It’s Time For BBQ And Hot Dogs

by Emily

Here were this week’s top three…

{breakfast}

Killer breakfast sandwich. Turkey bacon, egg, and cheddar on a croissant. If I could get the cafeteria to scramble me an egg with peppers to put on a sandwich I’d be in heaven.

Coffee always makes the top of the list! Black Hand with chocolate milk.

With a Lavender Love kombucha.

{lunch}

Yogurt bowls for the win. With blueberries and chopped nectarine and modest variation in toppings. 2% Fage with Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes.

4% Siggis with pecans, chia, and cookie butter.

Passionfruit Chobani with Heritage Flakes, pecans, and chia.

{snack}

This kettle corn is some of the best packaged popcorn I’ve ever tasted, it is super crispy.

Another sweet and salty, a pixie tangerine with a chicken Wilde Bar.

My coworker brought me in a grass jelly drink to try after I raved about the jelly at Boba Guys. It was good! Not very sweet at all and mildly grassy in a pleasant way. I mixed it with vanilla soy milk.

{dinner}

Our cooking took place indoors and up North but we still made the most of Southern bbq flavors for two of our meals this week. Nacho night! Carolina bbq chips, sharp cheddar, pulled turkey with bbq sauce, pinto beans, red onion, and roasted broccoli.

A similar concept on salad – arugula with ranch / bbq turkey / pinto beans / red onion / cucumber / bell pepper. With corn on the cob. This was a fun dinner but it desperately needed some crunch and we ended up dumping kettle chips on our salads to act as de facto croutons.

Hot dogs in scrambled eggs sounds low-brow but tastes amazing. Our eggs included ‘dogs, red onion, arugula, and cheddar. With avocado and roasted asparagus on the side.

Now I just need to find myself some watermelon this weekend!

1Jun2016

Bao, Bubble Tea, And A Birthday

by Emily

Three day weekend eats. My third day was Friday, not Memorial Day (hello, healthcare family, Adam and I both worked the holiday).

We managed to fit a lot of fun into the days. Including not one but two types of bubble tea! Plus a trip to Pennsylvania for my middle niece’s birthday party – Adam’s entire family was there and it was great to see everyone together. And a loooong walk in the almost-summer sun that left me burnt to a crisp.

Here were the highlights…

We split an iced latte and a lavender coconut shortbread from Tygershark.

We adored the cute succulents, natural light, and overall vibe in there, we will definitely be heading in for a meal soon.

I packed us great bagels for our mini road trip. Topped with fancy lox and Neufchatel cheese.

Plus toasted marshmallow coffee once we got to PA.

Green juice on a shopping trip at Whole Foods.

Kale, spinach, cucumber, and orange. I went back and asked for ice, green juice is a billion times tastier when it’s cold.

Baohaus.

The “Uncle Jesse Bao” is fried tofu served with Haus Seasoning Salt, crushed peanuts, Taiwanese red sugar, cilantro, and Haus Sauce. P.S. I am ashamed about how much I am anticipating “Fuller House” season 2.

Boba is the our favorite. Black rose tea with tapioca and housemade almond jelly at Boba Guys.

Plus I have been Instagram-jealous of this treat from Vivi for months.

Black milk tea with boba on the bottom and a cloud of cotton candy – sprinkled with pop rocks!! – top. So much fun!

Best for last – a picnic with my boys!

We shared grilled cheese sandwiches and a long nap on a blanket in the grass.

We’ve made it to Wednesday, enjoy the rest of your week!

27May2016

Five For Ten

by Emily

I worked all last weekend so I didn’t take the time to blog. Good news – that means I have tomorrow off with a three day weekend! Here were the top five eats for the last ten days…

{1} Oatmeal for lunch

Prepackaged with vanilla almond butter and citrus on the side.

And a homemade mix with chia seeds and sliced almonds.

With fresh strawberries stirred in and melty cookie butter on top. P.S. Cookie butter probably should have gotten its own bullet point!

{2} The last of the Tahini Granola in yogurt bowls

With plain Greek yogurt and fresh blueberries and blackberries.

I need to make a 2nd batch of granola asap, it made the last two weeks of lunches an absolute delight. I’m going to give myself a lower sugar week with Heritage Flakes first though.

{3} Epic sandwiches

The cafeteria-assembled breakfast sandwiches were particularly epic but this turkey ‘which from home was nothing to sneeze at.

TJ’s quinoa bread with turkey and cheddar. I put the chips inside the sandwich for some needed crunch.

Cinnamon-raisin toast with smashed hard-boiled egg, veggie sausage, and Greek yogurt cream cheese.

Egg and cheese croissantwich.

I’ve decided I don’t eat egg sandwiches often enough, a gap in my culinary habits that desperately needs to be filled.

{4} Starbucks’ s’mores bar

Holy crap this was good!

I swear the graham cracker layer has coffee in it.

{5} Mexican-flavors dinners

Deconstructed tacos, aka taco filling bowls scooped with tortilla chips.

Shredded chicken, sautéed orange bell peppers and onion, cheese, plain Greek yogurt, and fresh cilantro. Plus brussels sprouts that I roasted with taco seasoning. <– so good

Another night we made chicken and zucchini enchiladas.

I don’t know why I never make enchiladas, these were so easy!

{Bonus} Near misses – don’t try this at home

These two seemed like they’d be great and instead were total let downs. I did not want a 2nd bite of this cookie dough bar.

And we were expecting to love Bunsmith, they have a cookie butter bun for god sake. And a boozy banana milk and spice cocktail.

Mega meh. The veggies in our bowls came out of a can and there was entirely too much rice. We’ll have to stay loyal to Bao Haus. In fact, it’s on the agenda for the three-day weekend!

16May2016

Bushwick And Beyond

by Emily

Weekend theme flavors: rose, tahini, coffee, and duck.

I am super lucky that my husband feels the same way that I do about trying new foods and sharing foods; splitting things means we get to have tons of tastes! I feel lucky to have him in general too! (<– see also: the gorgeous flowers below that he surprised me with after work on Friday)

For Saturday breakfast we shared a soursop smoothie. It couldn’t compare to the fresh stuff I had at home but was still yummy. Frozen soursop puree, caramel almond milk, and cinnamon and nutmeg.

I also had an iced Americano while we did a big grocery restock trip. Pro tip – ask for “light water” so you can add some milk without losing espresso.

Lunch was a smorgasbord at Smorgasburg. Duck bun, smothered in sweet chili sauce. The crunch from the fried shallots makes this our favorite bao in the city. {A+}

I cooled my mouth down with an earl grey egg cream. {A}

We tried a savory crepe with egg, chili sauce, and a crunchy cracker. {B} The texture ended up not really being our speed, we both wished we had gone for the extra egg in it.

Palm sugar with tamarind caramel ice cream for dessert. {A+} This had such a unique flavor.

I tasted a bite of cinnamon rose and it was pretty amazing as well. We grabbed an unphotographed coffee at some point in there too.

Our evening plans included a tasting/tour of Owney’s Rum at The Noble Experiment so we wandered around Bushwick a bit. We were parked about a mile from the distillery so we got to see a few cool spots. And the tour was great; we really love factory/brewery/etc visits.

I also had a vodka soda with cherries. <– desperately needed lime

For dinner we fell head over heals in love with Faro. Gorgeous tableware, locally and humanely sourced foods, and delicious dishes.

We started with ricotta gnocchi with ramps, morel mushrooms, fava beans, and cured egg.

Plus a little gem lettuce salad with miso anchovy vinaigrette, pistachio, soft-boiled egg, and mint. It was amazing, truly the very best salad we’ve ever had! Adam and I both thought it was the best dish of the day. The mint made it absolutely perfect.

Drinks were a meh rosé and a sour porter which we loved.

We shared our entrées (more tastes!). Squid ink corzetti with peekytoe crab, uni, shiro dashi, and sorrel. I really dislike long pasta – I should have looked up corzetti before I ordered – but Adam was swooning.

And I lost my mind over our dry aged duck breast. It was served on a fantastic turnip puree.

Key lime tart with fresh strawberry sorbet for dessert.

We will be back!

Sunday baking project – tahini granola. Best granola I’ve ever made; I ended up eating a big bowl with milk for dessert at the end of the day.

For breakfast I ate it on top of plain Greek yogurt, with fresh berries, and a single Luxardo cherry.

Plus a rose latte in an amazing cup.

We spent our afternoon wandering around Chelsea Market to get out of the unseasonable cold.

Lunch was a sharp cheddar grilled cheese with a chocolate milk stout.

Seed + Mill served the highlight of the day – goats milk yogurt with the best tahini I’ve ever had. We couldn’t believe how delicious this was! I can’t wait to take my parents there this summer.

My home-cooked dinner was delicious as well, thanks, crockpot!

Chicken, potatoes, and baby carrots were cooking away with 40 cloves of garlic while we spent the day out of the house.

Served with roasted green beans with a sprinkle of almonds and cheese.

Yum. And I am basically stuffed again reading through this post!

14May2016

Back At It

by Emily

We are back at the old grind. The first week of real life after vacation felt loooooong. It’s good to be back at work though, and great to be back with the dog!

Here were some of the best bites this week…

This week’s coffee was fan-freaking-tastic! Blackhand that I brought home from my trip to Richmond. It was super strong and roasty.

With strawberry watermelon Polar that’s my new favorite flavor.

I also tried the caramel almond Nutchello. It was pleasant but not as strongly flavored as I was hoping for.

Midmorning snack of baby carrots and wonderful red cherries.

Cafeteria lunch. They are making a fancy new hybrid burger that is half turkey half veggie; it was good! My korma veggies were not so good, I ended up swapping them for fries.

Yogurt bowl. Salted caramel noosa (<– yum!) with blueberries and blackberries and awesome gorp-style trail mix my aunt gave us. Plus a golden nugget mandarin orange on the side.

Better yogurt bowl. Plain Greek yogurt, berries, red plum, Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes, nature’s sprinkles (chia) for healthy fat, and Amy Sedaris’ sprinkles for joy.

This ridiculously adorable cookie from Starbucks made for a fun end of the day snack.

And carrots with caramelized onion dip was the perfect thing to crunch through while I cooked this week.

We also really enjoyed lemonade with pink lemon! Perfect with mint sparkling water. The lemons were orange on the outside, pinkish on the inside, and sweeter than their yellow counterparts.

Brinner for the win. Banana pecan pancakes, berries, and amazing turkey bacon, with maple syrup poured on after the picture.

Breakfast for dinner is always a good idea, but it’s a great idea when your drink and dessert are also on theme. We planned the pancakes because we both had coffee-flavored beers to try.

And we tried the crazy expensive, crazy good Compartes donuts & coffee bar. I thought it was totally worth the price.

Our other dinners were also winners. Nachos! Maple bacon kettle chips with TJ’s low-fat three cheese blend, turkey bacon, shredded turkey breast, broccoli, and green pepper.

And Greek salad night. Greens with Greek feta dressing, cucumber, tabouli, TJ’s stuffed grape leaves, and crunchy roasted chickpeas.

Last night we ate Chipotle and caught up on TV. <– kind of the best date night

27Feb2016

Sprinkles And Sandwiches

by Emily

By the time this post goes live I’ll already be on my way to work (wan wan). I’m working Saturday/Sunday because I have Friday/Monday off, and I’m heading in extra-early because we have family visiting and I need to be done and free to hang out in the afternoon. The good thing about visitors is that we’ll probably take them to Ample Hills!

Friday was a boring mix of buying new couch slipcovers and filing our taxes (wan wan), but Monday we’ve got some fun breakfast plans lined up.

A few of my dinners were pretty darn weak, but all of this week’s lunches were exclamation point worthy.

Daytime Eats

This weeks’ coffee – Starbucks espresso blend with skim milk. With a piñata apple.

And a chocolate pretzel protein bar.

Or a wonderfully juice sumo mandarin.

Or a lavender kombucha.

Plus buttered toast.

I also had an Americano with chocolate milk.

Plus Adam and I split a butterscotch latte while we ran errands.

With extra espresso, Adam loved it too.

This week’s tea – Roobios.

Amazingly, this caffeine-free herbal was my favorite tea thus far. With milk and honey it was downright delicious.

I’m still excited by this gum.

The flavor dies in about a minute but who doesn’t love a gum with sprinkles?

Oatmeal bowl. Oats with freeze-dried raspberries and blueberries and peanut butter chocolate chips.

The oats were great, but I ate much earlier in the day than I usually do (and then stayed for an hour of overtime!) and I ended up also getting a guava cheese empanada on the train home.

Yogurt bowl. Plain 2% Greek yogurt with fresh blackberries and pomegranate, toasted pecans, chia seeds, and Heritage Flakes.

Yogurt bowl. Maple Chobani with blackberries, pecans, and Heritage Flakes.

Salad bar. I love the days when the cafeteria does a Greek section; my salad was loaded with falafel, tzatziki, and taboule, plus black-eyed peas, olives, and cucumber.

Friday, Adam and I went to lunch at a new restaurant near our apartment. The meal was underwhelming, but I made a great yogurt bowl for dessert when I got home.

Plain Greek with peanut butter, honey, cinnamon, maple pecan granola, more pecans, and Luxardo cherries on top!

Nighttime Eats

House snacks included cashews – I’ve been making Adam trail mix bags for work and snacking heartily while I assemble them.

And chocolate-covered gummies.

And fun snacks included two girlfriend outings this week. A coworker and I got drinks at Colonie after an outlandishly frustrating work day. Bolivian Rose – Singani 63, Aperol, Dolin dry vermouth, Combier, and a super fragrant lemon twist.

And I introduced a friend to the Korean-style shaved ice at Snowdays.

They had specialty flavors – Thai iced tea! Topped with mochi, sweetened condensed milk, and grass jelly.

The mid-week blahs led to some pretty disastrous meals. Like big salads – baby kale, cashews, chia seeds, pomegranate, and peanut sauce – and horrifyingly cheesy nachos.

Or a sandwich night where the only veggies to be found were a side of baby carrots.

My sandwich – with a butter-toasted brioche, roasted turkey, raw milk cheddar, special sauce, and tons of pickles – was delicious but not the healthiest.

But we went on a really fantastic Tuesday night date at Talde. Now that I know that I like ginger in drinks I could order the Ginger Rose – Four Roses bourbon, Applejack, lemon, and ginger-cinnamon infused grenadine.

The drink was good but the meal was to die for; truly one of the best dishes we’ve ever had. Acorn squash rendang with Malaysian grits, fried shallot, pickled shitake, and a six-minute egg.

The blend of textures and flavors – crispy with creamy, spice with sour – was unbelievably satisfying. Dessert was sweet with salty.

Pretzel-potato chip bars with chocolate ganache.

And we started the week with veggie tofu bowls.

Extra-firm tofu was marinated in stone-ground mustard, lemon juice, honey, and evoo then baked ’til crispy.

Served on top of honey butter shredded carrots, and sautéed brussels sprouts tossed in the tofu marinade.

And ended the week with veggie packed pasta. TJ’s spinach tortellini with red sauce.

We gussied up the sauce with sautéed mushroom and onion and roasted zucchini and graffiti eggplant. I followed the Serious Eats trick of adding pasta water.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Let’s cross our fingers for more warm weather!

8Feb2016

A Week Of Super Bowls

by Emily

I was a bit under the weather last week, nothing too bad, mostly a lot of coughing and headaches, but I just didn’t have it in me on Thursday to blog a recap. I was not too sick, however, to eat a bunch of yummy stuff that’s worth sharing. Last Monday through Sunday, here are the highlights*…

*highlights within the highlights, I obviously drank more coffee than this

coffee

Caramel-flavored Chameleon Cold Brew! With half & half. I adore CCB, it’s so smooth.

Served one day with citrus seltzer and a sumo mandarin.

This wins for my all-time preferred citrus, it is sweet and firm, and there are seeds but they are big enough to pop out easily.

oatmeal

In homemade instant bowls for work (just add hot water!).

Rolled oats, chia seeds, dry milk powder, freeze-dried raspberries, and toasted walnuts.

And smoothies.

Vanilla almond milk + chia seeds + oats + frozen banana + brown sugar + cocoa powder.

old-school-style cafeteria lunches

Sliced turkey and cheese with a less than healthy “veggie” side.

My school didn’t actually have a cafeteria (I graduated in a class of <40 and we had iguanas running the halls) but this is how I imagined the lunches would have been.

pepperoni-ish pizza

Oh. My. God. We sliced up a TJ’s turkey summer sausage and put it on the best homemade pizza we’ve ever had.

Usually I try to overdo it with pizza – lots of veggies, too much cheese – and the crust ends up soggy, but this was a crispy masterpiece. With a simple side salad.

sugar

Haribo salty licorice.

Cake pop flavored gum. There are sprinkles in it!

We finished this month’s Skoshbox the day it came.

Tj’s dark chocolate mini cookies.

These hearts were way better than I was expecting; usually I don’t buy boxed cookies because I’m a pretty great cookie baker myself but there is no way I could make chocolate shortbread this crunchy.

fancy booze in Brooklyn

Adam met me after work for a fantastic Friday night date in Boerum Hill. We started at Grand Army for cocktail hour.

My Alabaster Cavern – blended scotch, Lustau East India Solera, cinnamon, lime, coconut, pineapple, and bitters – tasted like a fancy painkiller. We liked the space and the vibe (they have a penciled drawing of ET as Mr. T on the wall) and will definitely be back.

The drink menu at Colonie was no slouch either. My Empire State Sour was American whiskey, NY apples, lemon, egg white, baked apple bitters, and cinnamon.

Best drink of 2016. That line of cinnamon stayed in place on top of the egg foam and made every sip smell delectable.

We shared two wonderful, duck-based dishes. Cavatelli with duck ham, béchamel, and soldier beans.

And wheatberries, mushrooms, and arugula with a duck egg on top.

I know the pictures are hard to see, but those black bits? Were crispy mushrooms. I don’t know how to describe the flavor (truffle? earthy?) but they were the single best thing I’ve ever tasted.

dinner bowls

I did not watch the game yesterday, but I have been eating some delicious bowls of dinner. All but one include broccoli because apparently it’s our favorite.

We made a variation of our black-eyed pea mix. Roasted broccoli, edamame, gochujang, smoked almonds, and cheddar.

A super bowl on Sunday. Orecchiette with roasted mushroom and baby zucchini, tossed with browned butter and Italian four cheese blend, topped with a sprinkle of smoked paprika. Served on a bed of roasted green beans.

Best bowl of the week – farro with ginger, garlic, lemon, gochujang, evoo, and salt and pepper / mackerel with stone ground mustard and a bit of mayo / roasted broccoli / toasted walnuts.

This was technically a lunch bowl. The cafeteria had a baked potato bar.

I swear there was a potato underneath all of that cheese and broccoli.

dog love

I feel like Webster’s adorable mug hasn’t been on the blog much lately, but I have been snapping pictures of him for Instagram. These are some of the best ones:

Related – a girlfriend surprised me with this darling dachshund scarf.

Here’s to a great week!

29Jan2016

Salads, Berries, And Chocolate – Post Blizzard Eats

by Emily

Fun fact about how old I feel – I spent an hour digging out my car on Sunday and it took until midweek before I could get up from my chair without audibly groaning. This was my first year (ever! I grew up on an island) having to do it and now I totally understand why so many people have heart attacks each winter.

daytime eats

The LIRR was still closed on Monday but thankfully Adam was around to drive me to work. Silver lining – I spent extra time with the husband and we got to eat doughnuts for breakfast.

I got an iced latte and a black sesame cream doughseed.

Tuesday was much less exciting, coffee with vanilla almond milk and a piñata apple (Let’s be real though, I’m always excited about coffee!).

And coffee with fat-free sweetened condensed milk in it is downright thrilling. Plus a protein bar and a pear.

More SCM love and more strawberry seltzer.

Speaking of strawberry, this week’s tea – white strawberry. This was a particularly pretty blend.

The most exciting breakfast of all involved halo halo. Plus cereal and chia seeds. I’m still not sure if my Filipino coworker was impressed or horrified that I was putting it on plain Greek yogurt!

I packed a couple homemade “instant” oatmeal bowls this week. Rolled oats, nonfat milk powder, brown sugar, chia seeds, and pecans, mixed with hot water at work. One day was freeze-dried raspberries with a peach on the side.

The other was strawberries with a tangelo.

I also brought in brownies! I made a double batch of milk crumbs (from Milk Bar) and dumped them in my favorite brownie batter along with some caramel chocolate chips. They got rave reviews from my coworkers.

And apparently I missed them when they were gone because one day I bought chocolate cookies and an iced coffee for a train-ride snack.

Lunches also included a slice of ridiculously overcooked veggie pizza.

And a delicious salad topped with falafel and giant scoops of tzatziki and tabbouleh.

nighttime eats

Adam had to take me home from work on Monday too – my train didn’t start running until the absolute last second on Tuesday morning – which meant we got to do a dinner date as well. The streets were still crazy so we decided to eat wherever we could park. We found a spot next to… Ramen Yebisu.

I got the veggie miso ramen with shitake mushroom, scallion, onion, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and kelp. With an egg on top. It was good, but just couldn’t compare with the epic ramen they serve up the road at Chuko.

I went out on Thursday too. I met up with friends for drinks and dinner after work. Drinks were bourbon, lemonade, and iced tea slushies at Pork Slope. Dinner was obscenely cheesy sandwiches at Melt Kraft.

I got the Melter Skelter (<– ha!), raclette cheese, pickled green tomatoes, jalapeño, bbq chips, and watercress.

So good. The pickled tomatoes were a really nice contrast to the rich cheese and chips are always a good sandwich topping.

Another night, Adam ate leftovers and I ate a guava cheese empanada on the train. We sat together for our salad course though.

Arugula with sweet and spicy pecans, chia seeds, and golden raisins, dressed with lavender honey, evoo, balsamic, and lavender salt.

Plus we shared new gummies.

My salad was spicy sweet and these were sour sweet.

I did manage to cook one real meal. I put chicken breasts in the crockpot in the morning along with a jar of salsa and tons of chopped bell peppers and onion – plus a little bit of salt and evoo – and came home to this –

Served with TJ’s Cuban black beans and tons of cheese on top.

We have really been loving the crockpot this winter, all of our best chicken has come out of it.

One more day of work and then I’m spending my weekend being low-key and boring, running errands and catching up on tv.

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: citrus

It’s Time For BBQ And Hot Dogs

Bao, Bubble Tea, And A Birthday

Five For Ten

Bushwick And Beyond

Back At It

Sprinkles And Sandwiches

Daytime Eats

Nighttime Eats

A Week Of Super Bowls

Salads, Berries, And Chocolate – Post Blizzard Eats

daytime eats

nighttime eats