An eclectic but wonderful line up of things from the past week…
Late July street corn seasoned tortilla chips. Good but not great, I would buy them again but definitely wouldn’t eat them with salsa.
I am glad I bought these mini bottles of insanely flavored whiskeys from Skatter Brain because the resulting cocktails were perfect. Sidenote – I learned while writing this post that that is how you pluralize whiskey.
Birthday Cake Shake – Vanilla cake whiskey vigorously shaken with amaretto, fresh orange juice, sugar, and an egg white.
P.S. I used my egg yolk to make a fantastic mug brownie. I topped it with Ben & Jerry’s newest flavor (vanilla ice cream with salted caramel, graham cracker swirl, and cookie dough) and swooned.
Peanut Butter and Jellies – Peanut butter whiskey (plus a bit of vodka for balance) with blueberry jam, Luxardo cherry, and strawberry seltzer.
Related – I love passionfruit and this Truly hard seltzer was just great.
Roast take-out sandwich (bbq brisket with onion rings and jalopeno slaw on a pretzel roll!!) with a mountain of roasted green beans.
Spicy salmon sushi bake that we adored. With leftover brown rice and a blend of canned and hot smoked salmon. Plus a cucumber salad.
Best meal of the week – Trader Joe’s Thai Vegetable Gyoza (yum!) / sauteed bok choy / homemade turkey meatballs with panade, hoisin, and gojuchang / homemade Sriracha mayo and dumpling sauce (yum!).
Is it supposed to be a balanced breakfast or a gourd-based breakfast? La Colombe pumpkin spice canned coffee plus Perfect Bar’s pumpkin pie seasonal flavor.
Lifeway pumpkin spice kefir. I am on a years’ long hunt for the eggnog version.
Trader Joe’s pumpkin Greek yogurt with plucot, chia seeds, and granola.
We liked but didn’t love Elysian’s Night Owl pumpkin ale.
Trader Joe’s Howling Gourds pumpkin ale makes it into Adam’s top five favorite beers.
And Southern Tier’s canned craft cocktail of their Pumpking whiskey and cola is officially in both of our top five for all-time-favorite beverages. I bought this months ago and squirreled it away and devestatingly I have been unable to find it again.
The nights we didn’t get take-out (we’ve had kind of crazy work weeks) we hit it out of the park with what we cooked for dinners. Super salad night – local lettuce with miso caesar dressing, bacon-flavored crunchy mung beans, Gardein vegan crab cakes, red bell pepper, and avocado.
Broiled salmon with a miso glaze plus baked green beans. Adam had his with rice but I went with bbq potato chips.
Emily Mariko style salmon bowls! Plus a side of smashed cucumber salad.
We tried the newest Coke flavor – Dreamworld. It was a bit too fruity for me; I preferred the Starlight and would much prefer if they would just bring back Diet Cherry Coke.
This past week was a crazy grueling work-week for both Adam and me (obviously his schedule was immeasurably worse than mine) and we ended up eating a ton of take-out (and candy!). The homemade meals I did manage to cook came out wonderfully though. Highlights included…
I am having a love affair with summer fruits. Doughnut peach + green plucot. My stone fruit preference goes plucot > plum > nectarine > peach > apricot and sometimes I forget how wonderful peaches are.
My mom sent us Pop Rocks to eat on watermelon, which was a great idea! Somehow it extended the fizziness.
Mango and dark cherry smoothie with almond milk and Greek yogurt.
We are officially all-in on alcoholic seltzers. These were two of the best we’ve tried so far.
Take-out win shout-out: this insane fried chicken sandwich from Roast. On sourdough bread with ranch, hot honey, pickles, and cheddar. Plus I made spicy cucumber salad.
Our favorite chicken salad – shredded chicken breasts with slivered almonds, kimchi, mayo, and horseradish. Plus sauteed rainbow chard with green onion, chili flake, and garlic.
Curried chicken thighs (baked after a marinade in goat milk yogurt, evoo, Jamaican curry powder, salt, and ginger) with baked cauliflower and coconut beans and rice (brown rice cooked with coconut milk, black beans, yellow onion, and habanero pepper).
This is a delayed post because we got back from vacation and both immediately had crazy work schedules including weekend coverage. But I declared last week “Sandwich Week,” which meant that all of our take-out was actually on-theme!
First – vacation was amazing. Truly one of the best weeks of our lives. We road-tripped to Provincetown Cape Cod –> Boston –> Portland, Maine –> Hudson, NY –> home. We got lucky with beautiful weather, admired astonishingly pretty flowers/landscaping, and ate some of the best meals of our marriage. I don’t have a single photo to share but I will link to some of our favorites.
Cape Cod: Bookstore (great lobster rolls and view) / Scott’s Cakes (yellow cake with pink buttercream only, best I’ve ever tasted)
Portland: Bao Bao (our favorites – bang bang chicken salad, crab rangoon spring rolls) / Crispy Gai (wonderful Thai, plus cocktails) / Duck Fat (duck on duck on duck poutine) / HiFi (all-time best doughnuts) / Izakaya Minato (amazing crudo and okonomiyaki) / Time and Tide (inventive lattes)
Hudson: Breadfolks (all-time best pastries) / Gracie’s Lunchonette (our favorites – pink horchatta iced latte, tuna melt with freshly baked tuna) / Kitty’s (Adam’s favorite meal of the week; our favorites – potato chips with dip and salmon roe, crispy broccoli) / Lil’ Deb’s Oasis (caribbean/eclectic, one of my favorite restaurants on earth)
Second – Some non-sandwich highlights from the past week…
This week’s coffee combo.
It’s stone fruit season! I will be snacking on nectarines, peaches, plums, and plucots for the foreseeable future.
Malted blueberry smoothie. Frozen blueberries with chocolate milk, plain Greek yogurt, and malted milk powder.
I scored cake-flavored beer that wasn’t a stout and loved it.
Turkey cheeseburger-inspired salad. Local lettuce with honey mustard dressing, baby tomatoes, dill pickle almonds, dill pickle slices, turkey meatballs (seasoned with dill pickle juice and yellow mustard), sharp cheddar, and homemade croutons with furikake.
Important things first – Adam and I are both off from work next week! We have a little (lobster roll-centric) road trip planned but mostly we are excited to be together multiple days in a row!
Some highlights from this week…
Coffee combo. Loved the coffee, do not recommend the milk.
Adam was away a few days doing something for his parents and I mostly adulted and cooked dinners. Mostly.
California roll bowls. Imitation crab stick, avocado, cucumber, and green onion tossed with Kewpie, Sriracha, rice vinegar, and furikake. Plus a side of seaweed.
Hot and cold tofu – silken tofu topped with a mix of green onion, chili crisp, urfa chili paste, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sugar. Plus roasted cauliflower.
It was a very tasty week! Adam and I had a weekday off and a few evenings together (woo-hoo!) and we made the most of them. Some of the best highlights included…
Vanilla bean iced latte with a cookie dough Perfect Bar.
Cookie dough iced coffee with cookie dough!
Still obsessed with these Kishu mandarins. They are so easy to peel!
Still obsessed with these brown sugar boba ice cream bars.
I bought every marshmallow cookie at Brookfield. Dulce de leche marshmallow sandwich cookie and a Lucky Charms bar.
We made taro milk shakes.
I cooked dinner every night this week! Quesadillas with kimchi, Kewpie, and Oaxaca cheese. Plus sautéed bok choy with Sichuan pepper salt.
Sweet potato waffle fries with pastrami-smoked salmon, bonito flakes, Kewpie, Sriracha, and furikake. Plus a quick-pickled cucumber salad on the side.
Roasted cauliflower rice topped with roasted yellow bell peppers and sweet onions, Wild Planet chorizo-spiced tuna, Oaxaca cheese, sour cream, and salsa. This was delicious and I will likely never sauté peppers and onions again.
Chicken salad (a blend of breast and thigh meat) with mayo, kimchi, and toasted slivered almonds. Plus roasted brussel sprouts and off-screen sourdough toast.
For a week of easing back into real life from vacation the past 5 days weren’t too bad! I even managed to cook a few dinners. That said, work has been insane and I am not sad that I’m heading into a three day weekend!
Highlights from the past week include…
Coffee combo – Hudson Roastery with sweetened condensed milk.
Layered halvah. P.S. We also bought halvah-crusted pecans and they were insane.
Leftovers and lettuce wraps converged for the perfect dinner. We used butterhead lettuce to wrap ground turkey sautéed with gojuchang with celery, peanuts, quick pickled cucumber and carrot salad, and pickled radish. Plus leftovers from great take-out we got over the weekend – kimbap and Korean fried chicken.
It’s possible we over-purchased fried chicken… we snacked on it all week long!
A quick and easy dinner – chicken burgers from the freezer with sautéed bell peppers and green onion, mashed avocado, a fried egg, and fantastic hot sauce from back home.
The best dinner of the week/month/new year! I made buffalo chicken meatballs (with ground turkey since we were shopping during a winter storm, hot sauce, cream cheese, and blue cheese) with sautéed carrot and celery, and homemade garlic bread (garlic, butter, spices, and tons of parmesan baked on everything ciabatta rolls).
Eating Chalk 