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

6May2016

Ocean 362 {Dinner In St. John}

by Emily

St. Thomas has to be my favorite island because it’s where I was born, but during our trip home our absolute best meal was enjoyed in St. John.

One of the boys from my high school class grew up to be an amazingly cool chef who opened a restaurant in Cruz Bay. Ocean 362 does modern takes on traditional Caribbean dishes using ingredients that are fresh, local, and sustainably sourced. It’s a total 10/10.

The space is pretty and open and we got a seat on the patio with a progressively more beautiful view of the sunset.

The setting sun also means that my photos get progressively less lovely!

Adam and I went alone for a date night and ordered a truly ridiculous amount of food for two people. We started with a local fish dip with citrus, herbs, and cream cheese, served topped with crispy capers, with radishes and crostini on the side.

We also had fresh bread with delightfully sweet butter and the chef sent out an assortment of pickles that were stunning. The mushrooms were good and the dilled cucumbers were the best I’ve ever tasted.

Cocktails included the Bean-a-colada with pineapple and vanilla infused vodka and pineapple juice. That dollop on the top is coconut milk and lime foam.

Plus a sparkly Seaplane with cava, orange bitters, and housemade hibiscus flower liquor. The foam is thanks to vegan “egg” powder. You can never go wrong ordering a cocktail with egg and especially not ordering one with hibiscus.

Adam said his pork tenderloin was scrumptious, but I’m sure it couldn’t have been better than my duck. Cast iron seared duck breast / duck confit / buttermilk dumplings / maple glazed carrots / crispy brussels sprout leaves. The dumplings were perfectly seasoned all the way through but the best bites were obviously confit.

We couldn’t choose so we got two desserts – torched brie with rum raisin conserve and a chocolate tart with a plantain crust, a passionfruit marshmallow, and dulce de leche.

We were swooning from the first bite to the last. Plus we continued to gush about the meal while we rolled ourselves back down the hill to the ferry!

26Apr2016

Was It Blogvious?

by Emily

Adam’s back, yay! Surprise? I tried to keep it under wraps for security reasons, so I hope it wasn’t blogvious (<– totally unnecessary portmanteau for obvious on the blog) that Adam has been out of town for the past month. He had a trauma rotation in Texas and the dog and I missed him like crazy! Now he’s back and we both have two weeks off of work and I plan on spending the majority of them holding his hand!

Foodwise, here were the weekend highlights…

Adam didn’t get back into town until late Sunday evening and I spent the better part of the day hyperventilating with excitement. I distracted myself for a little bit with Vietnamese iced coffee and a pedicure.

Fun fact – toe nail polish was my something blue in my wedding.

Another day, another coffee.

I usually skip over Gala apples but this one was very sweet and crisp.

Brunch with friends at Du Jour Bakery, my new favorite breakfast spot in Park Slope. The space feels totally open and airy and they have yummy iced lattes.

I ordered the brioche French toast with maple butterscotch, berries, and whipped cream.

It was good, but I need to accept the fact that I don’t really like French toast. My girlfriends got savory egg sandwiches that I think I would love.

Dinner at Pearl’s Bake and Shark, a newish Trinidadian spot in Williamsburg. My bake and jerk chicken was very tasty.

Aka pulled jerk chicken on fried dough, with pickled slaw and pineapple salsa. The chicken didn’t taste like the jerk I grew up with, but it was smoky delicious.

Bbq turkey salad at home.

Baby spinach dressed with creamy Greek dressing / avocado / cucumber / chopped turkey breast tossed in cola bbq sauce / brie / a sprinkle of smoked paprika. A great combo; the paprika was such a good addition.

15Apr2016

Superlative Eats

by Emily

This week’s…

*Best coffee*

Inspired by my absolutely decadently scented hand sanitizer, I stirred cinnamon and vanilla bean into my coffee (espresso blend with chocolate milk).

*Best oatmeal*

Rolled oats with chia and freeze-dried blueberries, topped with a hefty scoop of cookie butter.

*Best yogurt bowl*

Maple quark with Heritage Flakes and pomegranate.

*Best lunch*

Sandwich week. Spicy chicken on rye / Starbuck’s sandwich offerings are actually really darn good / Greek wrap stuffed with cucumber, tzatziki, and stuffed grape leaves. <– the wrap was from a lunch and learn, our formula rep did a great inservice on the new ASPEN enteral nutrition guidelines.

*Best dessert*

Work party for a coworker’s birthday. We had filipino ambrosia and I made brownies.

Fantastically ridiculous brownies! P.S. Amy Sedaris’ best-ever sprinkles are available here.

11Mar2016

The F Word

by Emily

So this week has been awful – I have the flu and I’m dying. Yup, sick, dying, but definitely not overly dramatic.

Remember how I was sick last week (with a cold, I guess?)? I felt ok-ish over the weekend, like a person again on Monday, and then like death after his robe got caught in a jet engine on Tuesday. I felt so bad I actually went to an urgent care center and willingly let them shove q-tips down my throat and up my nose. Long story long, no strep, but I have the flu. Ugh.

So 95% of my meals have looked like this:

Or like this:

But I did eat two really good bowls of dinner on Sunday and Monday! A Greek salad – romaine topped with TJ’s feta Greek dressing / roasted chickpeas / cucumber / TJ’s tabbouleh / TJ’s stuffed grape leaves / and pimento stuffed green olives.

And a grain salad – bulgur with evoo, s&p, and allspice / roasted broccoli / browned mushrooms/ toasted walnuts / yellow raisins / and minced green olives.

When I’m not on death’s door I can toss together a pretty great meal.

I hope everyone is feeling healthy this weekend.

4Mar2016

Short And Sick

by Emily

This week was short but no cakewalk. Monday I was off because I worked Saturday/Sunday, and Thursday I was off because I’m a coughing, sneezing, miserable mess. How am I sick again?? Apparently my immune system is as over winter as I am.

I ate pizza and/or soup for 90% of my meals this week. Here were my more exciting eats…

Brooklyn Roasting Company has nitro cold-brew now and it is flipping delicious.

This week’s tea was vanilla rooibos. Perfect for my throat and yummy with a bit of milk and honey. Rooibos is definitely my favorite type of tea.

This yogurt bowl was the best thing I ate all week. Coconut Greek with fresh strawberry and pomegranate, Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes, chia seeds, and toasted pecans.

Monday, before I knew how sick I was, Adam and I both had the day off and we had a wonderful time in the city. We got sushi burritos! Mine was fantastic – sushi rice, marinated tofu, cucumber, carrot, pickled cucumber, seaweed salad, tobanjan mayo, tempura crunch, and sesame seeds.

Split a cone at Big Gay Ice Cream. The salty pimp = vanilla soft serve with dulce de leche, sea salt, and chocolate dip. Plus sprinkles.

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And took a long walk (sans coats!) through Chelsea and across the Manhattan Bridge.

This week’s Skoskbox had some big winners, especially the grape Hi Chew.

Here’s the only dinner I actually cooked this week. Cheesy scrambled eggs and spicy green beans.

I put the green beans under the broiler – to attempt something like this – and they came out great.

I hope everyone is feeling their best this weekend!

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!

22Feb2016

Wonderful Weekend Walking Weather

by Emily

Oh my gosh, thank you so much, New York, for the gorgeous weekend weather! We took full advantage and fit a long walk into our fun on both Saturday and Sunday.

Daytime Eats

My new favorite ridiculous coffee.

Butterscotch latte with an extra shot.

Oatmeal bowl. Rolled oats, chia seeds, freeze-dried blueberries, and toasted walnuts.

Topped with a chocolate coconut peanut butter packet. The pb gets so gooey good on the hot oats.

Drinks in my carts while I did a giant shopping trip.

Green juice with spinach, kale, cucumber, and pineapple.

Sunday was our Brooklyn date. We saw Deadpool (<– loved it! loved that it was just funny, hilariously, and not sad at all) and took another long walk, including some exciting food stops. Iced Vietnamese latte.

It was so warm out that I enjoyed my iced drink whilst walking along in only a tank top and cardigan!!

A “hot dog” at the Smorgasburg Industry City location. Pan con queso is a grilled chunk of marinated white Latin cheese on a hot dog bun, topped with onions, cabbage, crushed potato chips, ketchup, mustard, and guasacaca (cilantro and parsley). It was scrumptious.

Amazing, freshly-made cheese and potato pierogis at Baba’s. These were out of this world, they had the best pierogi dough I’ve ever tasted.

And an ice cream cone to top it all off.

Ample Hills’ salted crack caramel (smoky caramel ice cream with hunks of crack candy) and It Came From Gowanus (salty dark chocolate ice cream with hazelnut crack candy, white chocolate pearls, and orange-scented brownies) in a cookie cone.

Nighttime Eats

I hit up my grocery’s deli for a quick meal on Adam’s overnight shift.

Tortellini salad and crunchy broccoli salad.

Plus lemon rosemary focaccia hummus with baked garlic pita chips and baby carrots.

Best store-bought hummus of all time.

A fancy dinner date at Upland. We really enjoyed our meal here, the menu changes seasonally and we will definitely be back in the summer.

They brought us a potato bread loaf with chive and lemon zest butter.

And we started with the whole crispy hen of the woods mushroom, with cloumage cheese and meyer lemon. This was fantastically meaty and loaded with umami.

Plus a greatcocktail, Bill Pay Buck – Tito’s, Aperol, ginger, and lime. I think that I hate ginger in drinks but somehow this felt very balanced.

And I got the cioppino for my meal, clams, red shrimp, mussels, striped bass, jumbo lump crab, and gochujang. I have been so brave with my seafood consumption lately, this was my first ever clam! (<– I hated it, but at least I tried)

My soup came with a thick slice of butter bread and I ordered a can of Genny Cream Ale that just felt right.

Dessert was the only part of the meal that didn’t blow us away. Devil’s food cake, milk chocolate ganache, and hazelnut praline, sounded good in theory but was just meh.

But we ran into a Woop’s so we had our sugar fix covered.

Good timing too, we found it just before we crossed the bridge back to Queens.

Burger night to end the weekend.

TJ’s brioche rolls are wonderful. We made our burgers with ground turkey, whole-wheat panko, eggs, spices, and browned shallots, cooked in a pan with evoo. Topped with pickle slices, raw milk cheddar, and Sir Kensington’s special sauce. So delicious we had to go back and split a second one!

With an easy salad of baby kale, pomegranate, pecans, chai seeds, and lavender salt / lavender honey / evoo / balsamic.

If the upcoming week is half as good as my dinner I’m in for a good time!

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: cucumber

Back At It

Ocean 362 {Dinner In St. John}

Was It Blogvious?

Superlative Eats

The F Word

Short And Sick

Sprinkles And Sandwiches

Daytime Eats

Nighttime Eats

Wonderful Weekend Walking Weather

Daytime Eats

Nighttime Eats