Autumn in New York City

Autumn is hands down the best season in New York.

The weather is a blissful 70* all season long, the trees are fiery shades of red and gold, there are no bugs and even better- the tourists go home for the season! I still haven't figured out why NYC is most densely populated during the blazing heat of summer and the dead frozen tundra of December- go figure. Alas, that leaves the very best of the year (Autumn and Spring) to the locals who are free to prowl the streets, knit scarves wrapped snugly around necks, to enjoy the last golden rays of a fading summer and bask in the golden glory of the season to come.

Most people think I love Winter best of all seasons- I always seem to be several degrees warmer than everyone else and my friends use to joke that my mood swings affected the snowfall- and while I do not deny my Winter Princess Barbie tendencies, Autumn has come up as the very best of everything I love- the food, the spices, the fashion, the holidays- all culminating in one dense explosion of color, wool, and the smell of pumpkin lattes. I experience a slight twinge of jealousy as I see the girls getting off the subway, school uniforms pressed crisp, pencils tucked behind ears, chatting about the physics quiz... Who knew that season we once dreaded could inspire so much longing in our 20-something selves? For every Autumn I see now, that golden red streak of Back-to-School Fever illuminates the whole picture, until I'm lost in the blurry visions of my kickline uniform, and the smell of the auditorium and textbook covers and highlighters and chalk dust.

While the summer lover's lament of the dying tulips and the leaves falling like paper airplanes all over the city I revel in the golden glory of every shadow elongating, every crisp breeze lifting my hair and the warm cinnamon smells that envelope the whole city like a hot toddy. Every store puts out the cranberry cashmere sweaters, and the Italian leather boots and the fashionista's of New York come out in droves to parade whats what on the real runways- the city sidewalks. Orange and pink wool scarves, and wine colored plaid skirts, and brown leather purses slung low over barley exposed shoulders...while the fine misty rains obscure their vision and their rainbow painted galoshes splash in the glassy puddles- I can't do much but glide forward, smiling, letting the drops cling to my glasses, wondering how this wonderful time of the year goes so frequently unnoticed.

While they mourn the daffodils I douse my apartment in Halloween decorations, and silk maple leaves and baby pumpkins I draw tiny faces onto. I boil orange peels and cinnamon sticks until the kitchen is glowing with the spicy smells of apple cider and bake about 4 million cookies from here until December. I prepare my 12 halloween costumes, cover my apartment in cottony spiderwebs and pull out the orange and black napkins, and lay my collection of glittery masquerade masks over my bookcases and windowsills where they sparkle the fading afternoon sun. I begin my favorite Autumn recipes- pumpkin pies, pecan tartlets, spiced apple cider with rum, homemade apple butter and hearty chili and stews... Come spend a week with me- you'll need a gym membership before day two.

There's something wonderful and sort of secretive and alluring about Autumn in New York. While the tourists pack up and go, New Yorkers can breathe a little sigh of pleasure at the long walks in the fading sunshine and the empty sidewalks and the old bookstores begging us inside. It seems all my favorite people were born during this time of year- I seem to be inherently drawn to the haunted magic that gleams in the dusty sunlight and stretching shadows. Even those who are sad to see Summer go can appreciate the simple beauty of the leaves in Bryant Park burning up the sky in orange and red or the happy little tick-or-treater's toddling down the block or the first bite of the seasons apple pie. It's New York's best kept secret. Christmas may be the most wonderful time of the year- but Autumn is golden start to the magic of the season.

Ps- I just learned how to can my own fruits and vegetables. And it's easy and yummy and they make great Christmas gifts- so here's the recipe for Homemade Apple Butter :) xoxo

Apple Butter (yields 9 half pints)

9 Quarts of applesauce (I made my own by cooking down apples, then mashing them :) )
2 Tablesppons ground cinnamon
1 Teaspoon gorund clove
1/2 Teaspoon allspice or nutmeg ( I like nutmeg- it's spicier!)
4 Cups of sugar

Cook applesauce, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and 2 c. of the sugar in a slow cooker for 12-15 hours. Just leave it overnight on low- you want the applesauce to reduce to about half. The next day, add the rest of the sugar and let the apple butter cook for one more hour.

The sterilize your canning jars in a large pot of boiling water for five minutes. Put the canning lids in hot but not boiling water for five minutes. Pull the jars out and ladle the hot apple butter into the hot jars, leaving 1/2" at the top (it's called headspace and you need to ensure the jars seal with a vacuum seal). Wipe the rims cleans and put one lid on each jar- then scre the screw band on until you meet resistance. Then process (boil) the jars with 2" of water covering them for 15 minutes. Pull the jars out and set them on a towel in a cool dry place- you'll hear the jars seal with a small ping! Leave the jars untouched overnight. The next day, check to make sure they sealed properly. If the jar lid pops up and down (like a snapple top) it's not sealed. If it doesn't pop then congratulations- you've just made Apple Butter! It's good warmed up on vanilla ice cream, or on toast. It also makes a great Christmas gift :)

Just an American Girl in the Tokyo Streets

Some of you may know I recently flew 14 hours to the other side of the world to get some soba. The plane ride was successful after 2 Valium and a cocktail of Aspirin, Benedryll and Juicy Juice. You could've flown my ass to Antarctica and I would've been thrilled. Nonetheless, I landed, 14 hours later and completely wasted, at Narita Airport- Woozy, but for the most part alive.
I feel like you can determine the awsomeness of your trip based on the airport you land in. Everyone ignored me in Paris, the roof was made of straw in the Dominican Republic and Disney Posters inevitably line Orlando International. Three distinctly memorable vacations...
Narita International is clean. Like, robots come in the middle of the night, there are not trash-cans, because there is no trash clean. And there were signs in English brightly proclaiming "Welcome to Japan!". God Bless the Japanese.
There are approximately 2,345,424,824 subway lines in Tokyo... And each is owned by a different company- like if I owned the A line and you owned the 6 Train...or something like that. And there isn't much in English once you get past customs apparently... tricksy little hobbits.  So getting on the train from the airport to the station our hotel was near was, well, interesting. Did I mention the station our hotel was near is the largest subway station in the WORLD? You think you've seen a lot of people in NYC, then take a trip to Shinjuku. Everything about this city is completely overwhelming. Getting off the train is like walking into a literal sea of people. And there is no 5- foot-radius rule in Tokyo. If you're in the way you will get run over. End of story. I suppose they feel that any inch of a building not covered in neon or forty foot television screens or posters of Ken Watanabe vs. Darth Vadar (yes, that was a real poster) is an inch wasted. It's like being drunk, getting thrown in a ball pit filled with glitter and rainbow paint , then shaken and spit out onto a sidewalk where you're not allowed to throw up...only pleasant.. am I making sense?
We found our hotel, checked into our tiny room, took pictures of the view and promptly passed out. We woke up at 12am Tokyo time starving and ready to hunt for food, sake and cheap business men to sing karaoke with. Mission accomplished on all accounts.
The food is unbelievable, if a little repetitive. We ate soba noodle soup for breakfast, gem colored sushi off conveyor belts that was probably caught that morning, fancy pants scallion pancakes we cooked ourselves on open table top grills and shabu shabu- essentially tastier-than-American fondue.I'm not even going to get into the crepes they sell on the corners, or the Japanese Coldstone or Chocolate Koalas- but let me just say the trip was worth it for the food alone. Everything was colorful and fresh and delicious- including the copious amounts of sake we drank with very nice businessmen at the Izakaya on the corner... anyway...
We saw the sights, beautiful temples built before our country was even a thought, paintings glazing the ceilings, shrines and pagodas 5 stories high, when all you can think is how the hell did they build this?! Tokyo tower, (a larger stolen Eiffel Tower with better lighting), the beer building, the giant Japanese Lantern and the techno Ferris Wheel at Odiba- a raver kids dream. The parks are covered in bonsai trees, there really are zen sand gardens and every time you turn around you seem to bump into a shrine of some sort. It's unbelievably amazing and breathtakingly beautiful in a historical way Americans can't even comprehend.
But I digress... what did I really go to Tokyo for? The shopping of course! Shinkuku and Harajuku and Shibuya, just to name a few. Department stores packed 6 floors deep with ridiculously cute neon pink shoes, jackets and lingerie covered in fur, mini skirts (I mean MINI skirts), cable knit sweaters with skulls and fur pom poms to hang on your expensive leather handbag. Everything is one-size-fits all. And that seems to work for Japanese women, because well, they are one size fits all... But every bubbly salesgirl was just dying to try and stuff my 36E chest into their sweaters, jackets, t-shirt and button downs. Then they would giggle hysterically as the zipper slid to a halt just beneath my underwire. I heard a lot of "Oh, you lucky guuuuul, you so big!" Haha, it never got old to them.
Their are rules so foreign to us but clockwork to them. They recycle everything, to the point that each component of your garbage is broken down, from your left over coke to the straw you were using it in. They don't eat on the streets - not even ice cream. Ever. They take stairs when there are escalators (very FEW escalators) and stand up when there are seats on the subway (what!?). They're polite to you even when you don't speak their language. They're beautiful and dark eyed and sexy but try so hard to look American. Men were obsessed with my hair and women were obsessed with my chest.... In America it's the other way around... They're really good at drinking, and even better at singing American songs at Karaoke. The sidewalks are so packed with people you can hardly move but the flow of the city is consistent and powerful.
And it makes you simply want to be there to look at it all and try to take it in, in the very few hours you have there. The overwhelming intricacy of their everyday life would make most Americans faint, but its like going on a new adventure every time you step outside.
If you can, go to Tokyo. You need to see the fashion, and walk in the quiet of the shrines and taste the unbelievable flavors of the food. You need to meet the people and draw pictures on cocktail napkins to communicate and walk around the parks in the rain.
Tokyo has a surprisingly romantic, intense feeling that was so apparent once you were there... all I could think was Why have I never come here before?
The 14 hour flight was worth it and I was surprised by how sad I was to board the plane back to my most favorite city in the whole world. The organized chaos will stay with me forever.

You should go to Tokyo.

CitiGurl123

When I was 12 we got the internet at my house. We only had AOL, our modem took 20 minutes to sign on and when anyone called- well, you remember...
I remember sitting in the phosphorescent glow of the screen, as brain cells slowly leaked out my ears, IMing 18 friends at once, the universal ping resounding in the living room like an alarm clock. Prrng. Pinnnng. Prrrng. Pinnng. My dad removed our speakers in less than a week...
But the single most internal joy was of course in creating your personal identity- your screen name! A small, usually completely inappropriate name tag the world would look at to make inaccurate assumptions about who you were, where you were from, how old you were and of course, how cute you might be. It had to be stellar, and different and not too long and speak volumes about your intellectual creativity so the entire freaking planet would know you were cool. It always ended up being something completely stupid.
I mean, seriously, who has kept the screen name they chose when they were 12? Or moreover still has an AOL account? Right, I mean right? Hasn't everyone moved on to Gmail and Earthlink and some-crap-that's-hard-to-remember.net? Yeah, about that...
Before you get all up-in-arms about my still having an AOL account- and yes, I literally still have the 12-year-old version of my digital self- let me just say a few things in my defense.
1. AOL is only 3 letters- It's easy to remember, and everyone knows it. I almost never have to spell my email address when I sign up for useless crap. Ok, maybe I thought I was being edgy when I spelled it CitiGurl- but come on, I was 12, and my middle name is spelled Kristyne- yeah, figure that one out.
2. 123 is actually my birthday. January 23rd, not December 3 in case you were wondering. Another thing that's easy to remember. I'll bet you thought I just chose 123 to add some fucking numbers didn't you? See, my 12 year-old-self was a smart bitch.
3. I've got about 4,526,324 email contacts already saved to Citigurl123's mailing list. And don't say, well you could transfer those names- because this is already becoming way too much work.
4. You guys all change your emails so often that I literally have no idea what any of your addresses are anymore. All I can remember are your AOL account screen names...
5. Some total asshole already took Jennie.Hurd@Gmail.com- seriously? WTF? How many of me are there in this world? Obviously, at least one too many.

Citigurl123@aol.com.
It's for realz, but don't email me... I never check my emails...