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Salad Tuesday and Flat Bread

I added a tab on the blog called “Operation Wedding“. I’ll be tracking my workouts and progress over the next 2.5 months… July 24th is quickly approaching! Operation Wedding is well underway – I am very sore this morning.

In other wedding news, I got a caterer. It’s going to be a secret though. You will just have to wait and see because I feel like being secretive. At least for now.

I wanted to share two yummy salads that I have made recently. I always eat more salads in the summer – I just crave them. And I have decided that $2.99 for a bunch of kale is not so terrible. It’s cheaper than eating out, I suppose.

Salad numero uno:

  • base: romaine; massaged kale with avocado, lemon juice, salt, and bragg’s liquid aminos
  • toppings: tomatoes, cucumbers, uncured organic turkey bologna (nitrate/nitrite-free)
  • dressing: pear-feta dressing from trader joe’s

Salad numero dos:

  • base: romaine; massaged kale with avocado, lemon juice, salt, and bragg’s liquid aminos
  • toppings: beets sauteed in butter + some cilantro, uncured organic turkey bologna (nitrate/nitrite-free), shredded cheddar cheese
  • dressing: annie’s lite honey mustard dressing

They were delicious. Reminds me of doing Leng’s salad challenges last year. I hear RhodeyGirl is doing a salad challenge right now too, and so is Lara. I adore salad, and I probably have a salad almost every day without even trying. Don’t forget, I am The Salad Girl.

In non-salad news, I had this amazing flatbread from Trader Joe’s this weekend:

It was called the “Tarte aux Champignons” – a French style flat bread with mushrooms, emmental, and parmesan (love!) cheese. I ate half and Bobby ate half… but I stole his crust. It was amazing. I actually wish the whole thing was just crust. We’ll definitely be buying this again if we can ever get into Trader Joe’s. I had to get this when I was in New Jersey because the Union Square Trader Joe’s lines are always too long.

What’s your favorite salad dressing? Mine is certainly honey mustard! I get it 99% of the time.

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Miami: Christmas in Miami (only 2 weeks late…)

Trying to get caught up on all my pictures… here is the Christmas spread from Miami (Bobby and I spent it with his family and family friends in Miami). On Christmas afternoon (around 1?) we headed over to their family friends’ house – it’s a gorgeous house in Coconut Grove. I think that if I could have any house in the world it would be that one!

This guy decided to watch us out the door (I still think lizards are cool – I did not grow up with them everywhere):

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Bobby’s mom (she’s an amazing cook) made a “chirashi”. Chirashi literally means “scattering” or “leaflets”. It’s a Japanese dish consisting of a bowl of sushi rice with various toppings scattered on top. I think Mom uses a slightly sweet rice (I could be wrong!) with some vinegar and sugar (maybe? sorry for the ambiguity!).

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In the US we usually think of chirashi as rice with raw fish on top, but there are actually many more types. The raw fish type is scattered with Edomae chirashizushi (the raw topping). Toppings are always left up to the chef. This time Mom put shrimp and some veggies on top (lotus root, scallions, carrots, seaweed, and sliced fried egg).

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She also made handmade mochi filled with red bean paste. These are made with sweet rice flour… I didn’t get a chance to help out but I definitely want to learn how to make these. These were wrapped individually with saran wrap.

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Once we got to the beautiful house, we helped set the table with all the goodies…

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There were mashed potatoes, green beans, turkey, Caesar salad (I think Mom brought this too), stuffing with chestnuts, cranberry sauce, wrapped up olives (always forget what these are called), gravy, and probably a bunch of other things that I’m forgetting!

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This was my first plate. I honestly don’t remember how many more I had… I definitely ate too much 🙂 It had Caesar salad, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts (these were AWESOME – I will definitely try to recreate), beans, turkey, and gravy.

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There was also a table of snacks (crackers, cookies, grapes, cheese, etc…) that I forgot to snap a picture of. And then there was dessert…

Handmade marshmallows (!). Topped with powdered sugar.

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Cupcakes!

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Panettone straight from Italy. A family member lives in Italy for work, and they were here for Christmas.

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It reminded me of our trip to Italy (back in 2008 – exactly 2 years ago now).

Back to now… it was a really wonderful day, and I’m so glad that Bobby and I were able to spend it with his family and the very accommodating and kind family friends.

One of my resolutions this year was to travel more – and I definitely want to fulfill it.

Where do you want to travel this year?

P.S. Coming up – IntenSati (Sati Life) review, eating out in New York yums, and more!

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Review: Josie’s West (New York City)

It’s good to be blogging again!

On Thursday night Bobby and I met up with one of my friends from a long long time ago. Gosh, I missed her. We met her very smart and cool boyfriend as well. Thursday (December 3rd) was actually Bobby’s and my 4 year anniversary as well as my brother’s birthday and Bobby’s sister’s birthday. Pretty awesome day.

Anyway, Kate and Simon suggested that we check out Josie’s West on 75th and Amsterdam. It’s a restaurant that serves food and uses “healthy & wholesome ingredients”. Their menu had a glossary (maybe people kept asking questions?) that described some of the more atypical ingredients like “Air baked organic Belgian fries” and “coulis”.

Disclaimer: I didn’t take pictures; I found what I could online.

The meal started with complimentary bread. I chose the cornbread. It was just okay; Whole Foods’s cornbread is better. There was also a dish of some kind of creamed squash spread, which was completely fabulous. I put it on everything.

Bobby and I got two things and kind of shared. We got “organic mesclun greens” with grilled chicken and a red wine-wasabi vinaigrette. The vinaigrette was nothing short of incredible, but the greens and the chicken were fairly boring. I wouldn’t get this again (so bland) but I do want to try to recreate the vinaigrette.

burger

We also got the “char-grilled natural turkey cheeseburger” (picture from the website) which came with cheddar and a honey mustard sauce. Bobby got steamed greens instead of fries (who is this boy?). The burger was very flavorful and juicy. I’d get it again for sure.

To be honest, the company was way more interesting than the food. We might go back, because I feel like I missed out on some cool dishes by getting the salad… but we weren’t really focused on the food at all and I had to pick something to order at the last minute so I went with my fallback (yep, I’m a salad girl). I was way more interested in catching up with Kate!

Overall rating: 6/10 stars. If it had been cheaper I would have rated it higher. The salad was about $15 and the burger was about $14. ::Shrug:: It was a great night, though.

Before dinner I hit up Lululemon and made a kickass buy; more on that later. I also have to blog about…

Stay tuned.

What are you doing this weekend? Tonight Bobby and I went to a neat joint in Astoria and tomorrow we’re going to Chinatown for lunch with 2 of my coworkers. We’re also going back to Lulu and I hope to do some grocery shopping so that I can actually cook something yummy.

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Mee’s Noodles For Me!

I haven’t really been able to cook since I moved to New York. The only things that my kitchen has been used for are grits/oatmeal and grilled sandwiches (thanks, George!).

Last night Bobby and I got take out Chinese from Mee’s Noodles. He had actually gone there for lunch yesterday, and had some leftover beef lo mein. We also got chicken and broccoli over rice and “mee fun” noodles with chicken. The “mee fun” noodles were actually just rice noodles (vermicelli).

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The beef lo mein – awesome. I love lo mein. The chicken and broccoli over rice – pretty good. I wish there had been a little more sauce. The “mee fun” – not that good. But that is only because I don’t like this kind of rice noodle. The chicken (marinated in soy sauce) was really tender though.

This place was (relatively) healthy compared to a lot of Chinese places that I’ve been to. There wasn’t much oil; I’d even call the “mee fun” dish a “diet” dish because it was steamed chicken and very little sauce over plain noodles… it even came with steamed spinach (which was not very good). I didn’t like the mee fun because it was boring.

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Mee’s Noodles is on 2nd Ave and 49th Street and they have free delivery (not sure how far they’ll go). Definitely check it out if you’re in the area – it’s cheap and yummy. The beef lo mein was around $6 (lunch special), the chicken and broccoli was $6, and the mee fun was $5.50 (I think). Bobby also got an egg roll for $1 but I tried it and it wasn’t nearly as good as the egg rolls from Edo Sushi in Pennington. Apparently you can get a small lo mein for about $4.50, but we didn’t see that on the menu until afterwards.

I also had the last of our leftover turkey with this meal (we still have a little bit of tofurkey left). And then I had a million pounds of some Tasti D-Lite.

What’s your guilty pleasure or secret? Mine is… I would be perfectly happy eating Chinese takeout every night, and I don’t actually like cooking all that much. I cannot believe I just typed that.

P.S. I’m meeting up with a blogger tonight! Guess who?

P.P.S. I’d love to do a big New York blogger meetup now that I’m settled in. Who’s interested? Who else can we invite? Where should we go?