Three peppermint snacks, two cocktail ingredients, and a yogurt with passionfruit in it!
Three (festive) things from this weekend…
I’m very into this fancy, dessert-y yogurt brand.
A peppermint-focused work snack. I forget every year how tasty the chocolate mint Perfect Bars are.
Coke didn’t release their cinnamon cola this season so I made my own boozy version.
Highlights from this week…
Wonderful yogurt bowl – plain skyr with granola and persimmon.
Milk Bar birthday cake iced latte.
Great horchatta with espresso at For All Things Good.
I pulled pumpkin chocolate chip cookies out of the freezer and they were even more amazing than I remembered.
I’m not ready for eggnog yet (make that – I am always ready for nog but I am not releasing the eggnog floodgate yet) but I have fully embraced peppermint! Like the limited release Wendy’s peppermint frosty.
Or Minter Wonderland ice cream.
Brooklyn Cupcake! Cojito, tiramisu, and guava cheese.
Best iteration yet of the butternut squash we make every year. This year we served it as a warm salad. Roasted butternut squash and shredded brussel sprouts, Trader Joe’s sweet and spicy pecans, dried cherries, and homemade dressing (3 T lemon juice, 3 T maple syrup, 2 T stone ground mustard, 1 T Kewpie, 1 T crystal hot sauce.
A meta dinner win – cobb salad egg salad in endive lettuce cups. Eggs with mayo and mustard, chives, avocado, turkey bacon, and blue cheese.
Buffalo chicken salad (shredded chicken with mayo, Franks, vinegar, blue cheese, and chives) with roasted broccoli and Japanese sweet potato.
Some of our favorite things from an exceptionally delicious weekend. We went to our favorite brewery and tried two restaurants that both easily made the cut for top five meals we’ve eaten in 2022.
Drinks at Evil Twin – we had a fall x candy x Wonderland line-up of beers.
Even More Hydra fruited sour / Fresh Feet & No Chicken citrus milkshake IPA / Fun Sized Halloween candy sour ale / Marshmallow is the New Milk Sugar marshmallow triple IPA / Back to the Pumpkin Patch pumpkin milkshake IPA. Also a Concrete Jungle fruit punch gose.
Dinner at Sobre Masa – a Mexican restaurant and tortilleria in Bushwick.
We shared seared queso fresco with fresh salsa.
And the best chips and guacamole we’ve ever tasted, with a variety of salsas.
I drank an El Pastor De Flavor – fat-washed tequilla, rum, roasted guava, masa, Vino de Agave, lemon balsam magnolia aperitif, and Mexican bitters.
And I ordered the oyster mushrooms with cracked corn, hoja santa, and guajillo mole. Plus housemade tortillas.
Housemade flan and tres leches for dessert.
Dinner at Potluck Club – a Cantonese American Restaurant on the Lower East Side. Everything was fantastic and the space was so cute!
A yuzu hard seltzer and a Chinese pale ale.
Spicy eggplants with fried shallot and cilantro.
Braised short rib with kobucha squash.
Rice roll noodles with oyster mushrooms, asparagus, chives, and hanger steak. <– best dish of the weekend!
I’m late on this post but we had too many wonderful things last week not to share! Mostly lots of very (very, very, very) good restaurant meals. Three different days I got to take a super-long city walk (including a Central Park date with the husband!). Highlights include…
Coffees with brown sugar syrup.
A tamarind Americano from Le Phin.
Breakfast at Ursula. We shared a strawberry chamoy pastry.
And a sopaipilla with grassfed beef, green chile, refried pinto beans, and cheddar.
Breakfast at the Blue Light Speaky Cheesy pop-up. The workers could not have been more wonderful here and everything was fantastic! We shared a sandwich with pesto scrambled eggs, goat cheese, blueberry jam, and arugula; a maple lavender latte (<– topped with orange zest, which apparently is my new favorite thing); and an iced Getaway Latte with sweetened condensed milk, cinnamon, and vanilla.
Malted berry smoothie. Frozen cherries and strawberries with Greek yogurt, chocolate almond milk, and malted milk powder.
Yogurt bowl – vanilla skyr, pecan granola, chia seeds, blueberries, and cherry plums (<– both Adam’s and my new favorite fruit).
Cookie dough granola (<– amazing, the flavor is spot on!) with blueberries and chocolate almond milk.
Lunch at Bahn (<– best meal of the whole week!). Iced Vietnamese egg coffee.
Summer rolls with shrimp and mung bean sauce.
Rolls with crispy shrimp, beef jerky, green mango, Sriracha, and egg yolk cream.
Noodle salad with sizzling butter beef.
Dumplings from Mimi Cheng. Their monthly special is a collab with Pecking House and is stuffed with buttermilk twice-fried chicken and topped with the best chili crisp I’ve ever tasted.
Homemade(!) grain bowls. Farro with pesto, chicken pesto sausage, fennel greens, and sauteed celery and baby orange tomatoes.
Adam forgot his credit card at BKNY Thai so we went back sooner than we were expecting to. A serendipitous mistake because our take-out was 11/10. Fish cakes / dumplings with ground chicken, shallot, peanut, and preserved radish / beef Pad See Ew with extra Chinese broccoli.
Omekase at the Chemisty Room at Sushi Lab. We ate at the counter and the service was impecable. I only took a few photos but everything was delicious and gorgeous.
Dinner at Wen Wen. My daiquiri with rum, Cachaça, and birds eye chili was perfect and balanced.
We had numbing celtuce salad with garlic, red vinegar, and Sichuan pepper.
Hot honey popcorn chicken.
Cold sesame noodles with cucumbers and egg ribbons.
Beef noodle soup with pickled mustard greens and a 16-hour oxtail broth.
Such a good week of meals! Highlights include…
Coconut tres leches iced latte! Espresso with a blend of coconut milk, condensed milk, and half and half. I was making a rose coffee syup at the same time so I went ahead and dyed it pink!
Yogurt bowl. Plain Greek with chia seeds and strawberry jam, yellow peach, passionfruit, and praline granola.
My birthday is this weekend so these felt appropriate. We have loved every single thing we’ve tried from Made Good.
Boozy grape slushie – grape soda ice cubes blended with vodka. <– my best idea of the summer
A take on callaloo. Collard greens, turkey bacon, and crab meat cooked with coconut milk, onion, scotch bonnet pepper, ginger, and chili flakes.
Adam paired his with rice like an adult and I paired mine with pizza like a winner.
Creamy, spicy, peanut noodles. Ramen noodles + stir-fried cabbage and red bell pepper + a sauce with cream cheese, peanut butter, and gojuchang.
I gussied up store-bought marinara to make a delicious meat sauce – turkey bacon, ground turkey, onion, chili flake, urfa pepper, fish sauce, and tons of garlic. Served on Trader Joe’s cauliflower gnocci with a side of garlic bok choy.
We also used meat sauce on homemade pizza. Plus sauteed broccoli with butter, chili flake, and garlic.
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).
Highlights from a tasty July week…
Coffee combo – Trader Joe’s dark roast with Chobani oatmilk horchatta.
We ordered marshmallows!
Vanilla Greek yogurt bowl with white peach, passionfruit, and fluff.
Toasted banana bread with marshmallow/fluff.
Summery drinks for a walk around our neighborhood – Blue Point Rainbow Italian Ice Sour and a vodka cocktail with fresh watermelon.
Adam and I are both head over heels for these vegan sweet potato cheese puffs.
Roasted garlic chicken sausage on a hot dog bun with Kewpie and kimchi. Plus roasted baby cauliflower.
Turkey sloppy Josephines! With roasted rainbow cauliflower.
Sheet-pan hash. With yellow potato, zucchini, green onion, pobablo pepper, fresh corn, chicken sausage, and sharp cheddar.
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.
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.
Boozy cherry coke slushy – frozen cherry coke cubes, frozen cherries, Luxardo cherries, and vodka.
Breakfast for dinner with freezer-staples the night we got home. Hashbrown and Trader Joe’s gojuchang veggie mix with soft-scrambled eggs.
Plus a brinner cocktail with decaf iced coffee, amaretto, coffee liquor, and sweetened condensed milk.
Finally – SANDWICH WEEK! Definitely a little inspired by Trader Joe’s sourdough bread.
Roasted sliced turkey, turkey bacon, strawberry jam, honey dijon. Plus roasted green beans.
Soft-scrambled eggs topped with smoked salmon salad. That green pile in the back is sauteed shredded brusell sprouts with shallots and dried cherries.
Heirloom tomatoes, gojuchang mayo, smoked sliced turkey, turkey bacon. Plus baby cucumbers with Bitchin Sauce.
Shake Shack cheeseburger and fries. We also shared an oreo funnel cake milkshake that was surprisingly delicious.
Take-out from Roast – aka our ultimate sandwich experience. Their roast beef melt is my all-time favorite. With fries and roasted green beans.
Turkey cheeseburger-inspired trail mix. Meat stick, cheddar moon cheese, dill pickle flavored almonds.
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.
Eating Chalk 