Greek Goodness and the Ballet

Good morning – how is everyone this fine Thursday morning? Is this week going by fast for you all? It is for me. I am definitely happy it’s Thursday though. Wednesday was busy and was over before I knew it!

Breakfast yesterday was Kashi Heart to Heart cereal with blueberries on top. I bought a huge container of blueberries last week and they’ve really lasted well.

Lunch was a salad from across the street – romaine lettuce with cheddar cheese, carrots, dried cranberries, walnuts and chickpeas. Topped with balsamic vinaigrette.

Snacks for the afternoon were Chobani yogurt with Kashi Go Lean cereal and a bag of grapes. The grapes were on sale last week so I bought them, but they did not last very long.

After work I headed uptown to a restaurant called Molyvos Restaurant to meet up with my friend Katie, her brother and her brother’s girlfriend. I’ve had Greek food before, but never really out at a nice Greek restaurant. This place was very nice and food was delicious. The menu on their website isn’t correct, but the one on menupages is right.

 We started with some wine and two appetizers: hummus and Tzatziki, which is sheeps milk yogurt with cucumber, garlic, mint and dill. I loved both, but favored the Tzatziki a bit.

 For my entrée, I had the Yemista, which is a  stuffed local red bell pepper, with arborio rice, eggplant, tomato and manouri cheese.

Sorry – I had to use flash on this one. It was scrumptous!! Soo delicious. I tried a bite of everyone else’s meal as well. Here they all are:

Aglaias Moussaka: casserole layers on eggplant, potato, tomato, spiced ground lamb and beef, yogurt bechamel.

Kritharaki Me Halaassina orzo risotto style with calamari, scallops kozani saffron and feta

Makaronia rolled pasta stuffed with agiorgitiko slow cooked short ribs, three cheese cream sauce

ALL were amazing!! What’s your favorite Greek dish? I have to say that mine was good, but I think the Makaronia was the best – hello it had a 3-cheese sauce!

We finished up our food and drink and then hopped in a cab to Lincoln Center. We made it just in time! We saw The Sleeping Beauty, performed by the NYC Ballet. It was a really great show. The only other ballet I’ve seen is The Nutcracker, which I dragged the Hubby to last year. Both were amazing, but this one was kind of nice because I knew the story better (thanks Walt Disney) and followed along easily. I had kind of forgotten The Nutcracker story when we saw that ballet, so I spent some time trying to remember the story while the ballet was going on.

I will say the first half of the show seemed a bit too long – intermission was a solid hour and a half into the show. We left Lincoln Center a little after 10:00 p.m. and I hopped in a cab. I was tired and ready to go to bed and was riding along smoothly until we were almost through Central Park and then the cab got a flat tire! Seriously. I had to get out and try to find another one to finish my trip home. Never had that happen before – very weird.

I made it home via the second cab and pretty much fell into bed. I was so happy that Katie asked me to go to the ballet — her dad and step-mom bid on the tickets at a charity auction and won, but then neither they, nor the other couple they bid with could attend, so the tickets would have gone to waste. The ballet is generally something that I wouldn’t think to go to on my own. It’s just a reminder that there are still soo many things I have yet to take advantage of in NYC and I’ve been living here for almost 4 years!

How about you – do you take advantage of all the activities and cultural events that your city/town has to offer?

NYC is soo diverse – I could probably do something different every night of the week if I wanted to (and had the money)! I should add that goal to my 2010 Resolution List – take advantage of more of the things NYC has to offer. 

Hope you all have a good Thursday. Talk to you on Friday.