I Can’t Choose A Favorite!

This is a longer wrap-up (Monday through Sunday) and I ate too many yummy things to chose a single favorite for my post title.  I’ve got my top three – 1) Thai-style crab fried rice, 2) roasted garlic bread, and 3) black sesame shaved ice.

Here were the highlights…

Killer coffee combo – Volcanic roast with chocolate milk.

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Usually I just have coffee for breakfast or eat something on my train, but this week the cafeteria sounded amazing first thing in the morning.  Eggs and hashbrowns, with humus.

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Cafeteria lunch, a spicy chicken sandwich on ridiculously cheesy bread with mustard, lettuce, and bell pepper.

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Last weekend I spent forever trying to make coconut curd.  I didn’t make jam, but I did filthy every last inch of my stovetop.  My experiment didn’t work, at all, but I did kind of like the end result – a vaguely sweet, egg, cake.

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I enjoyed my “jam” in lunches all week.  Like with vanilla bean yogurt and blackberries.

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And plain yogurt, berries, maple quinoa granola, and black sesame seeds.

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Whole Foods hot bar lunch.

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Sesame broccoli, turkey salad, and cole slaw.

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Plus a maple soda that was not as exciting as I was expecting it to be; it had an off-putting aftertaste.

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Snack time.  Ice cream = maple walnut and a white chocolate vanilla marshmallow flavor.

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Milk bun.

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Crème brulee milk stout.

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My workweek dinners were on point!  Like crab fried rice with roasted broccoli and sliced cucumber.

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I loosely followed this recipe, except I used brown rice and waaaay more crab.  It was fantastic.

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Vampire killer, I roasted three whole heads of garlic for this recipe.

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Garlic turkey meatballs with red sauce and roasted zucchini.

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And amazing homemade garlic bread – I mashed butter and roasted garlic and then slathered it on sliced sourdough and baked until delicious.

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Even our leftovers meal was tasty.  Cheese tortellini with meatballs, peas, roasted garlic, and red sauce.

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One night I had dinner out with a coworker.  We checked out the new Brooklyn MŏkBar location.  They have a liquor license now, and I got a yummy vodka “cloudsicle.”

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Plus chicken ramen with kimchi and poached egg.

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And the new Brooklyn Snowdays location was right next door!  Black sesame shaved ice with oreo, mochi, and condensed milk.

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Plus a dinner date with the husband.  Brinkley’s has Genesee Cream Ale on draught!

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We got pimento cheese dip and duck fat fries to start and I dipped my fries in the pimento cheese and pretty much died of heart failure happiness.

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Plus fish tacos with mahi, guacamole, and pineapple salsa.

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The other two dinners were decidedly less exciting.  Like Chipotle take out.  And more hot bar.  Yes, I went to Whole Foods two different days, it was an exciting week.  I was too busy at work yesterday to break for lunch so by the time I got dinner I ate a giant plate of all of the things.

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Now it’s two days of work before a break on Wednesday.

Have a great week!

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Chocolate “Cheesecake” Oatmeal

Kids.  Work is really freaking stressful this month.  My goodness.  I had Wednesday off this week (from working the previous weekend) and I practically spent the whole day in a coma.  And yesterday I bought multiple coffees before 10 am.  I promise to whine about post a work sitch update sometime soon, but for this post I’m keeping things short and simple.

Some of the best things I ate this week…

Oatmeal with chia seeds, two kinds of chocolate chips, and a scoop of cream cheese.  It was heavenly.

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Mango yogurt with Luxardo cherries, plus I added a banana from the cafeteria at work.

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Another dessert-y lunch, plain Greek yogurt with cookie butter, granola, and a Pink Lady apple.

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My mother-in-law sent us a giant box of sugar cookies for Easter.  Both of our mothers still send us Easter baskets, actually, there’s a lot of candy in this house!

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Leftover cheddar bbq meatloaf with roasted green beans.  Adam butchered the meatloaf getting it out of the dish and then mashed it onto my plate because I pretty much live like a princess.

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<– that was sarcasm, but I really am pretty spoiled.  Case in point – honey beer with dinner.

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Sweet potato fries with tons of extra-sharp cheddar and ground turkey with Korean bbq sauce.  I realize that the photo is pretty rough, but it was one of the yummiest things I ate all week.  We highly recommend the frozen fries from Trader Joe’s.

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Hot pasta salad.  I sautéed big chunks of green bell pepper and onion in tons of olive oil and smoked paprika, tossed with crispy roasted chickpeas, and cheese tortellini.

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Are you dying eggs this weekend??

Crab Rangoon Grilled Cheese

This post contains a week’s worth of wrap up – not just the sandwich – but the sandwich was awesome so it stole the title.  Maybe I’ll make a thing of it and start titling all of my weekly posts after the best bite?

Yummy things…

Our very last cup of chicory coffee from Café du Monde.  <– boo!  With a mandarin.  I spilled the 2nd to very last cup all over the counter and down the side of the fridge, so that was fun.

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More chicory coffee, in yogurt form.  With KIND maple quinoa granola and chocolate-covered cacao nibs.  Plus a Pacific Rose apple.

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The best chips of all time – honey butter flavored from Trader Joe’s.  Excluding, obviously, the freshly made honey butter chips served at Oiji.

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Another Trader Joe’s win – Kona coffee cookie mocha swirl ice cream.

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Homemade treats make the best snacks though.  I threw a wedding shower for one of the ladies at work this week and contributed cookie butter bars and brown butter chocolate chip cookies.

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The eponymous sandwich!

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Served with roasted brussel sprouts with paprika and Old Bay seasoning – to keep the seafood theme going.

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Toasted sourdough with crab rangoon in between.  The filling was a mixture of cream cheese, lump crab meat, green onion, minced ginger, brown sugar, and soy sauce.  They were wonderful.

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I loosely followed the recipe for Eat, Live, Run’s lemon brown sugar chicken.

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I added sliced green onions to the casserole dish and used extra smoked paprika, but primarily I swapped in MAPLE sugar for brown sugar.  Delicious.  We spooned the sauce on top of our veggies.

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Another night I loosely followed the recipe for Bon Appétit’s marinated beans.  Great northern beans with evoo, rice vinegar, cilantro, green onion, and gojuchang.  I served the beans on top of roasted green beans and sweet potato fries.

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With a sour beer on the side.

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I work the next five days, but I hope everyone else has a lovely weekend!

4 x 3 = 12

For breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus snack, here were my top three eats for this week…

breakfast{1}  The 2nd best* thing I ate all week – Vietnamese iced coffee.

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Café du Mondé coffee with chicory from our trip to NOLA with sweetened condensed milk.  Yum City.

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b{2}  A killer smoothie.

How pretty is this purple??  Frozen soursop and blueberries with cow’s milk and vanilla pudding mix.

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b{3}  Double chocolate oat bowl.

Oats, chia, freeze-dried strawberries, chocolate chips, and chocolate-covered cacao nibs.

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b{warning}  Do not recommend: this oatmeal drink box.

The flavor was way too artificial.  Adam tried a plain one and loved it so it’s probably the caramel flavor that’s the problem.

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lunch{1}  Cafeteria sandwich.

Turkey and cheese.  I mostly prefer to pack lunch for work but I hate trying to pack sandwiches so this is a great cafeteria option when I’m in the mood.

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l{2}  Yogurt bowl.

Coconut Greek yogurt with pink grapefruit is this year’s new favorite combo!  I snacked on the vanilla granola and chocolate coconut milk on the side.

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l{3}  Baked potato bar.

I topped my spud with cheese sauce, salsa, black beans, bell peppers, red onion, jalapeño, and cilantro.

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snack{1}  Caffeine overload.

Iced latte with chocolate-covered espresso beans.  Full disclosure – I drank a sugar-free Red Bull around this same time and spent an hour or two pretty sure I could hear colors.

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s{2}  Cheesy bagel.

I toasted half a poppy seed bagel with butter and cheddar-gruyere/parmesan-gouda.  Eaten while prepping dinner because I just couldn’t wait.

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s{3}  Yogurt bowl with my favorite citrus.

Maple yogurt with Heritage Flakes.  Plus a Sumo Mandarin.

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dinner{1}  Let’s be real, the very best* thing I ate this week was nachos.

Four-cheese nachos with black beans and roasted garlic salsa.  Duh.  But no photo because we ate them in bed in the middle of the day (<–fabulous) and my main focus was on keeping them away from the dog.

d{2}  Gojuchang turkey rice bowls.

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Brown rice with cilantro, lime and butter / roasted cabbage / ground turkey sautéed with spring onions and cilantro and a sauce made out of gojuchang, brown sugar, soy sauce, and rice vinegar / black sesame seeds and lime juice on top.

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d{3}  Cheesy eggs.

A scramble with cheddar-gruyere and parmesan-gouda.  Plus baby carrots for a quick veggie on the side.

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d{warning}  Do not recommend: the altered quinoa soup I blogged about last weekend.

I see why Cooking Light only used a quarter cup of grains, by day 2 our leftovers were very well-hydrated quinoa with not a drop of broth to be found.

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Top Five This Week

{1}  Fiber One sent me samples of their newest product line – layered chewy bars.

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I’m a fan!  Sometimes fiber-added products hurt my stomach, but these gave me no issues.  They are chewy without being tooth-breaking and salty-sweet – my favorite flavor combo.  They come in double chocolate almond.

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And the even more delicious salted caramel and dark chocolate.

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{2}  I made a tasty strawberry sauce.

It was quick and easy, just fresh strawberries quartered and cooked in a skillet over medium heat.

Paired with passion fruit yogurt with Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes.

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And plain yogurt with vanilla granola and a few Luxardo cherries.

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{3}  Ben & Jerry’s and New Belgium partnered on a cookie dough beer and I paired it with cookie dough ice cream.

We ended up not loving the beer, which had a chemical aftertaste to it, but the ice cream (which I topped with melty Biscoff) was obviously delicious.

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And speaking of Speculoos…

{4}  Starbucks has a cookie butter bar and it is out of this freaking world.

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{5}  I spent 3+ hours making over-the-top lasagna.

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Loosely based on this recipe, it was totally worth the time commitment.

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I made a red sauce with ground turkey and TJ’s soy chorizo.  My béchamel was a four-cheese doozy made with cheddar-gruyere and parmesan-gouda. I skipped the ricotta, but did top my dish off with more parmesan-gouda.

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{bonus}  My schedule – I worked President’s Day and work this upcoming weekend which means I was off from work yesterday and today for a midweek weekend!  And Adam is off today too so we’ve got some Upper East Side fun planned.  See you next week!

It’s Beginning To Taste A Lot Like Valentine’s

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As long-term blog readers know, the Emily holiday theme-food calendar is pretty packed.  There’s Apple Month (September) and Pumpkin Month (October into November), and November/December are the only time of year I’ll eat eggnog, candy cane, and gingerbread.

My mom recently asked me why Valentine’s Day and Easter don’t get any love?  I decided it’s lame that only August – December get theme flavors, so brought two new holidays into the party, albeit likely with less fervor.  Valentine’s Day (February) gets chocolate-covered cherry and cinnamon, and Easter (April) gets coconut and lemon.

Here was this month’s themed-food stash:

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Those goodies will be the main content of this post, along with a few other things that I LOVED (<– staying on theme).  It works out to be work lunches/snacks since this week’s dinner situation was beyond bleak – 1. nachos 2. Chipotle 3. frozen meal from Trader Joe’s 4. Adam and I got into bed and fell asleep before 8pm.

Chocolate cherry yogurt, chocolate cherry cashew KIND bar, and a Sumo mandarin.

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Valentine’s trail mix with chocolate hearts, dried dark sweet cherries, and roasted pecans.  Plus a Junami apple.

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2% yogurt with blackberries and muddy buddies.

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Vanilla bean yogurt with tangerine, blackberries, vanilla granola, and citrus crumble cake.

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A coworker just came back from the Philippines and she replenished my stash of these amazing powdered milk candies.

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Best bite sip of the week – very vanilla iced coffee.

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Do you have any romantic plans for next Tuesday?

Carbo-Loading For The Work-Week

Three words to sum up this weekend’s eats – all the carbs.  Fourth word – yum!

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It was a very good weekend, in spite of the city’s first snow.  We drove (carefully!) into Brooklyn both days for tasty brunches, I cooked two new dishes, we cackled loudly at the Garfunkel and Oates special, and I polished off a bunch of freelance work.

Iced latte from Milk Bar.

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Starbucks smoked butterscotch latte.  I ordered this with four shots of espresso (normal x2) and two pumps of syrup (normal/2) and it was still too sweet.

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Espresso and chocolate milk.

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Best brunch of the new year at Sunday in Brooklyn.

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I drank a Sundae Coffee – cold brewed coffee, aged rum, allspice dram, and vanilla cream – and a Smoked Oak Soda, aka the best thing I’ve ever tasted.  It was like a glass of toasted marshmallow!!!

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We started with a pecan sticky bun and a maple cheddar biscuit.  It’s possible we got excited and basically ordered the whole damn menu. 

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I uncharacteristically ordered pancakes… malted pancakes with hazelnut maple praline and brown butter.

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Plus we spit home fries and I stole several bites of Adam’s smoked salmon and pastrami cod.  We took some food home, obviously, and the dog was over the moon for that salmon.  <– I agree, best lox I’ve had yet.

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Work lunch yogurt bowl.  Vanilla bean with TJ’s almond butter granola and chocolate tahini, plus a Piñata apple.

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Pizza lunch at Emmy Squared.  We had waffle fries with bonito flakes.

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The Marn Blanc — white pizza with mozzarella, ricotta, pecorino, and caramelized onion – was good but intense; I’d probably get something with red sauce to cut through the fat next time.

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Snack time, tortilla chips and peanut butter cups.

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Dulce de leche iced chocolate from Cacao Market.

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Turkey salad for a simple dinner, with mayo, ground mustard, celery, sweet and spicy pecans, and cilantro.  Plus baby carrots and buttered sourdough toast.

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Nacho night.  Tortilla chips with sharp cheddar, chunky salsa, and black beans.  Plus more baby carrots on the side.

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Sunday I spent some time chopping in the kitchen and tried two new recipes.  I did a very loose interpretation of Mapo Tofu with ground turkey and gojuchang served on brown rice.

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Next to a bok choy salad.  I borrowed this sauce, and tossed it with chopped bok choy, red bell pepper, celery, green onions, and Valencia peanuts.  It was delicious!  This was our first time eating the bok choy raw and we loved it.

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I’d say my glycogen stores are fully replenished.  Have a fantastic week!

Wrapping It Up

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+.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Gelt!

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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See you next year!  <– my favorite dumb joke