Walking Weekend

by Emily

I didn’t watch any of the game, but my weekend sure was super. Saturday morning Adam and I woke up extra early and went into the city to watch the sunrise. We parked in Dumbo, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, wandered around lower Manhattan, and then walked around Chelsea. Then we took the subway to Park Slope, did a long loop through our old neighborhood, and walked back through Fort Greene to our car in Dumbo. Throughout the day we ended up walking >11 miles.

Of course, the minute the sunrise started getting gorgeous my camera started dying/getting too cold to function.

We punctuated our walk with stops for coffees and desserts, but most of it went unphotographed due to my technical difficulties. Highlights included a dulce de leche iced coffee from Terremoto turned into an affogato with a scoop of goat milk tahini ice cream from Seed + Mill.

I did manage to get a shot of breakfast #1, at the Oculus. We split a “hell of a nerve” from Joe and the Juice – banana, elderflower, and strawberry juice.

Plus pastries and lattes at Eataly (with sips of Italian cola). I got a cream filled croissant; the pastry wasn’t flaky enough for me but the cream was fantastic and I ate it out with a spoon!

And I had to Instagram breakfast #2 at Santina.

I had a fantasmic egg sandwich. Fluffy egg on a soft bun with tons of fontina cheese and green chiles. I pretty much swooned after every bite.

Friday’s breakfast was a smoothie. Frozen strawberries with plain Greek yogurt and chocolate-mint soy milk.

And Sunday I made an egg sandwich at home. Smoked gouda and a fried egg on a brioche bun.

Another highlight was dinner at Pig Beach. We loved their vibe and their great 90’s music playlist <== we listened to “Pony” by Ginuwine! There weren’t a ton of menu options for me so I ordered some sides and then got some from Whole Food’s hot bar later on.

Macaroni and cheese, yummy purple cole slaw, and buckeyes for dessert. Plus a 10/10 vodka soda and an amazing drink with vodka, honey, and rosé.

I may not have watched the Super Bowl, but I definitely spent Sunday making and eating on-themed foods! We had nachos with buffalo chicken on TJ’s honey butter chips.

Muddy Buddies – made with Biscoff cookie butter instead of peanut butter because I’m bringing them into work at there’s a nut allergy.

And I used a fun product sample from Moore’s Marinades to make my buffalo chicken baked pasta.

I used their Blue Cheese Buffalo Wing Sauce – instead of putting in hot sauce and blue cheese separately – and my pasta came out great. P.S. heat haters, this sauce is more tangy than spicy and I recommend it for wimps too.

Have a super week!

17Jan2017

Long Weekend Top Five

by Emily

I had a very enjoyable weekend, including two fancy brunches and one entire day spent watching tv and eating nachos with a dog lounging in my lap. There have been some very enjoyable eats over the past four days too.

Here were the top five…

{1} The final serving of my new favorite coffee combo.

Texas pecan cold brew + sweet buttercream creamer + ice + a straw = a very happy Emily. Adam loved it too.

{2} Brunch at Gristmill in Park Slope.

We adored it and will definitely be back for dinner. They are known for their garlic knots and that morning they had an everything garlic knot for The Loxness Knotster – with pastrami smoked salmon from ACME, cream cheese, ricotta, and dill.

I got a Brunch Punch – with rum, lemon-lime shrub, grenadine, cinnamon, and clove. It was so pink!

Plus spicy potato hash with carrots, arugula, and poached egg. This dish was soooo balanced and just a joy to eat.

{3} Brunch at Sunday in Brooklyn in Williamsburg.

I had an egg sandwich on brioche with gochujang aioli, crispy potatoes, and cheddar. Plus a toasted oak soda with a shot of vodka. <– such a genius idea that the owner came by and nodded his approval.

{4} Super soup.

Served with ridiculously cheesy buttered toast.

Yellow onion, celery, green bell pepper, and carrot sautéed in evoo / white miso / low-sodium chicken broth / shredded turkey breast / pesto tortellini. The soup was super easy since I already had the cooked meat in my freezer. I boiled the pasta in my broth and it came out great.

{5} Okonomiyaki aka Japanese cabbage pancake.

Thank you, Serious Eats, for introducing me to another new yummy thing.

Served with quick salads of celery, red bell pepper, basil, and green onion, in a mustard vinaigrette.

My pans stick so my okonomiyaki came out in pieces, but you could hardly tell once I smothered it in toppings! Cabbage and Japanese sweet potato pancake / fish sauce aioli / gochujang / roasted seaweed / black sesame seeds / green onion.

Next week is going to be less exotic but more cheesy, I’m making a gratin!

9Jan2017

Carbo-Loading For The Work-Week

by Emily

Three words to sum up this weekend’s eats – all the carbs. Fourth word – yum!

It was a very good weekend, in spite of the city’s first snow. We drove (carefully!) into Brooklyn both days for tasty brunches, I cooked two new dishes, we cackled loudly at the Garfunkel and Oates special, and I polished off a bunch of freelance work.

Iced latte from Milk Bar.

Starbucks smoked butterscotch latte. I ordered this with four shots of espresso (normal x2) and two pumps of syrup (normal/2) and it was still too sweet.

Espresso and chocolate milk.

Best brunch of the new year at Sunday in Brooklyn.

I drank a Sundae Coffee – cold brewed coffee, aged rum, allspice dram, and vanilla cream – and a Smoked Oak Soda, aka the best thing I’ve ever tasted. It was like a glass of toasted marshmallow!!!

We started with a pecan sticky bun and a maple cheddar biscuit. It’s possible we got excited and basically ordered the whole damn menu.

I uncharacteristically ordered pancakes… malted pancakes with hazelnut maple praline and brown butter.

Plus we spit home fries and I stole several bites of Adam’s smoked salmon and pastrami cod. We took some food home, obviously, and the dog was over the moon for that salmon. <– I agree, best lox I’ve had yet.

Work lunch yogurt bowl. Vanilla bean with TJ’s almond butter granola and chocolate tahini, plus a Piñata apple.

Pizza lunch at Emmy Squared. We had waffle fries with bonito flakes.

The Marn Blanc — white pizza with mozzarella, ricotta, pecorino, and caramelized onion – was good but intense; I’d probably get something with red sauce to cut through the fat next time.

Snack time, tortilla chips and peanut butter cups.

Dulce de leche iced chocolate from Cacao Market.

Turkey salad for a simple dinner, with mayo, ground mustard, celery, sweet and spicy pecans, and cilantro. Plus baby carrots and buttered sourdough toast.

Nacho night. Tortilla chips with sharp cheddar, chunky salsa, and black beans. Plus more baby carrots on the side.

Sunday I spent some time chopping in the kitchen and tried two new recipes. I did a very loose interpretation of Mapo Tofu with ground turkey and gojuchang served on brown rice.

Next to a bok choy salad. I borrowed this sauce, and tossed it with chopped bok choy, red bell pepper, celery, green onions, and Valencia peanuts. It was delicious! This was our first time eating the bok choy raw and we loved it.

I’d say my glycogen stores are fully replenished. Have a fantastic week!

6Jan2017

Hello, 2017!

by Emily

How is everyone’s year going?? So far, the word for my 2017 is tasty.

Here are some culinary highlights from the first week…

Coffee first, always coffee. Espresso roast and chocolate milk before work.

I also had the best iced latte of the year from Birch; their shots are extra strong and roasty.

Adam and I both had Monday off of work and we started our new year with a trip to Serendipity 3.

Veggie chili for my lunch.

I kept lunch boring because I was focused on the main event – sundae funday! A giant scoop of peanut butter pie with hot fudge and bananas. <– swoon city

Work lunches were centered around a box of free product review samples I received from ips snacks. The snacks – crisps and popcorn – are all made with whey protein and pack at least 5 grams of protein for </ 150 calories.

I have to admit that I liked the snacks a lot more than I was expecting to. The salted popcorn was honestly the best bagged popcorn Adam or I have ever tasted! It was filling, satisfying, and totally delicious. The chips would rate poorly if I compared them to chip-chips, but score a 9/10 as snack crisps. Very few snacks, especially ones that pack less than 200 calories, keep me full enough in the afternoon that I don’t consider gnawing my own arm off on the train, but these did the trick.

I packed crisps and fruit to pair with toasted turkey and cheese cafeteria sandwiches. BBQ chips and a cara cara.

Sea salt and black pepper chips and an Asian pear.

Snack attack. Popcorn and a honey kolsch.

Yogurt bowl with plain Greek, chocolate tahini, sliced snap dragon apple, chia seeds, cinnamon, and sweet and spicy pecans.

I was killing it with dinners this week. Three different veggie-forward, flavor-loaded, 10/10 dishes! When I made fried green onions last week I saved the infused oil and that’s what I used for cooking this week. First, a simple salad to start off the new year.

Oak leaf lettuce, TJ’s Greek-style feta dressing, cucumber, dill, and roasted chickpeas. With hibiscus kombucha on the side.

Next up, spicy cabbage salad with turkey and peanuts from Bon Appétit. I only ever read this magazine on plane rides but this recipe alone would be worth the subscription cost!

I doubled up so that we could get 4 big dinners out of it, and roasted the cabbage so it was less voluminous, but otherwise followed the recipe exactly <– something I rarely do.

Served with cheesey breadsticks, aka pizza dough rolled up with an obscene amount of cheese.

Finally, I tried my hand at shakshuka. Based loosely on the recipes from Serious Eats and My Name is Yeh, my version had red bell peppers, red jalapeño pepper, and serrano pepper.

Served with hunks of sourdough.

I’m excited to do a little more exploring in the kitchen this new year. My meal plan list for the next month or so includes menemen, mapo tofu, kaya jam, okonomiyaki, and chilaquiles!

31Dec2016

Wrapping It Up

by Emily

Thanks to the holiday day and compensatory days for working the preceding and following weekends… I only worked two days this week! Tuesday and Friday on and the rest of the week to do as I pleased, not a bad way to end 2016. Though now I do work both NYE and the first day of 2017.

It was also a big week in my personal life, on Wednesday Adam and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary (and 14th anniversary of being together)! We didn’t exchange gifts or do anything crazy to celebrate, it’s hard to get too excited when we are so darn close to 10 years. <– eeeeeeeeeeee!

Food highlights for the week – – –

Yogurt lunches. Dulce de leche Chobani with granola, plus a snapdragon apple and a vanilla latte can. Out of 10, the coffee and yogurt both get a 9+.

2% Fage with Soom chocolate tahini, sweet and spicy pecans, chopped apple, and chia seeds.

Dinner at Bubby’s. I met a girlfriend in Chelsea midweek and this is where we ended up. Neither of us ordered pie, but I had a great frisee salad with poached egg and sherry vinaigrette.

Iced coffee with princess emulsion (fancy vanilla extract that had a strong undertone of lemon and actually wasn’t great in coffee).

Fantastically roasty Terremoto Coffee skim latte was the best drink of the week, especially because I plopped a scoop of goat’s milk tahini ice cream in it a minute later.

Gelt!

On our anniversary – which we actually celebrated a day late because Adam’s schedule is insane – we cuddled on the couch and watched our wedding video with a split of champagne and the last eggnog iced coffee of the season.

We did dinner at Shalom Japan and I didn’t take a single picture. I did snap dessert – an ice cream date at OddFellows. Toasted marshmallow + amazing caramel chocolate toffee.

Best dish of the week = I made legit macaroni and cheese. Pimento cheese macaroni and cheese.

Whole wheat macaroni / sautéed green onions and chopped pimento / mornay sauce with sharp cheddar and raw milk cheddar / panko on top.

With spinach salad with red bell pepper, sweet and spicy pecans, and honey mustard, and roasted green beans with fried green onion.

See you next year! <– my favorite dumb joke

27Dec2016

Merry Christmas!

by Emily

My holiday greeting is a few days late but that’s ok, my holiday celebrating was late too! Adam and I both worked Christmas day this year (and Thanksgiving… and New Years) so we saved our gift opening and merriment for the 26th. It was actually kind of fun, we had an item that needed to be exchanged and we just ran right out to the mall and did it.

Here were the food-based highlights, no candy canes, sugar plums, or fruit cakes, but good all the same…

Making the most of the end of eggnog season with several eggnog iced lattes (with a quadruple dose of espresso!).

Christmas day I packed a bottled coffee for work (1.5 thumbs up) plus an exciting peppermint seltzer.

Saturday we headed to Brooklyn for Thai food at super artsy and cool Samui.

Apparently Christmas Eve lunch is not a thing because we were the only people in the restaurant! At least there was no one blocking our view.

The food was great, this was the 2nd best green papaya salad I’ve ever gotten.

And I had yummy shrimp Pad Thai in an egg crepe.

Ice cream for dessert to celebrate the first night of Hannukah – “Festival of Lights”cream cheese ice cream with pieces of chocolate rugelach.

Actual Christmas day I came home from work and ate leftovers with the dog, but Christmas Eve I had a pizza and beer party with the husband.

We made taco pizza that was fantastic. TJ’s thin crust / refried beans / Mexican cheese blend / seasoned ground turkey / cilantro sour cream. With roasted zucchini on the side.

And for our belated Christmas dinner we made brinner, aka breakfast for dinner.

Red and green eggs – a scramble with red bell pepper, green onions, spinach, and parsley, plus cheddar.

The best roasted potatoes from Serious Eats. <– seriously, they were THE BEST

Enjoy the rest of your year!

12Dec2016

New Orleans Vacation 2016

by Emily

New Orleans was our best travel experience of 2016. We stayed at a cute hotel in the French Quarter and had enough time to really get to know the area. It was a great way to finish up the year.

This was my first trip to Louisiana and I think we managed to pack a lot in. We visited three local breweries, walked around Loyola and Tulane, explored the French Quarter and Bourbon Street, went to the World War II Museum….

We also tasted tons of local (or at least Southern) flavors – pralines, divinity, snowballs, beignets, pimento cheese, etouffe, grits, chicory coffee, milk punch, and hurricanes.

Here were some of our best bites…

♥Pralines. They were everywhere and the smell was amazing.

♥Hurricanes. We went to Pat O’Brien’s (<– yuck!) and Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop.

♥Frozen daiquiris, this one was eggnog!

♥This pecan pie soda was actually horribly disgusting, but it was fun to try!

♥Snowballs. NOLA served me the best snow-cones of my life, I had one every day. This was wedding cake (a blend of vanilla and almond) and egg custard topped with sweetened condensed milk.

♥Breakfast at Café Du Monde. This was a must-stop for us, it was actually the only activity I had planned when I booked our tickets. The beignets did not disappoint and neither did the chicory coffee café au lait (served on crushed ice).

♥Breakfast at District Doughnut. We got a Nutella doughnut and a biscuit with pimento cheese.

Plus yummy Vietnamese coffee and an iced coffee with cola and chocolate milk (<– delicious and infinitely better than it sounds).

♥Brunch at Willa Jean.

I had the shrimp and grits – gulf shrimp, etouffee gravy, grits, and slow poached eggs with cheddar biscuits on the side.

Cookies and milk for dessert. With a beater of dough and vanilla-infused milk.

♥Flights at Abita. <– one of our very favorite breweries They had our old favorites and some fantastic limited edition flavors including vanilla Turbo Dog and a key lime gose. We had beers, Zapps chips, and a root beer on draught and were in absolute heaven.

♥Lunch at Cochon. They had house-made eggnog.

We split a variety of small plates – a roasted carrot special with mint, Louisiana blue crab rice, and whole fried shrimp with pickled mustard seed hot sauce. The fried herbs were aromatic and wonderful and the best bites were a mix of everything at once.

♥Dinner at Brennan’s.

Insanely creamy Caribbean milk punch with Buffalo Trace bourbon, Mt Gay black barrel rum, cream, and vanilla bean.

Ridiculous foie gras “sweet potato casserole,” with sweet potato puree and candied pecans.

I had the cheddar risotto for dinner. With Cherokee Rose cheddar, smoked maitake mushrooms, collard green puree, and a brown butter sauce.

♥Dinner at SHAYA. <– best meal of the trip and also best meal of the year

That’s a halvah cappuccino. I also had a Pearl Diver – vodka, labneh, vanilla, and lavender bitters.

We shared a trio of appetizers – Moroccan carrots with chermoula and mint / baba ganoush with green garlic / tershi = a creamy pumpkin spread with crispy garlic and chili oil. All with fantasmic pita bread and herbed olive oil.

Also foie gras with rose tahini and carob molasses on challah toast (omg).

I had the matzoh ball soup for my entrée. With slowed cooked duck, dill, charred leaks, lemon oil, and a cinnamon-scented broth. Best matzoh balls of my life! Adam had slow cooked lamb and the bites I stole were truly the best thing I’ve ever tasted (fyi I don’t typically eat mammals but I’ll have a taste occasionally if I know the meat is humanely-sourced and Adam says the flavor is worth it).

Dessert(s). We basically rolled away from the table! Chocolate babka with halva ice cream and labneh cheese cake with burnt honey ice cream.

It was a wonderful trip!

P.S. No post coming from this weekend, it was the husband’s birthday and I was in celebration-mode versus blogger-mode. And now we’re both back at work.. womp wah. Have a great week!

4Dec2016

Vacation Part 1/3

by Emily

We’re on vacation! Friday through next Sunday Adam and I have 10 glorious days off together!! We’re spending time in New Orleans and next weekend we’re doing a staycation in the city.

You can tell we’re in vacation-mode because we ate 90% of our meals out of the house and with drinks and dessert and have been purchasing all of the coffees.

Espresso at Variety.

New Orleans cold brew at Blue Bottle.

Espresso at Mixtape.

Iced coffee and a chocolate croissant at L’imprimerie.

Drinking chocolate at Devocion.

Dinner at Sally Roots. Booze face.

I got jerk chicken ramen! Chicken broth, yummy jerk chicken, noodles, fish cakes, bamboo, spinach, and wood ear mushroom.

We did dessert at Guadalupe Inn. Drinks with meh chocolate tres leche cakes and churros stuffed with fabulous goat milk caramel.

Best brunch of the year at Rider. Safe Word of the Day and Covet Thy Neighbor’s Drink.

The Cure = crispy rice and lentil cakes, duck confit, cilantro, hoisin, sriracha, and poached egg. Adam had lox and fries, a combo you didn’t know how much you needed.

Dessert at Odd Fellows. Crème brulee and banofee ice creams with brown butter cake crumbs on top.

Pretty damn good brunch at Forrest Point. This drink was named “Fancy Pants,” Flor de Cana, Wild Turkey, Pedro Ximenez sherry, pineapple, lemon, Lapsang Souchong, star anise, cinnamon, and demerara sugar!

Chilaquiles!

Skillet s’mores with Fernet.

I did manage to make some dinners at home – chicken enchilada casserole. I loosely followed this recipe from Jo Cooks, with brown rice and the addition of green chilis. With roasted zucchini on the side and chips for dipping.

Other things that are making me happy… this assortment of cola-flavored goodies. The gum was great the seltzer was too plain.

We found (freshly made) coquito at a bar in Bushwick! It tastes like coconut eggnog and joy.

The Body Shop sent me this sweet holiday gift. Fantastic eyeshadow and delightful smelling things. FYI – they are offering a bunch of gift sets that will contribute to rainforest conservation, I recommend everything strawberry.

Happiest thing of all? I’m on vacation!

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: booze

Walking Weekend

Long Weekend Top Five

Carbo-Loading For The Work-Week

Hello, 2017!

Wrapping It Up

Merry Christmas!

New Orleans Vacation 2016

Vacation Part 1/3