Cold Brew With Condensed Milk

by Emily

Here were some of my best bites over the past 7 days…

Grady’s Cold Brew with scm. So flipping good! It even overtook THIS as my favorite coffee combo for the year.

Trader Joe’s berry oatmeal with chocolate peanut butter and a Gala apple on the side.

Snack attack – spicy chicken jerky with a cheese stick and a Golden Nugget tangerine.

Trader Joe’s birthday cake bar. This was delicious, absolutely studded with sprinkles!

Eggs and veggie hash. Onion, mushrooms, yellow bell pepper, and broccoli, sautéed in evoo with paprika and turmeric / topped with tons of cheddar / and sunny side up eggs.

Meat and potatoes night.

Asian-inspired meat and potatoes. Yummy miso meatballs,

ginger and garlic baked fries,

plus broccoli.

Yesterday I spent a solid four hours cooking this “soup.”

I roasted chicken bones and made a tasty brown stock, but… then I over-reduced the stock into practically nothing and by the time I was done boiling my pasta in it the pot was dry! The final dish – with whole wheat pasta shells, roasted zucchini, and shredded chicken, and lots of cheese – was fantastic, but probably didn’t need to take four hours!

Have a nice weekend!

14Apr2017

Chocolate “Cheesecake” Oatmeal

by Emily

Kids. Work is really freaking stressful this month. My goodness. I had Wednesday off this week (from working the previous weekend) and I practically spent the whole day in a coma. And yesterday I bought multiple coffees before 10 am. I promise to ~~whine about~~ post a work sitch update sometime soon, but for this post I’m keeping things short and simple.

Some of the best things I ate this week…

Oatmeal with chia seeds, two kinds of chocolate chips, and a scoop of cream cheese. It was heavenly.

Mango yogurt with Luxardo cherries, plus I added a banana from the cafeteria at work.

Another dessert-y lunch, plain Greek yogurt with cookie butter, granola, and a Pink Lady apple.

My mother-in-law sent us a giant box of sugar cookies for Easter. Both of our mothers still send us Easter baskets, actually, there’s a lot of candy in this house!

Leftover cheddar bbq meatloaf with roasted green beans. Adam butchered the meatloaf getting it out of the dish and then mashed it onto my plate because I pretty much live like a princess.

<– that was sarcasm, but I really am pretty spoiled. Case in point – honey beer with dinner.

Sweet potato fries with tons of extra-sharp cheddar and ground turkey with Korean bbq sauce. I realize that the photo is pretty rough, but it was one of the yummiest things I ate all week. We highly recommend the frozen fries from Trader Joe’s.

Hot pasta salad. I sautéed big chunks of green bell pepper and onion in tons of olive oil and smoked paprika, tossed with crispy roasted chickpeas, and cheese tortellini.

Are you dying eggs this weekend??

7Apr2017

Crab Rangoon Grilled Cheese

by Emily

This post contains a week’s worth of wrap up – not just the sandwich – but the sandwich was awesome so it stole the title. Maybe I’ll make a thing of it and start titling all of my weekly posts after the best bite?

Yummy things…

Our very last cup of chicory coffee from Café du Monde. <– boo! With a mandarin. I spilled the 2nd to very last cup all over the counter and down the side of the fridge, so that was fun.

More chicory coffee, in yogurt form. With KIND maple quinoa granola and chocolate-covered cacao nibs. Plus a Pacific Rose apple.

The best chips of all time – honey butter flavored from Trader Joe’s. Excluding, obviously, the freshly made honey butter chips served at Oiji.

Another Trader Joe’s win – Kona coffee cookie mocha swirl ice cream.

Homemade treats make the best snacks though. I threw a wedding shower for one of the ladies at work this week and contributed cookie butter bars and brown butter chocolate chip cookies.

The eponymous sandwich!

Served with roasted brussel sprouts with paprika and Old Bay seasoning – to keep the seafood theme going.

Toasted sourdough with crab rangoon in between. The filling was a mixture of cream cheese, lump crab meat, green onion, minced ginger, brown sugar, and soy sauce. They were wonderful.

I loosely followed the recipe for Eat, Live, Run’s lemon brown sugar chicken.

I added sliced green onions to the casserole dish and used extra smoked paprika, but primarily I swapped in MAPLE sugar for brown sugar. Delicious. We spooned the sauce on top of our veggies.

Another night I loosely followed the recipe for Bon Appétit’s marinated beans. Great northern beans with evoo, rice vinegar, cilantro, green onion, and gojuchang. I served the beans on top of roasted green beans and sweet potato fries.

With a sour beer on the side.

I work the next five days, but I hope everyone else has a lovely weekend!

25Mar2017

Coconut, Citrus, And Guava, Oh My

by Emily

Did I mention last week that I need a vacation? This week was worse. Thankfully, starting tomorrow we are on vacation!! Here are the highlights from the past five days that felt like they lasted for ten…

I kept my coffee combo the same, but did kick things up a notch one day with an Aussie iced coffee!

Limoneira recently expanded their orchards to include blood oranges and Cara Cara oranges and they sent me a box of goodies to sample.

The Cara Caras were good, and the blood oranges were the best I’ve ever had – juicy and sweet and just a bit tart. They made a very good work snack (with roasted pecans and TJ’s butterscotch short breads).

And were fantasmic mixed into coconut yogurt with Heritage Flakes.

It was a week of exceptionally good yogurt bowls. Plain Greek with TJ’s mixed nut butter, vanilla granola, chocolate-covered cacao nibs, and shortbreads.

Chicory + coffee yogurt with granola and nibs.

Adam and I both were off on Wednesday and we went to Sunday in Brooklyn for brunch. I had “The Elvis,” charred banana, housemade fluff, sunflower butter, and green apple, on whole-wheat bread.

Plus pie and espresso at Blue Stove. This guava chess was good but not great.

Snacks of note included jelly beans on the first day of Spring.

This lime fresco popcorn.

And the epicness that is Trader Joe’s dried fruit selection. Dried persimmon?! The carabao mango is out of this world, it’s like candy.

Three of five nights I ate a grilled cheese sandwich* while watching Bob’s Burgers** but twice I did manage to cook a legit dinner. Like egg sandwich pitas.

Scrambled eggs with smoked paprika, red bell pepper, and spring onion in a pita with mayo and sharp cheddar.

Plus a cruciferous veggie mix sautéed with cashews and soy sauce.

Green curry chicken and veggies. The chicken strips were baked after marinating in a spicy Sriracha marinade, with yellow onion, green onion, green bell pepper, and roasted zucchini, in a green curry sauce.

We kept the coconut theme going with our drink.

*grilled cheese notes: this week they were on quinoa bread but rye or sourdough is best / sharp cheddar with pickle relish is my preferred combo / always cooked in butter.

**Bob’s Burgers is my new favorite cartoon series (other than Rick and Morty which is just one of the best tv shows of any genre), I like it even more than Futurama. It’s the perfect balance of funny yet sweet.

See ya next week!

13Mar2017

(Winner, Winner) Chicken Dinners

by Emily

Did this weekend feel far too short for anyone else??! I’m working next weekend – and expecting horrid snow on Tuesday – so maybe I just had a lot of emotion riding on this free time.

We did manage a fair amount of productivity and fun – taxes were filed, groceries were replenished, and we spent a great evening with my cousin and her boyfriend. They were only in Manhattan for a couple of hours but we managed to give them some good New York fun – drinks/games at Barcade and bbq at Blue Smoke.

If this post had six points my bbq dinner feast would have been #1, but since I didn’t bother with pictures while company was in town, here were the weekend’s top five…

{1} Marshmallow flavored popcorn.

It was yummy, and a little bit pink!

{2} This week’s coffee combo – chicory coffee and chocolate milk.

{3} A random lunch assortment – chocolate peanut butter packet, strawberry lingonberry yogurt, an apple, and a pink lady apple flavored kombucha. The kombucha was my favorite component.

{4} Take-out galore. Garlic fries, fried ravioli, southwestern salad, boneless wings, blue cheese, and honey bbq wings.

{5} An Asian-inspired dinner. Scooped up with tortilla chips.

Bok choy and edamame sautéed with garlic and soy sauce.

Red curry chicken salad made with shredded chicken breast with mayo, red curry, red bell pepper, shallot, and toasted coconut chips.

17Feb2017

♥♥♥

by Emily

Did everyone have a happy / romantic / chocolate-coated Valentine’s Day? Mine was good; Adam and I don’t do gifts but we went out of a yummy dinner on the 13th, and some of my coworkers brought in candy.

Top five tastes from the week…

{1♥} chocolate-covered cherry <– one of this month’s theme flavors!

CCC smoothie – chocolate milk, frozen dark cherries, plain Greek yogurt.

CCC coffee – cold brew, chocolate milk, Luxardo cherries with juice.

The coffee seriously made me swoon with happiness.

{2♥} best Mexican food in Brooklyn

I read two different places that El Atoradero had the best nachos in New York, so clearly we had to go there immediately. They were delicious, though not as good as the nachos I bake at home.

This was the best chicken burrito I’ve ever eaten though. The chicken tinga was smoky and roasty and there were peas and carrot in it giving little pops of sweetness.

Ample Hills for dessert!

{3♥} yogurt bowls

Toasted marshmallow yogurt(!!) with vanilla granola and chocolate tahini/Biscoff.

Siggi’s raspberry with mixed nut butter.

{4♥} deep-dish pepperoni pizza

I used TJ’s whole-wheat dough and cooked it in a casserole dish. With mozzarella, pizza sauce, and turkey pepperoni that I apparently did not have the skill to cut into hearts.

{5♥} English butter fudge

I love you, Trader Joe’s; this was the single best candy I’ve ever eaten. If you’re a fan of penuche/praline/brown sugar I recommend you buy this immediately.

Have a nice weekend!

10Feb2017

It’s Beginning To Taste A Lot Like Valentine’s

by Emily

As long-term blog readers know, the Emily holiday theme-food calendar is pretty packed. There’s Apple Month (September) and Pumpkin Month (October into November), and November/December are the only time of year I’ll eat eggnog, candy cane, and gingerbread.

My mom recently asked me why Valentine’s Day and Easter don’t get any love? I decided it’s lame that only August – December get theme flavors, so brought two new holidays into the party, albeit likely with less fervor. Valentine’s Day (February) gets chocolate-covered cherry and cinnamon, and Easter (April) gets coconut and lemon.

Here was this month’s themed-food stash:

Those goodies will be the main content of this post, along with a few other things that I LOVED (<– staying on theme). It works out to be work lunches/snacks since this week’s dinner situation was beyond bleak – 1. nachos 2. Chipotle 3. frozen meal from Trader Joe’s 4. Adam and I got into bed and fell asleep before 8pm.

Chocolate cherry yogurt, chocolate cherry cashew KIND bar, and a Sumo mandarin.

Valentine’s trail mix with chocolate hearts, dried dark sweet cherries, and roasted pecans. Plus a Junami apple.

2% yogurt with blackberries and muddy buddies.

Vanilla bean yogurt with tangerine, blackberries, vanilla granola, and citrus crumble cake.

A coworker just came back from the Philippines and she replenished my stash of these amazing powdered milk candies.

Best ~~bite~~ sip of the week – very vanilla iced coffee.

Do you have any romantic plans for next Tuesday?

3Feb2017

The End Of The First Month Of The New Year

by Emily

I’m two weeks late and about a hundred pictures short, but here, finally, is a (bi)weekly wrap up for the end of January. I blame a bout of the cold, a string of loser dinners, and a case of the mid-winter blues for my lack of timeliness and photo-taking-enthusiasm.

Gaps aside, here were some eats from the past two weeks…

{rated within their category; i.e. the yogurt bowl is an 8 out of 10 compared with other yogurt bowls not compared other dissimilar items}

Green monster from the cafeteria. They sometimes set up a smoothie bar at the rotating station. I chose spinach, strawberry, mango, and coconut water. 8.5/10

Chocolate iced coffee. 8/10

Work snack – an apple and coconut caramel bar. The score here is for the Thai Coco coconut milk drink, which was creamy and sweet. 9.5/10

Soursop yogurt with blueberries and vanilla granola. 8/10

Turkey reuben-ish sandwich from the cafeteria. Sliced turkey, swiss cheese, pickles, spinach, and cole slaw on a whole-wheat wrap. Plus french fries dipped in 1000 island. 6.5/10

Cola kombucha. 6.5/10

This Milka Oreo candy bar didn’t have as much cookie in it as I wanted. 6/10

But these TJ’s sour gummies are the best gummy candies Adam or I have ever tasted. 10/10

Biscuit breakfast sandwiches for dinner. Buttermilk biscuits (<– I don’t recommend this recipe, the biscuits had no flake) / maple Sriracha mayo / smoked gouda / fried egg. 6/10

Pumpkin soup. Roux, canned pumpkin, and chicken stock with sautéed onions, carrot, and maple chicken breakfast sausage on the bottom. This didn’t turn out as well as I was expecting it to, the salt and pepper pumpkin seed brittle I sprinkled on top was by far the best component. 5/10

Escarole and white bean skillet with (turkey) bacon and artichoke. 7/10

Creamy turkey pasta. Ground turkey sautéed with garlic, browned mushrooms, and oven-roasted tomatoes, tossed with sour cream, and whole-wheat pasta. 7.5/10

I’ve got some yummy things planned for this weekend so hopefully the next post will be slightly less lame!

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: apple

Cold Brew With Condensed Milk

Chocolate “Cheesecake” Oatmeal

Crab Rangoon Grilled Cheese

Coconut, Citrus, And Guava, Oh My

(Winner, Winner) Chicken Dinners

♥♥♥

It’s Beginning To Taste A Lot Like Valentine’s

The End Of The First Month Of The New Year