Weekend Wrap-Up; We Had Visitors

by Emily

On the excitement front this weekend – Adam’s parents came to visit! We are going to see all of my in-laws soon for Thanksgiving, but it was good to catch up with the parents now before the craziness of eleven of us under one roof. We had them Friday night through Sunday afternoon and we got to show off LI.

lunches

Packed for Friday – an AriZona Oak Tea and 2% Fage with a big baggie of pomegranate arils and chopped fruit punch plucot.

I also bought mac and cheese and some greens from the cafeteria.

Heartbreakingly, I think this was my last yogurt bowl with plucots for this season, the produce sections have all seemed to have moved on.

We had so much fun last weekend that we did a repeat this Saturday and drove the husband’s parents up to…

Montauk!

We went to the beach, the lighthouse, and of course, Lunch.

Adam and I shared a buttery hot lobster roll,

and a bowl of lobster chowder.

My favorite part is the whiffs of sherry.

And that’s not a foamy beer head,

we drank a chocolate egg cream for dessert.

You could tell that it was made with Hershey’s (a true EC has U-Bet), but Adam was still a fan.

We kept things low-key before goodbyes on Sunday and hung out around the house. Take-out from Luigi’s fit the bill.

I had a side salad, a buffalo chicken slice, and a Magic Hat Wilhelm Scream that I split with my m-i-l.

snacks

Breakfast at my desk on Friday. An iced Americano (with skim milk and cream) with a sticky-sweet Dark Chocolate Peanut Larabar. –Ummm, and I just noticed on the site that Lara has new Pumpkin Pie and Gingerbread flavors!! How do I find those immediately?–

Sweet = Haribo Licorice Wheels plus some of the Mini Gold Bears that my s-i-l sweetly sent us.

Salty = TJ’s pea crisps.

Coffee from 7-11 is kind of amazing.

Adam and I are embarrassingly into the Almond Joy Creamer they have there. And our location has pumpkin coffee, pumpkin pie creamer, and (free!) pumpkin spice syrup. What, what?!

dinners

Dinners were the least exciting meals of the weekend. Friday night we kept thing simple while we finished our last-minute cleaning.

A toasted sandwich of caramel apple swirl bread, herbed sliced turkey, light Havarti, and TJ’s sweet and spicy jalopeño jelly.

With baby carrots on the side.

Simple but good.

Saturday we went out to Tavern 18.

I had a beer that was pretty good.

And a Thai Noodle Salad that was pretty terrible.

No veggies, no flavor, and I keep forgetting that I kind of hate Soba noodles. I’m into pasta that is chewy, while Soba tends to fall apart in your mouth.

No complaints about dessert though! The best thing about Tavern 18 is that it is spitting distance from Ralph’s Ices.

Dulce de leche and pumpkin pie for me. I practically licked the cup clean.

I didn’t want my awful leftovers to go to waste, so I gussied them up into something moderately edible for dinner last night.

+ roasted broccoli and cauliflower and loads of creamy Sriracha sauce (tons of Sriracha whisked together with smoked brown sugar, mayo, and a little canola oil).

Hot sauce can hide a multitude of sins.

P.S. It is October first on Wednesday! <– in other words, it is three days until I drink pumpkin beers and pumpkin spice lattes like crazy

22Sep2014

Weekend Wrap-Up; October Came Early in Montauk

by Emily

The husband and I had quite the nice weekend. <– do I always say that??! A day of errands and a day trip up to Montauk. We got to stick our toes in the sand!

We also had some tasty eats.

Here’s how most of the last two days looked…

Errands day opened with a late brunch bowl at home.

Apple Cinnamon Chobani topped with toasted coconut and pomegranate arils. There was also a big blob of Wild Friends Chocolate Coconut Peanut Butter hidden underneath the fruit.

Snacks of the day included two types of goodies from Haribo,

and a Honey Crisp Crispin that I shared with the husband.

This is our absolute favorite hard cider.

I also hungrily tore off bites of pretzel roll on the drive home from grocery shopping.

I went late in the day and Trader Joe’s was getting slammed. Probably because the shelves all seemed to be brimming with new pumpkin goodies!

Dinner was an Apple Month special (unlike what’s coming in the rest of this post!).

A toasted sandwich of Applegate Farm Smoked Turkey, TJ’s Light Havarti sliced cheese, and TJ’s hot pepper jelly, on Pepperidge Farm Caramel Apple Swirl Bread.

Plus TJ’s nacho kale chips and baby carrots on the side.

This sandwich was so yummy; love the spicy-sweet pairing.

Our drive to Montauk was nice and speedy (only about 2 hours; a Montauk local told me that traffic to the Hamptons cuts back nearly 2/3 after Labor Day) but it did require a little coffee.

We shared some Vanilla Chameleon Cold Brew with skim milk and chocolate milk on the drive up

and we got more of the good stuff locally while we walked around a ritzy shopping area.

We did lunch at Lunch, a lobster roll place right on the beach.

Adam was all about the hot lobster roll.

He shared a few hunks of buttered meat with me (gah! yum!), as well as his cole slaw.

I know it’s only September, but there were two fantasmic sounding pumpkin items on the menu, and who knows when I’ll go back to Montauk, so I couldn’t pass them up. Pumpkin and crab soup.

And Post Road Pumpkin Ale with a cinnamon-sugar rim.

OMG.

After lunch, a drive to the lighthouse, and a quick stop at the beach, we got more beer at the Montauk Brewing Company.

Their tasting room was quite cheap – $8 for 4 pours – and you even got to keep your glass.

I will definitely order their Driftwood Ale if I see it on menus in the city.

A final coffee for the road – I love Hampton Coffee Company –

and we were on our way home.

We did dinner in front of reruns of “Chopped.” We went high-brow with the food so it would match up with the high standards of the Chopped judges.

Pizza Hut pizza and Cupcake Wine Moscato. Keeping it classy.

8Sep2014

Weekend Wrap-Up; Attack Of The Killer Sandwiches

by Emily

Did everyone have a great weekend? Mine was low-key but good; I got my hands on not one, but two of my top favorite sandwiches, so that was nice. The weekend following a three-day weekend always feels a bit too short! Assume many, many coffees went unphotographed.

breakfast

Iced coffee and I ate the top off of this cappuccino muffin.

I’m not really a muffin fan but I had been craving one like crazy all week and Friday seemed like a fun time to give in.

Peanut butter chocolate chip bar from GoMacro.

This came in my Urthbox but I would buy it again on my own. Eaten on the go because I spent most of Saturday helping a friend move.

lunch

I packed a nice yogurt bowl for work on Friday, with sliced plucot and a Jax banana coconut water on the side. The bananas foster yogurt was good, but a bit too sweet (note – if it’s too sweet for my tastes it is way too sweet for 90% of the adult population).

Plus brown sugar sea salt seaweed snacks and caramel apple Twizzlers for the afternoon.

Both snacks got two thumbs up.

Green juice from Foragers. Kale, spinach, cucumber, pineapple, and mint.

I’ve been wanting to go to Foragers for ages so it was good to try out the juice bar. They have so much fancy stuff, including this super-soft apple caramel I bought the husband.

I also scored myself a licorice.

snack

Chocolate-covered bears are always good.

I finally got to make the chia tea lemonade.

Quite nice! I will definitely do this again.

Orbit gum loses its flavor and get’s hard too chew very quickly, but it’s neat that my gum is on theme for the month.

I handed my girlfriend a piece of gum, right after I let her use my apple scented hand sanitizer, and she cracked up. I might be a bit obsessed.

dinner

We got take-out from Bareburger to go with our “The Office” marathoning. I ate baby carrots in the car so I could get some veggies in.

We sat at the bar while we waited. I got a peach julep slush. swoon

My sandwich was grilled chicken topped with smokehouse sauce, blue cheese, sautéed mushrooms, turkey bacon, and fried onions. {my favorite “burger”}

Ridiculous. It is the Big Blue Bacon with modifications to make it pork-free, if you want to try one for yourself.

Adam worked overnight on Saturday and I got home late so I went with my old-standby dinner.

Plus turkey jerky… for protein.

I’m not even embarrassed, popcorn’s a whole grain.

Sunday we went to Fletchers. {my favorite bbq}

I got the chopped chicken sandwich, which I smothered in pickled jalopeños and their amazing bbq sauce.

Plus banana puddin(g) for dessert.

I just wanted to taste the pudding – we were planning on stopping for pie afterwards – but it was so flipping good that I couldn’t stop eating until I basically licked the bowl clean!

11Jul2014

Weekly Wrap-Up; Play It Again, Sam!

by Emily

This week’s meals were so good that I went ahead and had most of them a 2nd time. Always nice when you can make leftovers work in your favor. And I even have a recipe to share.