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!

11Apr2016

Weekend Trip To Richmond

by Emily

I had Friday off and I made the absolute most of it with a three-day trip to Virginia. I drove to Maryland on Friday morning to meet up with my aunt, uncle, and cousin, and then we drove down to Richmond together to visit my other cousin and her friends for the weekend. Our schedule included beautiful walks, copious booze, and delicious food. I had a fantabulous time!

I mostly snapped photos of coffee and booze, but we ate until we could pop. These are a few of the can’t–miss spots we visited:

Black Hand is a locally operated coffee roaster and café. I started both my mornings with an iced latte and loved them so much that I went back for a pound of beans before we left.

Bistro Bobette for French cuisine. We had scrumptious foie gras with mango and balsamic and I ate rainbow trout with string beans and brown butter that knocked my socks off.

My Noodle & Bar serves awesome cocktails and the best Thai food I’ve had outside of NYC.

Thai rum, strawberry jam, and local honey shaken with basil with a Thai chili, salt, and sugar rim. <– ridiculous good

Drunken Noodles with yummy duck. I forget to request “Thai spicy” and my dish was still tingly-good so you know I was impressed.

Social 52 had biscuits and grits galore and a varied beer (and cocktail) menu with the option of flights with five ounce pours.

Sour, coconut porter, cream ale, and local cider. The coconut porter was one of the best beers I’ve ever had; the coconut and porter loves alike enjoyed it.

Plus I did a pb&j – peanut butter porter and raspberry stout!

The Daily for – local, sustainably sourced – appetizers and cocktails. My Bee’s Knees had gin, lemon, elderflower liquor, and vanilla-infused honey. Perfectly balanced.

Bonus, sightseeing: be sure to check out the fun little shops in Carytown and the gorgeous grounds at the VA Museum of Fine Arts.

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!

31Dec2015

Goodbye, 2015

by Emily

It’s been a good year but I’m ready for 2016!

I still tend to think in terms of school years rather than calendar years, so I don’t usually set new year’s resolutions (though in 2015 I did lose a few pounds and make a major career move, woo-hoo!). However, for the past 5 years I have made it my mission to read at least 25 books a year. I’m pretty proud of the 35 I read this year so I included the list at the bottom of this post.

I’m heading to a NYE party tonight and then I’m up early for work on the 1st, so without further adieu, here’s the final wrap-up of the year…

breakfast

A final eggnog iced coffee while I set up my planner for 2016!!

Otherwise this was the coffee combo for the week –

With wonderful fruit options, a cocktail grapefruit.

And a piñata apple.

Plus tea at work.

Caramel was yummy, and it smelled delicious.

lunch

I had Monday off – the end of a fabulous four-day weekend – so I got to have a yogurt bowl at home.

Plain Fage with maple syrup, blackberries, chia seeds, and praline pecan granola.

Oatmeal from home, at work.

With vanilla almond butter.

Cafeteria salad bar.

I made myself a Greek salad with romaine with balsamic, marinated cucumber salad, tzatziki , tabbouleh , and falafel.

dinner

Monday was our 8-year wedding anniversary (we got married on our 5th dating anniversary so it was also our 13th year as a couple)!! I consider myself the luckiest person alive that I get to spend my life with Adam. We celebrated with food, of course. We headed into the city early and got our favorite coffee {Brooklyn Roasting Company},

and our favorite ice cream {Morganstern’s}.

We split a scoop of American egg with sweetened condensed milk and chocolate sprinkles.

Then we enjoyed our favorite dinner of the year (maybe my favorite dinner of our marriage!) at Bowery Meat Company. It was a truly epic meal of several courses whose highlights included roasted cauliflower, foie gras, Spanish wine, and an entire casserole of duck lasagna. We held hands, and giggled, and were generally disgusting, and I didn’t take a single picture*. *Other than instagramming the duck lasagna, because how could I not?

The nights at home, appetizers included delicious leftover buffalo chicken pizza and carrots with hummus.

I’ve determined that pretty much no matter what I eat for lunch I am frantic with hunger by the time I get home from work so I usually eat something before I try to make dinner.

Tuesday’s dinner didn’t require much time or effort though, because we brought home leftover duck lasagna. swoon.

I consider myself a fairly good cook and it is safe to say that I’ve never made a dish that tasted as good as these microwaved leftovers!

With salads on the side.

Spinach / lavender salt, lavender honey, evoo / sweet and spicy pecans / golden raisins.

And Wednesday I designed a quick dinner around this (former freebie) Bertolli Asiago Cheese and Artichoke sauce.

We tossed the sauce with sautéed mushrooms, artichokes, shredded chicken, and orecchiette pasta. It obviously couldn’t compete with the duck but was still good.

2015’s reading list

They’re listed in chronological order. F = fiction, NH = nonfiction, and M = memoir. I bolded the year’s top ten favorites.

Bones Never Lie – Kathy Reichs (f)
I Forget to Remember, A Memoir of Amnesia – Su Meck (m)
The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, And Other Small Acts of Liberation – Elizabeth Berg (f)
The Next Queen of Heaven – Gregory Maguire (f)
Fairyland, a Memoir of my Father – Alysia Abbott (m)
Yes, Please – Amy Poehler (m)
Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – Mary Roach (nf)
Born Round, A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite – Fran Bruni (m)
Flesh and Blood – Patricia Cornwell (f)
With or Without You – Domenica Ruta (m)
The Story Sisters – Alice Hoffman (f)
Tender at the Bone – Ruth Reichl (m)
Comfort Me with Apples – Ruth Reichl (m)
Garlic and Saphires – Ruth Reichl (m)
Crash and Burn – Lisa Gardner (f)
Delancey – Molly Wizenberg (m)
Someone is Watching – Joy Fielding (f)
If Only You People Could Follow Directions – Jessica Henry Nelson (m)
Working Stiff – Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner – Judy Melinek M.D. (m)
The Removers – Andrew Meredith (m)
Let the Tornado Come – Rita Zoey Chin (m)
Bossypants – Tina Fey (m)
Unorthodox, The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots – Deborah Feldman (m)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery (f)
Delicious – Ruth Feichl (f)
Head Cases, Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath – Michael Paul Mason (nf/m)
Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood – Leah Vincent (m)
Speaking in Bones – Kathy Reichs (f)
My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places – Mary Roach (m)
Cooked, A Natural History of Transformation – Michael Pollan (nf)
Burn Down the Ground – Kambri Crews (m)
Thinking in Pictures, My Life with Autism – Temple Grandin (m/nf)
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (f) {reread}
Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee (f)
Gulp, Adventures on the Alimentary Canal – Mary Roach (nf)

Do you set new year’s resolutions?

19Dec2015

Last Week’s Top Five

by Emily

There has been a lot of excitement since last Saturday. We had three days of weather so warm I could hold my iced coffee in bare hands while I walked in my sandals.

Last Sunday I comfortably walked the dog in shorts and a t-shirt!

And Adam celebrated a birthday.

His parents came for a birthday visit and we had a great time showing them the tree at Rockefeller Center and the fantastic holiday lights all around Manhattan.

Here are some of the food highlights…

{1} Pineapple Turkey Chili

By Tuesday the weather was back to normal* again and it was cold enough for Chili. *global warming winter normal, it’s still 50 in December

I made my pineapple turkey recipe.

We gobbled it up topped with shredded cheese, sour cream, and pickled jalapeño.

{2} Holiday Fails

It was bound to happen sooner or later, I had not one, but two, holiday themed food flops.

This years soy nog has way too much soy milk aftertaste for me and the candy cane flavor (in spite of the adorable chips of candy cane) was the first Adagio tea I thought tasted like dirty water. You win a lot, you lose some.

{3} Restaurant Burgers

Any time we have Long Island visitors we take them to Bare Burger. Adam’s parents loved it.

I got a Wiki Wiki on a turkey patty – gouda, duck bacon, fried onions, and pineapple relish.

The burger was great, and they had a very exciting local brew – chocolate egg cream stout!

We also took them to Thistle Hill. I got a falafel burger.

With tzatziki and hot sauce and salt and pepper fries.

{4} Dinner at The Gander

We are both obsessed with duck, so The Gander quickly made it to the top of our dinner date list.

The space was gorgeously done up for Christmas – with lights and a giant gingerbread house – but too dark for me to take a passable picture. Ignore my bad photography though, the food was on point.

We started with local burrata with butternut squash and toast.

And I ordered the Glasgow Punch, which came from a tap; scotch with citrus and clarified milk. This was one of the best drinks I’ve ever had, it smelled smoky in an amazing way.

We split two pastas for dinner. Gnocchi with shishito peppers and cheddar.

And tubetti with duck confit and a duck egg yolk. <– best dish of the night

Plus cauliflower with capers and anchovies.

Dessert was salted cajeta cake with maple lace tuiles and pistachio gelato.

Everything was delicious and you could taste the care that went into each dish.

{5} Birthday Ice Cream Cake

This was my first attempt at an ice cream cake and I was a little nervous but it came out great. Whenever Adam and I go to a Cold Stone-style ice cream place we always get coffee with Oreos and peanut butter, so that’s what I put together for his birthday.

An Oreo crust / with a peanut butter layer (I basically make flattened buckeye candy) / a coffee ice cream layer / and a bunch of Oreos, mini Reese’s cups, and sprinkles for topping.

Yum! It was gone by the end of the weekend!

5Dec2015

It’s Beginning To Taste A Lot Like Christmas!

by Emily

December 1st hits and right on schedule my head fills with thoughts of sugar plums! Or rather thoughts of eggnog and hot chocolate, I’ve never actually tasted a sugar plum.

It’s not as big as my pumpkin bounty, but I was still pretty excited to pull out my holiday goods stash.

I’ve marked all of the eats in this post that qualify as holiday foods with a ** for classification purposes, also because it feels me with glee. I’m missing a lot of photos (I ate a ton this week) but here are the highlights…