Peanut Butter, Chocolate, And Coffee

I took a long weekend, hence the extra-late post.  Adam takes attending call in a nearby town once a month and this time I tagged along!  I went out for lattes at an adorable coffee shop, had truly fantastic Thai food, and got a flight at a local brewery (complete with a margarita flavored Radler served with lime and a sugar rim!), but mostly I hung out at the hotel room so I had to pack the essentials.

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You know, “the essentials,” peanut butter, chocolate, and coffee.

More on that peanut butter – B.Nutty offered to send me some samples and I jumped at the opportunity because, holy crap, white chocolate pretzel peanut butter!!  They also sent me Totally Toffee – made with honey roasted peanuts, toffee, milk chocolate, and almonds – and Blissful Blueberry – with blueberry and milk chocolate.  I haven’t opened the berry one yet but the toffee and pretzel flavors are both 10/10 delicious.

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All flavors are gluten-free (including the pretzel one) and trans fat-free.  I can’t stop eating them by the spoonful!

Also they’ve made great additions to snack plates and yogurt bowls.  Honeycrisp apple / cucumber / baby carrot / B.Nutty irresistible pretzel.

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Plain greek yogurt / blackberries / granola / B.Nutty totally toffee.  That’s Thai tea in the back.

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Other snack wins include… mocktails with club soda and bitters.

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This Peeps cereal that tastes like a bowl of straight up marshmallows.

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I don’t usually photograph the stuff I eat at work but I made an exception because this bbq Love Corn was so tasty.

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A whole set of Trader Joe’s wins – vegan jackfruit crabless cakes and bbq popped chips with roasted broccoli and homemade chili oil aioli.

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Have a great week!

 

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Cheese In All Its Forms

Highlights from a lazy weekend…

Chocolate Stumptown cold brew + a peanut butter chocolate chip Perfect Bar.  <– my two favorite flavors from each company

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Mild cheddar Just the Cheese snack.  <– my official favorite flavor from my box of samples

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Garlic and chive cheese + a chicken sesame bbq Epic Bar.  <– my favorite flavor from Epic

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Grilled cheese + maple vanilla coconut chips.

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Plain Icelandic yogurt with yellow plum and chocolate caramel sunflower butter honey.  <– do NOT recommend those honey packets

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I am still having a Brazo’s Tacos obsession.

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Chicken and Mexican-style street corn frozen meal + a guava kombucha.  <– my favorite Synergy flavor, other than grape chia

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I made the quickest nachos dinner ever, by buying bbq chips and then filling a box at the Whole Food’s hot bar with shredded cheddar cheese, black beans, corn, red onion, and roasted bell peppers.  5 minutes in the oven later…

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Heart On

I hope everyone had a nice Valentine’s Day!  I love a holiday with theme colors.

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This week I loved…

Stumptown cold brew with milk.  I’m not sure if I had ever tried the chocolate flavor before, I loved it.

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An epic chocolate cherry smoothie.  Plain Greek yogurt, frozen cherries, and chocolate milk.

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We don’t really do Valentine’s gifts, but the husband did buy me cupcakes!

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Salted caramel and a delicious funfetti.

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A take on this lemon poppy seed chicken casserole.  We added tons of roasted broccoli.

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A take on shakshuka, with red bell pepper and chipotle.  Topped with roasted zucchini, sumac, and two fried eggs.

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Adam was not around for Valentine’s dinner and I’m fighting a pretty bad cold so I loved myself with Brazos Tacos take-out for dinner.  The Solid – pulled chicken, refried black beans, roasted corn pico, sliced avocado, and jack cheese // Tres Quesos – Oaxacan cheese, manchego cheese, and queso fresco, with refried black beans, sliced avocado, roasted corn pico, and pickled watermelon // chips and salsa.

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Bonus – things I love deeply that you might not know about from the blog:

{1} Diet soda.  It is truly the only food I cherish more than coffee or cheese!

{2} Running.  I am not fast, and I am extremely careful with my knees so I don’t run that often, but it is one of my favorite things.  I run about 3 miles in about 30 minutes one time most weeks and I love every second of it.

{3} Wegman’s hot bar “Asian” section.  I get hot bar chicken at least once a week as a pre-dinner snack but it never makes it onto the blog because it just photographs so abhorrently.

{4} “The Office.”  My love of tv is well-documented and over the past year “The Office” has become one of my favorite shows.  I have seen every episode at least three times!  So much of what is happening with the world right now is scary and sad and I’m really loving feel-good shows that are an escape from reality.

Strawberry Guava Passionfruit Mango Banana Pineapple Coconut Plum

There was not much excitement around here this weekend, Adam was out of town and I worked a Sunday coverage shift at work (and it was a particularly long and harrowing day!) – I mostly ate frozen meals and snack foods.  Here were the highlights…

How many drinks do I need to pack for a weekend work day?  Unsurprisingly, I’m a pretty big fan of the new strawberry guava diet coke.

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I tried the new cinnamon shortbread latte from Starbucks (with half syrup and double espresso), it’s pretty good.

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My 1st year working as a teacher in New York I ate about a million protein bars and lately I’ve gotten back on that train.

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Yogurt bowl wins.  Trader Joe’s guava passion fruit whole milk Greek yogurt (it’s amazing!) with sliced mango and TJ’s freeze-dried banana slices.

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Wallaby caramelized pineapple Aussie creme yogurt with chopped black plum and shredded coconut.

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Spicy shrimp tempura sushi from Whole Foods.

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Kashi Mayan Harvest bowl. 7/10 on the frozen meal scale.

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Red’s chicken and Mexican street corn (8.5/10).  Severe with roasted broccoli.  That whole plate got topped with copious amounts of Kewpie and Sriracha.

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Engaging Eats

It was an exciting weekend, two of our favorite people came to visit us – and got engaged while they were here!  We loved being a part of their special day, and also enjoyed a winery tour, stumbling into the Tom Tom Festival, and staying up far too late.  I mostly took photos of people, but here were five highlights of what I ate…

{1}  Coffee from Sweethaus.  Quad / nonfat / iced / latte / with vanilla and mint.

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{2}  Brunch at Junction.  I had the Huevos Rancheros – crispy corn tortillas topped with refried beans, cotija cheese, fresh avocado, salsa, and 2 fried local eggs.  Plus the Jungle Cat – Vida Mezcal, Campari, pineapple, lime, and Caribbean jerk spiced cane syrup.

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{3}  Lunch at Smoked in Crozet.  We could not believe how good this place was!  I had smoked turkey, fried chicken, cole slaw, and smoked jalopeno creamed corn.  The cream corn was my favorite side dish of all time!

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{4}  I did not take a picture, but I still have to mention how delicious the fried chicken sandwich at The Fitzroy is.  3/4 of us ordered it for dinner and all of us basically swooned over it.

{5}  It was a coworker’s birthday this weekend so I am bringing in the best ever chocolate chip cookies and I ate copious amounts of dough as I worked.

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I am looking forward to eating a baked cookie with lunch today!

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Yum Yums And Cheer

I had some real flops in the dinner department this week, and I don’t photograph my work lunches, so most of what I have to share in this post is dessert!

I tried chocolate oat milk in my iced coffee and I didn’t totally hate it.

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Wegman’s coffee counter shopping treat, salted caramel cold foam iced latte.  Cold foam gets two thumbs up from me, I would get it again on an unflavored latte.

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The cookie butter flavor at Red Mango is hands down the best frozen yogurt I’ve ever tasted!  Topped with mochi and butterscotch chips.

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Homemade tahini cookies stuffed with m&ms.  A riff on this recipe because No. 2 Pencil’s cookie recipes are all genius.

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Chipotle salads are my favorite restaurant meal at the moment and I’m not even ashamed about it.  My perfect combo = greens, chicken, extra fajita veggies, corn salsa, hot salsa, sour cream, and cheese.  Eaten at home with a super tasty Dogfish Head Dragon and Yum Yums beer.

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This salad was a homemade dinner success!  Sauteed broccoli slaw / shredded chicken breast / toasted almond slivers / a food processed sauce of cilantro, parsley, orange juice, lime juice, evoo, honey, and rice vinegar.

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Buchi, Boba, Bacon

Highlights from a yummy week…

Coffee combo = Brooklyn Roasting Co with sweetened condensed milk, shakerato style.

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This pineapple + mint Buchi is my new favorite kombucha.

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Kung Fu Tea served me a fantastic bubble tea, rosehip milk tea with coconut jelly and boba.

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Chipotle salads are possibly one of my top five favorite foods.  Romaine, chicken, fajita veggies, pinto beans, hot salsa, corn salsa, sour cream, cheese.

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Homemade green curry.  Chicken sausage and zucchini / on cauliflower rice / with green curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, brown sugar, and lime.

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Tasty egg sandwiches.  Seeded challah rolls with fried eggs, sharp cheddar, turkey bacon, and mayo and gojuchang.  Plus the simplest salads – romaine with ranch.

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Dinner out at Bebedero.

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We had great drinks – a paloma with mezcal, rosemary, and black sea salt and tepache, a fermented pineapple drink.

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And I had nachos with cheese sauce and house-pickled jalopenos.

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Hell Of A Halvah

Highlights from this week…

It’s really lovely to have a husband who arranges me flowers and buys me cupcakes when I’m cranky!  Related note – it’s also really nice to live walking distance from Sweethaus because apparently they are our favorite cupcakes on the planet.

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Random drink assortment from work, the lemon rose blossom water was surprisingly delicious.

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Weirdest/most exciting snack award goes to – this Japanese candy we brought home from NY.  It was like a fun dip but with a cola flavored lollipop and fizzy milk powder.

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Fantastic product sample – Absolutely Gluten Free sent me their newest snack item: TahiniBARs.  Halvah is a candy made of sesame paste and it is both Adam’s and my very favorite treat.

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The TahiniBARS come in vanilla, pistachio, and cocoa nibs.  They are certified kosher, dairy free, and gluten free.  Each serving has 100 calories.

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We LOVED them!  They absolutely stacked up to the halvah I grew up eating and the artisinal varieties we’ve had in NY.

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One of my favorite ways to eat halvah is crumbled up in yogurt, so one day I made an absolutely ridiculous snack – plain Greek yogurt / vanilla TahiniBAR / Soom chocolate tahini spread / red plum and green pluot.  Delicious.

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We had some tasty dinner too.  Like bbq chicken fried rice.  Fried rice / carmelized red onion / shredded rotisserie chicken / fresh corn / collard greens cooked with rice vinegar / bbq sauce / eggs.

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Jalopeno popper pasta, loosely inspired by this recipe.  We used whole-wheat shells, turkey bacon, no cream, and less cheese; plus I topped mine with panko.  With roasted zucchini.

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Leftovers with an assortment of baby wines.  I do NOT recommend the rose.

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Homemade buffalo chicken dip / scooped with baby carrots and potato chips / celery sauteed with butter, salt, pepper, and celery seed.

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I’m trying out a recipe that sounds super fun this weekend, so please cross your fingers for me that it turns out!