Tag Archives: booze

NYC: Day 2 and 3

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I wish I had been able to blog more in the city because squashing the recaps of these two days together just can’t do them justice.  To say the weekend was fabulous is an understatement; although every trip to the New York is fabulous. 

Saturday and Sunday were spent pretty much exclusively eating and walking.  My two favorite things.  And the walking was through our favorite areas and the eating included some of the best meals I’ve ever tasted.  Fabulous.

Saturday started with a trip to Soho to our favorite brunch spot.

We discovered Freemans on a whim one weekend and it has never disappointed us.  The boys (and my friend Lana who lives in the city and joined us for the day) were duly impressed.

I ordered the Fall Vegetable Hash, which came with two pan-fried eggs and herbed creme fraiche.

This was savory breakfast perfection, I didn’t know that brussels sprouts in the morning could taste so good. 

I knew our next stop required a hungry belly though, so I managed to leave one egg on the plate.

I’ve you’ve ever previously read my blog when I had visitors in the city then you know where we headed next.

Sugar Sweet Sunshine has the best (and cheapest) cupcakes in the city.  They are sweet without being too sweet, spongy and light, gorgeous, and innovative.  Plus the cake is so good that this former frosting-licking-then-tosser devours the entire cupcake, cake and all!

I went with pistachio.

Be still my heart.

Then we hopped on the train and headed to DUMBO.

The neighborhood Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass is one of our favorite areas in the city.

In addition to being gorgeous, you can walk straight from the park to the Brooklyn Bridge for a walk into the city.

Fabulous.

A subway trip later, and we were back in Park Slope.  I know hitting up the same area during a three-day trip to the city is a little silly, but we just love it there so much!  Plus, it was the first time Gordy and Ian got to visit our old ‘hood.

Those photos are from Bierkraft, an exciting little craft beer spot on 5th avenue.

Bierkraft has an area with benches, a tap selection, and then walls and walls of beer coolers for you to peruse.  So I of course ordered an apple cider.

This was the only underwhelming thing I put in my mouth all day (TWSS).  I usually drink Woodchuck ciders and this guy from Harpoon had a slightly lower alcohol content and a much lower flavor punch.  I passed him off halfway through.

We continued the carbo-loading by splitting this bag of chips.

It had been a long time since brunch but I wanted to be hungry for dinner and these spuds fit the bill perfectly.

For dinner we took everyone to Sotto Voce, the best Italian food in Brooklyn.  The wait staff was totally accommodating about seating six without a reservation, nice as hell, and they brought us great bread.

The lighting was a little dim, so these pictures – with lighting engineered by Lana with an i-phone flashlight app – don’t even begin to do the food justice.

I ordered the special and it quickly found its way onto my “Top Five Best Meals Ever” list.

Sacatini pasta stuffed with spinach and gorgonzola in four cheese sauce with walnuts and poached pears.

Holy god.  I am not a good enough writer to adequately describe how amazing this was.  The fresh pasta had a totally unique texture.  The sauce was pure cheese ecstasy.  The poached pears would have been exciting all on their own and then they were perched atop this masterpiece.  I ate about 2/3 and shared the rest and everyone agreed that it was divine.

The rest of the night took us bar-hopping in Williamsburg, but frankly I was just plain too tired for booze so I have no pictures of that.

Sunday morning we slept in late, Ian set off to his train, and Adam, Gordy, and I wandered down to Lexington Avenue in search of brunch.  We had been very excited to try one particular location but I’m glad that it fell through because that disappointment led us to Rare.

Rare is the restaurant attached to the Affinia Shellburne Hotel but don’t let that fool you; it is so not a hotel restaurant.

For starters, they took pride in their complimentary Bloody Marys.

I ordered mine extra spicy and was in horseradish heaven.

Did I say that Saturday’s dinner was a best meal ever?  Because Sunday’s brunch was the best breakfast of all time.  Seriously.

This is how Rare does french toast.  Thick slices of challah, real Vermont maple syrup, and sautéed bananas.

They were ridiculous good.  I ate exactly half, pretty much only stopping because I couldn’t shut up about how good they were and I was starting to annoy the other patrons.

I also took a few bites of Adam’s parmesan and truffle fries.

I wasn’t the only one moaning at the table.

A quick walk to drop Gordy at his train, a stop at Barnes and Nobel for a coffee with skim milk, and we were back on the road.

As you might have divined from yesterday’s post, dinner on the road sort of sucked, but every minute in the city was perfection.

I’ve lived a lot of (neat) places – St. Thomas to Miami to Brooklyn to Buffalo – but the city has felt like home since before I even moved there.  When we vacation my homesickness is always for our studio in Park Slope, even though we now live somewhere new.  After two years away it still feels like home, my true home.

Where is your home, your true home?

STT; Merry Christmas – Sunday Afternoon

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I hope everyone had happy holidays!  Adam and I have been feeling extremely blessed.  I’m also feeling busy, I hate how brief I have to make these recaps!

Ok, back to Friday afternoon.  Since we had already paid the daily admission fee, Adam and I headed back to Magen’s beach.  He swam, I read a magazine, and we both clapped in delight over these signs –

On the way back, we had to hit up an island institution.

Going to St. Thomas without making a stop at the dairy is practically criminal!  Adam and I split a Bailey’s Delight, made with rum raisin ice cream, egg nog, and brandy.

Then it was time for the final prep for our big Christmas Eve party.  A family friend who knows we usually just have to scrounge on the 24th brought over turkey chilli with kidney beans for dinner.

The rest of the evening’s eats were indeed party food.  I have no pictures from the actual party, but you can assume I ate at least one of everything, and that it was all delicious!

My hot pepper peach cheese ball.

Baked spinach and artichoke dip.

Baked brie topped with cranberries and walnuts.

Dippers.

Pinwheels.

Fixings for mini turkey sandwiches.

Mini bagels with cream cheese and lox.

Frosted shortbread.

Snowballs, macaroons, and 7-layer bars.

We were also fully stocked with booze.  I spent most of my evening carrying around a tray of tequilla shots – it’s a Christmas tradition!  And while I did manage to skip that particular tradition, I got so wasted on orange juice with Goldshlager (don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it!) that Adam had to pour me into bed.

Christmas morning began the best possible way – with a light workout!  Adam and I ran for about a mile near the beach, then hiked the mile home.  It was a short workout, but considering that we had double hangovers and presents to open, I’m pretty proud of us.

A small glass of egg nog was consumed during stockings,

and then a lovely breakfast before presents.

Sidenote – our family does stockings, breakfast, then presents.  Always.  What was your Christmas morning tradition?

Gingerbread coffee with 2% milk,

a small plate of eggs with red and green pepper and Applegate Farms turkey bacon,

and a 0% Plain Chobani with a slice of coffee cake.

I should have given myself a bigger serving of eggs, I gave away most of my bacon/yogurt/cake.  In spite of our refreshing run, I think my nighttime imbibing had made me a little picky.

Not too picky, however, to turn down a big handful of maple sugar cotton candy(!!).

After present opening (which was plentiful – thank’s mom and dad!) there was lunch.

Apple slices and baby carrots,

and crackers with leftover hot pepper peach and spinach dip.

Plus dessert.

Dinner was consumed at my aunt’s house, with a large group of family and friends.

Plus a slice of garlic bread,

and a slice of delicious yellow cake with blueberry jam and vanilla buttercream.

I helped with the frosting, pulling a recipe from Eat, Live, Run that was to die for.

This morning started with another light workout.  Adam and I walked up and down the beach for 45minutes, then hiked the mill uphill homeward.  I wore my heart rate monitor and was pleasantly surprised that our 1hour, 11minute workout killed 290calories.  It’s nice to know that our sand trudging burned up more than the back of my leg muscles.

Lunch was leftovers. 

Turkey chilli,

 and macaroni and cheese made with swiss cheese, chives, and white truffle flavored oil.

Sidenote – my cousin made the mac and cheese for Christmas dinner and the husband liked it so much he went back for thirds!

I also ate the final serving of Junior Mints,

which helped fuel me up for…. a long nap!

We are at school now, and rest of the day’s agenda is movies, dinner, maybe drinks with friends.  See you soon!

St. Thomas; Tuesday Morning – Thursday Morning

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We’re here. We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!  We’re also busy; this will be a quick recap post.

Tuesday morning at the airport, Adam and I did a good job putting together breakfast from our packed snacks.  We split the Orange Cranberry Cliff Bar,

and shared sharp cheddar, baby carrots, and a gingergold apple throughout the morning.

Our flights went well, and on our layover I found a Salsarita’s for lunch.

(Delicious) chips with spicy salsa,

and a chicken burrito with black beans, a little bit of rice, corn salsa, red onions, medium salsa, and shredded cheese.

So tasty and fresh, especially for a plane meal!  I ate about half of everything.

Before we knew it we were in my childhood home.  Being handed homemade toffee,

and finding gifts on our pillows.

I could get used to this!  The husband and I did some wrapping of our own too.

Before we knew it, it was time for dinner.

Spicy chicken with whole-wheat linguine,

mushrooms and broccoli with sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds,

and mandarin oranges.

We ate all squished together in a clump, because someone decided to start a puzzle at the table 😉

For dessert my dad and I opened up these Klick Halva Truffles.

Adam went out (late!) with some of our guy friends from high school, but I stayed home rereading All But My Life, by Gerda Weissmann Klein and laughing at the notes I wrote in the margins while writing a 15page final paper on it.

Wednesday morning was all about dinner leftovers for breakfast.

And 10minutes of strength and stretch moves.  My goal for vacation is to (at minimum) get in a good stretch every day.

For lunch, we headed to Barefoot Buddha, my favorite restaurant.

I split a passionfruit smoothie with the husband,

and a bagel sandwich with my mother.

Yuuuuuuuum.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on errands, including finding a gloriously huge pile of Achie comics (donated to my mom’s library),

and getting all of our wedding rings polished.

Plus testing saved maple sugar cookies from Thanksgiving.

Out of the freezer, still good!

For dinner we headed to Island Time Pub with my aunt and cousins (2sets, one local, one visiting). The lighting was awful, but the dark did mean we got to enjoy these sailboat sail “trees.”

Adam and I split a Caesar salad, with green peppers and mushrooms added.

And a buffalo chicken pizza.

I had these two slices plus a third.

I also had two black and cokes with dinner.

After that I was the designated driver, so even though we were out with friend until almost 1, I stuck to diet coke.

This morning began with a workout. A good workout 🙂 St. Thomas isn’t exactly map-my-run-able and I don’t have a Garmin, so we are focusing on time instead of distance. We had my mom drive us down to the nearby beach so we could run (not that we ran I’m the sand, just near the beach). In the end we ran for 20minutes and walked for 18minutes. Then we slowly walked up the HUGE hill home; I’ll have to take a picture tomorrow. All total, 60monutes of activity, which felt great.

Breakfast was Greek Gods honey Greek yogurt, topped with some blueberries and banana.

I’ve spent the morning running errands with my mom, including a trip to school so I could write this post.

Christmas Eve is tomorrow, what?!?

What’s the best airplane food you’ve ever had? The worst?

A Pre-(Impromptu)Party Post

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Ooof!  So far we have packed this winter vacation full of fun.  I’ve been AWOP (<–away without posting) so I’d love to give you guys a full recap, but frankly, we’ve got a party to throw!  Yes, the party is tonight, and yes, it was planned, um, today.

Yesterday evening we took my in-laws out to dinner at Pearl Street.  (No you didn’t miss a lunch post, I just didn’t eat lunch.)  I ordered a turkey reuben.

There isn’t actually a turkey reuben on the menu, but PS is fabulous so when I asked to sub turkey for corned beef they happily complied.

With cole slaw on the side.

We had some time to kill so we headed to Starbucks where I ordered a short, skim, salted caramel hot chocolate.

Then we headed to see….. The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra!

No photography was allowed during the show, but I promise you it was as aesthetically pleasing as it was easy on the ear.  I didn’t recognize all of the music but the show closed with scores from “The Nutcracker” and “Messiah” and everything was wonderful.

During intermission, the husband and I split a cranberry juice with champagne.

Fast-forward to a morning that came way too quickly, and the husband and I were out the door to see his parents off.

We were out and about too early for Target, so while we waited for paper plates and napkins to become available we stopped into Bagel Jays to split a rye bagel with lox spread.

Delish!  The rye bagel was a pretty exciting concept.

During the fray I did take time to cash in a Groupon for a mani/pedicure.

And to grab lunch from the Wegman’s hot bar.

But then it was back to work!

We’ve got things mostly done now, so I took a break for blogging and dinner.

The other half of my turkey reuben was delicious.

But this microwaved frozen okra was not.

Even spicy paprika couldn’t save it.  I forced down half to get in my greens, but this was slime city.

And now I’m looking forward to seasonal beer, mint chocolate cake balls, and hot pepper peach cheese-ball!

Ten Things

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1.  I stole this post idea from The Daily Garnish.  I had fun reading hers, and knew it would be a fun post to write.  Plus, with a name like hers you know she’s a smart cookie!

2.  I always try to dress professionally for school – a lot of students come in sweats but our teachers have already told us that they watch our every move before we apply to the next level of our program – but my hair looks like this pretty much every day.

3.  Adam said that my Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Brownies are the best brownies he’s ever had.  I’m over the moon; I have a tendency to get inappropriately excited about making things he likes.

4.  I really like pigs.  I want to own two, and I’ve already got names picked out – General Sow and Sir Francis Bacon.  I want a piglet the way other women want a baby; in fact, I regularly tell the husband that “my ovaries hurt for a pig.”  He hates me.

5.  We both really want a hedgehog.  Did you know that the spiky darlings are illegal to keep as pets in both New York and Miami?  Adam’s not entirely convinced our inability is a bad thing.  He thinks that just because I’ve prenamed our future hedgehog “Sonic,” that I plan on dying him blue.  He’s right.

6.  Contrary to the image #2 belies, I do own some hair accessories.  I store them in a refurbished fruit basket.  I came up with that idea all on my own, and I think this is far more clever than it actually is.

7.  The parking situation is the only thing we don’t love about our neighborhood.  For no discernible reason, there is M-T-W and T-F parking on opposite sides of the street.  Adam is so on the ball, that he kept us from getting a ticket today (Thursday) by moving my car to the Thursday side of the street in the morning.  Yesterday (Wednesday).

8.  Sometimes I have so many clever ideas – pet names, interior design, world domination schemes – that I stress myself out and can’t sleep.  So I put a notepad and pen at the head of my bed.  I’ve never written in it.

9.  I’m most excited that school is over because now I have time to work on my magazine binder projects.  Our dining room table (our only table) has looked like this for months.

10.  This will be my only post this evening.  Dinner was candy and booze.

What’s 1 thing about you?

Pasta Perils

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Good news!  I scored an A on my take-home final, which means I ended up with an A in that nutrition course.  Ever better news – I ended the semester with a B in Organic Chemistry; whoop whoop!

We’ll call it “celebratory,” but it was mostly hungry, I did some snacking before dinner.  A cinnamon double chocolate brownie.

A Pumpkin Ale from Buffalo Bill’s Brewery, split with the husband.

And a pickle.

Dinner was based around this Suddenly Salad Basic Pasta box (free from BlogHer).

However, the seasoning packet was very sodium heavy, so we threw it out and just used the pasta.

Instead we seasoned the noodles with Smart Balance Light and some Kernal Seasons.

We also stirred in frozen artichoke hearts and green beans during the last few minutes of boiling.

The mixture ended up being very good.

So good in fact, that you should picture this bowl times two because I ended up going back for seconds!  Actually, I’m still pretty hungry, which is irritating; this is why we don’t eat much pasta.

One exam (and a presentation) to go!

What’s your favorite pasta topping? 

Moe’s Who?

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It’s been quite a night for a Thursday, quite a night!  In addition to making a banging dinner and a revolutionary dessert, I also managed to get some school work done; booyah!

On the agenda for tonight were quick and easy quesadillas.

But you know I did some snacking first.  Adam and I split some fun – a snowman cookie from Sweet Tooth,

and a Weyerbacher’s Imperial Pumpkin Beer.

Both were quite tasty; I ate a little less than half of the cookie, and a little more than half of the beer.

Wokka, wokka, wokka, wokka…..

In between sips, I sautéed up 1/2 cup each frozen corn and black beans in some tomatillo salsa.

This was delicious, and what didn’t fit on my quesadilla was eaten out of a bowl with a bit of sour cream.

I topped a tortilla with my veggie mixture and 1.5oz of sharp cheddar, folded, and gave a quick spin in a greased frying pan.

To die for!  This was cheesy and melty and salty, all while still being healthy.  I previous thought that nothing could top Moe’s, but this was definitely better!

Dessert was pretty darn good too.

That would be low-fat cottage cheese, topped with half a banana, drizzled with caramel sauce.

Sometimes I even impress myself.

Eaten whilst watching “Modern Family,” which seriously slays me with how funny it is!

What do you put on your quesadillas?