More fun drinks. All good/would buy agains. Pineapple yuzu kombucha / pandan coconut soda / banana water (this was our favorite!).
A summer watermelon date. It was kind of disappointing, but fun to eat in the kitchen as a whole family.
This black sesame bar was nice; not roasty enough for me but also not too sweet.
Guac Shop take-out. They crammed so much food into this food! My go-to order – a rice bowl with tofu, sweet potato, roasted cabbage, corn, pico, jalapeño mango salsa, cheese, and cilantro aioli. Plus chips with guac.
Hetty McKinnon‘s hoisin garlic noodles for the New York Times (recipe). As I write this post I am realizing that I completely left out the garlic — but they were still great! Paired with roasted sprouted tofu and snap peas sauteed with garlic, sunflower seeds, and parmesan.
Spicy maple miso chicken with a maple miso tahini salad. The best meal of the week! Baked chicken thighs sauteed with maple syrup, white miso, rice wine, soy sauce, and gochujang. Plus roasted broccoli, raw fennel, and green onions tossed with maple, miso, dark soy sauce, rice vinegar, and tahini.
This was one of my best birthdays in recent memory! We spent a long weekend in Hudson, filled with an excessive amount of handholding, pastries, and cocktails! Some highlights of our favorites …
Hudson Roastery butter pean iced cortado (with an extra shot, this is the best ratio for us here).
Treats at Kitty’s. This cruller was actually only ok, but I had a puffed rice krispy treat with tons of marshmallows.
Treats from Mel the Bakery, all 10/10. Jalapeno cheddar pretzel croissant / blueberry jam and corn cookie sandwich / almond chocolate croissant.
Pez Husker Du – white and Oaxacan rums, Flor de Azul, blue corn, and lime. The incredibly nice bartender gave us a taste of the house-made blue corn syrup and it was amazing.
Hereafter Marigold Weather including gin, lemon verbena tea, meyer lemon, orgeat, and honey.
Breakfast at Cafe Mutton. This restaurant is so special. We shared a perfect meal. Delicious house-made celery soda.
Zucchini, corn, and onion omelet with goat gouda. With toast buttered to near insanity. I asked for hot sauce and they brought out a house-made sungold tomato situation that was one of the best sauces we’ve ever tasted.
Lettuces salad with sungolds, cucumber, corn, scallions, herb dressing, pecorino, and breadcrumbs.
Milk-soaked almond cake with honey and blueberries.
Breakfast at Gracie’s Luncheonette. Chicken biscuit with honey butter and hot sauce and a great hashbrown. This was some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten.
Dinner at Gracie’s Luncheonette (yes, we went twice, it’s that good!). I got the white bbq half chicken – broiled half chicken with Alabama white BBQ (also some of the best chicken I’ve ever eaten; we loved the sauce and rub too), slaw, a biscuit (excellent), and mac and cheese (weak; meanwhile Adam’s fries were swoonworthy). Sadly, we enjoyed neither our iced coffee nor our iced coffee cocktail.
Dinner at Lil Deb’s Oasis. Their upcoming closure is giant loss. I’m showing my three favorite things but we ordered a lot and it was all great. Charred snap peas with tahini sauce / tomatoes and cucumbers with fennel, perilla, roasted peach jam, and sesame chili crisp. <– these were both stunningly good
Burmese crispy tofu lettuce wraps with spicy ginger mustard.
Dessert was my favorite course. We had flan, a surprisingly good dessert cocktail (with vodka, brown butter, dates, orgeat, and nutmeg), and the best – boozy – affogato I’ve ever had (with sweet cream ice cream, grilled pineapple, and coffee caramel tequila). I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the pineapple but it actually made the dish.
Posting a day early because it’s my birthday tomorrow and we have fun dinner reservations tonight (Rolos – I am hoping to snag a burger!). Things from this week included…
A bunch of weird birthday cake flavored things. My mom also gave me cake-scented hand soap, body wash, hand sanitizer, and a candle!
Creamy mango smoothie. Frozen mango and banana with water, milk, vanilla protein powder, and malted milk powder.
Two new favors of Wilde chicken chips. Both were good but maple waffle remains my favorite.
More Roast; I obviously had to try their crab rangoon crunchwrap (with crab rangoon spread, jasmine rice, sweet chili cucumber slaw, crispy wontons, and pepper jack cheese — my version was better!). We also shared a buffalo chicken sub and had baby carrots from home.
The best meal of the week was this chicken jalapeño popper dip – cream cheese, skyr, Duke’s, Kewpie, Trader Joe’s sweet and spicy pickled jalapeños (plus brine!), baked chicken breast, and sharp cheddar. Scooped with roasted broccoli and Trader Joe’s new sweet chili black eyed pea tempeh crisps (which are fantastic).
Bean salad. I sauteed onion, orange bell pepper, poblano pepper, baby tomatoes, and black beans with lime juice and more brine; added diced avocado and sharp cheddar once it cooled; and added Love Corn corn nuts just before serving. We made this in advance and ate it cold and it was delightful.
Obviously, we ate summer bbq themed nachos for the 4th of July. Red, white, and blue tortilla chips baked with sharp cheddar, vegetarian baked beans, and leftover esquites. Plus homemade cole slaw (roasted sugarcone cabbage with salt, sugar, Trader Joe’s ranch seasoning, lemon juice, and sour cream).
We had one of our best weekends in recent memory, including tons of dog cuddles, a picnic on the boardwalk in Long Beach, a few stops in Ridgewood, and a day at Industry City. Also some truly excellent food! My absolute favorites were…
A lightly toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese and jelly at Apollo Bagels.
Hellbender‘s soft scrambled egg tostada with black beans, cheddar, salsa macha, and sesame.
Also from that same (fabulous) brunch – peanut butter jello with chocolate whipped cream!
Dolly’s black cherry pie. Excluding the key lime category, this was the best pie I’ve ever eaten.
Lil Al’s Burgers. It didn’t break my top five but this was a very solid cheeseburger. Plus very good fries.
I didn’t take a photo of Hometown BBQ‘s brisket sandwich with pickles, white onion, and sticky sauce on a crispy sesame bun that was possibly the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten. But Apollo sent us home with extra bagels and I did take leftover brisket meat and reheat it with scrambled eggs and sharp cheddar and eat it on an everything bagel with Kewpie and yellow mustard.
Obviously, I had a cache of Fourth of July themed foods…
Here was some of what I ate this week…
Adam bought me this wild cherry Barebells bar because when he saw it was a new/limited flavor he knew I would want it (correct). It was not as good as most of the milk chocolate flavors but better then the other white chocolate flavors and surprisingly much better than the s’mores one.
Sour cream and onion chicken salad. Shredded chicken with caramelized sweet onion and shallots, fresh green onion, sour cream, Duke’s mayo, fish sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, and white pepper. Served with star-shaped pretzel crackers and roasted cauliflower.
A savory, summery, vegetarian dinner. Roasted zucchini / a take on esquites – fresh corn sauteed with green onion, poblano pepper, Trader Joe’s sweet and spicy pickled jalapeños, gochugaru, garlic powder, onion powder, and cotija cheese, plus lime juice, sour cream, and Duke’s after I took the pan off of the heat / glazed tofu – super firm tofu that I boiled (<– worth the time, the texture was great) then tossed in a hot skillet with butter, evoo, gochujang, chili crisp, honey, soy sauce, and minced garlic.
Warm bean salad. Sauteed sliced snap peas, celery, green onion, cotija cheese, pinto beans, lime, and chipotle Cholula. Plus crab dip and pretzels on the side.
It was a perfect New York summer weekend! Including great food (several of my top favorites and lots of sweet treats!), a couple of long walks, brunch on the water in Roslyn, a trip to Rockaway Beach, and a visit to the mall! The best things I ate were…
Rockaway Beach Bakery. Guava cheese danish. We also had a yummy slice of croissant bread. Their new location is great.
From Lucie. They make my favorite cake in the city. This was a (super duper moist) vanilla cake with Earl Gray frosting and blackberry jam.
Culture Espresso makes our 2nd favorite chocolate chip cookie in the city. This was the corn cookie and we also enjoyed a frozen maple coffee.
Pavlo Mochi. My favorite was the banana milk jam with a dulce de leche center.
Connolly’s Bar pina colada is my current favorite frozen cocktail.
I didn’t actually love my brunch burger at Naks but their wonderful vinegar fries were fantastic dipped in egg and gravy.
My cocktail was also a win; I got the Zesto – a milk punch with coconut, soursop, and rum (and that’s a pandan coconut rum jello shot!).
Roberta’s house-made bread + stracciatella + sugar snap peas with pea shoots and green garlic.
Best meal of the weekend = lunch at Rippers. Cheeseburgers and seasoned fries. This is Adam’s favorite burger.
Their cocktails were magical too! Lychee soju martini and a frozen sangria (we ate spoons of sangria with soft-serve and swooned).
P.S. No photos but I had a kale salad with salmon at Daily Provisions that knocked my socks off.
King’s Coast coconut iced latte with coconut cold foam. 100/10.
See also – Beanmonger‘s strawberry white chocolate iced latte. A little too sweet for me.
Paris Baguette Dubai chewy cookie. Nowhere near as good as Bear Donut but still delicious (obviously).
Veggie cheese fries. Baked fries tossed with furikake, garlic powder, and onion powder / poblano pepper, corn, green onion, and honey goat cheese / six-minute eggs tossed in a skillet with butter, evoo, gochujang, chili crisp, maple syrup, soy sauce, and lime.
Bean salad. Great Northern beans, celery, cucumber, tomatoes, peanuts, sesame seeds, and sharp cheddar tossed with evoo, sesame oil, chili crisp, honey, and rice vinegar.
No post last week because we were on vacation! Adam and I went to New Mexico (my first time there) – Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and a night in the desert in Taos. We had a wonderful time! It was beautiful, the food was outstanding, and we visited our final Meow Wolf.
Things from the week back in real life…
A sugar plum yogurt bowl! The plums were the leftover solids from a plum syrup I made (red and black plums simmered with sugar and water — ok in iced coffee, better in seltzer) plus plain skyr and granola.
Veggie snacks. Fun to try but not for me (the sweet potato was too chewy and the okra was too crunchy); I brought them to work and at least one person liked each thing.
The best vegan jerky.
Tofu veggie bowls. This was the best meal of the week. Hedgehog-cut baked super firm tofu and roasted brussels sprouts topped with chopped white mushrooms sauteed with evoo, butter, lemon juice, maple syrup, dark soy sauce, miso paste, Dijon, garlic, gochugaru, and sesame seeds.
Chickens salad. Shredded baked chicken, six-minute eggs, Wilde chicken chips, and sauteed hen of the woods mushrooms tossed with plain skyr, Duke’s mayo, pickle brine, chopped pickles, salt, Sichuan pepper, white pepper, smoked paprika, onion powder, and garlic powder. Plus succotash we did not suffer for – frozen mixed veggies (carrots, peas, corn, green beans, and baby lima beans) sauteed with butter and lemon.
Inspired by our chicken salad we also made a chickens migas! Eggs scrambled with shredded chicken, Wilde chicken chips, kettle chips, honey goat cheese, and sauteed tomato, poblano pepper, corn, and green onions. I topped my bowl with tons of Green Cholula (the sweet goat cheese was possibly not the best cheese for this dish!).
Eating Chalk 