I Can’t Choose A Favorite!

by Emily

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Whole Foods hot bar lunch.

Sesame broccoli, turkey salad, and cole slaw.

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

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

Milk bun.

Crème brulee milk stout.

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

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

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

Garlic turkey meatballs with red sauce and roasted zucchini.

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

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

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.”

Plus chicken ramen with kimchi and poached egg.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Have a great week!

14Apr2017

Chocolate “Cheesecake” Oatmeal

by Emily

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

Are you dying eggs this weekend??

7Apr2017

Crab Rangoon Grilled Cheese

by Emily

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.

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

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

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

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.

The eponymous sandwich!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

With a sour beer on the side.

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

25Mar2017

Coconut, Citrus, And Guava, Oh My

by Emily

Did I mention last week that I need a vacation? This week was worse. Thankfully, starting tomorrow we are on vacation!! Here are the highlights from the past five days that felt like they lasted for ten…

I kept my coffee combo the same, but did kick things up a notch one day with an Aussie iced coffee!

Limoneira recently expanded their orchards to include blood oranges and Cara Cara oranges and they sent me a box of goodies to sample.

The Cara Caras were good, and the blood oranges were the best I’ve ever had – juicy and sweet and just a bit tart. They made a very good work snack (with roasted pecans and TJ’s butterscotch short breads).

And were fantasmic mixed into coconut yogurt with Heritage Flakes.

It was a week of exceptionally good yogurt bowls. Plain Greek with TJ’s mixed nut butter, vanilla granola, chocolate-covered cacao nibs, and shortbreads.

Chicory + coffee yogurt with granola and nibs.

Adam and I both were off on Wednesday and we went to Sunday in Brooklyn for brunch. I had “The Elvis,” charred banana, housemade fluff, sunflower butter, and green apple, on whole-wheat bread.

Plus pie and espresso at Blue Stove. This guava chess was good but not great.

Snacks of note included jelly beans on the first day of Spring.

This lime fresco popcorn.

And the epicness that is Trader Joe’s dried fruit selection. Dried persimmon?! The carabao mango is out of this world, it’s like candy.

Three of five nights I ate a grilled cheese sandwich* while watching Bob’s Burgers** but twice I did manage to cook a legit dinner. Like egg sandwich pitas.

Scrambled eggs with smoked paprika, red bell pepper, and spring onion in a pita with mayo and sharp cheddar.

Plus a cruciferous veggie mix sautéed with cashews and soy sauce.

Green curry chicken and veggies. The chicken strips were baked after marinating in a spicy Sriracha marinade, with yellow onion, green onion, green bell pepper, and roasted zucchini, in a green curry sauce.

We kept the coconut theme going with our drink.

*grilled cheese notes: this week they were on quinoa bread but rye or sourdough is best / sharp cheddar with pickle relish is my preferred combo / always cooked in butter.

**Bob’s Burgers is my new favorite cartoon series (other than Rick and Morty which is just one of the best tv shows of any genre), I like it even more than Futurama. It’s the perfect balance of funny yet sweet.

See ya next week!

20Mar2017

Pie In The Sky

by Emily

This is a longer wrap-up (Monday through Sunday) but I’m missing a lot of photos because this week felt like the actual longest and I mostly just ate cheese on top of various things. Adam and I both have a week off coming up at the end of the month and man, oh man, do I need it! Three big complaints from this past week – 1. some horrible thing are happening in our department and my schedule/work-load is going to become ridiculous; 2. the “blizzard” killed my big Pi(e) Day plans; 3. I stood in front of an automatic door like an idiot and gouged my big toe and then bled all over the place in front of a bunch of cute doctors.

My schedule was all over the place last week so I was disoriented in addition to cranky. Thanks to the weather-related NYC shut down, a last minute schedule change for a lunch and learn, and weekend coverage, I was off on Wednesday, worked a half day on Tuesday and Thursday, and worked a full day Monday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But now I’m off again on Wednesday which is pretty much a golden lining!

/end rant. Here were some of the yummy things that put a smile on my face last week…

Coffee combo on point. Chicory with sweet buttercream creamer.

I also had wonderful iced lattes from Butler and City of Saints.

Killer lunch components = California Grape kombucha. Peach and cloudberry(!) skyr yogurt with Heritage Flakes and a sumo mandarin.

Our lunch and learn was a Nestle presentation on perioperative nutrition. It was more product promotion than educational, unfortunately, and the research wasn’t as robust as I had hoped. My lunch was good though, grilled salmon and mixed veggies.

Fabulous lunch date at the White Oak Tavern.

I had a cocktail with whiskey, Kahlua, housemade butterscotch, espresso, and cream.

We split a salad and salmon for lunch. Chopped salad with cucumber, feta, olives, avocado, haricot vert, and tahini dressing.

Pan seared salmon with a smoked tomato and piquillo puree, plus crispy potatoes and cipollini onion.

We were pleasantly surprised by how good the food was because we definitely came for dessert – a dark chocolate brownie with butterscotch, walnuts, and toasted marshmallow.

Fruit and cheese plate, the cafeteria was feeling fancy.

Coffee break with a honey caramel chocolate bar.

Adam totally saved Pi(e) Day by offering to bake with me. We made S’mores Pie which is one of our favorites. Almost as good as going on a pie crawl in Brooklyn, almost.

The crust looks red because instead of graham crackers I made it out of Peeps flavored Oreos (<– which turned out to be freaking amazing).

P.S. on Monday night while the grocery store was packed with people filling carts with bread, canned goods, and bottled waters, I got in line with Oreos, chocolate bars, marshmallows, and a case of soda. I’d die first if the blizzard had been real but I’m still pretty sure I win.

Eggs for dinner that tasted far better than they looked. Scrambled with sharp cheddar and brown sugar and Sriracha shredded chicken.

When we were at the University of Miami I worked at an on-campus bar that served the yummiest pita tuna melts; it took me ten years, but I finally made them at home.

Curried tuna salad – canned tuna with mayo, green curry paste, curry powder, spring onion, and shallots – with sharp cheddar stuffed in a pita and cooked in a skillet with copious amounts of butter. They were 10/10 fantastic.

Plus roasted green beans with shallots.

Buffalo chicken and veggie bowls.

Roasted sweet potato and brussels sprouts, topped with shredded chicken breast in buffalo sauce, and a drizzle of blue cheese dressing.

Have a great week!

13Mar2017

(Winner, Winner) Chicken Dinners

by Emily

Did this weekend feel far too short for anyone else??! I’m working next weekend – and expecting horrid snow on Tuesday – so maybe I just had a lot of emotion riding on this free time.

We did manage a fair amount of productivity and fun – taxes were filed, groceries were replenished, and we spent a great evening with my cousin and her boyfriend. They were only in Manhattan for a couple of hours but we managed to give them some good New York fun – drinks/games at Barcade and bbq at Blue Smoke.

If this post had six points my bbq dinner feast would have been #1, but since I didn’t bother with pictures while company was in town, here were the weekend’s top five…

{1} Marshmallow flavored popcorn.

It was yummy, and a little bit pink!

{2} This week’s coffee combo – chicory coffee and chocolate milk.

{3} A random lunch assortment – chocolate peanut butter packet, strawberry lingonberry yogurt, an apple, and a pink lady apple flavored kombucha. The kombucha was my favorite component.

{4} Take-out galore. Garlic fries, fried ravioli, southwestern salad, boneless wings, blue cheese, and honey bbq wings.

{5} An Asian-inspired dinner. Scooped up with tortilla chips.

Bok choy and edamame sautéed with garlic and soy sauce.

Red curry chicken salad made with shredded chicken breast with mayo, red curry, red bell pepper, shallot, and toasted coconut chips.

6Mar2017

Brunch At Queens [blank]

by Emily

In spite of the bitter, freezing cold, I spent my weekend appreciating Astoria. I drove in Saturday and Sunday for two (cheese-packed) brunches. Plus yummy post-brunch iced lattes – always iced, always – at Kinship and Gossip. Finally, I did some expensive but adorable shopping at Lockwood.

Queens Kickshaw. We started our meal with a gouda grilled cheese – brioche with gouda, pickled jalopenos, guava jam, and black bean hummus. Such a good combination of flavors!

I had an interesting cocktail with vodka, apricot liquor, golden raisin shrub, and orange bitters.

And mac and cheese with broccoli pesto on the bottom and an egg on top. The pasta was ridiculously good, but actually the best thing on the plate was the side salad; the salads were perfectly dressed rainbow chard with herbs.

Queens Comfort. We shared a King Kong Doughnut to start – banana bread with peanut butter topping.

My friend and I both ordered the fried green tomato benedict – fried green tomatoes on a buttermilk biscuit with spinach, hollandaise, hot pepper jelly, and poached eggs.

Back at my Queens apartment, I served a dinner and dessert worth noting. Shave-ice style yogurt bowl – plain Greek with condensed milk, sliced banana, Frosted Flakes, and a few Luxardo cherries.

Pasta bowls with torn lasagna noodles, tuna, roasted zucchini, and a sauce with gojuchang, brown sugar, vinegar, and soy sauce.

3Mar2017

4 x 3 = 12

by Emily

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.

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

b{2} A killer smoothie.

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

b{3} Double chocolate oat bowl.

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

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.

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.

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.

l{3} Baked potato bar.

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

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.

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.

s{3} Yogurt bowl with my favorite citrus.

Maple yogurt with Heritage Flakes. Plus a Sumo Mandarin.

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.

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.

d{3} Cheesy eggs.

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

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.

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: veggies

I Can’t Choose A Favorite!

Chocolate “Cheesecake” Oatmeal

Crab Rangoon Grilled Cheese

Coconut, Citrus, And Guava, Oh My

Pie In The Sky

(Winner, Winner) Chicken Dinners

Brunch At Queens [blank]

4 x 3 = 12