Mid-January

by Emily

Tuesday night, I met up with my aunt in the Financial District for dinner and then coffees/cookies at the beautiful new 3rd story Eataly.

Wednesday, I was off from work and spent the entire day in bed, watching tv, eating pizza, and reading a Liane Moriarty book from start to finish.

Thursday, Adam and I went on a dinner date sans coats in 66 degree weather.

<– kind of a hard week to complain about, huh?

Here were my best bites…

New all-time favorite coffee combo: Texas pecan coffee concentrate with sweet buttercream creamer. Swoontastic.

I also tried the new Starbucks Cascara latte. It was meh, too sweet but not in a brown sugar way as promised.

Chilaquiles!

Kinda, sorta. I cooked thick tortilla chips in salsa and leftover spicy pepper sauce from my shakshuka. Topped with black beans, shredded cheese, and fried eggs.

Piñata apple with a spicy chicken epic bar. I’ve really been enjoying these meat-based bar options.

Yogurt bowl lunch. Siggi’s with granola and chocolate tahini. Plus pears.

I made cheesy turkey sloppy joes. Turkey breast sautéed with onion and green bell pepper and tomato paste, stirred into a sharp cheddar mornay sauce, and served on a brioche bun. It was pretty damn good.

With leftover bok choy salad and roasted broccoli.

Our date night was a pizza date at Paulie Gee’s.

It was our first time and we loved it. I had a Milk and Honey Ale and a pizza with fresh mozzarella, baby spinach, olive oil, and garlic.

Dessert at Ample Hills. A new flavor, The View – chocolate marshmallow ice cream with ooey gooey butter cake pieces, brownies, and crack cookie; plus fantasmic dark hot chocolate.

Looking forward a long weekend!

6Jan2017

Hello, 2017!

by Emily

How is everyone’s year going?? So far, the word for my 2017 is tasty.

Here are some culinary highlights from the first week…

Coffee first, always coffee. Espresso roast and chocolate milk before work.

I also had the best iced latte of the year from Birch; their shots are extra strong and roasty.

Adam and I both had Monday off of work and we started our new year with a trip to Serendipity 3.

Veggie chili for my lunch.

I kept lunch boring because I was focused on the main event – sundae funday! A giant scoop of peanut butter pie with hot fudge and bananas. <– swoon city

Work lunches were centered around a box of free product review samples I received from ips snacks. The snacks – crisps and popcorn – are all made with whey protein and pack at least 5 grams of protein for </ 150 calories.

I have to admit that I liked the snacks a lot more than I was expecting to. The salted popcorn was honestly the best bagged popcorn Adam or I have ever tasted! It was filling, satisfying, and totally delicious. The chips would rate poorly if I compared them to chip-chips, but score a 9/10 as snack crisps. Very few snacks, especially ones that pack less than 200 calories, keep me full enough in the afternoon that I don’t consider gnawing my own arm off on the train, but these did the trick.

I packed crisps and fruit to pair with toasted turkey and cheese cafeteria sandwiches. BBQ chips and a cara cara.

Sea salt and black pepper chips and an Asian pear.

Snack attack. Popcorn and a honey kolsch.

Yogurt bowl with plain Greek, chocolate tahini, sliced snap dragon apple, chia seeds, cinnamon, and sweet and spicy pecans.

I was killing it with dinners this week. Three different veggie-forward, flavor-loaded, 10/10 dishes! When I made fried green onions last week I saved the infused oil and that’s what I used for cooking this week. First, a simple salad to start off the new year.

Oak leaf lettuce, TJ’s Greek-style feta dressing, cucumber, dill, and roasted chickpeas. With hibiscus kombucha on the side.

Next up, spicy cabbage salad with turkey and peanuts from Bon Appétit. I only ever read this magazine on plane rides but this recipe alone would be worth the subscription cost!

I doubled up so that we could get 4 big dinners out of it, and roasted the cabbage so it was less voluminous, but otherwise followed the recipe exactly <– something I rarely do.

Served with cheesey breadsticks, aka pizza dough rolled up with an obscene amount of cheese.

Finally, I tried my hand at shakshuka. Based loosely on the recipes from Serious Eats and My Name is Yeh, my version had red bell peppers, red jalapeño pepper, and serrano pepper.

Served with hunks of sourdough.

I’m excited to do a little more exploring in the kitchen this new year. My meal plan list for the next month or so includes menemen, mapo tofu, kaya jam, okonomiyaki, and chilaquiles!

31Dec2016

Wrapping It Up

by Emily

Thanks to the holiday day and compensatory days for working the preceding and following weekends… I only worked two days this week! Tuesday and Friday on and the rest of the week to do as I pleased, not a bad way to end 2016. Though now I do work both NYE and the first day of 2017.

It was also a big week in my personal life, on Wednesday Adam and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary (and 14th anniversary of being together)! We didn’t exchange gifts or do anything crazy to celebrate, it’s hard to get too excited when we are so darn close to 10 years. <– eeeeeeeeeeee!

Food highlights for the week – – –

Yogurt lunches. Dulce de leche Chobani with granola, plus a snapdragon apple and a vanilla latte can. Out of 10, the coffee and yogurt both get a 9+.

2% Fage with Soom chocolate tahini, sweet and spicy pecans, chopped apple, and chia seeds.

Dinner at Bubby’s. I met a girlfriend in Chelsea midweek and this is where we ended up. Neither of us ordered pie, but I had a great frisee salad with poached egg and sherry vinaigrette.

Iced coffee with princess emulsion (fancy vanilla extract that had a strong undertone of lemon and actually wasn’t great in coffee).

Fantastically roasty Terremoto Coffee skim latte was the best drink of the week, especially because I plopped a scoop of goat’s milk tahini ice cream in it a minute later.

Gelt!

On our anniversary – which we actually celebrated a day late because Adam’s schedule is insane – we cuddled on the couch and watched our wedding video with a split of champagne and the last eggnog iced coffee of the season.

We did dinner at Shalom Japan and I didn’t take a single picture. I did snap dessert – an ice cream date at OddFellows. Toasted marshmallow + amazing caramel chocolate toffee.

Best dish of the week = I made legit macaroni and cheese. Pimento cheese macaroni and cheese.

Whole wheat macaroni / sautéed green onions and chopped pimento / mornay sauce with sharp cheddar and raw milk cheddar / panko on top.

With spinach salad with red bell pepper, sweet and spicy pecans, and honey mustard, and roasted green beans with fried green onion.

See you next year! <– my favorite dumb joke

27Dec2016

Merry Christmas!

by Emily

My holiday greeting is a few days late but that’s ok, my holiday celebrating was late too! Adam and I both worked Christmas day this year (and Thanksgiving… and New Years) so we saved our gift opening and merriment for the 26th. It was actually kind of fun, we had an item that needed to be exchanged and we just ran right out to the mall and did it.

Here were the food-based highlights, no candy canes, sugar plums, or fruit cakes, but good all the same…

Making the most of the end of eggnog season with several eggnog iced lattes (with a quadruple dose of espresso!).

Christmas day I packed a bottled coffee for work (1.5 thumbs up) plus an exciting peppermint seltzer.

Saturday we headed to Brooklyn for Thai food at super artsy and cool Samui.

Apparently Christmas Eve lunch is not a thing because we were the only people in the restaurant! At least there was no one blocking our view.

The food was great, this was the 2nd best green papaya salad I’ve ever gotten.

And I had yummy shrimp Pad Thai in an egg crepe.

Ice cream for dessert to celebrate the first night of Hannukah – “Festival of Lights”cream cheese ice cream with pieces of chocolate rugelach.

Actual Christmas day I came home from work and ate leftovers with the dog, but Christmas Eve I had a pizza and beer party with the husband.

We made taco pizza that was fantastic. TJ’s thin crust / refried beans / Mexican cheese blend / seasoned ground turkey / cilantro sour cream. With roasted zucchini on the side.

And for our belated Christmas dinner we made brinner, aka breakfast for dinner.

Red and green eggs – a scramble with red bell pepper, green onions, spinach, and parsley, plus cheddar.

The best roasted potatoes from Serious Eats. <– seriously, they were THE BEST

Enjoy the rest of your year!

12Dec2016

New Orleans Vacation 2016

by Emily

New Orleans was our best travel experience of 2016. We stayed at a cute hotel in the French Quarter and had enough time to really get to know the area. It was a great way to finish up the year.

This was my first trip to Louisiana and I think we managed to pack a lot in. We visited three local breweries, walked around Loyola and Tulane, explored the French Quarter and Bourbon Street, went to the World War II Museum….

We also tasted tons of local (or at least Southern) flavors – pralines, divinity, snowballs, beignets, pimento cheese, etouffe, grits, chicory coffee, milk punch, and hurricanes.

Here were some of our best bites…

♥Pralines. They were everywhere and the smell was amazing.

♥Hurricanes. We went to Pat O’Brien’s (<– yuck!) and Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop.

♥Frozen daiquiris, this one was eggnog!

♥This pecan pie soda was actually horribly disgusting, but it was fun to try!

♥Snowballs. NOLA served me the best snow-cones of my life, I had one every day. This was wedding cake (a blend of vanilla and almond) and egg custard topped with sweetened condensed milk.

♥Breakfast at Café Du Monde. This was a must-stop for us, it was actually the only activity I had planned when I booked our tickets. The beignets did not disappoint and neither did the chicory coffee café au lait (served on crushed ice).

♥Breakfast at District Doughnut. We got a Nutella doughnut and a biscuit with pimento cheese.

Plus yummy Vietnamese coffee and an iced coffee with cola and chocolate milk (<– delicious and infinitely better than it sounds).

♥Brunch at Willa Jean.

I had the shrimp and grits – gulf shrimp, etouffee gravy, grits, and slow poached eggs with cheddar biscuits on the side.

Cookies and milk for dessert. With a beater of dough and vanilla-infused milk.

♥Flights at Abita. <– one of our very favorite breweries They had our old favorites and some fantastic limited edition flavors including vanilla Turbo Dog and a key lime gose. We had beers, Zapps chips, and a root beer on draught and were in absolute heaven.

♥Lunch at Cochon. They had house-made eggnog.

We split a variety of small plates – a roasted carrot special with mint, Louisiana blue crab rice, and whole fried shrimp with pickled mustard seed hot sauce. The fried herbs were aromatic and wonderful and the best bites were a mix of everything at once.

♥Dinner at Brennan’s.

Insanely creamy Caribbean milk punch with Buffalo Trace bourbon, Mt Gay black barrel rum, cream, and vanilla bean.

Ridiculous foie gras “sweet potato casserole,” with sweet potato puree and candied pecans.

I had the cheddar risotto for dinner. With Cherokee Rose cheddar, smoked maitake mushrooms, collard green puree, and a brown butter sauce.

♥Dinner at SHAYA. <– best meal of the trip and also best meal of the year

That’s a halvah cappuccino. I also had a Pearl Diver – vodka, labneh, vanilla, and lavender bitters.

We shared a trio of appetizers – Moroccan carrots with chermoula and mint / baba ganoush with green garlic / tershi = a creamy pumpkin spread with crispy garlic and chili oil. All with fantasmic pita bread and herbed olive oil.

Also foie gras with rose tahini and carob molasses on challah toast (omg).

I had the matzoh ball soup for my entrée. With slowed cooked duck, dill, charred leaks, lemon oil, and a cinnamon-scented broth. Best matzoh balls of my life! Adam had slow cooked lamb and the bites I stole were truly the best thing I’ve ever tasted (fyi I don’t typically eat mammals but I’ll have a taste occasionally if I know the meat is humanely-sourced and Adam says the flavor is worth it).

Dessert(s). We basically rolled away from the table! Chocolate babka with halva ice cream and labneh cheese cake with burnt honey ice cream.

It was a wonderful trip!

P.S. No post coming from this weekend, it was the husband’s birthday and I was in celebration-mode versus blogger-mode. And now we’re both back at work.. womp wah. Have a great week!

4Dec2016

Vacation Part 1/3

by Emily

We’re on vacation! Friday through next Sunday Adam and I have 10 glorious days off together!! We’re spending time in New Orleans and next weekend we’re doing a staycation in the city.

You can tell we’re in vacation-mode because we ate 90% of our meals out of the house and with drinks and dessert and have been purchasing all of the coffees.

Espresso at Variety.

New Orleans cold brew at Blue Bottle.

Espresso at Mixtape.

Iced coffee and a chocolate croissant at L’imprimerie.

Drinking chocolate at Devocion.

Dinner at Sally Roots. Booze face.

I got jerk chicken ramen! Chicken broth, yummy jerk chicken, noodles, fish cakes, bamboo, spinach, and wood ear mushroom.

We did dessert at Guadalupe Inn. Drinks with meh chocolate tres leche cakes and churros stuffed with fabulous goat milk caramel.

Best brunch of the year at Rider. Safe Word of the Day and Covet Thy Neighbor’s Drink.

The Cure = crispy rice and lentil cakes, duck confit, cilantro, hoisin, sriracha, and poached egg. Adam had lox and fries, a combo you didn’t know how much you needed.

Dessert at Odd Fellows. Crème brulee and banofee ice creams with brown butter cake crumbs on top.

Pretty damn good brunch at Forrest Point. This drink was named “Fancy Pants,” Flor de Cana, Wild Turkey, Pedro Ximenez sherry, pineapple, lemon, Lapsang Souchong, star anise, cinnamon, and demerara sugar!

Chilaquiles!

Skillet s’mores with Fernet.

I did manage to make some dinners at home – chicken enchilada casserole. I loosely followed this recipe from Jo Cooks, with brown rice and the addition of green chilis. With roasted zucchini on the side and chips for dipping.

Other things that are making me happy… this assortment of cola-flavored goodies. The gum was great the seltzer was too plain.

We found (freshly made) coquito at a bar in Bushwick! It tastes like coconut eggnog and joy.

The Body Shop sent me this sweet holiday gift. Fantastic eyeshadow and delightful smelling things. FYI – they are offering a bunch of gift sets that will contribute to rainforest conservation, I recommend everything strawberry.

Happiest thing of all? I’m on vacation!

25Nov2016

Tastes Like Thanksgiving

by Emily

I hope all my American readers stuffed themselves silly yesterday (all of my readers really!) and made good memories with family and/or friends. Adam and I both had to work, so no festivities here, but thankfully I spent time with 3/4 of my family in St. Thomas last weekend. P.S. No post from last weekend, I didn’t take many pictures, but I did eat johnny cake with cheese and day drink almost daily.

In spite of being kind of lame on Turkey Day, I did manage to pack my week with holiday flavors – cranberry, green beans, turkey, pumpkin, and egg nog. Plus, apparently I’ve decided that chips are an on-theme holiday flavor!

Winter Cheer Stumptown with a cranberry clementine seltzer and a giant pomelo.

Cranberry turkey Wilde bar with a snap dragon apple and a cranberry cider seltzer. <– are we appreciating the cranberry seltzers I squirreled away for this week?!

Holiday spiced sweet cream cold brew.

Thursday felt like an appropriate time to get my eggnog goodies going.

Veggies with pita chips for scooping from the cafeteria for lunch. Tomato, green bell pepper, corn, cheddar, and beans.

Oats in a jar. I dumped hot oats with chia seeds and pepitas into the last of the chocolate tahini. Plus an ambrosia apple.

With more chocolate for dessert, I snacked on a cookie dough bar and a latte.

The cafeteria made a special Thanksgiving lunch. I had veggie lasagna, stuffing, and green beans.

Tuesday night – aka the first time Adam and I laid eyes on each other since last Wednesday! – we went out for dinner before making an overdue grocery run. I got a chopped salad with green chili lime vinaigrette, roasted corn, cucumber, jicama, and tons of avocado plus blue tortilla nachos with black beans, serrano salsa fresca, and Oaxaca queso sauce.

Post-dinner coffee to get me through Trader Joe’s. The aged Sumatra is tasty.

And the next morning I was able to get dinner going in the crock pot – cranberry bbq chicken that knocked our freaking socks off. In a slow cooker on low for 8 hours / chicken breast / maple whiskey bbq sauce / fresh cranberries tossed with minced garlic and a bit of sugar. I topped my bowl with some shredded cheese.

Served with roasted green beans and pumpkin beers.

I was the only RD at work on Thanksgiving and the day ended up being pretty exhausting. Thankfully I already had planned the ultimate lazy dinner – nachos. I kept things on theme though! TJ’s turkey and stuffing kettle chips / cheddar, swiss, and gruyere / turkey breast / cranberry sauce. With green beans in thyme honey balsamic vinaigrette.

Served with – just under the wire – the last pumpkin beer of the season.

Plus a nauseating amount of baking nibbles for dessert, we are doing a belated Thanksgiving with my in-laws this weekend and I’m bringing cookies.

What’s your favorite traditional Thanksgiving dish? I won’t judge you if you say nachos.

18Nov2016

Highlights From Last Week/end

by Emily

Long time no blog! Life has been busy and work has been crazy and Adam had time to spend with me last weekend so I didn’t waste a single moment on the computer. This weekend is going to be pretty exciting too… follow me on Instagram for instant updates.

Speaking of Insta, do you follow @coffeecupsoftheworld? We went to the pop up exhibit in Manhattan last weekend and thought it was pretty neat.

Fitting, since coffee’s been a pretty big feature of the past week.

Here were some of the best bites…

To start, the single best bites of the month. Milk Bar for an iced latte (my favorite in the city) and a Thanksgiving croissant – “stuffing” flavored bread filled with in-house roasted, shredded turkey, homemade gravy, and cranberry sauce! Adam and I swooned and were more than a little sad that we shared instead of getting one each.

Chocolate halvah iced coffee. Better in theory but still not terrible in practice.

Chocolate cherry smoothie – plain Greek yogurt, frozen cherries, vanilla almond milk, vanilla bean paste, brown sugar,cocoa nibs.

Brunch at Lighthouse. With a grapefruit mimosa. We were blown away by our first chilaquiles experience, they are like a bowl full of nachos!

Brown butter sprinkled chocolate chip cookies I made for a birthday party at work. I used the dough base from this recipe and they were fantastic, the little bit of crunch from the sprinkles was perfect.

Ice cream from Davey’s. A Halloween candy mashup and cookie butter chocolate chip.

Dinner at Ducks Eatery. I don’t have a photo of my dinner, which was undercooked and kind of gross, but the appetizer/drinks situation was breathtaking. Exhibit A – smoked mussels with chili oil on toast with maple, smoked butter, and chives.

12th st sour with egg white foam.

Pièce de résistance – the Café Canard – Tullamore dew, espresso, brown sugar, cream, and nutmeg. I’m not one for hot coffee but sipping it through a cloud of sweet, foamed cream is pretty appealing.

Lentil bowls. Red lentils cooked with with garlic, ginger, red bell pepper, carrot, onion, tomato paste, and turkey bacon. Topped with cheese, hot sauce, plain Greek yogurt, and a serving of roasted zucchini.

Stoneridge Orchards sent me a nice package of dried fruits to try. Their products are all organic and always produced without sulfites, artificial preservatives, colors, hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, etc.

Dark chocolate cherries with almonds were a work snack.

P.S. that snazzy glitter sleeve is part of my ongoing campaign to make my office life more enjoyable. Fancy glass water bottle and a felt succulent.

The rest of the berries were paired with toasted nuts and roasted things for some “it still feels like fall” dinners. 10 out of 10 for this product review, by the way, these were by far the best dried fruits I’ve ever eaten. Sometimes dried cranberries can be displeasingly chewy but the texture here was quite pleasant.

Warm kale salad – sauteed kale / dried blueberries / pepitas / turkey bacon / honey thyme balsamic vinaigrette.

Cranberry almond chicken salad – shredded chicken breast / mayo / stone ground mustard / dried cranberries / slivered almonds. The sweetness of the cranberries was perfect with the mustard.

Roasted vegetable medley – butternut squash / shredded brussel sprouts / dried cherries / pecans / more vinaigrette / topped with goat cheese.

I’m off to enjoy a long weekend!

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: greens

Mid-January

Hello, 2017!

Wrapping It Up

Merry Christmas!

New Orleans Vacation 2016

Vacation Part 1/3

Tastes Like Thanksgiving

Highlights From Last Week/end