Tag Archives: bar

It’s Beginning To Taste A Lot Like Christmas

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Eggnog and peppermint are two of my all-time favorite flavors so naturally December is one of my favorite food months. Here are some of the items I’ve been stockpiling for the celebration –

On-theme things from this week include…

Coffee combo. The chobani oat nog is the best vegan egg nog I’ve tried but not as good as the traditional stuff.

Holiday kombucha with a holiday crisp barebell and a Lady Alice apple.

Hanco’s peppermint iced tea! With herbal jelly and strawberry jelly hearts (aka the best bubble tea combo).

Holiday ice creams at Ample Hills. Coquito and Co – coquito ice cream with rum, cinnamon, and nutmeg and homemade coconut cheesecake chunks // Festival of Lights – cream cheese ice cream with raspberry rugelach.

Dinner and drinks at Sleyenda, Leyenda‘s holiday pop-up! They decorate to the nines and serve a specialty cocktail menu all month.

We had coquito, obviously, plus my favorite drink of all-time – The Candy Striper – a frozen blend of Novo Fogo silver cachaça, coconut, maple, vanilla, lemon, peppermint, and cardamom.

Bonus – Coffee with cardamom and amazing Yemeni pastries at Diwan Cafe. This was stuffed with cheese and smothered in honey!

With Cranberry On Top

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What an odd-feeling week; Adam and I came back from vacation and then immediately both went to work on Saturday, then it was a holiday week which always feels special even though we both worked, and tomorrow we are heading to Pennsylvania for a belated holiday celebration with all of my in-laws. But first, tonight we are meeting out of town friends for Her Name is Han, which should be quite fun.

Highlights from the week include – mostly things that were on-theme!

I want to say I don’t have a limited/seasonal release item problem but this year I stockpiled things that were on-theme for Thanksgiving, so you tell me. My Christmas collection is also pretty robust.

I needed special coffee to ease back into work so I pulled out Hudson Opera House Espresso beans from our last trip to Hudson Roastery.

Perfect Bar’s new chocolate toffee flavor was yummy (still can’t compete with the cookie dough one though).

See also – I liked Barebell’s holiday crisp even better. I couldn’t totally identify the flavor profile – coconut? – but it was creamy and delicious.

Yogurt bowl. With pumpkin seed butter, cranberry sauce, and maple and almond butter granola.

Peanut brittle Reese’s?! I actually loved these (still not as good as the pretzel cups!).

Homemade bbq turkey and black bean chili. Topped with cheese, cranberry sauce, and Trader Joe’s hot and sweet jalapenos.

Plus herbed stuffing veggie chips.

Salads. Sweet baby lettuce with black garlic balsamic vinaigrette, Trader Joe’s maple roasted almonds, smoked turkey, and roasted butternut squash.

Plus a mix of stuffing chips; we much preferred Trader Joe’s to the Whole Foods version.

Nachos! Stuffing chips with cheese, cranberry sauce, and smoked turkey.

Calamansi, Grapefruit, Yuzu

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Highlights from the last week, mostly fun drinks and good sandwiches on Trader Joe’s sourdough…

A new style of Kind bar, in dark chocolate peanut butter.

Sparkling matcha with a calmansi soda.

Seaweed chips plus sparkling yuzu.

A super easy paloma. I am 11/10 about finding tiny Squirt cans.

These tiny Trader Joe’s gummi bears are as delicious as they are adorable.

Out-of-town friends were here this Sunday and we spent an afternoon taking a long walk through Greenpoint – Williamsburg with stops for coffee and ice cream – the apple pie with cheddar caramel from Odd Fellows.

Tuna melts and roasted brussel sprouts. Tuna salad with mayo, stone-ground mustard, and capers, plus cheddar.

The turkey sandwich I’ve been waiting for all fall – with cheddar and pumpkin butter. Plus roasted broccoli with garlic and chili flakes.

P.S. It was a short week because I spent the first half in Ohio celebrating my grandmother’s NINETY-SECOND birthday. She’s amazing and it was an amazing trip!

P.P.S. Also I was home for several meals that didn’t get photographed because apparently we are obsessed with Roast Sandwich Shop and will order and eat their bbq chicken crunch wrap multiple days in a row!

Candy Corn – Love Or Hate?

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Highlights from this week include – – –

Pumpkin Noosa + candy corn and Halloween mellow creams (I am very pro candy corn, by the way! I also like black licorice and mint candies)

I didn’t like this yogurt but I did quite enjoy the Jones bar.

Still very into these vegan pork rinds. Adam brought some into a work meeting and his coworkers were largely fans.

I scooped homemade caramelized onion, cheddar, and sour cream dip with these chips and that was obviously the best thing I ate all week!

I’d probably buy any Ben & Jerry’s new release but coffee with marshmallow was a no-brainer.

This week’s pumpkin booze was all from Shipyard. I shocked myself with how much I liked that seltzer.

I actually didn’t love this hatch chili mac and cheese and am posting to remind myself not to buy it again.

Whole Foods hot bar. Mac and cheese, green beans, buffalo cauliflower, and curried cauliflower.

Passionfruit vinegar chicken from the crock pot (extremely loosely based on this recipe). With roasted broccoli.

California bowls! Imitation crab sticks with cucumber and avocado / dressed with Kewpie, chili oil, and rice vinegar / and topped with furikake.

Pumpkin, Cinnamon, Squash

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Highlights from a nice weekend…

A coffee menagerie.

Drip Coffee has gotten a lot of good press and I see why – this oat milk latte was smooth and delicious!

Bars – pumpkin pie was good, chocolate seed and oats was great.

It was Sweetest Day on Saturday so Adam and I went on a date to Laderach to buy an unreasonable amount of chocolates.

Golden Years in Brooklyn for a classic cheeseburger with fries.

Plus not-so-classic Cuba Libre with fernet and Paloma with mezcal and jalopeno.

Dinner at Kings Co Imperial. Guangzhou Layover – mezcal, plum, Campari, and Strega.

Crispy oyster mushrooms with Sichuan chili pepper.

Chinese eggplant with garlic and kung pow sauce.

Chicken dumplings in cinnamon oil.

Noodles with mushrooms.

Best meal of the weekend was this homemade dinner. Curried chicken salad with celery, toasted almonds, and dried apricots, plus roasted yellow squash and delicata squash with cinnamon, urfa chili, and gochugaru.

Pumpkin And Pizza

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Highlights from this week…

Beverage wins – cinnamon vanilla cold brew // pumpkin spice latte // strawberry tonic kombucha.

Pina colada smoothie – coconut milk, pineapple, and banana.

Pumpkin spice skyr with a coffee maple cacao bar.

Pumpkin spice Greek yogurt with Cheerios and pumpkin spice granola.

Very into these cheeze stuffed pretzels this week. They are vegan but I definitely melted regular sharp cheddar onto them.

I also turned them into pizza trail mix! With sundried tomatoes, baru baru nuts, and crispy cheese bites.

Sautéed ground turkey with bbq sauce / roasted broccoli romanesco / sautéed TJ’s cruciferous crunch blend / sharp cheddar / Caribbean beans and rice – brown basmati, pink beans, onion, ginger, habanero, and coconut milk.

A crockpot take on this pineapple chicken / riced cauliflower / roasted butternut squash.

Adam invited me on a dinner date but there was hour+ traffic in all directions so instead we got Whole Foods hot bar and watched Castle… it was perfect!

Pumpkin Month

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October first means it’s Pumpkin Month!! I’m very excited about this year’s pumpkin item cache.

But first, here were the gourd-free highlights from the last week…

Honey yogurt with blackberries, JUMBO blueberries, maple almond butter granola, and dark chocolate sunflower seed butter.

Yogurt with red plum, cheerios, cinnamon, and mulled cider apple butter (sent from my grandmother in Ohio; thanks, Nana!).

Still in love with the Matcha Bar sparkling cans. Also really enjoyed this canned tepache.

Homemade sparkling mango iced matchas. Can we talk about the fact that I did not drink matcha before this July??! I had a yuzu matcha at Ume and I am obsessed now.

The perfect work snack. My coworkers had somehow never eaten Cow Tails before but they were very into these caramel apple ones.

I enjoyed these dessert cups from Hail Merry, meyer lemon > peanut butter.

Whole Foods hot bar – yellow squash and zucchini, curried cauliflower, roasted potato wedges, and three types of chicken salad.

Chicken tenders, pretzels, and roasted yellow squash and zucchini, with pimento cheese.

Take-out pizza – buffalo chicken and a vodka grandma slice – with leftover roasted yellow squash and zucchini. I probably should vary my vegetables a bit next week!

Is it obvious from my dinner choices that Adam has been out of town at a conference all week?! 🙂

Big Happy

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Adam was free on vacation last week – and I managed a few overlapping days off as well! – and we had a wonderful time. Tons of dinners out, tons of time together (but never enough!), we walked from Williamsburg across the bridge to Koreatown and back, took a long stroll eating around Ridgewood/Bushwick, and spent some time at Rockaway Beach. A great week!

Highlights include —

Breakfast on the beach boardwalk. Nutella iced latte from Rockaway Roaster and an amazing guava cheese danish from Rockaway Bakery (they also have croissant bread loaves and I’m dying to go back!).

Maple oat-milk matcha lattes.

Freeze-dried honeycrisps with a seed bar.

Boozy apple pie milkshakes!

This double IPA from Stone was very drinkable.

Chips with what ended up being the best jarred salsa I’ve ever eaten.

Mochi things from Mochii, mochi stuffed with cookies and cream ice cream and mochi balls with toasted rice powder and peanuts.

Chamoyada from Maya’s Snack Bar – tamarind ice cream with fresh mango and tons of chamoy and tajin.

Leftovers from Mud Club in Woodstock were still great.

Delicious birria burrito and quesadilla from Nene’s Deli Taquiera.

Omakase at Shinn East. Every single bite was perfectly composed and it was so fun to watch the chef up close.

We had one of the best dinners of our lives at Little Mad.

I didn’t take many pictures because I was too busy swooning. Favorites were fried maitake mushrooms with sour cream and onion dip served in an onion(!!).

And this insane, upscale take on corn and cheese – baby corn, fried corn silk, caramel popcorn, and comte cheese fondue.