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!

25Jan2016

Last Week’s Top Five

by Emily

{1} Coffee, always.

Highlights include Starbucks while I grocery shopped last Monday. The coffee was only ok, but getting to leisurely sip and shop on a weekday? Fabulous.

Even better – a triple nonfat iced latte from the Stumptown in the Ace Hotel.

It’s a neat spot and the espresso is fabulous, I highly recommend making a stop if you’re near Penn Station.

{2} Ramen with some of my favorite people

My Maryland aunt and cousin came into town for a quick visit and I met them at the train and needed to provide food, warmth, and NYC awesomeness – enter Chelsea Market for Ramen at Mok Bar.

I got the ginger chicken ramen (Roasted ginger chicken broth, pulled chicken, cucumber and garlic chive kimchi) with an egg on top and we shared a few varieties of kimchi on the side.

They are used to the cold, and are a walking family too, so they were totally down with a chilly 2+ mile stroll through Chelsea/LES to meet Adam.

Including a stop at Sokerbit!

{3} Dinner at The Vandal

The Vandal is a new (ginormous) restaurant in the Bowery. The menu is a mix of “street food” from a myriad of cultures and the décor is graffiti-style art on every wall. There’s a coffee cart in the dining room and a bar in the basement. It’s a fun spot. My aunt has a family friend who is involved in the opening.

Highlight of the night – my cousin was trying to describe who Chris Santos was to Adam just as Chris Santos walked up to our table to say hello. It was hilarious and he was very sweet and friendly.

We shared everything so we could all taste lots of drinks and dishes. The drinks menu is divided into Bright, Spiced, and Barrel-Aged and we ordered one from each section plus a yummy bottle of Spanish wine.

My drink was the best, The Intervention = Gentleman Jack whiskey, plum, Aperol, lemon, and Spanish bitters.

We ordered a few meat dishes that I didn’t eat. Plus shrimp arepas with purple slaw and chipotle cream and cauliflower with picada sauce, olives, and hazelnuts.

Wild mushroom pizza with caramelized onion.

And brussels sprouts elote.

All of the dishes were fantastic but the pizza (recommended by Chris Santos himself!) and cauliflower were everyone’s favorite. It was a wonderful night.

{4} Americanized Halo Halo

My sweet Filipino coworker knows I’m in love with palm seeds and she brought me in giant jars of palm seeds and halo halo topping (boiled, sweetened mix of beans, coconut, jackfruit, etc).

I’ve been putting it on pretty much everything, including this ridiculous sundae.

Toasted almond gelato, halo halo, sweetened condensed milk, frosted flakes, and rainbow sprinkles. I didn’t have shaved ice but otherwise it was pretty close to the real deal!

{5} Blizzard bowls

I didn’t do the best job of stocking up on food before the storm and we spent most of the weekend eating chicken nuggets. I did manage to get it together for one healthy (yummy) meal.

Steam/sautéed shredded green cabbage and shredded chicken cooked in peanut sauce, topped with fried shallots and fresh cilantro. Shredded cabbage is so quick and easy, I need to remember to use it more often.

I hope all my East Coast readers are staying warm and safe!

12Jan2016

St. Thomas, 2016

by Emily

I took Friday and Monday off and spent a four day weekend in St. Thomas visiting my parents. It was really nice to get into the sun!

I didn’t take many food pictures, mostly I just texted Adam a million kissy-faced selfies.

Here are the top four eats I did capture…

1. Dinner at Longboard in St. John. We shared a chips with a guacamole, hummus, queso trio. That’s my frozen painkiller in the foreground.

And I had a fajita salad with grilled mahi.

Delicious. The culinary themes for this trip were fresh seafood and local rum.

2. My favorite turkey bacon bagel sandwich from Barefoot Buddha. <– the sandwich I ate on my wedding day

Plus a Vietnamese iced coffee.

3. A giant cheese calzone.

Stuffed with spinach, mushrooms, and black olives.

4. Key lime pie!

Served on plain Greek yogurt with a scoop of ground flax seed because that’s seriously the best way to eat key lime pie.

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?

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…