A reader of Gracenotes NYC invited me to a Met’s game and I happily agreed because 1. I haven’t seen the new stadium, 2. I probably will never go to a Met’s game unless it’s a company sponsored event, and 3. he had box seats and I really wanted to see the Delta Sky360 Club. We agreed to meet up at the Jackie Robinson Rotunda (did he actually play for the Mets?). Here’s the new stadium:
We started climbing the stairs to the second level but were quickly escorted to the sky club (there are a ton of employees directing people left and right). The Sky Club is really nice, almost to the point where you have to ask yourself if people are still going to games to WATCH the game! We had tickets to the Verizon box, which is on the Sterling level (section 9). Here’s our view:
Did you know that this apple appears every time a Met’s player scores a home run? We didn’t see any home runs that day, but I’m kind of interested to see it appear. You can kind of see the apple leaf under the SNY sign:
And finally, our seating area, with lots of alcohol, food, and good company:
The Mets ended up losing (it was kind of an uneventful game) but we had fun walking around the stadium and seeing all of the awesome food available (Carvel, Blue Smoke, Shake Shack, and MANY others). Readers, if you have any awesome events to attend in New York and have an extra ticket, I’m always down!
I feel like this took place ages ago (the concert was on April 15th), but it took a while for me to upload pictures onto my computer…so, better late than never! My friend from Google, Cliff, flew to New York for vacation, which coincided with the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall. Cliff managed to get two tickets to the concert and invited me to tag along for the event.
The symphony orchestra was composed of artists from around the world that auditioned through YouTube videos – isn’t that an innovative idea? There were also amazing composers attached to the event (MTT and Tan Dun). During the concert, there were video clips of some of the performers (they were seriously from all over the world) and it was a wonderful way to spend the evening. Cliff also got us tickets to the champagne reception during intermission, where we bumped elbows with Sergey Brin (funnily enough, Cliff was mistaken for Sergey Brin when we were walking out with our gift bags from a Korean cosmetics company; they asked him to pose with the bag but when they realized Cliff is blonde and about a foot taller, they went looking for the real Sergey)
Here’s a picture of MTT with the entire orchestra:
If you’re interested in listening to the recordings, you can check out the YouTube Symphony Orchestra page.
Red Mango is giving out free frozen yogurt on Saturday, May 2nd, from 12 – 4pm! They’re introducing a new flavor, Tangomonium, and took over a year (and 100 test batches) for the founder, Dan Kim, to create. The flavor offers a light and refreshing flavor with notes of fruit and citrus:
I can’t wait to try it on Saturday!
On Thursday, I will be attending the 2nd annual Taste of Southeast Asia, sponsored by Khmer Legacies:
You can purchase tickets through their website and if you type in the promotion code “foodblog,” you’ll get a 15% discount! Tickets are also available at the door on Thursday. I received two free tickets to attend the event and will be taking my friend, Maria.
Hope to see you there!
Magnolia’s is probably one of New York’s most famous bakeries (thanks to Sex and the City) but I find their cupcakes a little dry. Whenever I stop by the shop, instead of waiting in line for their cupcakes, I usually end up getting a small order of their banana pudding. It’s light and airy yet really decadent. I looked up the recipe and it’s surprisingly easy to make – perfect for a Friday treat to bring into the office.
The ingredients:
Don’t even bother getting the reduced fat Nilla wafers – I mean, if you’re using heavy cream, just go all out, right?!
First, combine the condensed milk with water and blend:
After the mixture is combined, add the instant vanilla pudding:
Mix the vanilla pudding with the condensed milk and water mixture until everything is blended together:
Let the pudding sit in the fridge for at least 4 hours (I let mine sit overnight because I didn’t want to put the entire pudding together the night before).
In the morning, I whipped up the heavy cream until peaks form.
Before:
After:
Yum! It’s starting to look good (even though there’s no sugar in the whipped cream, there’s something so deliciously awesome about heavy cream, don’t you think?)
Okay, now it’s time to combine the pudding and the heavy cream:
After carefully combining the whipped cream with the pudding, you should get a light yellowish mixture like so:
The recipe suggests that the pudding mixture should set for 4 hours (but no longer than 8), so I woke up early on Friday morning to assemble this amazing pudding. First, I cut up some bananas (about 5 bananas, but I bought more just in case):
And started layering the nilla wafers, bananas, and pudding:
I got through about three layers before I ran out of nilla wafers (although I still had some pudding left):
I finished the banana pudding with a nice layer of light and fluffy pudding and a banana:
After carefully transporting it to the office, I let it sit in the fridge for 5 hours (until after lunch) and we all dug into it as we sang happy birthday to our friends at work. The pudding got rave reviews (actually, people said it was BETTER than Magnolia’s!) It’s super simple to make and definitely an amazing treat!
