Llamas, And Pigs, and Humans, Oh My!

Three-day weekend highlights, including lots of new “bests”…

Unicorn smoothie!  The layers were acai and pitaya with coconut water and plain Greek yogurt.

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Bananarama smoothie.  Frozen banana, plain Greek yogurt, a hot chocolate packet, and Banana Wave Banana Milk.  <– free product review alert: the banana milk is a vegan milk made of banana puree, soy, oats, and other ingredients.  One serving contains as much potassium as a small banana as well as 29 vitamins and minerals and 1200 mg of omega-3 fatty acids.  One cup has 150 calories, 4 grams of protein, and 5 grams of added sugar.

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Black bear, aka Otha‘s coffee concentrate with housemade chocolate milk.  This shop was adorable and we want to go back immediately.

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Du’s Donuts.  Adam’s all time favorites.

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Lunch at Llama Inn.

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I had soft-boiled eggs with delicata squash, charred scallions, pumpkin seeds, and chimichurri sauce.

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We got our own desserts, flan for Adam and key lime pie for me.  Best key lime pie of the decade, it was enrobed in toasted meringue!

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Lunch at Pig Bleeker.  We had a Salty Spritz – vodka, St. Germain, and apricot, with a salty white wine rinse, and a Champagne Sherry Cobbler that was the all-time best drink we’ve ever had – Fino sherry, fresh citrus, and champagne.

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I got a fried chicken thigh sandwich with Pig Beach mustard sauce, house pickles, mayo, and hot sauce.  The meat was smoked before it was fried and it was by far the best fried chicken I’ve ever tasted.

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Durian mochi.

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Malter Chronkite from Mister Dips, a malty chocolate-dipped cone.

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Spicy crunchy tuna sushi bowl.  Brown rice with ginger, rice vinegar, seaweed, and black sesame seeds / canned tuna fish and smoked trout with Sriracha and mayo / quick pickled cucumbers / fresh avocado / panko and fried garlic toasted in butter / Sriracha on top.

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Chopped romaine salad with honey mustard dressing, dill, sautéed mushrooms with garlic, shredded chicken, crumbled blue cheese, and homemade raisins.

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I am on Saturday/Sunday so I’ve only got two days of work before a day off, woo-hoo!

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Salmon Cream Cheese Wontons

I had to work this weekend but somehow I ended up with a bunch of eats that were super good.  Because they all included sugar and/or cheese?  Probably!  Here were the highlights…

Three fun new coffee cups.  Halvah cotton candy on top.

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Chocolate milk ice cubes.

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Starbuck’s nitro cold brew.  I loved the velvety texture but was not a fan of it being served without ice.

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Pickings are slim at the cafeteria on the weekends but I put together a pretty good lunch plate.  BBQ wings, veggie lo mein, roasted baby carrots, and cherry tomatoes with blue cheese dressing.

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Mango yogurt with fresh mango on top.  Guys, fresh mangos are so flipping good, how did I forget about them all winter??

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Cookie and coffee break.  From Bittersweet (a hopping Fort Greene coffee spot with no less than 7 cute doggies waiting in line when I walked in).

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Another sweet snack, vanilla yogurt with chocolate peanut butter stirred in and mini chocolate chips on top.

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Cinnamon dusted apple slices with sharp cheddar squares and chocolate peanut butter sticks.

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Whole Foods hot bar dinner on an after-work shopping trip.  Crispy potatoes, vegan meat balls, roasted zucchini, tabbouleh, and pasta salad.

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Best meal of the week was this quick and easy dinner I threw together Friday night.

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Salmon cream cheese wontons!  I stuffed wonton skins with a mix of canned salmon, cream cheese, brown sugar, fish sauce, and minced ginger.  Baked at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes.

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They were creamy and crispy and delicious.  Served with roasted green beans.

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A close 2nd for best meal was our dinner at Lady’s, a newish Italian spot in Brooklyn.

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The food was all fantastic – so fresh, and perfectly seasoned.  Like this amazing salad with snow peas, sunflower seeds, and pickled radish.  <– 2nd best salad of my entire life

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We also started with hummus with crispy chickpeas, charred cucumber, lemon, and focaccia.

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With a yummy local watermelon ale.

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And for our entrée we shared pasta with crab,

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and honey butter pizza dough with sea salt and Calabrian chili.  The spicy-salty-sweet contrast was perfection.  I had a glass of prosecco with that course and the pairing was wonderful.

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I got a giant scoop of the new cheesecake flavor at Ample Hills for dessert.  It was a tasty weekend!

Chicken Wing Style Meatballs

This week’s top three were tippity-top good!  Sweet and spicy, my favorite combo…

{1}  Fluffy cloud sesame vanilla yogurt bowl goodness.

TJ’s vanilla bean Greek yogurt with halvah cotton candy folded in.

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{2}  Chocolate chip vanilla chia pudding.

Chia seeds + vanilla hemp milk + mini chocolate chips.

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{3}  Chicken wing style meatball dinner.

Inspired by this Spicy Habenero Wing Sauce I got from Moore’s Marinades.  <– free sample alert – this product was provided for me without charge to review, I was not given any additional compensation for this post and all opinions are my own.

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I made spicy meatballs with wing sauce, ground chicken, and celery and onion (the veggies were minced and cooked in butter first).  I used panade instead of breadcrumbs and they ended up being the juiciest, best meatballs we’ve ever made eaten.

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Seriously, Adam and I ate the whole batch in one night because we kept going back for more!

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Served with an on-theme side, sautéed carrot, celery, and spring onion.

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Have a great weekend!

Smorgasburg, Greenport, And The Weekend’s Top Five

{1}  A day trip to Greenport.

Greenport is one of Adam’s favorite Long Island areas and we finally had a Sunday together to go explore.

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We walked on the pier, walked on the beach, ate a kind of meh breakfast in town, plus got a great iced latte and an almond croissant.

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Aaaand a toasted marshmallow iced latte that knocked our socks off.

{2}  Our 1st kolache experience.

So exciting!

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I’ve been dying to try one ever since I started following Kylie and Brooklyn Kolache did not disappoint.

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We did one sweet and one savory – poppy seed and turkey, egg, and cheese – plus a delicious brown sugar iced latte.

{3}  Our 1st Smorgasburg visit of the season.

It was a good one!  We hit up Duck Season for duck fat fries with confit and a sandwich with confit, pickled cabbage, gojuchang, and craklins.

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Ube Kitchen for Halo Halo.  It was a nice dessert, but not Halo Halo – there was no nata de coco, no palm seeds, plus it had granola in it, and almond milk instead of condensed milk.

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Plus we got impossibly smooth coffee from Ministry of Kaapi.

{4}  BBQ chicken salad.

Baby romaine dressed in yogurt ranch, shredded chicken in Korean bbq sauce, cucumber, sharp cheddar, and smoked paprika.

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This was actually the appetizer course for a meal that included cheese fries and buffalo chicken wings!

{5}  A toasted marshmallow smoothie/shake.

Toasted marshmallows, Greek yogurt, vanilla extract, and vanilla hemp milk.

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It was wonderful.

P.S. This is currently the view when I step out my front door!!

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Halvah Cotton Candy

Here were this week’s top five bites –

An egg and cheese roll from a truck in Brooklyn.  This edge bite does not give an accurate picture of just how wonderfully cheesy it was.

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Kiwi Chobani with Heritage Flakes and a Minneola.

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Sweet Cream Liberté with maple quinoa granola and some Golden Nugget tangerines.

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A loose take on this recipe for vegan menemen with silken tofu.  I couldn’t find urfa chiles so I substituted smoked paprika and some raisins and somehow it came out great.

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With roasted zucchini and toasted bread with olive oil.

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Halvah floss (aka cotton candy!).

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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??

Pastrami Smoked Salmon On Sourdough

Once again, this title reflects the most exciting thing I ate in this post.  Honestly though, everything I ate this weekend was pretty darn tasty!

Iced coffee with cake popsicle used for ice.  <– gaaaaah!  so swoontastic!

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Perfectly sweet just enough sour smoothie – passionfruit sorbet / plain Greek yogurt / frozen blueberries / princess flavoring / water.

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Snacky lunch at work.  Mandarin, uncured turkey pepperoni, yummy cinnamon roll Chobani.

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Cafeteria sandwich.  Spicy chicken, pesto, red pepper, and tomato, on an insanely cheesy roll.

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Mr. Flip sandwich from Flip Bird – pulled rotisserie chicken, harissa honey, pickled coleslaw, sambal mayo, and a piece of crispy skin.  It was a 10/10.

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Dinner from the freezer – ice cream and a naan pizza.

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The cilantro pesto pizza – which I got with a free coupon given to me for review – was delicious, the flavor was a bit spicy, which was a nice surprise.

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Lox and cream cheese on a bagel sourdough toast.

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This pastrami-style smoked salmon from Trader Joe’s is my all-time favorite smoked salmon.

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Served with a quick salad of tomato, cucumber, cilantro, green onion, olive oil, and Himalayan salt.

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I made a recipe!  Cheddar bbq turkey meatloaf.

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I ate all of the crispy cheese bits that started to burn to the pan and was sooooo happy.  Plus roasted broccoli.

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Do you have a favorite type of smoked fish to recommend?