Oh man, has allergy season hit us with a vengeance. I feel just horrible! My throat hurts, my nose is runny, and my head is an achy, foggy mess. All of that complaining is to say – I missed a lot of pictures this week, many of them of candy and/or coffee because I pretty much had to have a liquid or hard candy in my mouth 24 hours a day. That said, I got to go on several mid-week dates with the husband and it was actually a pretty great week.
breakfast
Smoothie. Vanilla almond milk, frozen banana, blueberries, raspberries and dates, chia seeds, and a scoop of vanilla pudding mix.
Adam prefers his smoothies creamier than icy so I thought the pudding would help with texture but it gave the smoothie an offputtingly sweet taste.
Breakfast date at Doughnut Plant!
I got a tres leches doughnut (the best one on the menu),
and a horchata, a specialty menu item for Cinco de Mayo.
Plus a latte from Gorilla.
Mmmmn.
lunch
Soup for my sore throat.
With a Lady Alice apple.
Guava-cheese empanada.
With a grapefruit soda.
A sandwich from home.
Low-fat cheddar, mayo, and Applegate Farm’s bbq spiced turkey on TJ’s whole-wheat Tuscan pane.
Turkey sandwich from the cafeteria on yummy olive bread.
Plus dried nectarines a coworker brought in.
They were even better than dried apricots.
snacks drinks
Lavender milk tea.
Good but not great.
This “Simply Red” from Pork Slope was amazing.
House-infused hibiscus vodka, mint, lime, and soda. I am obsessed with mint lately.
Low-fat machta latte.
I told you there were going to be a lot of drinks!
dinner
Rice bowls.
For a super authentic Cinco de Mayo.
Date night at the new-ish Luke’s Lobster in Park Slope!
My lobster roll was heavenly.
And then we got a flight at Ample Hills for dessert.
It came in an egg tray and was amazing and delicious and I was basically dying.
Adam and I had a pretty great weekend… in spite of me misplacing my – expensive! – favorite sports bra and spending half of Saturday in mourning. Seriously – I don’t change at the gym, I didn’t pack it on a trip, and we are very careful to check the machines for runaways when we do our laundry – where the frick is it?!! But when we weren’t checking and rechecking literally every drawer in the house, we did manage to have some fun.
highlights…
Homemade S’mores Milk
It’s official, I’m a genius. I put it in coffee, obviously.
S’mores Milk, makes 2 cups
Inspired by Tosi’s Cereal Milk. This recipe requires you to strain the solids out of the milk, you can use a fine mesh sieve but I used my French Press and that worked really well too. Smooshy marshmallows will not work for this, you need crispy ones; if you can’t find the Mallow Bits I recommend picking the marshmallows out of Lucky Charms!
2 cups skim milk or milk of choice
1/3 cup Jet Puff Mallow Bits
4 squares graham crackers, crumbled
2 Tbsp hot chocolate milk
Place all of the ingredients together in a container and stir to combine. Cover and store in the fridge for 8 – 16 hours.
Strain, discarding solids. Milk can be stored, covered, in the fridge for up to 1 week.
Cheesy Spicy Eggs
Coming up somewhere just behind coffee, diet coke, dulce de leche, and popcorn, corn cooked in scrambled eggs is one of my favorite meals.
This plate was TJ’s frozen fire-roasted corn, chopped spinach, and sliced shishito peppers (<– so much spicier than I was expecting!) cooked in coconut oil with eggs scrambled in and chunks of Kerrygold Skellig sweet cheddar tossed in at the end.
C’est Cheese in Port Jeff
C’est Cheese is always worth the drive up Port Jefferson for dinner.
We shared a beer sampler. The Framboise was my favorite.
A cheese plate. Adam loved the Tallegio and I was all about the 7-year Gouda.
And a grilled cheese with blue cheese and a raspberry-cranberry relish on marble rye. The cheese and jam combo made for the best bites of the night.
Snacky in Williamsburg
This weekend one of my lifelong best friends celebrated her 30th(!!!) birthday.
After the party, the husband and I had dinner at Snackys, one of my favorite Williamsburg spots. We shared a seaweed salad and a Chinese big bun stuffed with pickled vegetables.
And did rice bowls for dinner. I know the photos aren’t much, but my Spicy Korean BBQ Chicken Bowl was great, yummy sauce and big bites of kimchi.
Our 1st Smorgasburg of 2015
NYC people – if you haven’t done Smorgasburg yet you need to get your life together. They added a few new vendors this season and it is happy, foodie, perfection. We couldn’t find the Snowday truck but you can bet I’ll keep an eye out from now on.
Buns from Bite Sized Kitchen. I got red curry chicken with peanuts, cilantro, and fried garlic and shloots (topped with loads of sweet chili sauce).
And beer-battered cheese curds with truffle cheese sauce from Curd’s the Word.
Remember this post? The stupid sports bra is the fourth item I’ve ever lost… which would be a really good track record if 2, 3, and 4 hadn’t all been within the last year!
This post feels long, and I am le tired, so I will try to be less loquacious than usual.
Very chatty sidenote – how great are some of the words that describe how much a person does or does not talk?? Loquacious. Taciturn. Verbose. Gabby. Love them!
Real talk though: I somehow caught a springtime cold and I am cranky and sniffling and need to go to bed. I know I’ve wasted 60+ words on an intro, but I’ll try to let the pictures speak for themselves as much as possible.
breakfast
Vanilla iced coffee with vanilla milk.
Smoothie #1 – strawberry mint. Chocolate mint soy milk, frozen strawberries, and plain Greek yogurt.
Smoothie #2 – blueberry bliss. Frozen blueberries and dates with plain almond milk, plain Greek yogurt, and a little honey.
I made another batch of Community Coffee French Roast, this time in our coffee machine. Traditional/hot brewing did make this a little bitter, but it was still quite drinkable. Especially with skim milk and a splash of toasted marshmallow coffee syrup or a sprinkle of cinnamon and brown sugar.
lunch
Subs with the in-laws for Easter. With chips and hard-boiled Easter eggs.
Coffee Chobani with Cocoa Coconut Renola and a Cara Cara. I am very picky about my coffee yogurts and this stuff was on point.
A half turkey sandwich from the cafeteria with seaweed salad and Easter candy delivered by a coworker.
I apparently don’t have a photo to speak for itself, but another day I packed a sandwich from home. An epic sandwich. Sweet cheddar and extra-sharp cheddar on a toasted English muffin. Swoon.
This mix was random, but it worked – spicy Thai chili tuna salad, brown sugar and sea salt seaweed, and a Cara Cara.
The husband and I are both obsessed with these two dessert items.
Plain Greek yogurt with butterscotch peanut butter and chocolate-covered cocoa nibs
I made How Sweet Eat’s Brown Butter Oatmeal Chunk Cookies for a birthday at work and they received rave reviews. I subbed vanilla bean paste for cinnamon, subbed dark chocolate chips for chocolate chunks, and made much smaller cookies (for a yield of 40 cookies versus her 15), and I recommend all three changes if you make a batch of your own.
I’m including two non-edibles that fed my soul. The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman was like a grown-up version of Francesca Lia Block’s stuff. It was hard to put down; I read on the train and one night I had to sit in my car in the parking lot for twenty minutes to keep reading.
Dessert was angel food cake layered with a yummy Cool Whip + vanilla pudding mix + shredded pineapple concoction.
An easy, amazing soup. I cooked shell pasta in chicken broth then dumped in sautéed chopped bok choy and green onions, shredded cooked chicken breast, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. My bowl was drizzled with sweet chili oil as well. Adam absolutely raved about this dish.
I turned the rest of my never-ending marinara sauce into a bastardized version of Jenna’s Channa Masala. On top of brown rice and roasted broccoli. Topped with plain Greek yogurt and sweet chili oil.
Safe Catch sent me a can of their wild skipjack tuna.
Please note: I was sent this product free of charge to review. I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.
Seafood is a great thing to include in your diet. It is a lean protein, a good source of iron, and a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. Unfortunately, due to the fact that seafood contains mercury, it may not be a good idea to consume it daily, and some varieties are safer than others. Canned tuna, for example, I have to tell my pregnant patients to limit to </ once per week. Safe Catch is a new, mercury tested, tuna brand that enforces a strict limit on the amount of mercury allowable in the fish that go into its products (their standards are 90% stricter than the FDA’s mercury safety limit of 1.0 parts per million). Also important – the fish is caught exclusively with pole and line from managed stocks.
I wanted to be able to really taste the tuna – we give it two thumbs up – so I made it into a super simple tuna salad.
Served on a challah roll with a side of roasted broccoli.
Last night was my sickest, and the husband worked overnight, so I made a(n incredibly tasty!) frozen meal from Trader Joe’s and called it a night. I also ate a bowl of cereal in bed.
There were entirely too many photos of my hands in this post.
I wrote this post at midnight on Saturday… while I ate dinner/my first meal of the day… it’s been kind of a rough week. Hopefully I’ll be in a better mood while this is auto-publishing because I should be in the car on my way to Easter celebrating with the husband’s family.
I’m missing a ton of photos from the week (chips and dip!) and posting two days late, so I almost skipped this post, but some of these eats (chocolate + oat bowls!) were just so good.
breakfast
Community Coffee sent me a variety of their ground coffees to try.
This was a free product sample that I’m reviewing for no additional compensation. It will take me some time to make it through them all, but I will let you know as I open each bag.
Quite nice! Roasty and not acrid at all. I am going to make a (hot) batch in the coffee machine soon and I will let you know if that changes my opinion, but for now we give this two thumbs up.
Salted crack caramel + salted honey with honeycomb and chocolate-covered potato chips.
dinner
Chipotle, because heaven forbid we go longer than five days without rice bowls.
Or salty lime chips, or giant diet cokes.
I made us a huge batch of marinara sauce in the crockpot.
It was a great idea in theory, but I didn’t season the sauce enough and the end result was very “meh.” Too bad we ate it three days in row for dinner and still have gallons left.
The best part of that meal was our side dish –
roasted broccoli with pesto gouda melted on top.
On a much more exciting night, I had drinks with a girlfriend at my favorite Brooklyn bar – Pork Slope. No photos, but I had a Keegan’s Mother’s Milk Stout on draft that rocked my socks off. Then we met up with Adam for dinner at Talde, Pork Slope’s Asian-American sister.
That’s my Navy Grog {Diplomatico rum, honey syrup, lime and grapefruit juices} and kale salad {cantaloupe, pickled beets, candied almonds, creamy ponzu}. I am going to be heartbroken when we move on from our national kale obsession.
New York gave us weather in the upper 40’s two days in a row and we had a fabulous weekend! We went to two new (to us) restaurants and adored them both. Here is a wrap-up of my favorite bites and sips, not including several more cups of coffee, several more cups of ice cream, and a windy but wonderful walk across the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.
A gorgeous espresso over skim milk, with raw sugar and a splash of cream. We fought over it on the subway. I also got another Maple Shay and learned that they will make it with skim milk and that it is even better that way.
We shared a sweet cream with salted caramel, fruity pebbles, grass jelly, and mochi. Snowdays is Adam’s favorite iced dessert option and mochi are my favorite iced dessert topping.
I actually passed on the cupcakes in lieu of puddings –
Banana and chocolate chip cookie.
Baohaus rocked our socks off. Their lighting scheme was dim with shades of yellow, so I couldn’t get a good shot, but the buns were outstanding.
I got an Uncle Jessie: Organic fried tofu served with our Haus Seasoning Salt, crushed peanuts, Taiwanese red sugar, cilantro, and Haus Sauce, and we shared a Coffin Bao: A large fried bao stuffed with our fried chicken topped with chili condensed milk syrup, crushed peanuts, Taiwanese red sugar, and cilantro. Chili condensed milk syrup is pretty much my love language!
Pig & Khao was even better. Adam says this was the best meal he’s had in months.
Every dish had umami out the wazoo. I poured a bit of Adam’s chili oil – for dipping with his steak and eggs – into my broth and the burn was so worth it!
Green eggs at home.
Scrambled with fresh arugula and TJ’s fire roasted corn. Instead of toast, I had ice cream.
Jimmy Fallon can laugh at his own jokes, I don’t care, this is the best Ben & Jerry’s of all time: Caramel & Chocolate Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookie Swirls & Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Peanut Butter Cookie Dough. Funny fact – I thought I hated iced cream up until a year or two ago.
I made a new salmon dish – Sweet and Spicy Cilantro Baked Salmon.
Recipe linked here. I was pleased enough with how it came out to make a recipe page.
With TJ’s Cruciferous Crunch (kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, green and red cabbage) sautéed with leftover cilantro sauce and Wegman’s Thai peanut sauce.
This was worth dirtying up the food processor for.
Crossing my fingers that the weather stays “warm” this week.
Who else has obsessively binge-watched their way though the entire first season of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” already? We finished the whole thing over the weekend. We loved it! I’m considering a rewatch. I hate the two trial episodes – I thought they were god-awful, truly some of the worst television I’ve ever seen – but I adored everything preceding them. The 10 second concept makes my life. Unsurprisingly, this is another smart and funny win from Tina Fey.
The theme song has permanently ear-wormed its way into my brain.
Related, Lisa – Born Round was amazing!
I read it on the train and then would sit in my car in the parking lot for at least 20 minutes each night to keep reading. I’m pretty sure Bruni should be giving TED Talks for all would-be crash dieters, emotional eaters, and aspiring journalists.
breakfast
I did the chocolate milk and iced coffee combo two days in a row.
Paired with a Special K protein bar both days.
Not the best bars – for taste or ingredient list – but they were free in the cafeteria and I had some extra morning hunger this week.
Another day I did hot chocolate mix in hot coffee with a lot of milk on top.
So basically just the lukewarm version of my chocolate milk and coffee.
My breakfast plan for St. Patrick’s Day was a green smoothie. Then I hit the snooze button and the plan was iced coffee with green dye in my milk. Then I hit the snooze button five more times and I barely managed to get coffee, ice, and boring plain milk into my cup.
…and then I also got Starbucks once I got off of the train.
I usually don’t let myself do two coffees in the morning, but I had stayed in bed until literally 10 minutes before I needed to be in the car so clearly it was a double coffee kind of morning. And yes, mom, I fixed my hat hair before I saw patients.
lunch
Thankfully the cafeteria totally came through and helped me get some green-theme on St. Paddy’s Day.
My bagel was topped with pepperjack, sliced turkey, mayo, mustard, and frisee lettuce. Plus baked onion rings on the side.
Blood orange Fage with Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes and blackberries and a fresh mandarin orange on the side.
I can’t believe I had only ever eaten canned mandarins up until this year, they are my new favorite citrus.
Tart cherry Noosa with coconut butter, homemade butterscotch peanut butter, and a Pinata apple.
We are loving the new 4 oz Noosa packs. Noosa is Adam’s top favorite yogurt – in fact it’s one of his favorite foods in general – but the original packages were a bit too large to enjoy on the go.
Vanilla-caramel yogurt with blackberries and 18 Rabbits caramel apple granola.
I loved the flavor of the grass-fed yogurt but I’d still be a little nervous about trying it plain.
snack
Popcorn / all-time best Easter candy / beer…
All good.
A small but gourmet sandwich.
Toasted whole-wheat with Applegate Farm herb sliced turkey, mayo, and leftover carmelized onions.
Weird pasta salad from the cafeteria.
Why do they keep putting croutons in pasta??
An Austrian iced coffee.
Aka coffee (delicious Grady’s cold-brew in this case) with ice, (skim) milk, and (vanilla-caramel) ice cream.
dinner
Asian-style baked shrimp bowls.
From the bottom up, I filled my casserole with quartered bok choy, sliced wild mushrooms, chopped orange and yellow bell pepper, shrimp, fish sauce, rice vinegar, soy sauce, canola oil, and Sriracha. Then I baked it for 15 minutes at 425 degrees.
Served on top of brown rice cooked in chicken stock.
Leftover bbq salads.
Spicy, local arugula topped with bbq sauce, cucumber, avocado, bell pepper, caramelized onions, and TJ’s fire-roasted corn cooked with turkey bacon.
These were some of the best salads we’ve made in months.
The next night I did a 180 from salads and made my grandma’s recipe for an awesomely retro chicken and rice casserole.
Complete with condensed soups, chow mein noodles, and crushed chips on top. I swapped half of the rice for shredded cauliflower but otherwise did not healthy it up at all.
Served with green beans baked with fish sauce, honey, Sriracha, and evoo.
We ate casserole the next night too.
And we will probably been eating casserole the next few nights as well!
Hope everyone has a great weekend, good luck getting that song out of your head!
When it comes to the big, important stuff – having jobs, our health, and a great marriage – Adam and I know that we are unbelievably lucky. That said, man oh man, this week was annoying. The snow has been relentless, I wore my favorite sweater to work only to get to the cafeteria and douse myself head to toe in balsamic vinegar, Adam had to have both of his big toe nails emergently removed, and my car has a flat tire. When it rains it pours*. I’m pretty sure I have never been so glad for a weekend!
There was a lot of stress snacking going down this week that I didn’t do the best job of photographing, but I am going to recap the most delicious things…
breakfast
Iced coffee on the train and plain yogurt with peanut butter at my desk.
I had a ridiculously amazing coffee combo this week… Cold-brew with chocolate milk and toasted marshmallow coffee syrup!
So insanely good.
Are you admiring my nails? Scroll to the last section of this post.
Note – the popcorn was sent to me free of charge to review. I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.
Pre-popped popcorn can never really compare to freshly popped, but these are definitely the best bagged varieties we’ve ever tried. They are nice and crisp. Adam – who likes to pretend that he doesn’t like popcorn – was crazy for them, so that’s saying something. We preferred the Simply Salted because the EVOO was good, but not quite as flavorful. Both are organic and kosher and have 40 calories per cup.
I surprised my sore husband with a giant, sweet latte.
The citrus fruits shown in my lunches this week are fresh Mandarins from Trader Joe’s that were wonderful. Very sweet and juicy with almost no seeds.
Baked yucca fries from the cafeteria. I had about double what’s shown because I started eating before I sat down.
They were paired with the salad that ruined my outfit.
TJ’s egg white salad and popcorn.
The egg salad was practically inedible; whyyyy was there so much turmeric??
Popcorn, Applegate Farm sliced turkey, mini Jarlsberg, and olives.
The tasting plates were fun, but I was missing my yogurt bowls.
dinner
If you judge a dish by how good it tastes cold and leftover, straight from the casserole dish – I definitely do! – then my pizza mac and cheese was a real winner.
Adam heated his serving up, but he also recommends that you try the recipe.
Chipotle night. I ate a giant rice bowl with chicken, veggies, and pretty much all of the toppings.
Our neighborhood is pretty much a food wasteland, but I think Chipotle would be Adam’s first pick even if we lived somewhere with more going on!
This was our best dinner of the week:
Roasted broccoli and kalettes (aka kale-Brussels sprout hybrids).
Southern pickle “fried” chicken. <– I am so proud of this one; check the recipe sidebar!
I served mine on a toasted, open-faced sandwich with a bit of mayo.
Last night we had fabulous kale salads.
I massaged a bunch of kale with Sepo sauce in the morning and then tossed it with roasted broccoli, cubed avocado, and roasted coconut chips when it was time for dinner.
We were supposed to have chicken on top of our salads but I accidentally left the remaining tenders sitting out on the counter overnight so instead I had a grilled cheese sandwich while I wrote this post.
fancy nails
So my jazzy nail polish? Actually nail wraps from Jamberry.
One of the girls I used to cocktail waitress with is a Jamberry consultant (her sales page is what I linked above) and she sent me a sample kit so I could try them out. I am pretty amazed by how easy they are to put on; really not tricky or time-consuming at all, maybe almost as easy as slopping painting on polish. Plus they are very cute! I will definitely buy some to try again.
P.S. Thanks to Way Back Machine, I was able to find my old employee profile (click to enlarge) –
