I know this post is behind schedule (and I swear, I really am going to share all of the tasty things we ate at the end of our trip!) but the first week back at work after a vacation always feels so looooong. It doesn’t help that the poor puppy is sick – and it really doesn’t help that he is on 2 weeks of a twice-daily medication, in addition to his twice daily seizure medication! No matter, he has the fuzziest face on Earth and I wouldn’t trade him for the world.
Here are some of the eats from the week that I wouldn’t trade either…
Adam and I took advantage of our joint weeks off and flew home to St. Thomas for a quick visit. The timing worked out perfectly so that we flew in on Mother’s Day and could celebrate with my mom in person.
Our trip was short but wonderful!
We saw some old friends, ate tons of good food, ran on the beach, and visited our favorite spots. I am missing pictures of most of the action, but here are some of the highlights…
St. Thomas now boasts several self-serve froyo places (and a Walgreens?!), a fact that seems insane to anyone who grew up in the VI.
Zest, at the Ritz, also had yummy toddy-brewed VI Roasters coffee, so you know I had to make an affogato.
That is pan-fried Old Wife, a nice white fish that went well with the smoky creole sauce. My plate also had veggies, fried plantains, and fungi – a cornmeal paste that has a texture like firm mashed potatoes.
Finally, fraccos, aka Caribbean shaved ice.
I got soursop and passionfruit with condensed milk and it was one of the best things I ate all vacation!
It was a great trip, and now I’m excited for a three-day staycation in the city before we head back to work.
Oh man, has allergy season hit us with a vengeance. I feel just horrible! My throat hurts, my nose is runny, and my head is an achy, foggy mess. All of that complaining is to say – I missed a lot of pictures this week, many of them of candy and/or coffee because I pretty much had to have a liquid or hard candy in my mouth 24 hours a day. That said, I got to go on several mid-week dates with the husband and it was actually a pretty great week.
breakfast
Smoothie. Vanilla almond milk, frozen banana, blueberries, raspberries and dates, chia seeds, and a scoop of vanilla pudding mix.
Adam prefers his smoothies creamier than icy so I thought the pudding would help with texture but it gave the smoothie an offputtingly sweet taste.
Breakfast date at Doughnut Plant!
I got a tres leches doughnut (the best one on the menu),
and a horchata, a specialty menu item for Cinco de Mayo.
Plus a latte from Gorilla.
Mmmmn.
lunch
Soup for my sore throat.
With a Lady Alice apple.
Guava-cheese empanada.
With a grapefruit soda.
A sandwich from home.
Low-fat cheddar, mayo, and Applegate Farm’s bbq spiced turkey on TJ’s whole-wheat Tuscan pane.
Turkey sandwich from the cafeteria on yummy olive bread.
Plus dried nectarines a coworker brought in.
They were even better than dried apricots.
snacks drinks
Lavender milk tea.
Good but not great.
This “Simply Red” from Pork Slope was amazing.
House-infused hibiscus vodka, mint, lime, and soda. I am obsessed with mint lately.
Low-fat machta latte.
I told you there were going to be a lot of drinks!
dinner
Rice bowls.
For a super authentic Cinco de Mayo.
Date night at the new-ish Luke’s Lobster in Park Slope!
My lobster roll was heavenly.
And then we got a flight at Ample Hills for dessert.
It came in an egg tray and was amazing and delicious and I was basically dying.
{1} The special drink at Café Bene this month is handmade strawberry milk! It’s called a “strawberry latte,” and as far as we could tell it is just milk and macerated strawberries. The husband and I liked it a lot.
That’s more than I can say for the S’mores Frappuccino, as the whipped cream did not taste like marshmallows.
{2} You can eat Kentucky Derby themed snacks even if you don’t watch the race and still have no idea who won.
Milk chocolate gelato and toasted walnuts blended with skim milk, Jim Beam Maple Bourbon, and ice.
{3} Bareburger’s new menu includes a burger topped with pimento cheese, pickled green tomato, a fried egg.
I guess that technically fit in with our Derby eats too.
{4} The new Avengers’ movie was not bad at all. Even though it was long enough for us to need a refill on our giant soda.
It was very funny; several quips had the whole theatre laughing out loud. I think overall it would have been a lot more Whedon-y if it had been Natasha walking into the house instead in that final farm scene (<– intentionally vague so as not to give any spoilers).
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.
highlights…
Homemade S’mores Milk
It’s official, I’m a genius. I put it in coffee, obviously.
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
Place all of the ingredients together in a container and stir to combine. Cover and store in the fridge for 8 – 16 hours.
Strain, discarding solids. Milk can be stored, covered, in the fridge for up to 1 week.
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.
C’est Cheese in Port Jeff
C’est Cheese is always worth the drive up Port Jefferson for dinner.
We shared a beer sampler. The Framboise was my favorite.
A cheese plate. Adam loved the Tallegio and I was all about the 7-year Gouda.
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.
Snacky in Williamsburg
This weekend one of my lifelong best friends celebrated her 30th(!!!) birthday.
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.
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.
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.
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).
And beer-battered cheese curds with truffle cheese sauce from Curd’s the Word.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or salty lime chips, or giant diet cokes.
I made us a huge batch of marinara sauce in the crockpot.
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.
The best part of that meal was our side dish –
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.
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.
Let’s be real – I’ve eaten a lot of Easter candy this week. Here are five things that taste better than Easter candy…
{1} TJ’s Espresso Pillows.
I realize that these are still candy, but they felt like a very fancy way to end my lunch hours. They are a bit smaller, and crunchier than typical chocolate-covered espresso beans.
{2} Homemade oatmeal bowls on the go.
1/3 cup rolled oats + 1/2 cup freeze-dried strawberries + 2 Tbsp malted milk powder + 1 Tbsp chocolate-covered cocoa nibs. I fill my bowl with hot water from the cafeteria (for tea) and have a yummy bowl of oats by the time I get back to my lounge.
{3} Peanut butter yogurt.
2% Plain Fage with my browned butterscotch peanut butter swirled in.
{4} Fresh blueberries.
This low-brow cereal bowl – eaten at my desk while I worked – was one of the best things I ate all week.
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, Lisa – Born Round was amazing!
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.
Paired with a Special K protein bar both days.
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.
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.
…and then I also got Starbucks once I got off of the train.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
All good.
A small but gourmet sandwich.
Toasted whole-wheat with Applegate Farm herb sliced turkey, mayo, and leftover carmelized onions.
Weird pasta salad from the cafeteria.
Why do they keep putting croutons in pasta??
An Austrian iced coffee.
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.
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.
Served on top of brown rice cooked in chicken stock.
Leftover bbq salads.
Spicy, local arugula topped with bbq sauce, cucumber, avocado, bell pepper, caramelized onions, and TJ’s fire-roasted corn cooked with turkey bacon.
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.
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.
Served with green beans baked with fish sauce, honey, Sriracha, and evoo.
We ate casserole the next night too.
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!
