How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria

by Emily

My title is a tongue in cheek joke about how the weather channel is turning me into a crazy person this month. I was having such a good week too. The VI was finally getting some desperately needed federal assistance and national news coverage and my parents got cell service back and I was able to talk to my mom. But now, Maria is expected to hit the Virgin Islands as a category 3 hurricane this week. Fantastic.

I’m still not really feeling up to prattling on about my days, but I did have some fun this week so I’m posting a top five…

{1} favorite work bites

{a} coffee coffee coffee

{b} I am still obsessed with that Trader Joe’s nut and seed mix

{c} I also packed a nice tasting plate – dried apples, TJ’s crispy cheese bites, and a maple salmon bar.

{d} This cafeteria wrap was on point. Chicken / pinto beans / tomato / bell peppers / banana pepper / cheddar.

{2} apple eatventures

{a} I made caramel apple bread from scratch! Basically just pumpkin bread made with apple sauce instead of pumpkin puree and totally just an excuse to use these caramel chips.

{b} Caramel apple oatmeal. Rolled oats / caramel chips / cinnamon / chia seeds / dried apples.

{c} Caramel apple Twizzlers.

{d} Apple pie milkshake. Vanilla ice cream / Greek yogurt / applesauce/ cinnamon and gingerbread spice.

{3} cobb salad pasta salad

Whole wheat bowtie pasta / crumbled fancy aged blue cheese / turkey bacon / chopped chicken breast / hard-boiled eggs / diced avocado / shredded spinach / roasted baby tomatoes.

{4} a Mile End meal recreation

Mile End Deli has a Brussel sprouts dish on their menu that we were over the moon for, so I recreated it at home. Our version was roasted brussel sprouts / tossed with crispy turkey bacon / plus olive oil and honey / sprinkled with sumac / on a base of labne.

While we cooked – which took no time at all – we sipped on Switchel.

Up Mountain Switchel sent me a box for review. The lemon flavor was too spicy ginger for me, but I loved the Yerba Mate. The ingredients list is short and simple (the four things listed on the front of the bottle plus water) and a serving has 54 calories and 10 grams of sugar. It paired nicely with our meal and would be a good alternative option to booze or soda with dinner.

{5} a trip to the South Fork of the Hamptons

{a} Doughnuts and coffee at Grindstone.

I had a Nutella s’mores brioche doughnut and a vanilla latte.

{b} La Colombe black and tan (draft latte and cold brew) at Sag Town Coffee. P.S. Apparently I am obsessed with Sag Harbor, it is so cute!

{c} Lunch at Lunch. Instead of a lobster roll I went with the seafood chili – with a bloody mary – and was quite pleased with my choice.

{d} A cup of birthday cake ice cream at Scoop Du Jour.

{e} And best of all, we got to stick our toes in the sand at the beach.

It was a super foggy day and the crashing waves were gorgeous. Plus we saw about a million seagulls. <– best beach day ever

5Sep2017

Cinnamon And Marshmallow In My Coffee

by Emily

I have eaten some very yummy things over the past four days! Adam and I both worked the holiday, but first we got to spend almost two full weekend days together!!! Good times.

Things [literal things] that made me happy this weekend…

Thanks to all of Target’s cheap “back to school” goodies, we have a jazzy new shower curtain and bedspread.

The sheets underneath are pretty happy-making too.

A Saturday trip to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Such a fun way to spend a morning. We were expecting things to be sparse due to the season but there was still a ton of beauty to admire.

As of last Friday, it’s Apple Month.

This spiced apple bourbon hand soap is currently the best smelling thing in our house!

Culinary highlights…

I haven’t eaten anything apple yet but I did cram some pretty fall-forward flavors into my coffees. Cinnamon.

And toasted marshmallow.

Though I also had a very summer-y Australian iced coffee with Wandering Bear cold brew and vanilla Curious Creamery ice cream.

Cheddar-chive biscuit and a matcha iced latte at Annex.

Brunch at Maison Premiere. We had a pastry assortment that was out of this world.

Maison Jungle Bird – Hamilton Black Rum, Cruzan Black Strap Rum, pineapple, Campari, and sugar cane.

I had the duck confit hash with bell pepper and poached egg. <– not as good as Colonie, sadly

While at the Garden, we had lunch at the Yellow Magnolia Café. (<– newest venture from the chef/owner of Wilma Jean)

I had wonderfully crispy, lemony fried chicken. Served with habanero honey, collard green slaw, and delicious wild rice. I suspect that there was honey butter in the rice because I don’t even like wild rice.

We took a long post-lunch walk for coffee and ended up also getting ice cream for dessert – blueberry with blue velvet cake from Little Cupcake Bakeshop.

Friday night I met a girlfriend in the Lower East Side for dinner and drinks. Sizzling noodles at The Tang.

I ended up with way too much food because I also couldn’t resist the Chungking Express salad – romaine, soft-boiled egg, honey, black vinegar, and chili oil.

How fantastically ridiculous are the drinks at Mother of Pearl?! My daiquiri – with Campari, grapefruit, and rosemary tincture – was tasty to boot.

We made an oldie but a goodie – buffalo blue cheese black bean burgers. Served with raw carrots and celery the first night.

Our citrus-y sip-while-you-cook line up did not contain any winners, we hated both of these drinks! <– normally I wouldn’t include this in a “highlights” section but they both sound so good in theory that I wanted to make sure I warned you

Sunday night I got fancy with a Southern dinner.

Pan-fried catfish! I made a spice rub with salt, pepper, cayenne, cumin, brown sugar, and smoked paprika and cooked the fish for 3.5 minutes on each side. Drizzled with a lemon butter pan sauce.

Plus sautéed collard greens with shallots, toasted coconut, and avocado (plus lemon, rice vinegar, and liquid smoke).

Flavor themes of the weekend – Campari / eggs / coffee / collard greens.

2Sep2017

Buffalo Chicken Ballyhoo

by Emily

Is it seriously September already?? Actually, don’t answer that; if I think about how fast this year seems to be going it makes my head spin. At least now it’s Apple Month.

Here were eight things from the end of the eighth month…

{1} coffee excitement

A match made in heaven? I put creamy pecan popsicle in my iced coffee.

The lattes at Black Brick are roasty and delicious.

{2} brunch at Loosie’s Café

This space was gorgeous! I had a grains bowl with shitake and king oyster mushrooms, purple kale, quinoa, roasted beets, cucumber raita, mint, and a soft egg.

{3} “milk and cookies” at The Bedford

Adam and I split a The Dude’s Caucasian – house-made vanilla bean espresso vodka on the rocks with a drizzle of cream.

And a Drunken Cookie – underbaked chocolate chip cookie dough stuffed injected with white chocolate. <– omg

{4} lime, mint, and elderflower sparkling water

{5} Curious Creamery ice cream mix

Please note – this product was given to me free of charge to review. I was not provided further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

It is mix that doesn’t require an ice cream maker, all you have to do is beat it with the milk of your choice and freeze. It takes about 15 minutes of hands-on time, and we found the ice cream consistency to be enjoyable after 5 hours (and it continued to be good 48 hours later too).

I used 2% cow’s milk but you can also use full-fat, skim, almond, etc – the mixes themselves are lactose-free and have no trans or saturated fat. I made the vanilla packet plain – Adam thinks it tastes like marshmallows! – and the chocolate I mixed with dulce de leche and roasted pecans for a turtle sundae.

We didn’t love the final product, but did quite like it. I’d say the ice cream is better than 7-11 brand, Turkey Hill, or the no-name stuff at cafeterias; on par with most store-bought ice creams; and not as good as Ben and Jerry’s or the ice cream we can get at places like Ample Hills or Ice and Vice in the city. If I’m living somewhere that isn’t NYC in the future I would definitely make it again.

{6} the last of the seasonal summer beers

These ended up being two of my all-time favorite strawberry beers. Shiner Strawberry Blonde / Saranac Strawberry Tart.

{7} out-of-this-world good buffalo chicken tenders

I base all of my “oven-fried” chicken on this recipe from A Cozy Kitchen. I used skinless, boneless chicken breast tenders and baked for 24 minutes at 425 degrees. I mixed smoked paprika and cayenne in with my flour and used panko as my bread crumb.

The final product was tossed with a mix of buffalo sauce, butter, and brown sugar.

Paired with carrots and celery – steam/sautéed and finished with thyme honey balsamic vinaigrette – to keep the theme going.

{8} buffalo chicken and blue cheese cheese fries

Our leftover chicken got to participate in something magical – waffle fries baked with cheddar, blue cheese, and buffalo chicken on top.

Have a great weekend.

19Aug2017

Couch Potato, Twice Baked

by Emily

This past week I came home from vacation and went back to work. It wasn’t all bad, the end of vacation means I get to see this face –

We made it home in time to celebrate his Buyday. With steak!

Here are the highlights of what the humans ate this week…

Coffee (coffee! coffee!). Wicked Joe Coffee sent me some samples. WJC is a sustainable, family-owned company producing certified organic, fair trade coffees. They offered to let me try out the goods in celebration of the fact that they are available in 247 Sprouts Farmers Markets nationwide.

I tried both blends (cooked in our drip coffee maker than cooled and served iced) black and with skim milk to taste-test and give them two thumbs up! I also did some fun, sugary coffee pairings based on the tasting notes to jazz up my return to work mornings. Wicked French says “bakers chocolate with an unexpected hint of sweetness” so I used fancy chocolate milk.

Big House has “sweet notes of caramel and citrus” so I swirled in dulce de leche.

Yogurt bowls. Vanilla almond granola / cloudberry peach skyr / and three(!) colors of plucots.

Passion fruit Fage / an apple / and an Rx Kids chocolate chip bar.

I snuck in one last day of midweek vacation with Adam on Wednesday and we went on a lunch date at the gorgeously cool Chaan Teng in Hell’s Kitchen.

I had shrimp and chicken dumplings to start.

And a sweet and spicy cocktail with tequila, tamarind, basil, Szechuan peppercorns, mango juice, lime, and chili.

They had kung pow duck! With chilis , peppers, peanuts, and jicama.

Snack attack. We finally got to Astoria to try Chip. My s’mores cookie was gooey perfection and now I can’t wait to go back.

Cola candies.

Korean Chili KIND bar. <– I like their savory flavors even better than the sweet

These dried mangos from TJ’s are out of this world good.

If you stretch the definition of “cooked” to its limit, I made five nights of home-cooked dinners! Turkey and sharp cheddar sandwich on a toasted whole-wheat croissant.

BBQ chicken salad. Local greens / ranch / baby heirloom tomatoes / pulled chicken breast with Korean bbq sauce / smoked cheddar.

An assortment of freezer items, and eggplant that I actually cooked myself.

TJ’s Thai sweet chili veggie burgers.

Crinkle cut fries (with ketchup and mayo).

Steamed/sautéed eggplant cooked with canola oil, fish sauce, gojuchang, honey, and garlic scapes.

I made pimento cheese twice baked potatoes!

This was my first time making twice backed spuds (or even eating them for that matter) but they came out great. The filling was a mix of potato / extra-sharp cheddar / diced pimentos / mayo / smoked paprika and cayenne.

Served with baked tofu.

And beautiful roasted purple and orange cauliflower.

The potatoes were great leftover too.

With leftover duck that I chopped up and reheated in a skillet.

And oven-baked okra fries.

Have a great weekend!

14Aug2017

Ice Cream In LA

by Emily

We took full advantage of our week off and took a trip out to the West Coast! This was our first time in Los Angeles and we had a great trip. We rented a car and had enough time to do some exploring. Keeping with vacation tradition, I got sick with a sore throat, but thankfully half of our agenda was ice cream anyway!

some of our favorite things we did – –

Chinatown // Griffith Park Observatory // La Brea Tar Pits

// Malibu

// Rodeo Drive // Santa Monica // Venice Beach

// Venice Canals

some of our favorite things we ate – –

Afters Ice Cream <– this wins best ice cream of the trip

Brioche ice cream sandwich with cookie monster ice cream and sweetened corn flakes. I couldn’t get a good photo in the sun but this was out of this world.

B Sweet

Filipino dessert bars are the best. I got amazing Halo Halo.

Blue Star Doughnuts

The bottom one was terrible but the top one was a fantastic buttermilk glazed. This was our very first stop on the trip and it was a nice start.

Egg Slut

House-made turkey sausage, cage-free over medium egg, cheddar cheese, and honey mustard aioli in a warm brioche bun.

Grand Central Market

There was so much to do here! We got chicken tacos.

And the best pad see eiw I’ve ever tasted. The noodles were a little bit charred and perfectly chewy. We were both in heaven.

Magpies Soft Serve <– this was the best soft serve we’ve ever had

I got a swirl with cherry cola(!!!) and sweetened cream.

Mr. Holmes Bakehouse

It was adorable in here and we almost came away with some gold pins. California croissant with smoked salmon, ginger, wasabi, and nori.

Philz Coffee

The mojito iced coffee lived up to expectations. I do have to mention that it makes me crazy that they call this “mojito” though, mojitos have mint and sugar but they also have rum and lime and without the second two ingredients you have a mint iced coffee, not a mojito.

Salt and Straw

It’s as good as they say. We had salted, malted, chocolate chip cookie dough and almond brittle with chocolate ganache.

Son of a Gun <– this was our best meal of the trip

This tapas-style seafood restaurant pretty much blew our minds. I drank a Ruby Red Julep – Angels Envy Bourbon, ruby red grapefruit, hibiscus, lemon, and mint.

We had the lemonfish poke with black radish escabeche, citrus, and crispy sunchoke.

Maple cream with smoked steelhead trout roe and pumpernickel flakes.

Heirloom tomato salad with avocado, chili, lime, miso, and corn.

Blackened rock cod with tomatillo salsa, fried tortilla, and crema.

And for dessert, Italian Hamburger: a brioche ice cream sandwich with caramel and maldon sea salt.

And now it’s back to work, wish me luck!

8Aug2017

Second Staycation

by Emily

By the time you read this I’ll be on a plane heading west, woo-hoo!

We are on our final week of summer vacation. We are excited for today’s travels, but when we made our plans we made sure to include time for some New York City love. Adam and I spent the past three days having a blast in our hometown. We ate all the things, got in some good dog cuddles, and spent some time showing off the Lower East Side to a friend (one of our favorite humans recent moved to the city for fellowship and we are excited to share the love).

Here were the top six edible highlights from the past three days…

{1} Antica Pesa = our new favorite Italian spot

Every piece of this meal was perfection. From the “Stranger Danger” – Ilegal Mezcal, guava, mint, hot honey, lime, and a Campari float.

To the cheese plate with the best blue cheese we’ve ever had.

I had housemade fettuccine with fresh mozzarella and eggplant puree and Adam had outstanding lasagna.

Plus for dessert we had coffee granite with chocolate cornflake crunch on top and a Gianduia hazelnut cream on the bottom that was my all-time favorite bite of dessert.

{2} Chef’s Club Counter

The boys liked their smoked salmon toasts and I loved my duck rice bowl with olives, citrus puree, and duck cracklins.

{3} Mother’s Ruin

My chicken and waffles were my favorite plate of food of the summer! The wings were coated in ridiculously fantastic Cholula-honey glaze. I also had a great drink with light rum, cava, honey, and mint.

{4} Booze in Brooklyn

We played our favorite game at Barcade (and were infinitely frustrated by Tapper) and I fell in love with Dogfish Head’s SeaQuench gose.

Plus we had ~~way too many~~ drinks and fell in love with the vibe at Rocka Rolla.

{5} Treats at Bibble and Sip

Iced lavender latte and a coconut Thai iced tea panna cotta. And now we want to go back and try every other flavor of panna cotta.

{6} Turkey cheese burgers

We made yummy turkey burgers – simply seasoned and kept moist with a brioche panade – on brioche buns with sharp cheddar cheese and bread and butters from Pickle Guys.

With roasted zucchini.

And a duo of fruit beers – New Belgium Juicy Watermelon Ale / Flying Dog Tamarind Ale.

See you this weekend!

5Aug2017

New Noosas

by Emily

I’m free (again)! After a short return to work I’m back on vacation for the next week, woo-hoo!

Honestly? I need a vacation. I was only back at work three days but I stayed late for more than an hour on Thursday and Friday and now I’m tuckered out.

Thankfully I had a few exciting things to get me through my week. Like a luscious line up of fun new beverages: Black Hand nitro cold brew / Secret Squirrel Vietnamese iced coffee / La Colombe triple draft latte / Maeil caramel macchiato / Harmless Harvest strawberry coconut water.

And an extra exciting package of product samples from Noosa.

Noosa yogurt is already pretty much angel pudding, so when they offered to let me try their new line of Noosa Mates (yogurt with premium mix-ins) I jumped at the chance.

They were even better than anticipated! Loved them all. I was happy with the portion of both yogurt and toppings and each one has between 240-270 calories. Banana Chocolate Peanut with Guittard chocolate chips and salted peanuts.

Honey cranberry almond with pepitas and granola.

Coconut almond chocolate.

Maple ginger with candied ginger and gingersnap crumble. I wasn’t expecting to like this because I think that I think that ginger is too spicy, but it was delicious! The candied ginger was chewy and delightful.

Honey pretzel peanut.

I ate some fun stuff on my free days too. Like doughnuts (which were just awful, but how cute is that pink wall?!).

And a trip to Red Hook.

We had key lime pie from Steve’s.

And crab sandwiches from Brooklyn Crab. Snow crab roll with Cholula-orange aioli.

Alaskan king crab roll with warm butter and chives.

Plus cole slaw.

And a Passion Paloma with mescal, passionfruit puree, and grapefruit soda.

Plus we stopped at Baked for coffee and brought home a grasshopper bar for dessert later in the week.

After a long span of eating every meal out, I was excited to make us a fancy dinner.

Smoked turkey kielbasa with onions and bell pepper.

Plus pommes aligot <– super cheesy potatoes. I loosely followed this recipe. I had to lighten up a few ingredients to accommodate what we had in the fridge (less butter, 2% milk instead of cream, low-fat three cheese cheddar blend) and it was still insanely yummy.

I served my leftovers piled all together in a bowl with smoked paprika maple mayo on top.

By the end of the week I was so exhausted by my three days of work that I got Chipotle instead of cooking anything! Rice / sautéed veggies / chicken / pinto beans / corn salsa / spicy salsa / sour cream / cheese.

Have a great weekend!

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: chicken

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria

Cinnamon And Marshmallow In My Coffee

Buffalo Chicken Ballyhoo

Please note – this product was given to me free of charge to review. I was not provided further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

Couch Potato, Twice Baked

Ice Cream In LA

Second Staycation

New Noosas