My fingers are still frozen… Gimme a minute…

OK I’m back. Its cold out there. Definitely had a bunch of moments that made me want to crawl into the exhaust pipe of a bus.  I swear there was this one moment where this bus just stopped right in front of me and farted black fumes right into my face and I enjoyed every second of it as it thawed my lifeless fingers.

I’m not going to lie.  I said fuck in my head approximately 100 times per minute when i got out there this AM but… again… After ten minutes it was just me against the road.

I attacked the road today.  I was all “You wanna try to kill me? I’ll kill u right back”

Here’s an interesting thought (to me): running in the freezing cold makes u pump your arms and engage your core (Amit I know you love that).  It makes u not want to stop even for a second.  And here’s something else I realized: it makes u run MUCH FASTER.  I chased the wind and it was awesome.

I love this blog.  Most of the time when I talk about how awesome my run was (especially on a day like today) most people are like “Shut your mouth and take your little tight bod and stick it somewhere AWAY from my face”

No one gets to tell me to shut up

MY BLOG.

OK… I’ll talk about something interesting now…

I don’t really have any health freak friends.  We pick restaurants based on vibe, New York Magazine, the new hot chef, and the “Anything below 14th street” rule.

I have one vegan friend and he lives in LA.  He doesn’t drink which is clearly something we need to work on because as far as I know no animals were killed in the process of making Tequila.

I’m not really a health freak myself but I like healthy food and I try to make the right choices as often as possible. Living in this city makes it kind of hard because of all the amazing food and new restaurants that open up every like… day.

So… Where am i going with this?

I’ve learned how to make healthy choices over the years because I’m always reading about what foods are good for you and what’s not good for you.

I decided that instead of just rambling on in my blog I’m going to (from time to time) make myself useful and give you some great tips on making healthy choices in NYC restaurants.  I’m not going to focus on “health food restaurants” because we all know those tend to suck when it comes to vibe and ambiance and drinking with your friends.

I’m going to focus on all the places we love to love.  Like.. last night we went to Pala (www.palapizza.com) to celebrate Andy Hollander’s B-day after watching Dana Parish fog up the windows with her performance at Rockwood music hall.  Then she pinched my husband’s butt.  (BTW – love Rockwood, love Dana, love foggy windows…)

Anyway, about Pala: I always walked past it and saw this cute Italian place on Houston and thought: Eh I can’t find anything healthy there except for fish and Italian restaurants always DOUSE their Fish with TONS of oil and anyone who watched what they eat knows how that makes you feel…

I was totally wrong (which never happens).  This place was awesome.  vibe is great.  Amazing Gluten free menu, amazing Vegan choices.  They basically cater to people like me who LOVE to make alterations to menus.  I’m that chick that makes the chef roll their eyes at the server when they put my order in.  Then they probably say something like “why doesn’t that bitch just stay home and make her own food?”

I’m giving Pala a raving thumbs up.  Here’s what we ordered:

1 – Polpette meatballs (in tomato sauce and parmigiano cheese) YUM! But I only had one because they are a little on the heavy side

2 – Favetta fresca mixed greens (with fava beans and pecorino primo sale) AMAZING.  Inhaled it.

3 – Parma prosciutto Gluten Free Pizza (cherry tomatoes, parmigiano cheese emulsion, tomato sauce and mozzarella).  Great pizza.  Had one slice.  loved the crust.

The pizza wasn’t EXACTLY Gluten free because there was something in the sausage.. not sure exactly… I was 2 tequila shots in at that point so I missed the details

The wine was great too but I forgot what we had.

It was yummy.  Happy Birthday Andy.