From Fashionista to Farmer

My mom's friend Micheline Brown had a glamorous life in New York. She was a stylist in movies like Sex and the City and TV shows like The Good Wife. Now she's decided to become a farmer.

She is going to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to be an intern at an organization called Growing Power. I did a video interview with her (below) before she left Brooklyn.

Growing Power is a national nonprofit organization that teaches people to grow, process, market and distribute food. At Growing Power’s urban farm they raise livestock like goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, fish and worms and also plants for food. The founder, Will Allen, won a genius award (like my dance teacher Elizabeth Streb!) for his good work.

While she's at Growing Power, Micheline will get to grow and harvest vegetables for neighborhoods that don't have enough healthy food. After her internship, she plans to start her own farm. I hope the farm she starts is in Brooklyn.

Here is a video interview I did with "Farmer Brown." Click here
Here is the Growing Power website: Click here

"Pete's-za" at Pete's Napolitan Cuisine

Yesterday night I went to Pete's Napolitan Cuisine with my mom, my step mom, and my sister. It just opened on Fifth Avenue between First and Second streets in Brooklyn. It specializes in pizza, which is a good idea. There are other little restaurants on the block, but not pizza. You can never have too much pizza.

The decor was very cool but also fancy. It had paintings and pictures painted on the walls of Italy. They had a brick oven to cook the pizza in. It smelled like they just made 300 pizzas, and they were jumping out of the oven.

For an appetizer we got a beet salad and caprese salad, which is tomato with mozzarella and fresh basil and a mix of sweet and salty balsamic vinegar. The beet salad was so delicious with a small bit of cheese.

For the main course I had margarita pizza, which is kind of plain with just cheese, basil and tomato. I got it because it reminded me of the caprese salad, but with bread. It was delicious, not plain at all, but very flavorful. My sister got a prosciutto pizza with arugula and she shared it with my mom. It was also really good.

They also serve desserts, but we didn't have any. I did see bread baked in the wood oven with powdered sugar that looked good. If I would rate Pete's, I would give it 4 stars. I had a very awesome time.

Pete's Napolitan Cuisine

289 Fifth Avenue

718-625-8444

Human Treats

Last week my mom's girlfriend's mom made dog treats for our new dog Pepper. She made them with organic oats, peanut butter, and other secret ingredients. She made them with love. they looked and smelled so good that we wanted to eat them. So we sent her a very nice letter saying thanks for the treats and can you make human treats? I also put in a picture of all of us with her.

The next week we received a box with a letter in it from my mom's girlfriend's mom saying " Dear Nic, enjoy the 'people treats' and please convey to your mom that it is good to advocate for what you want." We opened the box up and there were cookies shaped in bones and just round ones. They were oats and chocolate chips. The ones shaped in the bones were more chewy than the round ones. I really like my cookies soft and chewy. They were such a good mix of grainy and sweet. I love all the things she makes.

Thank you Mrs. Gianas for all of the amazing treats!!!! WE LOVED THEM!!!!!!!!

here is the recipe:

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups butter

4 cups flour

2 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups sugar

5 cups blended oatmeal**

24 oz. chocolate chips

2 cups brown sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 8 oz. bar milk chocolate grated ( i buy it bulk at the health store)

4 eggs

2 tsp. baking powder

3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)

2 tsp. vanilla

** measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder

Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla; mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda. Add chocolate chips, milk chocolate bar and nuts. Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. (on till nicely brown) Makes 112 cookies

Have fun!! This is a huge recipe and I reduce it to half. The cookies can be made quite large if you prefer for fun raisers etc.

I also buy chocolate, chocolate chips and oatmeal at the health store. I use only King Arthur brand flour. (you can use any kind of all-purpose flour)

A Sweet Sweet Birthday

my god mom's cake

Over the weekend I celebrated my God mom, Jackie's birthday. Her partner and I made a cake to help celebrate. I did a question and answer with her because she bakes so well. This is what she said:

Q: How do you have time to make the cakes when you have a full time job?

A: My kids help, and I do it on the weekends.
Q: What is the emotion when you bake?

A: Sometimes I am happy when it goes well, but when it turns out not as I expected I get mad.
Q: What types of cakes you usually make?

A: I like to make yellow cake, and I make a very good cheese cake.
Q: Do use a cook book?

A: I do when I make the yellow cake because I haven't remembered it. I don't for a cheese cake. But it depends on the recipe.

The cake we made was so pretty. Her son, Jackson, also helped. After the cake, we made made a butter frosting and added green food coloring to it. It turned out to be a lime green. We put the Aquarius symbol on it, because my god mom was born in February. When we had Sunday dinner we ate it and it was so good!!!!!!!!

The following weekend, she also made a cake for Jackson's birthday, and it was phenomenal. He's really into The Lion King.

Jackson's cake

Chinatown Brooklyn Style

Last weekend I went to the Chinatown in Brooklyn. It is different from the one in Manhattan because it has more unique fish, fruit, and vegetables and is a little less expensive. We went to get crabs for gumbo and we also saw a lot of cool foods.

Brooklyn Chinatown has been around since the late 1980s. It runs on 8th Avenue from 42nd to 68th Street. You can get there on the N/R and D subway trains. The neighborhood is very crowded with many, many stores all along the block.

Some of the coolest, and strangest foods I saw: eels, crabs, carp, roots of some kind of plant, exotic mushrooms, seaweed, frogs, turtles with no shells, mackerel, trout, and many more but if I tell you this blog post will be eight pages long.

I love discovering new types of food and eating them, so I was excited to go into a bakery and try Chinese buns. I had a hot dog bun, two pork buns, and a sweet bun that had coconut on it. I really liked the hot dog bun. It was like a pig in a blanket, but the bread was really soft and fluffy.

I recommend going there. Take a trip in honor of the Chinese New Year, which happens in early February this year. Or you can go just for fun.

Sweets for the Sweet 16

Last weekend my cousin Tashawn's turned 16. In honor of her "sweet 16" we had a sweet treat: cupcakes.

We got them from a new store called the Cupcake King on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. The store is very cute and colorful. We bought five very large red velvet cupcakes, two chocolate ones with white swirls and three chocolate mint with peppermint patties on top.

I liked the red velvet best, because it was so creamy and sort of melted in my mouth. Cupcake King is a little bit expensive; the large ones cost $3.75, the smaller ones, $2.75. It adds up. But it is worth it.

Valentine's Day is coming and cupcakes are great for a present. If you really like someone you should go here. The info is here: click here: for website

in the shop

Birthday Heaven!

Sunday it was my mom's birthday, and we celebrated by having dinner with friends and family. My Godmother Jackie came with her partner Juliet and their two kids, Toshi and Jackson. My Auntie Jane came as well.

My sister made a great salmon dinner topped with pea tendrils (pea sprouts) with snap peas on the side. The marinade for the salmon was made up of the soy sauce and ginger. I was assigned to grate the ginger. She let the salmon soak in the marinade for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, she sauteed the snap peas and the pea sprouts. She broiled the salmon for 6 minutes, and then she put the pea sprouts and peas on the cooked salmon. She also roasted fingerling potatoes, nicely seasoned with olive oil, salt and thyme.

I took a bite of the salmon and it was really good. I could have fainted. Actually I was impressed that my sister was able to create a dish from a recipe in Bon Apetit magazine. I was eating a piece of the best thing in the world. I could live off of that dish. I even took it for lunch the next day!

After Juliet made an amazing cake. It had a fish on it with a hook in its mouth, because my mom loves fishing. Juliet is a great baker and she is so fun. I had a bite and went crazy. It was so rich and good. I love her and my sister. My mom felt so special when she was eating and opening presents.

Katie's Kookies!!!

Throughout the holidays, I got to eat the best cookies I have ever tasted. Every year, my mom's co-worker Katie Garton takes a couple days off work and makes 1,000 cookies from scratch. WOW, that is as many I can make in my life.

She gave us over 50 cookies: Snickerdoodles, Vanilla Trees, Chess Squares, Thumb Prints and many more melt-in-your-mouth cookies. I tried every kind at least once. My very favorite was the Chess Squares, though it is hard to choose. They taste like a piece of heaven.

Though Katie already has a job, she should start a cookie business. I would be her first customer.