November 2011
6 posts
21 tags
thankful
Some very belated, and very disorganized, and unforgiveably unreciped, tidbits from the past weeks:
Lucky boyfriend got three birthday cakes this year: favorite flourless chocolate, pumpkin cake, and a (very messy but delicious) triple-layer mint chocolate chip ice cream cake with mint chocolate ganache and whipped topping (one layer was another flourless chocolate, so this might’ve had an...
12 tags
bulgogi & rice noodles with broccoli, spinach and...
Dinner last Wednesday: three kinds of kimchi from Woorijip, Trader Joe’s bulgogi marinated boneless beef short ribs (panfry for five minutes on each side, these are effortless and REALLY REALLY GOOD), and rice noodles with sesame sauce, broccoli, spinach and bok choy that I’d made the day before.
Rice noodles with broccoli, spinach and bok choy:
1 large package rice noodles
1...
17 tags
eggplant parmesan
Dinner last night was cheesy, saucy, salty eggplant parm, which I’ve attempted to make several times before (and always failed in one way or another). Last night’s was excellent, and reminded me how much I like eggplant (some fantastic baigan bharta at Tiffin Wallah Friday night helped too). It’s easy and done in under an hour and doesn’t even require a side of linguine or...
7 tags
stove-top roasted chestnuts
Anyone else breaking out the Christmas albums yet? No? Just me and the Wal-Mart advertising committee? Oh, okay. With sincere apologies for those of you who aren’t as thrilled as I am to see wrapping paper on the shelves and Reeses’ trees replacing the pumpkins at the Duane Reade, I AM EXCITED ABOUT THIS SEASON. So, on Sunday, I bought a few handfuls of chestnuts and determined to...
7 tags
comfort food
Black beans, spicy Cuban rice & beans, and goat stew from Sophie’s. Nice follow-up to a morning in the cold moving furniture and boxes of cookbooks from the old office to the new one.
16 tags
birthday blizzard & pumpkin whoopie pies
I have resentful memories of late October weather as a kid, investing hours conceiving a perfect Halloween costume only to have it ruined by the parental enforcement of an unmatching puffy winter coat. My birthday is the 29th, and this year I spent hours trawling thrift shops on the evening of the 28th to find a perfect white trenchcoat to match my Holly Golightly costume in anticipation of the...
October 2011
5 posts
15 tags
apple cider
For the past few weeks, we’ve developed a Sunday tradition of pumpkin beer imbibed in bed sometime between 10 am and 3 pm. This past Sunday broke our streak, as I couldn’t find any pumpkin beer at the Fairway but was intrigued by “The Saint” by Crispin, a hard apple cider. “Artisanal” and “natural” with Belgian Trappist yeasts (ooooooh) and...
16 tags
pumpkin cake with graham cracker streusel and...
Pumpkin blondies notwithstanding, this was the first pumpkin cake of the season, made on a whim after a healthy vegetarian tofu dinner and for no occasion in particular, although we did end up taking the remaining third of it (after putting away 2/3 ourselves in 24 hours. yep. that’s right.) to my boyfriend’s parents’ house for pre-Yom Kippur dinner last night. I have two go-to...
14 tags
stuffed tofu squares & oven fries
Don’t get me wrong, I adore tofu. Really, I do. I like it in stir-frys. I like it crispy and pan-fried in olive oil. I like it instead of ricotta in my lasagna recipe. And I like it - um, wait. Those are all of the things I ever do with tofu. For someone who was vegan for over a year, my lack of tofumagination is kind of depressing. So today, I did something I sort of rarely do for a regular...
13 tags
lazy sunday stovetop slow-cooked barbecue chicken
Even though the weather outside is still persistently not autumnal enough, I’m forging ahead anyway with my knitted wool tights and hot ginger tea and legwarmers and lace-up boots and new Neon Indian album and oversized sweaters and hearty, heavy one-pot meals that are best eaten curled up on the sofa in aforementioned legwarmers.
Back-to-school season changes Sundays, giving them a...
24 tags
pumpkin spice french toast
I don’t understand the conception that French toast is difficult to make. As someone who struggles to achieve perfect pancakes and doesn’t own a wafflemaker, French toast is my standard special-occasion breakfast to impress. Even - or perhaps especially - on occasions when a slightly hungover me is the only one that needs impressing.
Also, HAPPY OCTOBER! Did you know that it’s...
September 2011
10 posts
14 tags
shana tova
So, whatever, I am like an eighth Jewish and sometimes my Jewisher friends like to tease me about it. Then I have to prove myself by doing things like eating chopped liver by the pound. I am only bummed that because my oven is broken, I had to buy Zabar’s challah and couldn’t make honey cake from scratch, but I’ll atone for it on Yom Kippur.
Apples & honey, for a sweet new...
19 tags
date night
Saturday night at Sushi of Gari, literally right downstairs from our apartment.
Near plate: sashimi platter. Highlight was the garlic-miso seared swordfish (I think) on the far left. The quality of the fish was pretty unmatched, and I liked that the waitress walked me through everything on my plate (although, clearly, it didn’t stick with me once I was busy eating it all.)
Far plate:...
10 tags
shipyard smashed pumpkin
In further pursuit of my goal to try a large percentage of the pumpkin beers on the market this season, yesterday we split a Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin (Pugsley’s Signature Series.) In contrast to the sweet, almost syrupy pumpkin pie-ishness of Southern Tier’s Pumking, this one hovered in the savory pumpkin category - sort of like eating a spoonful of plain, organic pumpkin out of the...
16 tags
housewarming: brownies & pumpkin blondies
I first made this cake on New Year’s Eve of this year, so I think of it sort of as my good luck charm of two thousand eleven, symbolic of how far I’ve come in my relationship with food this year. It is to 2011 what pumpkin cake was to my 2010 (see top of page 2 in the link): representative of what kind of cook I am, and what I want to feed people when I cook for them. Despite my...
8 tags
non-copyright-infringing froyo with assorted...
I know I’m super late on this, but I’ve discovered a new favorite food blog: whatsgoodattraderjoes.com. I’m telling myself that it’s just entered my awareness because never before have I lived seven blocks from a Trader Joe’s, but it’s suddenly become a significant influence in my purchasing decisions. For example, nonfat plain frozen yogurt was not exactly at...
17 tags
strip steak with peppers & onions in red wine...
Our new kitchen on the upper west side is not perfect. It has perks: the dishwasher, the fantastic stainless steel appliances and black marble counters. It also has cons, the most significant of which is the fact that pretty much whenever you pan-fry anything with the remotest amount of gusto, the smoke alarm in the living room adjacent goes off. And off. And off. No amount of standing on chairs,...
11 tags
whole foods wedding cake
A coworker’s last day in the office before leaving for her wedding, so I picked out this black-and-white cake: a layer chocolate cake and a layer yellow, with chocolate ganache in between and buttercream over the outside and pink icing flowers on top. Way to step it up, Whole Foods. It was beautiful and yummy. And, since she’s having peach crisp at her wedding this weekend, suitably...
8 tags
pumpkin season
It is September. That means a lot of things. Fall (eff you stop calling it autumn) is my favorite season: leaves falling and brown wool sweaters and thick argyle socks and fresh apple cider and composition books and short nails painted burgundy and brick red and grey tights and cat faces carved into jack-o-lanterns and gold necklaces and birthdays of everyone I love. I am a total dork about fall,...
15 tags
labor day breakfast
Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to his grandma’s house down the shore where he grew up, which turns out to be not terribly far from the places down the shore where I spent a lot of time during summers as a kid (the Maps app on my iPad had me playing a well-illustrated version of the “What exit?” game in the backseat). We ate Vic’s pizza with extra garlic, sausage and...
14 tags
vegan spinach dip
I wasn’t planning for this to be the recipe that broke the blogging dry spell, but after tasting the bite of the leftovers this morning I found I’d stumbled upon something. I’ve actually been cooking quite a bit lately, out of necessity and economy, fashioning meals that could’ve come straight out of the Trader Joe’s cookbook and might have been hard to defend in...
August 2011
6 posts
7 tags
hot chocolate
It’s raining, it’s pouring, we spent most of the day in bed except for an excursion to the gym two and a half blocks away which was interrupted halfway there by a detour to get Chinese food instead. Safe and warm back at the apartment, there was only one thing needed to make this a perfect rainy day.
Hot chocolate:
1 cup milk (skim, 2%, whole, soy, etc.)
1.5 oz chocolate (milk...
11 tags
rice krispie treats
This post is dedicated to Sophie.
Another couple we know moved in together last weekend and their housewarming party is tonight and I decided to make rice krispie treats because like OMG how cute and retro and ironic are rice krispie treats and how cute and retro and ironic that everyone is moving in together and trying not to let the basil plant they bought at Trader Joe’s die in the...
11 tags
red pepper & corn frittata
I’ll just come out and say it: I’ve been intensely neglecting ingestibles as of late. Between preparing to move, moving, working and spending weekends exploring the new neighborhood, I haven’t made the time to diligently record either my foodventures or several culinary experiments in the new apartment’s kitchen, which is tiny (basically existing in the front hallway) but...
8 tags
xi'an famous foods redux
10 tags
fine & schapiro
Officially moved to the Upper West Side a week ago. Roast beef, pastrami and sweet red peppers on rye. My new favorite.
7 tags
fried egg; leftover domino's
July 2011
11 posts
7 tags
old german bakery
There are not many things I will miss about Hoboken when I move to the Upper West Side next week (fingers crossed; knock on wood: if the NY rental market has taught me anything is that if the keys aren’t on your keyring, don’t celebrate yet). I will miss the river and the gorgeous view of the city, I will miss my favorite CVS that reminds me of the Midwestern strip mall suburbs, and I...
13 tags
cubby's
Cubby’s is a barbecue place in Hackensack, NJ known mostly for its ginormous portions and for the fact that its owner, Bobby Egan, is the author of Eating With The Enemy and an unlikely North Korean diplomat.
6 tags
a few of my favorite things
Breakfast today: three quarters of a miniature chocolate mousse cake from Carlo’s, a side order of bacon from the corner deli, and a spoonful of crunchy peanut butter.
9 tags
la isla
Pollo Asado - roasted chicken with yellow rice
Chicharron de Pollo - marinated fried chicken chunks, with yellow rice
Ensalada de Espinaca y Remolacha - spinach tossed with mango, avocado, blue cheese, oranges, red onion, and toasted macadamia nuts served over roasted beets
Cuban restaurant with a lot of hype, but the food was solidly mediocre.
moules
9 tags
tuna melt pancake wrap
A few weekends ago (July fourth, to be exact), I woke up at 7 a.m. and decided I wanted to go to Stacks for breakfast. Most memorable as of late for my belgian-waffle-with-ice-cream-and-bacon breakfast at an equally ridiculous hour, Stacks is perhaps most valuable for its unwavering willingness to make you anything you want, anytime.
On the menu are an array of pancake wraps, quaintly named...
9 tags
china FUN
12 tags
scarpetta
I don’t like trendy restaurants. I’m not saying that in the way people do when they’re too trendy for trendy restaurants. I’m saying that in the way of people who love food and love restauranteurs and love discovering new and delicious things, and hate disappointment. I believe strongly that on a good menu, you shouldn’t be able to “order wrong.” I believe...
17 tags
tea for two
Yesterday at Alice’s Tea Cup, Chapter Two, on East 64th.
Indian Chai with milk & honey.
Chocolate chip & coconut scone on the left, lemon blueberry on the right. Jam and clotted cream are most necessary.
Pumpkin scone above, strawberry cream cheese scone below. The former tasted like October.
Christmas tea, to go with the pumpkin scone. Quite heavy on the cloves.
14 tags
mile end
To make up for several weeks of twelve-hour workdays (which, for the record, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying) I planned a superdate for Friday after work. This mostly consisted of me going to Brooklyn, which I never do. Our first stop was Mile End, where I had a chart-topping St. Ambroise Apricot Wheat beer. The pickle platter was excellent: the new pickles are subtle and delicate and peppery,...
6 tags
special lunch
On Thursday I took a work lunch with one of my best friends in the world since the second grade, Katie, who lives in Boston but was staying in Brooklyn visiting her sister. We went to Takahachi for my favorite near-office lunch special (the miso-marinated grilled salmon). Katie ordered some sushi.
June 2011
19 posts
5 tags
8 tags
watermelon gazpacho
A guest blog post via text from my friend Dan, in lieu of the fact that the best thing I ate today was a bowl of Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut cereal and Deep River Mesquite BBQ potato chips in almond milk.
“I just had watermelon gazpacho and it was the best thing I ever tasted. Like eating summer. It’s from my country club, Alpine Country Club, consistently the best food I’ve...
17 tags
sunday brunch
Finally found a place in Hoboken that reminds me of Philadelphia. Pretzel bread, BBQ ranch salad with fried chicken, and creme brulee french toast with bacon. The caramelization on the surface of the toast perfectly mimicked the hard caramel on the surface of actual creme brulee, and the inside was just as creamy and custardy. Kinda a miracle of physics. Molecular gastronomy ain’t got...
30 tags
saturdate
It was supposed to be date night last night, but after getting off to a late start after work, that quickly turned into an hour together at the gym, massive indecisiveness about what we wanted to eat, then me watching boyfriend eat two blue cheese wedges after realizing it was too late to be hungry. We made up for it today, though, starting with a two-scoop ice cream cone at Ben &...
19 tags
rose pistola & la boulange
It’s my last night in San Francisco and it’s hitting me that this is the first time in years I’ve gone anywhere besides New York and Chicago for an extended vacation (in the schedule of the working world, four full days is practically studying abroad). I serendipitously got to spend most of the weekend with my friend Mary and her sister Liz, who happened to be in Cali at the same...
8 tags
saratoga omelette
I’m in San Francisco on a business trip, but decided to fly in early to spend the weekend checking out the redwoods and North Beach - I’d only been to San Diego before, and this is entirely unfamiliar, as I’d hoped it would be. I spent most of yesterday and today with my friend Fordy, who lives in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. He made me an omelette for...
6 tags
subway's avocado spread
My boyfriend’s developed a minor addiction to Subway’s new avocado spread. I’m dubious…how do they keep it so green?
19 tags
belgian waffle with ice cream & bacon
Some mornings you just wake up hungry. You think about what you want - a bagel? Granola? An egg sandwich? No. You’re ravenous. You have a big day ahead of you. Meetings booked straight through from nine in the morning until eight thirty at night. It’s your last day in New York before you fly across the country to San Francisco, in a middle seat. You worked long hours yesterday, no...
8 tags
12 tags
pb&j cookies
Some of you may have noticed that my peanut butter addiction has gone into remission as of late - but, like they say, you’re always in recovery. I usually get my daily fix each morning with a spoonful or two in my cereal - Peanut Butter & Co.’s Crunch Time, Dark Chocolate Dreams, or a combo of the two (I swear, they pay me nothing, I just can’t help proselytizing this peanut...
7 tags
eggs up
14 tags
centrico & mary ann's
I could eat Americanized Mexican food for most meals without ever tiring of it. It has so many things that I love: gooey, salty melted cheese, creamy beans & spanish rice, generous amounts of onions, avocado, and carbs in both chewy & crunchy forms. Sure, the often greasy and rich Mexican-inspired cuisine in the U.S., like Chinese, is far removed from its original form (chimichangas, for...
