Eggcellent Eats

We bought tons eggs and dye for Easter this year, and of course, never did a darn thing with them.  The dye is in our “holidays bin” for next year, but the eggs had to be cooked. And so, I enjoyed hard-boiled eggs as a meal almost every day this week.

I was also all about the Cara Cara oranges and Medjool dates. It’s starting to taste like summer!

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I started Ruth Reichl’s first autobiography on the train and I think I’m in love.

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She is so funny, and I love any story about food!

We were insanely busy at work all week and I’m dying. That’s why this post is a day late (and is short about 10 more coffee and candy pictures), because I did sessions with 18 patients on Friday – many of them with gestational diabetes – and when I got home I just wanted to lie down.

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breakfast

I made an awesome cold-brew blend this week: Community Coffee French Roast and BRC Peru with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pumpkin pie spice.

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Served on ice with S’mores Milk and skim milk.

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So good.

I am almost through my Nonni’s Biscotti sample shipment and I am going to buy more when we’re out.

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They are yummy, even when not dipped in coffee.

I discovered the magic that is dates dipped in peanut butter.

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lunch

Kimchi noodle bowl.

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The Cara Cara was the best finish for my perfectly burning mouth.

I brought TJ’s cashew butter and tahini kale chips and crispy broccoli snacks (<– they’re back!!) to crunch on top of salad bar.

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With a big scoop of macaroni salad.

This tasting plate wins best lunch of the week.

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Dates / turkey bacon / hard-boiled egg / crispy broccoli / orange.

But this triple – chocolate oatmeal bowl wins a close second.

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Rolled oats with a heaping Tbsp of hot chocolate mix, chocolate-covered cocoa nibs, and dark chocolate chips.

And this busy day “lunch” was a loser. Vanilla soy milk at 11 am.

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And Easter candy at 4pm when there was finally a lull.

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dinner

Omg. Kids! I made the tastiest stroganoff-inspired noodle bowls ever. Adam and I could not get over them.

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Served in heaping scoops on egg pappardelle.

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Yummy Stroganoff-ish Pasta, serves 4

  1. Heat 1 Tbsp evoo in a large skillet over high-medium heat.  Add 20 ounces sliced white mushrooms, and a big pinch of salt, and cook until the mushrooms have lost their juices and browned, stirring regularly (10 – 13 minutes).  Deglaze the pan with a healthy pour of cream sherry.  Remove mushrooms from pan and reduce heat to medium-high, adding an additional Tbsp evoo if needed.
  2. Add 1 lb lean ground turkey and two large shallots, chopped to the pan.  Season with pepper and 1 Tbsp smoked paprika.  Cook 5 minutes, stirring regularly and breaking up the meat into small pieces with the side of your spatula.  Stir in 1/2 Tbsp ground garlic, 1/2 Tbsp fish sauce, and 1 Tbsp soy sauce.  Continue to cook, stirring regularly, until meat is cooked through (5 – 7 more minutes).
  3. Reduce heat to low and stir in 3/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream.
  4. Serve on top of pasta of choice.

The leftovers were still great.

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Served on top of spinach salad. Plus, those of us who can eat chocolate had Lindt caramels for dessert.

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We had cobb salad.

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Baby spinach with balsamic / roasted asparagus / turkey bacon / avocado / TJ’s cave-aged blue cheese / hard-boiled eggs.

And egg salad.

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Eggs with shredded carrot, chopped green pepper, mayo, pickle relish, garlic mustard, dill, tumeric, smoked paprika, and s & p.  With great seeded crackers my parents sent us for Easter.

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And roasted broccoli and green beans.

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Egg salad is good – and I wasn’t even tired of eggs yet! – but roasted green beans are always the best part.

Then we finished the week out with Chipotle.

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Enjoy your weekend!

Homemade S’mores Milk and Weekend Brooklyn Love

Adam and I had a pretty great weekend… in spite of me misplacing my – expensive! – favorite sports bra and spending half of Saturday in mourning.  Seriously – I don’t change at the gym, I didn’t pack it on a trip, and we are very careful to check the machines for runaways when we do our laundry – where the frick is it?!!  But when we weren’t checking and rechecking literally every drawer in the house, we did manage to have some fun.

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highlights…

Homemade S’mores Milk

It’s official, I’m a genius.  I put it in coffee, obviously.

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S’mores Milk, makes 2 cups

Inspired by Tosi’s Cereal Milk.  This recipe requires you to strain the solids out of the milk, you can use a fine mesh sieve but I used my French Press and that worked really well too.  Smooshy marshmallows will not work for this, you need crispy ones; if you can’t find the Mallow Bits I recommend picking the marshmallows out of Lucky Charms!

  • 2 cups skim milk or milk of choice
  • 1/3 cup Jet Puff Mallow Bits
  • 4 squares graham crackers, crumbled
  • 2 Tbsp hot chocolate milk
  1. Place all of the ingredients together in a container and stir to combine.  Cover and store in the fridge for 8 – 16 hours.
  2. Strain, discarding solids.  Milk can be stored, covered, in the fridge for up to 1 week.

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Cheesy Spicy Eggs

Coming up somewhere just behind coffee, diet coke, dulce de leche, and popcorn, corn cooked in scrambled eggs is one of my favorite meals.

This plate was TJ’s frozen fire-roasted corn, chopped spinach, and sliced shishito peppers (<– so much spicier than I was expecting!) cooked in coconut oil with eggs scrambled in and chunks of Kerrygold Skellig sweet cheddar tossed in at the end.

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C’est Cheese in Port Jeff

C’est Cheese is always worth the drive up Port Jefferson for dinner.

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We shared a beer sampler.  The Framboise was my favorite.

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A cheese plate.  Adam loved the Tallegio and I was all about the 7-year Gouda.

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And a grilled cheese with blue cheese and a raspberry-cranberry relish on marble rye.  The cheese and jam combo made for the best bites of the night.

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Snacky in Williamsburg

This weekend one of my lifelong best friends celebrated her 30th(!!!) birthday.

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After the party, the husband and I had dinner at Snackys, one of my favorite Williamsburg spots.  We shared a seaweed salad and a Chinese big bun stuffed with pickled vegetables.

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And did rice bowls for dinner.  I know the photos aren’t much, but my Spicy Korean BBQ Chicken Bowl was great, yummy sauce and big bites of kimchi.

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Our 1st Smorgasburg of 2015

NYC people – if you haven’t done Smorgasburg yet you need to get your life together.  They added a few new vendors this season and it is happy, foodie, perfection.  We couldn’t find the Snowday truck but you can bet I’ll keep an eye out from now on.

We got lattes at Brooklyn Roasting Company.

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Buns from Bite Sized Kitchen.  I got red curry chicken with peanuts, cilantro, and fried garlic and shloots (topped with loads of sweet chili sauce).

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And beer-battered cheese curds with truffle cheese sauce from Curd’s the Word.

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Remember this post?  The stupid sports bra is the fourth item I’ve ever lost… which would be a really good track record if 2, 3, and 4 hadn’t all been within the last year!

Easter And Onward

This post feels long, and I am le tired, so I will try to be less loquacious than usual.

Very chatty sidenote – how great are some of the words that describe how much a person does or does not talk??  Loquacious.  Taciturn.  Verbose.  Gabby.  Love them!

Real talk though: I somehow caught a springtime cold and I am cranky and sniffling and need to go to bed.  I know I’ve wasted 60+ words on an intro, but I’ll try to let the pictures speak for themselves as much as possible.

breakfast

Vanilla iced coffee with vanilla milk.

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Smoothie #1 – strawberry mint.  Chocolate mint soy milk, frozen strawberries, and plain Greek yogurt.

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Smoothie #2 – blueberry bliss.  Frozen blueberries and dates with plain almond milk, plain Greek yogurt, and a little honey.

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I made another batch of Community Coffee French Roast, this time in our coffee machine.  Traditional/hot brewing did make this a little bitter, but it was still quite drinkable.  Especially with skim milk and a splash of toasted marshmallow coffee syrup or a sprinkle of cinnamon and brown sugar.

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lunch

Subs with the in-laws for Easter.  With chips and hard-boiled Easter eggs.

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Coffee Chobani with Cocoa Coconut Renola and a Cara Cara.  I am very picky about my coffee yogurts and this stuff was on point.

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A half turkey sandwich from the cafeteria with seaweed salad and Easter candy delivered by a coworker.

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I apparently don’t have a photo to speak for itself, but another day I packed a sandwich from home.  An epic sandwich.  Sweet cheddar and extra-sharp cheddar on a toasted English muffin.  Swoon.

This mix was random, but it worked – spicy Thai chili tuna salad, brown sugar and sea salt seaweed, and a Cara Cara.

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snack

Coconut water for rehydration.

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These chips are amazing.

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Coffee, always.

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The husband and I are both obsessed with these two dessert items.

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Plain Greek yogurt with butterscotch peanut butter and chocolate-covered cocoa nibs

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I made How Sweet Eat’s Brown Butter Oatmeal Chunk Cookies for a birthday at work and they received rave reviews.  I subbed vanilla bean paste for cinnamon, subbed dark chocolate chips for chocolate chunks, and made much smaller cookies (for a yield of 40 cookies versus her 15), and I recommend all three changes if you make a batch of your own.

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I’m including two non-edibles that fed my soul.  The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman was like a grown-up version of Francesca Lia Block’s stuff.  It was hard to put down; I read on the train and one night I had to sit in my car in the parking lot for twenty minutes to keep reading.

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This lip-balm smells like my dreams.

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dinner

Easter dinner.

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Dessert was angel food cake layered with a yummy Cool Whip + vanilla pudding mix + shredded pineapple concoction.

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An easy, amazing soup.  I cooked shell pasta in chicken broth then dumped in sautéed chopped bok choy and green onions, shredded cooked chicken breast, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.  My bowl was drizzled with sweet chili oil as well.  Adam absolutely raved about this dish.

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I turned the rest of my never-ending marinara sauce into a bastardized version of Jenna’s Channa Masala.  On top of brown rice and roasted broccoli.  Topped with plain Greek yogurt and sweet chili oil.

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Safe Catch sent me a can of their wild skipjack tuna.

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Please note: I was sent this product free of charge to review.  I was not provided with further compensation for this post.  All opinions are my own.

Seafood is a great thing to include in your diet.  It is a lean protein, a good source of iron, and a good source of omega-3 fatty acids.  Unfortunately, due to the fact that seafood contains mercury, it may not be a good idea to consume it daily, and some varieties are safer than others.  Canned tuna, for example, I have to tell my pregnant patients to limit to </ once per week.  Safe Catch is a new, mercury tested, tuna brand that enforces a strict limit on the amount of mercury allowable in the fish that go into its products (their standards are 90% stricter than the FDA’s mercury safety limit of 1.0 parts per million).  Also important – the fish is caught exclusively with pole and line from managed stocks.

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I wanted to be able to really taste the tuna – we give it two thumbs up – so I made it into a super simple tuna salad.

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Served on a challah roll with a side of roasted broccoli.

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Last night was my sickest, and the husband worked overnight, so I made a(n incredibly tasty!) frozen meal from Trader Joe’s and called it a night.  I also ate a bowl of cereal in bed.

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There were entirely too many photos of my hands in this post.

Oats And Easter Candy

I wrote this post at midnight on Saturday… while I ate dinner/my first meal of the day… it’s been kind of a rough week.  Hopefully I’ll be in a better mood while this is auto-publishing because I should be in the car on my way to Easter celebrating with the husband’s family.

I’m missing a ton of photos from the week (chips and dip!) and posting two days late, so I almost skipped this post, but some of these eats (chocolate + oat bowls!) were just so good.

breakfast

Community Coffee sent me a variety of their ground coffees to try.

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This was a free product sample that I’m reviewing for no additional compensation.  It will take me some time to make it through them all, but I will let you know as I open each bag.

This week I cold-brewed the French Roast.

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Quite nice!  Roasty and not acrid at all.  I am going to make a (hot) batch in the coffee machine soon and I will let you know if that changes my opinion, but for now we give this two thumbs up.

Gevalia almond milk iced coffee.

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The flavor was good but not great.  The 9 grams of protein made it a good breakfast though.

Iced coffee and peanut butter toast with condensed milk from the tea place near my work.

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I threw out my crusts and my office smelled like a peanut all day!

lunch

Banana walnut oatmeal with a minneola and Cadbury mini eggs.

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Cabury mini eggs win for best holiday candy ever.

Wild berry oatmeal with Justin’s chocolate hazelnut butter.

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I 100% bought the oatmeal because it had a bear on the package, but it ended up being pretty tasty.

Turkey sandwich, citrus, and malted eggs.

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That’s a toasted English muffin with Smart Balance and Applegate Farms smoked turkey.

Yogurt bowl.

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2% Greek with pomegranate and marble halvah.  <– my best idea ever

Chicken sandwich from the cafeteria.

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An everything bagel with mayo, mustard, spicy chicken, Munster cheese, and fancy lettuce.

snack

Coffee all day every day.

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Worth mentioning were this short, skim caramel macchiato.

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And the fact that Hungry Ghost has Stumptown cold brew on draft.

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Easter candy.

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Turkey jerky.

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Ample Hills!

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Salted crack caramel + salted honey with honeycomb and chocolate-covered potato chips.

dinner

Chipotle, because heaven forbid we go longer than five days without rice bowls.

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Or salty lime chips, or giant diet cokes.

I made us a huge batch of marinara sauce in the crockpot.

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It was a great idea in theory, but I didn’t season the sauce enough and the end result was very “meh.”  Too bad we ate it three days in row for dinner and still have gallons left.

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The best part of that meal was our side dish –

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roasted broccoli with pesto gouda melted on top.

On a much more exciting night, I had drinks with a girlfriend at my favorite Brooklyn bar – Pork Slope.  No photos, but I had a Keegan’s Mother’s Milk Stout on draft that rocked my socks off.  Then we met up with Adam for dinner at Talde, Pork Slope’s Asian-American sister.

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That’s my Navy Grog {Diplomatico rum, honey syrup, lime and grapefruit juices} and kale salad {cantaloupe, pickled beets, candied almonds, creamy ponzu}.  I am going to be heartbroken when we move on from our national kale obsession.

Happy Easter to all my readers who celebrate.

Birthday Cake Coffee And Jelly Bean Gum

Random notes:

  1. A bunch of bites slipped past the camera this weekend, though per usual, the majority of them were coffee and candy.
  2. I had big plans for excitement in the city this weekend and the snow (in March?!  seriously?) throw me off my game.  We did make it to the Lower East Side for a 2nd trip to Adam’s new favorite restaurant though.
  3. I binge-watched my way through the first 9 episodes of “Fresh off the Boat” and thought it was great.  The book has been on my Amazon wish-list for ages, and we recently visited BaoHaus, so it’s safe to say I’m currently infatuated with Eddie Huang.

Eats:

Double espresso with skim milk (over ice) at work.

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I’m not super hungry most mornings, but I try to get in a full 8 oz serving of dairy in my coffee.  The 8 grams of protein and 90 – 130 calories usually hold me just fine until my early lunch.  Usually.  I was so hungry all day on Friday that I was practically crying.

My lunch was delicious.

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Fresh blueberries on top of lemon Chobani with a  side of sugar cookie kettle corn.

But soon after lunch I was miserable.  And I took lunch an hour earlier than usual so it was looong afternoon.  I bought this thing of cheese and crackers from the cafeteria, scoffed at how ridiculously large the serving size was, and finished the whole thing 30 minutes later.

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And 30 minutes after that, I was buying coffee and a KIND bar for my train ride.

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Plus I ate Easter candy both before and after dinner.

My dinner, that in retrospect definitely could have used more protein, was a good one though, if a bit scattered.

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Salad = baby kale, cubes pesto gouda, dried blueberries, buckwheat groats, and honey/evoo/lavender salt for dressing.

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Our pasta bowls were more of the same; pesto gouda and baby spinach, along with tons of caramelized onions – finished with cream sherry! – and whole wheat boxed mac and cheese with a few giant shells thrown in for good measure.

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I was still hungry when we went to bed!  Thankfully I felt back to normal by Saturday morning.

My picture-taking motivation went downhill at that point – when I woke up to almost-April snow my plans to go to the gym, clean the floors, and generally accomplish anything all seemed to disappear – but I do have shots of the good stuff.

Adam loved the oatmeal raisin cookie smoothie that I made for my last Recipe Redux post a ton, so this weekend I worked up an official recipe.

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I made mine with plain almond milk.  ‘Twas good.

This gum is great.

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Doesn’t taste like a jelly bean, but it has a great, tart flavor.

Starbucks reached the 20th birthday of the Frappuccino last week and they celebrated with a limited-edition birthday cake flavor… with pink raspberry whipped cream!

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I asked for them to make me one into a skim iced latte.  So good.  Still ridiculous, but slightly less ridiculous.

I made Pinch of Yum’s Bourbon Chicken for Sunday dinner, though I trashed mine up a bit by substituting in turkey breast and Jim Beam’s Maple Bourbon.

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Served with brown rice and roasted broccoli, under a healthy drizzle of sauce.  My mother – a maple fanatic – bought me the bourbon for Christmas and I have so many cocktail ideas for it.

We had another amazing meal at Pig & Khao.  Adam is obsessed with this place and I don’t blame him.

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That’s my Reisling and our order of fried mantao buns.

The husband had a giant plate of pork leg, and I ordered the Khao Soi – red curry, coconut milk, chicken, egg noodles, pickled mustard greens, and shallots.

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I don’t even like red curry (understandably, the menu is mostly meats so there aren’t a ton of options for me) but I loooved this.  The flavors are just so balanced; you leave feeling unbelievably satisfied.

We had to make room for Halo Halo though!

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Shaved ice, leche flan, ube ice cream, macapuno (coconut), and pinipig (toasted puffed rice).  My favorite desserts are bat ping so, choclados, and halo halo, clearly I am all about shaved ice and sweet milk.

Did you try the birthday cake Frappuccino?

Pig & Khao & Bao

New York gave us weather in the upper 40’s two days in a row and we had a fabulous weekend!  We went to two new (to us) restaurants and adored them both.  Here is a wrap-up of my favorite bites and sips, not including several more cups of coffee, several more cups of ice cream, and a windy but wonderful walk across the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

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Carolina Honey Argo Tea.

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This tea was honey perfection; I loudly “Mmmmn’d” at least five times before we had finished it.  And bonus – Adam and I adore reusing the bottles.

Iced latte from Brooklyn Roasting Company.

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A gorgeous espresso over skim milk, with raw sugar and a splash of cream.  We fought over it on the subway.  I also got another Maple Shay and learned that they will make it with skim milk and that it is even better that way.

Shaved ice at Snowdays.

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We shared a sweet cream with salted caramel, fruity pebbles, grass jelly, and mochi.  Snowdays is Adam’s favorite iced dessert option and mochi are my favorite iced dessert topping.

A stop at Sugar, Sweet, Sunshine.

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I actually passed on the cupcakes in lieu of puddings –

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Banana and chocolate chip cookie.

Baohaus rocked our socks off.  Their lighting scheme was dim with shades of yellow, so I couldn’t get a good shot, but the buns were outstanding.

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I got an Uncle Jessie: Organic fried tofu served with our Haus Seasoning Salt, crushed peanuts, Taiwanese red sugar, cilantro, and Haus Sauce, and we shared a Coffin Bao: A large fried bao stuffed with our fried chicken topped with chili condensed milk syrup, crushed peanuts, Taiwanese red sugar, and cilantro.  Chili condensed milk syrup is pretty much my love language!

Pig & Khao was even better.  Adam says this was the best meal he’s had in months.

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I had Vietnamese coffee.

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And Shan noodles: ground chicken, turmeric, peanuts, fermented mustard greens, rice noodles.

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Every dish had umami out the wazoo.  I poured a bit of Adam’s chili oil – for dipping with his steak and eggs – into my broth and the burn was so worth it!

Green eggs at home.

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Scrambled with fresh arugula and TJ’s fire roasted corn.  Instead of toast, I had ice cream.

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Jimmy Fallon can laugh at his own jokes, I don’t care, this is the best Ben & Jerry’s of all time: Caramel & Chocolate Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookie Swirls & Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Peanut Butter Cookie Dough.  Funny fact – I thought I hated iced cream up until a year or two ago.

I made a new salmon dish – Sweet and Spicy Cilantro Baked Salmon.

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Recipe linked here.  I was pleased enough with how it came out to make a recipe page.

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With TJ’s Cruciferous Crunch (kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, green  and red cabbage) sautéed with leftover cilantro sauce and Wegman’s Thai peanut sauce.

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This was worth dirtying up the food processor for.

Crossing my fingers that the weather stays “warm” this week.

“It’s A Miracle!”

Who else has obsessively binge-watched their way though the entire first season of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” already?  We finished the whole thing over the weekend.  We loved it!  I’m considering a rewatch.  I hate the two trial episodes – I thought they were god-awful, truly some of the worst television I’ve ever seen – but I adored everything preceding them.  The 10 second concept makes my life.  Unsurprisingly, this is another smart and funny win from Tina Fey.

The theme song has permanently ear-wormed its way into my brain.

Related, LisaBorn Round was amazing!

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I read it on the train and then would sit in my car in the parking lot for at least 20 minutes each night to keep reading.  I’m pretty sure Bruni should be giving TED Talks for all would-be crash dieters, emotional eaters, and aspiring journalists.

breakfast

I did the chocolate milk and iced coffee combo two days in a row.

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Paired with a Special K protein bar both days.

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Not the best bars – for taste or ingredient list – but they were free in the cafeteria and I had some extra morning hunger this week.

Another day I did hot chocolate mix in hot coffee with a lot of milk on top.

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So basically just the lukewarm version of my chocolate milk and coffee.

My breakfast plan for St. Patrick’s Day was a green smoothie.  Then I hit the snooze button and the plan was iced coffee with green dye in my milk.  Then I hit the snooze button five more times and I barely managed to get coffee, ice, and boring plain milk into my cup.

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…and then I also got Starbucks once I got off of the train.

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I usually don’t let myself do two coffees in the morning, but I had stayed in bed until literally 10 minutes before I needed to be in the car so clearly it was a double coffee kind of morning.  And yes, mom, I fixed my hat hair before I saw patients.

lunch

Thankfully the cafeteria totally came through and helped me get some green-theme on St. Paddy’s Day.

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My bagel was topped with pepperjack, sliced turkey, mayo, mustard, and frisee lettuce.  Plus baked onion rings on the side.

Blood orange Fage with Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes and blackberries and a fresh mandarin orange on the side.

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I can’t believe I had only ever eaten canned mandarins up until this year, they are my new favorite citrus.

Tart cherry Noosa with coconut butter, homemade butterscotch peanut butter, and a Pinata apple.

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We are loving the new 4 oz Noosa packs.  Noosa is Adam’s top favorite yogurt – in fact it’s one of his favorite foods in general – but the original packages were a bit too large to enjoy on the go.

Vanilla-caramel yogurt with blackberries and 18 Rabbits caramel apple granola.

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I loved the flavor of the grass-fed yogurt but I’d still be a little nervous about trying it plain.

snack

Popcorn / all-time best Easter candy / beer…

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All good.

A small but gourmet sandwich.

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Toasted whole-wheat with Applegate Farm herb sliced turkey, mayo, and leftover carmelized onions.

Weird pasta salad from the cafeteria.

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Why do they keep putting croutons in pasta??

An Austrian iced coffee.

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Aka coffee (delicious Grady’s cold-brew in this case) with ice, (skim) milk, and (vanilla-caramel) ice cream.

dinner

Asian-style baked shrimp bowls.

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From the bottom up, I filled my casserole with quartered bok choy, sliced wild mushrooms, chopped orange and yellow bell pepper, shrimp, fish sauce, rice vinegar, soy sauce, canola oil, and Sriracha.  Then I baked it for 15 minutes at 425 degrees.

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Served on top of brown rice cooked in chicken stock.

Leftover bbq salads.

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Spicy, local arugula topped with bbq sauce, cucumber, avocado, bell pepper, caramelized onions, and TJ’s fire-roasted corn cooked with turkey bacon.

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These were some of the best salads we’ve made in months.

The next night I did a 180 from salads and made my grandma’s recipe for an awesomely retro chicken and rice casserole.

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Complete with condensed soups, chow mein noodles, and crushed chips on top.  I swapped half of the rice for shredded cauliflower but otherwise did not healthy it up at all.

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Served with green beans baked with fish sauce, honey, Sriracha, and evoo.

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We ate casserole the next night too.

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And we will probably been eating casserole the next few nights as well!

Hope everyone has a great weekend, good luck getting that song out of your head!

Pi(e) Day 2015

Pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, is an infinite, constant number (i.e. the number goes on forever and it’s the same number for all circles of all sizes).  π equals 3.1415926535897932384626etcetera,etcetera.  Because of this, math-lovers and sugar-aficionados alike celebrate March 14 (3/14 = 3.14) as Pi Day each year.  This year was extra special because it was a once-a-hundred-years opportunity to celebrate a full five digits (3/14/2015 = 3.14[.]15).  Adam and I partook in both dessert pies and pizza pies to mark the occasion.

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Pi Day

Adam and I knew that we wanted to go for the double, so we headed to Park Slope, where both our favorite pie place and pizza place reside.  We were clearly not the only ones to have this idea –

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After an hour+ wait, we did dessert first with pie at Four & Twenty Blackbirds.

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Malted chocolate pecan for him and buttermilk chess for me.  The crusts suffered a bit from what must have been a major uptick in production (Blackbirds was offering a 3 slices for $14 special) but the fillings were amazing as always.

Then we did slices of pizza pie at Pino’s.

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Bbq chicken for me.  Adam got more because he has π memorized beyond the first three digits 😉

Dinners in Bowls

I’m not so big on plates -I also prefer chopsticks to forks – and it feels like we eat the majority of our dinner out of bowls.  Extra-credit if the food is layered into the bowl instead of served as a homogenous dish.  Our dinners last weekend hit both counts.

We even ate dessert in bowls.

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The ice cream was good, but nothing about it was “Tres Leches.”  Boo.

Spicy sweet potato bowls.

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  • baked yam
  • creamy Sriracha sauce – Sriracha, mayo, and honey
  • sautéed broccoli – in soy sauce and rice vinegar
  • sunny side up egg – fried in coconut oil

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This was… not good.  The idea was good, I think, but the broccoli was freezer-burnt and the potatoes were old.

Our bbq bowls were much, much better.

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  • brown rice cooked in chicken stock
  • bbq pulled chicken – cooked in the crockpot with stock and smothered in TJ’s bbq sauce
  • collard greens sautéed with bbq sauce and turkey bacon
  • tons of caramelized sweet and red onions (cooked like this)
  • shredded sharp cheddar

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We’re going to put our leftovers on top of salad later this week and I’m pretty excited about it.

DUMBO Fun

Drinks in DUMBO.

I am obsessed with Brooklyn Roasting Company‘s coffee and we finally made it to their roaster/café.  I wish I had taken photos because the space was gorgeous and inviting, but we loved our beverages.

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Iced Maple Shay for me = espresso with cream and real maple syrup.  Amazingly, it was too sweet and creamy for me to finish.

Our next stop was the antithesis of maple and cream, green juice from Forager’s.

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Kale, spinach, cucumber, and papaya.  I will not be getting papaya again; I always like to include one sweet and juicy component in my green juice (carrot, apple, watermelon, etc) but the papaya did not bring any brightness to the party.

Williamsburg Fun

Sunday brunch and brunch dessert (<– that’s not a thing!) in East Williamsburg.  We ate at Brooklyn Star where Adam was 99.9% sure that Emma Stone was at the next table.  It wasn’t her, but it sure was her doppelgänger.

The bourbon bon bon – bourbon, iced coffee, sweetened condensed milk – was the menu item that called me in.

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Nope!  I love bourbon, and I love iced coffee, but apparently I don’t love them together.

My kale salad stole my heart though.

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You can’t see it under the giant cheese crisp, but there was raw kale with lemon vinegarette, roasted peanuts, and golden raisins.  Best kale salad ever.  I know I say that every time, but this one was my new favorite.

We also got coffee at Sweatshop.

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And the best sundae ever at Milk Bar.  With crack pie soft-serve.  The guy asked me if I wanted “hot fudge or cornflakes?,” and I answered “both.”

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That was the correct answer.

Do you celebrate Pi Day?  Favorite kind of pie?