Carbo-Loading For The Work-Week

by Emily

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

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.

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.

Espresso and chocolate milk.

Best brunch of the new year at Sunday in Brooklyn.

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!!!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Snack time, tortilla chips and peanut butter cups.

Dulce de leche iced chocolate from Cacao Market.

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

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

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.

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.

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

6Jan2017

Hello, 2017!

by Emily

How is everyone’s year going?? So far, the word for my 2017 is tasty.

Here are some culinary highlights from the first week…

Coffee first, always coffee. Espresso roast and chocolate milk before work.

I also had the best iced latte of the year from Birch; their shots are extra strong and roasty.

Adam and I both had Monday off of work and we started our new year with a trip to Serendipity 3.

Veggie chili for my lunch.

I kept lunch boring because I was focused on the main event – sundae funday! A giant scoop of peanut butter pie with hot fudge and bananas. <– swoon city

Work lunches were centered around a box of free product review samples I received from ips snacks. The snacks – crisps and popcorn – are all made with whey protein and pack at least 5 grams of protein for </ 150 calories.

I have to admit that I liked the snacks a lot more than I was expecting to. The salted popcorn was honestly the best bagged popcorn Adam or I have ever tasted! It was filling, satisfying, and totally delicious. The chips would rate poorly if I compared them to chip-chips, but score a 9/10 as snack crisps. Very few snacks, especially ones that pack less than 200 calories, keep me full enough in the afternoon that I don’t consider gnawing my own arm off on the train, but these did the trick.

I packed crisps and fruit to pair with toasted turkey and cheese cafeteria sandwiches. BBQ chips and a cara cara.

Sea salt and black pepper chips and an Asian pear.

Snack attack. Popcorn and a honey kolsch.

Yogurt bowl with plain Greek, chocolate tahini, sliced snap dragon apple, chia seeds, cinnamon, and sweet and spicy pecans.

I was killing it with dinners this week. Three different veggie-forward, flavor-loaded, 10/10 dishes! When I made fried green onions last week I saved the infused oil and that’s what I used for cooking this week. First, a simple salad to start off the new year.

Oak leaf lettuce, TJ’s Greek-style feta dressing, cucumber, dill, and roasted chickpeas. With hibiscus kombucha on the side.

Next up, spicy cabbage salad with turkey and peanuts from Bon Appétit. I only ever read this magazine on plane rides but this recipe alone would be worth the subscription cost!

I doubled up so that we could get 4 big dinners out of it, and roasted the cabbage so it was less voluminous, but otherwise followed the recipe exactly <– something I rarely do.

Served with cheesey breadsticks, aka pizza dough rolled up with an obscene amount of cheese.

Finally, I tried my hand at shakshuka. Based loosely on the recipes from Serious Eats and My Name is Yeh, my version had red bell peppers, red jalapeño pepper, and serrano pepper.

Served with hunks of sourdough.

I’m excited to do a little more exploring in the kitchen this new year. My meal plan list for the next month or so includes menemen, mapo tofu, kaya jam, okonomiyaki, and chilaquiles!

31Dec2016

Wrapping It Up

by Emily

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+.

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

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.

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

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.

Gelt!

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.

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.

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

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

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

See you next year! <– my favorite dumb joke

24Dec2016

‘Twas The Week Before Christmas

by Emily

Technically this should be known as “the week of the sandwich.” I don’t actually have a single picture (I was kind of a disaster this week) but I ate a sandwich for at least one meal, some times two, a day.

I was a bit under the weather so for non-sandwich meals I made a giant batch of chicken soup. Shredded chicken breast / onion, celery, red bell pepper, carrots, evoo, tomato paste / chicken broth / brown rice.

Adam and I shared this winter vanilla stout while we cooked.

I packed so many veggies into my pot that I ended up with more of a stoup, so I topped my bowls with cheese, sour cream, and jalapeños, like I would a chili.

It was also a week of eggnog coffee, of course.

And it’s worth noting that the one day I did pack lunch – yogurt with granola and an apple – this strawberry yogurt and TJ’s coffee can were both excellent.

This post was kind of a disaster, wasn’t it?

A very happy 1st night of Hanukkah for all my readers who celebrate and I hope my readers who celebrate Christmas have a merry, jolly weekend.

16Dec2016

Back At It

by Emily

With a crazy-busy week at work and a weather in the tens in NYC yesterday, we are definitely not on vacation any more, Toto!

Thankfully my day-to-day life takes place in the best city in America with the world’s nicest husband and the universe’s cutest dog so it’s really not too bad.

And I get to eat some pretty yummy food too. Flavors of the week – salmon, green beans, eggs, and egg nog…

This week’s coffee combo decked my mornings with boughs of jolly.

Christmas blend espresso roast with soy/nog. I also had a 2nd (and sometimes 3rd) cup at work everyday because going back to work after a vacation kind of sucks.

Vanilla bean yogurt with Bear Naked cacao + cashew butter granola. Plus a super juicy Pacific Rose apple.

Oatmeal with chia seeds, chocolate-covered cacao nibs, and gingerbread spice. Plus an apple on the side and a scoop of peanut butter on top once it was cooked.

Yesterday I had a ridiculously cheesy toasted turkey sandwich from the cafeteria that I was too busy to snap a picture of. And Wednesday the hospital served us a holiday luncheon, complete with the best steamed green beans any of us had ever tasted.

It was a week of sweets, including on-theme jelly beans.

Plus Brooklyn Cupcake. Guava cheese and coquito <– the best flavor.

I also ate all of the Oreo frosting off of this slice of red velvet.

I knew Monday would knock me out, so I got dinner started before work that morning. Strata with a super simple salad with honey mustard dressing.

The egg casserole was this recipe but with whole-wheat pumpernickel, maple chicken sausage, and a nutty raw-milk cheddar. The leftovers were great the next day too.

Wednesday Adam and I did a date night at the beautiful Sisters’ Restaurant. I want to go back for brunch so I get a better view, plus hopefully my food shots will be a little better.

We shared drinks – Nine Pin Cider for me – and two appetizers. Sweet potato fries with local maple crème fraiche and fried cauliflower and capers. The cauliflower was ahh-mazing. And we both decided the Nine Pin is the best cider on the market.

I ordered the salmon niçoise, more green beans for me! It was great, the fish was perfectly cooked.

More salmon for dinner yesterday. I made garlic salmon patties with sautéed bok choy with fried oyster mushrooms and a quick sauce of soy/honey/sriracha. I ate my second patty while I assembled our plates, with a creamy cocktail sauce for dipping.

Have a merry weekend!

18Nov2016

Highlights From Last Week/end

by Emily

Long time no blog! Life has been busy and work has been crazy and Adam had time to spend with me last weekend so I didn’t waste a single moment on the computer. This weekend is going to be pretty exciting too… follow me on Instagram for instant updates.

Speaking of Insta, do you follow @coffeecupsoftheworld? We went to the pop up exhibit in Manhattan last weekend and thought it was pretty neat.

Fitting, since coffee’s been a pretty big feature of the past week.

Here were some of the best bites…

To start, the single best bites of the month. Milk Bar for an iced latte (my favorite in the city) and a Thanksgiving croissant – “stuffing” flavored bread filled with in-house roasted, shredded turkey, homemade gravy, and cranberry sauce! Adam and I swooned and were more than a little sad that we shared instead of getting one each.

Chocolate halvah iced coffee. Better in theory but still not terrible in practice.

Chocolate cherry smoothie – plain Greek yogurt, frozen cherries, vanilla almond milk, vanilla bean paste, brown sugar,cocoa nibs.

Brunch at Lighthouse. With a grapefruit mimosa. We were blown away by our first chilaquiles experience, they are like a bowl full of nachos!

Brown butter sprinkled chocolate chip cookies I made for a birthday party at work. I used the dough base from this recipe and they were fantastic, the little bit of crunch from the sprinkles was perfect.

Ice cream from Davey’s. A Halloween candy mashup and cookie butter chocolate chip.

Dinner at Ducks Eatery. I don’t have a photo of my dinner, which was undercooked and kind of gross, but the appetizer/drinks situation was breathtaking. Exhibit A – smoked mussels with chili oil on toast with maple, smoked butter, and chives.

12th st sour with egg white foam.

Pièce de résistance – the Café Canard – Tullamore dew, espresso, brown sugar, cream, and nutmeg. I’m not one for hot coffee but sipping it through a cloud of sweet, foamed cream is pretty appealing.

Lentil bowls. Red lentils cooked with with garlic, ginger, red bell pepper, carrot, onion, tomato paste, and turkey bacon. Topped with cheese, hot sauce, plain Greek yogurt, and a serving of roasted zucchini.

Stoneridge Orchards sent me a nice package of dried fruits to try. Their products are all organic and always produced without sulfites, artificial preservatives, colors, hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, etc.

Dark chocolate cherries with almonds were a work snack.

P.S. that snazzy glitter sleeve is part of my ongoing campaign to make my office life more enjoyable. Fancy glass water bottle and a felt succulent.

The rest of the berries were paired with toasted nuts and roasted things for some “it still feels like fall” dinners. 10 out of 10 for this product review, by the way, these were by far the best dried fruits I’ve ever eaten. Sometimes dried cranberries can be displeasingly chewy but the texture here was quite pleasant.

Warm kale salad – sauteed kale / dried blueberries / pepitas / turkey bacon / honey thyme balsamic vinaigrette.

Cranberry almond chicken salad – shredded chicken breast / mayo / stone ground mustard / dried cranberries / slivered almonds. The sweetness of the cranberries was perfect with the mustard.

Roasted vegetable medley – butternut squash / shredded brussel sprouts / dried cherries / pecans / more vinaigrette / topped with goat cheese.

I’m off to enjoy a long weekend!

11Nov2016

Stick To Your Ribs Dinners

by Emily

Thank you, to all those who have served.

The weather is starting to cool down a bit more – I can no longer comfortably wear my sandals* – and our dinner choices have shifted towards steamy, stick to your ribs meals. *Note – I’m still wearing the sandals, I’m just not comfortable any more.

This was also election week and it’s safe to say that I ate my feelings in the form of booze, caffeine, and sugar. I am a woman, but I’m also cis/straight, white, sans disability or preexisting health conditions, and unlikely to get an abortion, so I know my feelings of disillusionment and heartbreak really pale in comparison to many others’.

On a happy note, here were some of the yummy things I ate this week…

This week’s coffee blend was soooo roasty and good.

I doubled up with train coffee and post-train coffee a few days, but I’ll note that this quad was enjoyed on a day I skipped the 1st coffee.

Starbuck’s holiday spiced sweet cream cold brew is good! It tasted like good tidings and cheer!

Did KIND bar read my blog? Limited edition caramel apple pumpkin spice is right up my alley. With a sweet Ambrosia apple.

I also love LARA’s hazelnut, hemp, cacao option. The crunchy nibs are great.

I was too busy at work for lunch one day and ate this turkey and stuffing sandwich on the way home in literally less than 3 minutes.

Plain Siggi’s with chocolate tahini and grapes with pumpernickel pretzels on the side. Yes, I put the grapes in the yogurt.

Elderflower yogurt (very floral) with persimmons and pumpkin spice Cheerios.

Strawberry cottage cheese plus grapes and pumpkin spice pepitas and granola. I didn’t enjoy this seltzer as much as I expected to.

Stress eating candies of choice –

Leftover turkey bolognaise that continued to knock our socks off. Thanks to turkey bacon, mirepoix, and 2+ hours on the stove, this sauce was packed with flavor.

With ~~wine~~ kombucha. Blueberry Mint was sweet and drinkable.

Leftover black eyed pea cakes. Topped with cheddar, fire-roasted corn, salsa, and a sunny side up egg with smoked paprika.

We’ve loved this chili from Iowa Girl Eats for years. This year I stepped it up a bit with lemon-pepper chicken, carrots and celery added to the base, and an additional hour of cooking time to concentrate the tomato before I added the beans.

Pumpkin beers to keep me company while I cooked. <– Adam and I both thought these two were some of the best of the season.

I topped my bowls with shredded cheese, pickled jalapeño, and plain Greek yogurt. Plus cucumber slices and Trader Joe’s pumpkin soup crackers on the side.

Chili, meat sauce, baked potatoes… what’s your favorite hearty, stick to your ribs food for winter?

5Nov2016

Bites And Frights

by Emily

How in the world is it November??? I promise not to spend the rest of this year talking about how the year is running out, but it really is blowing my mind.

On the agenda before January? Christmas shopping, finding the perfect day planner for 2017, and plans for three out-of-town trips right in a row.

Presently, I’m waiting for Adam to get home so we can go to brunch. And these were the highlights from the past week…

I actually did a pretty good job with capturing things this week minus a plethora more of nachos and iced coffees. I tried a new blend from Birch.

Espresso and a KIND bar.

Coffee, chai latte, and an almond croissant.

I found a white chocolate seltzer for my Halloween lunch. It didn’t have much flavor, but my oatmeal was good – with chia seeds, chocolate-covered cacao nibs, and candy corn, plus I stirred in pumpkin puree and Greek yogurt cream cheese at the end.

Other lunches centered around this sweet box of samples from LÄRABAR. They offered me a chance to try their newest product – BITES, “truffle-like bites made from real food to satisfy your sweet craving.” The bites are vegan, gluten-free, kosher, and only use Fair Trade Certified™ cocoa and coffee.

We tried three of four flavors (I’m saving mint chocolate for December, aka Peppermint Month) and were big fans. Cherry Chocolate Chip was enjoyable but not our favorite, I thought Double Chocolate Brownie was fudgy and great next to coffee, and Adam loved the fact that Chocolate Macaroon was coated in coconut flour.

I had a serving of brownie bites with a Noosa pumpkin yogurt and some gum drop grapes(!!) for lunch.

Coconut macaroon went with plain yogurt with yummy chocolate tahini on top.

This week’s snack highlights were nut and seed centric.

Also, of course, candy. Another product review, Magic Candy Factory sent me a super exciting sample –

That’s my name! I think this company is really exciting, you can choose from 100’s of shapes, or write a custom message, and MCF will 3D print you a gummy. The candy is vegan (no dairy, no gelatin), gluten-free, nut-free, and kosher. Most importantly, it’s delicious.

We tried sublime strawberry and Adam declared this his favorite gummy candy of all time.

Orange and black nachos for Halloween. TJ’s pumpkin chips topped with cheddar, olives, black beans, and shredded chicken.

Plus pumpkin beers and Peeps. Warlock was fantastic this year.

For the rest of the week, I made a big batch of pumpkin seed pesto. Served on pizza with cheddar and sliced turkey, I promise it was tastier than it looked. With a pea sprout salad.

And we tossed the rest of the pesto with pumpkin-shaped pasta, parmesan, shredded chicken, and roasted cauliflower. Almost nothing is better than pesto pasta.

Enjoy your weekend!

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: yogurt

Carbo-Loading For The Work-Week

Hello, 2017!

Wrapping It Up

‘Twas The Week Before Christmas

Back At It

Highlights From Last Week/end

Stick To Your Ribs Dinners

Bites And Frights