Festive Feasting

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It was a fun week! My aunt and uncle were in town for a show and we had a great time meeting up with them. I didn’t take any photos but we had GREAT meals at Canary Club and El Quiote.

Highlights include…

I managed to eat a truly impressive amount of peppermint and/or Christmas themed food!

Blank Street‘s candy cane cold brew was possibly my favorite coffee of this year!

The coquito cold brew (with two shots of espresso) from 787 obviously isn’t bad either.

Health-Ade Holiday Cheers kombucha.

Peppermint vodka seltzer, yes, I dyed it green.

Amazing tiramisu eggnog at Dante.

Peppermint ice cream (12/10) with peppermint chocolate quinoa bites.

Adam’s favorite bakery in New York is probably Blacksmith’s Breads. He sweetly surprised me with a pretzel bread.

Greek yogurt bowl with tiger syrup, granola, and persimmon.

Good-not-great but incredibly convenient microwave rice rolls.

Very Spicy Vegan Dan Dan Noodles from Very Fresh Noodles. It wasn’t actually that spicy (more numbing than hot) but the noodles were unbelievably fresh, bouncy and perfect.

This was the best meal I’ve made this year. Roasted broccoli / roasted red onion / roasted white beans / dried cherries / best ever sauce; in the food processor – parsley, roasted jalopeno, Korean chili flake, smoked almonds, smoked sardines, parmesan, honey, garlic, salt, evoo, and a bit of water / and I topped my bowl with candied jalopenos.

My True Love Gave To Me…

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Three peppermint snacks, two cocktail ingredients, and a yogurt with passionfruit in it!

Three (festive) things from this weekend…

I’m very into this fancy, dessert-y yogurt brand.

A peppermint-focused work snack. I forget every year how tasty the chocolate mint Perfect Bars are.

Coke didn’t release their cinnamon cola this season so I made my own boozy version.

Hello, December

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First things first, check out my amazing holiday-themed things haul –

I am most excited about the eggnog yogurt and the peppermint ice cream.

Highlights from this week include… several foods that fit in themed months past…

This Sugar Bee apple was a 10/10, crispy and sweet.

And the new crisp apple Olipop was a 9/10.

Did you know Arizona Iced Tea makes a spiked version??! So nostalgic and quite tasty.

Mini blondies from Fat Witch – matcha and white chocolate citrus.

Festive yogurt bowl – plain Greek with tiger syrup, cookie butter, granola, Satsuma mandarins, and cranberry sauce.

I have been weirdly into ramen recently, especially this spicy one. I like to crack an egg in before I put it in the microwave.

Another round of Thanksgiving nachos. Stuffing chips with swiss/gruyere, shishitos, smoked turkey, and cranberry sauce. Plus roasted brussel sprouts.

Crab-fried cauliflower rice! I sauteed riced cauliflower, rainbow chard, and green onions with Sriracha, soy sauce, fish sauce, rice vinegar, ginger, and garlic and eggs and loads of blue crab.

Thankful For Family

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This year I worked Thanksgiving Day but then had Friday off for a long weekend — so my parents came to visit! They loved getting to experience the cold (not many 45 degree days in St. Thomas!) and spend time with their granddog and we did a bunch of great New York exploring. Our travels included Time Square, Bryant Park, Chelsea Market, Industry City, Bushwick, Greenpoint, and Hudson!

I did not take a single dinner photo – we went to the oldest steakhouse in New York and also had outstanding meals at Kitty’s in Hudson and Glasserie in Brooklyn! – but here are a few highlights from the past week…

I managed to eat many on-theme things on Thanksgiving.

My parents and I stuck with tradition and ate Thanksgiving nachos – Trader Joe’s stuffing chips with smoked turkey, sauteed shishitos, swiss and gruyere, and cranberry sauce. Plus sauteed green beans with butter and lemon.

Plus Loryn Powell said that Fireball and banana cream rum tastes like a Cinnabon so my mom and I tried it with a maple pecan cream liquer and were quite impressed!

We were also pleased with these Tip Top mini canned cocktails.

We tried – and loved – one of the Zaro’s specialty black and white cookies – mint chocolate.

We found the Oishii omakase strawberries on sale! Fun to try but no one really preferred them to standard strawberries.

Everyone thought that Fortunes Ice Cream in Trivoli makes the best ice cream we’ve ever tried. I got persimmon and the sour cherry labne.

Broad rice noodles with tofu from Bangkok Bar in Industry City – I’ve wanted to go there for forever and now I want to go back immediately.

Great iced latte from Wycoff Starr.

Festive yogurt bowl with plain skry, frozen banana bread, brown sugar syrup, cinnamon, and sumatra mandarin.

It’s Starting To Taste Like Winter

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Highlights from this week…

Wonderful yogurt bowl – plain skyr with granola and persimmon.

Milk Bar birthday cake iced latte.

Great horchatta with espresso at For All Things Good.

I pulled pumpkin chocolate chip cookies out of the freezer and they were even more amazing than I remembered.

I’m not ready for eggnog yet (make that – I am always ready for nog but I am not releasing the eggnog floodgate yet) but I have fully embraced peppermint! Like the limited release Wendy’s peppermint frosty.

Or Minter Wonderland ice cream.

Brooklyn Cupcake! Cojito, tiramisu, and guava cheese.

Best iteration yet of the butternut squash we make every year. This year we served it as a warm salad. Roasted butternut squash and shredded brussel sprouts, Trader Joe’s sweet and spicy pecans, dried cherries, and homemade dressing (3 T lemon juice, 3 T maple syrup, 2 T stone ground mustard, 1 T Kewpie, 1 T crystal hot sauce.

A meta dinner win – cobb salad egg salad in endive lettuce cups. Eggs with mayo and mustard, chives, avocado, turkey bacon, and blue cheese.

Buffalo chicken salad (shredded chicken with mayo, Franks, vinegar, blue cheese, and chives) with roasted broccoli and Japanese sweet potato.

Top 5, x2

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Some of our favorite things from an exceptionally delicious weekend. We went to our favorite brewery and tried two restaurants that both easily made the cut for top five meals we’ve eaten in 2022.

Drinks at Evil Twin – we had a fall x candy x Wonderland line-up of beers.

Even More Hydra fruited sour / Fresh Feet & No Chicken citrus milkshake IPA / Fun Sized Halloween candy sour ale / Marshmallow is the New Milk Sugar marshmallow triple IPA / Back to the Pumpkin Patch pumpkin milkshake IPA. Also a Concrete Jungle fruit punch gose.

Dinner at Sobre Masa – a Mexican restaurant and tortilleria in Bushwick.

We shared seared queso fresco with fresh salsa.

And the best chips and guacamole we’ve ever tasted, with a variety of salsas.

I drank an El Pastor De Flavor – fat-washed tequilla, rum, roasted guava, masa, Vino de Agave, lemon balsam magnolia aperitif, and Mexican bitters.

And I ordered the oyster mushrooms with cracked corn, hoja santa, and guajillo mole. Plus housemade tortillas.

Housemade flan and tres leches for dessert.

Dinner at Potluck Club – a Cantonese American Restaurant on the Lower East Side. Everything was fantastic and the space was so cute!

A yuzu hard seltzer and a Chinese pale ale.

Spicy eggplants with fried shallot and cilantro.

Braised short rib with kobucha squash.

Rice roll noodles with oyster mushrooms, asparagus, chives, and hanger steak. <– best dish of the weekend!

Kjun + 53

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This was a weirdly busy and stressfull week and I did not adult very well. I mostly ate take-out and candy and nary a picture was taken. I am also very overdue on laundry!

That said — Adam and I had an impromptu Manhattan date night that was so fantastic I just have to blog about it, photo-free post be damned.

I was supposed to have a doctor’s appointment on the Upper East Side that got cancelled at the last minute leaving us time to try two new-to-us spots that we want to return to immediately!

Kjun NYC – a newish Korean Cajun spot. We had fantastic fried chicken (marinated in buttermilk and gojuchang) that came with pickles, potato salad, and a gojuchang honey sauce. My favorite dish was a take on deviled eggs with soy-marinated eggs, wasabi aioli, and fried chicken skin.

53 – a restaurant with a stunningly gorgeous cocktail bar. Also the most amazing bartender, he was knowledgeable and innovative and when he saw how much we loved our drinks he even gave us a sample of their newest cocktail. We head over heels loved our two drinks. Electric Feels; mezcal with guava, sichuan pepper, calmansi, and Himalayan salt. Coke de Blanc; clarified milk rum and coke punch, rum, champagne, and vanilla.

This upcoming weekend I am scheduled to work but we also have some exciting dinner reservations – I’ll bring my camera!

Pumpkin, Peppermint, Prezels

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Fun things from this weekend – we early voted and it only took a couple of minutes! The weather was gorgeous and we took a bunch of long, beautiful walks.

Food highlights included…

In a fit of out-of-season joy I bought and loved a peppermint mocha ice latte.

Brunch at Emilia’s Bakehouse in Melville. We had great lattes.

And a preztel croissant.

Loved this Aura Bora flavor. They have two new seasonal flavors I am dying to get my hands on.

I also tried and loved two new boozy seltzer cans. The June Shine passion fruit vodka soda has all my favorite things!

Great new flavor from Chip – a brown sugar cookie made with apple butter, stuffed with a caramel apple filling, and topped with cinnamon sugar.

Desserts in Astoria. Baklava and Knafeh.

Thai food in Astoria. I got extra-spicy drunken noodles with extra veggies and mock duck.

Plus we shared great crab rangoon.

Trader Joe’s pumpkin-shaped pasta with homemade meat sauce (pizza sauce with ground turkey and ground chicken, garlic, salt, pepper, urfa pepper, smoked paprika, and three cheese blend). Plus rainbow cauliflower.