven-baked sweet potato fries earlier in the summer to go with hamburgers. Those cut-up versions obviously cook a lot faster than the whole versions.

Aside from my failures to make this vegetarian dish as planned, I still enjoyed how it turned out! I’m a huge fan of a mashed potatoes–so much so, in fact, that I think they should have their own special place on the Food Pyramid, preferably near the bottom so I have a good excuse to eat them all of the time. The chipotle peppers in this gave a nice smoky flavor to the sweetness of the potatoes. The corn added a bit of crunch so it wasn’t just a big mushy pile of vegetables, and I never say “no” to something that includes cheese and sour cream.

Because I’m a girl and I’m small, I view this dish as a perfectly acceptable dinner, especially if you serve it with a nice salad on the side. For others though, it might be better as a side, or (I hope this isn’t too weird), rolled up in a tortilla as a sort of vegetarian burrito. Everything tastes better in a tortilla anyway. Everything.

So without further ado, here is my edited version of the recipe, with photographic evidence of the NYC kitchen’s ability to produce edible food, despite its dollhouse-like nature:

Tex-Mex Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients:

• 3 medium sweet potatoes
• 1 can of corn, rinsed and patted dry
• 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 T butter
• 1/2 yellow onion, chopped
• 2-4 canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced or pureed
• 1 oz. light cream cheese
• 1/4 cup light sour cream
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup cilantro, roughly chopped
• 6 T shredded cheese (I used Monterey Jack)

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. (The 350 degrees suggested in the original recipe did NOT work for me. I did some frenzied Googling on my iPhone and discovered I had to amp up the temperature and cook those poor potatoes for a bit lot longer to make them mashable.)

2. Give your sweet potatoes a good scrub with water and then a paper towel. Pierce them a few times all over with a fork so they don’t explode on you, then place them on top of foil on a baking sheet. Or if you’re like me, and your oven is too small to hold your brand-new Wilson baking sheets from your wedding registry (*pout*), use your 9×13 Corningware dish. They’ll be in there for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of your potatoes.

3. While the potatoes get nice and soft, place the corn in a heavy cast-iron skillet (I used a stainless steel skillet and scrubbed it like crazy after) over medium-high heat with no butter or oil. Just let the corn chill for a bit before you stir it, so it can roast. Stir it after a few minutes, then let it sit. Continue to do this until your corn looks more flavorful than it did when it came out of the can, but not burnt and dried out. I added a little ground pepper and crushed red pepper to mine, too.

4. Set the corn aside in a small bowl, along with the rinsed and drained black beans. I went ahead and added the cilantro. I think I used a lot more than a 1/2 cup because I love cilantro and it’s not exactly cheap for how much a recipe usually calls for. Plus, I think I was foreshadowing my overuse of chipotle peppers later on and knew the cooling flavor of cilantro would help subdue the heat. Riiiight.

Silly cilantro, escaping and clinging to the chipotle can.

5. Saute the chopped onion in the butter over medium heat until soft and translucent. I went ahead and added this to the corn-bean-cilantro mixture, too.

I kind of just wanted to eat this vegetable mixture.

6. Mince the chipotle peppers. I used five, because I’m brave and foolish. I have never, in all my times of preparing Tex-Mex dishes, used canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.

Can of fire.

What is adobo sauce, you ask? It’s apparently a mixture of tomato, jalapeno, garlic, vinegar, and FIRE. I know this because I conducted extensive research by scrutinizing the back of the can and also by bravely/foolishly dipping my finger into the sauce and taste-testing it.

It also kind of looks like you committed vegetable-murder on your cutting board after.

The cutting board looks like a crime scene.

Go ahead and mix the desired number of minced peppers into your veggie mixture. I saved the extra sauce from the can and added a spoonful or two of it to a half-eaten jar of fail salsa. Seriously, this stuff was like eating tomato sauce before–and now, it’s make-your-nose-run spicy. Just the way I like it. I really think the Desert Pepper Trading Company is trying to fool gullible New Yorkers into believing just because their salsa is made in El Paso, it will actually be good. Lies.

7. Back to the recipe. If you don’t buy pre-shredded cheese, it’s a good idea to do this now. Because baking sweet potatoes takes a while. Go ahead and clean up your mess so far too, while you’re at it.

8. When the potatoes are fork-tender all the way through, cut them in half length-wise and start scooping out the flesh with a spoon and place in a large bowl. If you’re me, you will totally destroy the potato skins in the process and give up on that idea.

I hid these in the garbage with such shame.

But I was hungry and not a quitter! I fetched our 9×9 Pyrex baking dish, sprayed it with Pam (just in case), and got set on making a sort of mashed sweet potato casserole.

9. Using a potato masher, mix the cream cheese and sour cream into the sweet potatoes. I found this part to be extremely enjoyable, as it allowed me to take my aggression out on the sweet potatoes for taking so freaking long to get soft.

10. Mix in your veggie mixture so you get something that is…colorful. Whether or not it actually looks appetizing is debatable.

If nothing else, it looks healthy.

11. Spread this mixture evenly into your greased square Pyrex pan, top with cheese, and pop in the oven for 5 minutes or so on broil. The cheese should melt and everything should get hot and delicious.

12. Shovel ravenously into mouth. Suffer mild tongue burns, but it’s worth it because you waited sooo long for those sweet potatoes to be done. (Well, hopefully YOU won’t because your oven will be set to an appropriate temperature from the get-go. Oh, well. Now I know…)

I’m no food photographer and this meal is no food model. But it tastes good, I swear.

I love that this meal is meatless because sometimes meat is just too much of a hassle. You have to be so careful not to contaminate anything and I end up washing my hands 20394823049823 times in the process. Also, meat can be an expensive protein source. I would never cut meat out of my diet completely (no offense, vegetarians/vegans), but it’s nice to mix it up every once in a while.

Although it was a pretty easy recipe, it was time-consuming because of those gosh-darn potatoes and the gosh-darn oven. On the bright side, I got to sneak in an episode of How I Met Your Mother while I waited and wondered how Ted Mosby scored such a fantastically large NYC kitchen. The Upper West Side must be a magical, spacious place.

Isn’t this kitchen just huuuuuge? Have the show’s creators never actually been to New York? Wasn’t this kitchen used by a law student and public school kindergarten teacher at one point? How did they get the money? WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?

NYC kitchen tour: It’s not small, it’s efficient.

So people have been wanting to see what our apartment looks like now that it actually has furniture and people living in it, but truthfully, I’m a little embarrassed to do a Grand Apartment Tour just yet. I mean, we are still using our TV box as a nightstand because apparently finding a table/flat surface that will fit in a 12″ wide space is not so easy.

But I can show you the kitchen, because it came mostly assembled! And it’s cute and little and brings yummy things to us.

Ta DAAAA! There it is. All of it. Really.

I take special pride in my ability to cook things in this tiny space. I consulted one of my favorite cooking blogs, Smitten Kitchen (she also lives in NYC) for tips about cooking in a less than Texas-sized kitchen. In this particular post, she talks about ways to maximize, and I quote, a “tiny” kitchen. Ha. I think I’ve got you beat on tininess, Ms. Smitten.

Fortunately, I had read Anthony Bourdain’s exposé on professional kitchens, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, from which I learned many useful things, like fresh garlic is always best, and you only truly need one high-quality chef’s knife, and fantastic cooking is possible in the smallest of work spaces.

He describes a professional line cook’s mise en place in great detail. Basically, this is a fancy French term for “everything in place” (or more directly translated, “put in place”). A mise en place includes everything the cook will need to prepare a dish–cooking utensils, basic ingredients like softened butter and freshly ground pepper, cutting boards, etc. And it all has to fit within an arm’s reach–often, in less space than that. And it has to be kept neat. Always.

Basically, if the pros can do it every day at warp speed, I can do it too.

There’s more counter space than you thought. But only a little.

So let’s begin our little tour, shall we? First, we have our only built-in counter space, which was quickly populated with our knife block, cutlery organizer, crock of various kitchen utensils (we’ve got spatulas and ladles to a meat-pounder and potato-masher, folks), and this drying mat thing we got from Target. Because we have no dishwasher. We are the dishwashers!

That felt really empowering to type.

I have to keep that little extra space clear in case I’m using the hand mixer or anything, because the only outlets in the kitchen are right there next to the sink. Also, I think the guys who came in and renovated before we moved in and put up this nice tile back splash screwed up when it came to the outlets because it is REALLY hard to plug anything in. I mean, it might be possible there’s actually tile directly behind the outlet protectors.

Seriously, I’ve succeeded 2 out of 2 times with the hand mixer, but our mini food processor just wouldn’t be plugged in, so I ended up making watermelon puree for popsicles on the floor of the living room (because, laughably, the cord was too short to reach from the breakfast table to the outlet by the baseboard). Let’s not talk about that, OK?

Our cabinets have fishy priorities.

I’m including this next picture primarily to show that things actually do fit in the cabinets. This cabinet always makes me laugh because although the shelves are adjustable, they are only adjustable to certain heights, and because of the various heights of our glassware, this was the best way they could fit. With the wine glasses in the easiest to reach location (along with the ultra-important Canada koozies)…and the tall tumblers at the very top. Where I have to get the footstool to reach them comfortably.

It’s an alcoholic cabinet. I don’t really know what else to say about it. We didn’t plan it this way, I swear.

Meet Kitchen Island.

One of the best pieces of advice I read before moving to NYC was to get an extra prep space surface of some sort and always, always, always keep it clear.

So when we found this fairly affordable kitchen cart at the East Harlem Target, it was basically love at first sight.

The top drawer holds plenty of extra cooking utensils, like measuring spoons and the pastry blender. The bottom exposed shelf holds all kinds of plastic bags, as well as foil and plastic wrap. The top shelf is for baking and cooking essentials, like olive oil, sugar, non-stick cooking spray…and peanut butter. The other part I use for cooking things I don’t need very much, like tea bags and my mandoline.

Plus, there is totally a towel bar on one side, which is awesome. And plenty of space on top to keep the cookbook/recipe holder, a few ingredients, and a glass of water. Because cooking is so dehydrating, don’t you know?

I forgot to mention this, but the actual kitchen only has one lonely drawer. And it’s really skinny, so it can only hold a can opener, some kitchen scissors, a wine bottle corkscrew, a jar opener, and a bottle opener. Do you detect a theme? It’s a drawer of things that open other things!

And there’s also a wine aerator in there. Because we’re fancy like that, and it’s BFFs with the corkscrew. And also probably the alcoholic glassware cabinet.

Who knew a simple board of wood could be so useful?

In terms of other features of the kitchen that we added, Sean was super-nice and installed this “pantry” shelf for me. Oh, I forgot to mention. There’s no pantry.

This shelf does a fine job holding our small cookbook collection, our spice rack, dry pasta and rice, crackers, and other random food items. However, in order to reach this handy little guy, I need help from my sous-chef.

That is to say, my portable, fold-out step stool. We found this handy-dandy tool at the Midtown East Home Depot. Which, I must say, was a frighteningly large Home Depot. Especially since no one shopping there lives in an actual house.

I use this step-stool to reach a lot of the kitchen cabinet shelves, too, as I am hobbit-sized and the kitchen, like so much of New York City, is built vertically. Sean has also used it to reach the stowaway storage space above our bedroom closet. Step stools: Not just for the vertically challenged anymore!

A step stool and a box of Diet Cokes: all you really need to get a boost in life.

There are still some more organizational things I’d like to improve about the kitchen, like not having the pots and pans in a somewhat stacked jumble under the sink, right next to the cleaning products, or figuring out a better recycling system.

Speaking of which, our apartment building has all these signs saying it’s a city law to recycle, but I’m pretty sure this is extremely difficult to enforce and therefore, a rule followed by few people.

I recycled as much as possible all the way through college, so I’d hate to break a good habit now. Plus, I’ve seen really gross things here, like trash blowing down the street and cigarette butts floating in a hot dog stand’s drink cooler, so it makes me feel better to contribute my teensy-tiny bit to not making the environment a grimy place of windblown trash and discarded cigarette butts.

Does anyone have any clever ideas about how to store and sort our recyclables into two categories (paper/cardboard items and plastic/glass/aluminum items)? They’re kind of overflowing from a paper shopping bag next to the front door (I like how I say this as if there’s a back door to a fourth-floor apartment), all mixed together. Everything I’ve done so far just seems unsightly and not up to my OCD organization standards.

A series of cereals.

Also, I’m not a super-huge fan of this (to the right). With no pantry, and some precious space above the fridge, it seems foolish to waste this surface. It holds paper towels, paper napkins, a slightly ghetto box of CVS-brand Wheat Thins, and an unsightly stack of opened cereal boxes.

This is because when cereal goes on sale from $5-$7 a box to $2.50-$3.50/box, you better believe I’m going to stock up. Or stack up, in this case. Ha.

Also, I’m not going to lie, half the reason I wanted to include this photo was because I put the photo booth images from my good friends’ Shanna & Derek’s wedding on the fridge.

Clarification: If our cereal boxes look weirdly tiny next to the paper towel roll, don’t freak out and assume food products are packaged smaller here to fit into our tiny kitchens. I bought the JUMBO-sized rolls of Bounty because they were cheaper somehow and seemed more efficient to replace, as I have to put the additional paper towel rolls on top of the cabinets. To get them down, I have to stand on the step stool, stand on my tippy-toes, and swing my arm wildly about my head.

That’s all of the kitchen for now! Next I will post my humorous and mildly successful attempts at making a twice-baked sweet potatoes recipe I found on Pinterest, mainly to prove that the preparation of food in this tiny space is possible. Any kinks in the cooking process I blame on the poorly written recipe, not the small kitchen or my small self.

Moral of the story: Don’t hate on things just because they are small. I love my hobbit-sized kitchen, and my hobbit-sized kitchen loves me. Plus, I bet in a who-can-clean-their-entire-kitchen-fastest competition, I would totally win.