Category Archives: Restaurants

Brooklyn and the Blogger Hubby

Posted on March 22, 2010 | 5 comments

Good morning all – how was your weekend? Mine was busy and good, but I feel a bit exhausted at the moment. I was supposed to go for a run this morning, but my allergies were out of control and I felt not so hot. So I bailed and will have to add that run to the end of my week.

After my long run on Saturday (yay for 17 miles!), I headed downtown to meet my friends Rachael and Stephanie at the Brooklyn Bridge. From there we walked over the bridge into Brooklyn. I can’t believe it took me so long to finally walk the Brooklyn Bridge. It was very pretty, but also very busy. It was so crowded, I didn’t even want to stop to take some pics.

When we got into Brooklyn, we headed to Rachael’s new apartment in Carroll Gardens. It was super cute and in a fun area. We went to dinner right around the corner, but I can not for the life of me remember the name of the restaurant. Rachael and I got risotto, she got seafood and I got mushroom. It was amazing. Stephanie’s pesto pasta dish looked awesome as well. Here are the two risotto dishes:

Seafood Risotto

Mushroom Risotto

So yummy! Afterwards we hung out at Rachael’s apartment and watched a not-so-great movie: New York, I Love You. There were soo many big name actors in this movie and it was about New York, we thought for sure it would be good. It was not. I actually fell asleep about halfway through. Oops! I guess the 17 miles finally hit me.

On Sunday we woke up around 9:00, had some breakfast and then headed out. My allergies were going a bit haywire because of the doggie and they just continued to flare up all day Sunday and into the night. I told Hubby when I got home that his hopes of ever owning a dog are slim to none.  

Do you suffer from animal allergies or seasonal allergies?

My allergies to dogs are decidedly worse than to cats. Murphy is one lucky kitty cat.

While I was out exploring Brooklyn, it seems Hubby was spending some quality time in the kitchen. I came home to find these:

A huge plate of white chocolate chip cookies. And he also made some venison stew this weekend. He documented his progress – what a little secret blogger at heart! 🙂

Before

Oops – he also snuck in a Murphy snuggling shot:

After – when the stew was complete:

After a Sunday full of laundry (3 loads), vacuuming and cleaning. I was happy to not have to cook and enjoyed some of Hubby’s venison stew:

And I know I gave up sweets for lent, but that giant plate of cookies is bound to get stale, so for the sake of not wasting food I also ate a few.

I try to be helpful, you know?

I’m excited for this evening. I’m attending the Village Voice Choice Eats (thanks Megan for sharing the event info on your blog!) with my friend Katie. Then tomorrow it’s back to the grind, marathon training and hopefully 100% health. 

And congrats to all those people who ran the NYC Half Marathon on Sunday! I saw a ton of runners on my way home on Sunday morning and I was just the tiniest bit jealous (ok really jealous).  What a perfect day for it. Have a good Monday all!

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Fun and Run Sunday

Posted on March 8, 2010 | 12 comments

Good morning all – it’s Monday again already. Whoever decided that weekends should only be two days and the work week five days was a cruel person. I think it should be reversed.

I’ll start by giving you a quick recap of Sunday, which was a busy and beautiful day. I woke up pretty late  – around 9:15 and had a light breakfast of granola with blueberries and blackberries.

I kept my breakfast light because I was attending a fun blogger lunch at noon. I met up with Lindsay around 11:45 and we walked over to Candle Cafe. I’ve eaten dinner there before, but had yet to try brunch/lunch.

I was really craving some breakfast-brunch food and was excited to see waffles on the menu. I ordered the waffles, along with a much-needed coffee. The waffles were delicious – they came with banana, apple and candied pecans on top. I gobbled them right up while enjoying some lively conversation with five other fellow bloggers. Here we are:

From the front left, that would be me, Lindsay, Katherine, Dori, Ashley and Melissa. Katherine and Melissa had just finished a run in Central Park and oh how it made me jealous. I decided I needed to squeeze a run in at some point in the afternoon. It was a lovely gathering and the conversation was wonderful – I can’t wait to do it again in the near future!

After my brunch/lunch I headed home to start the dreaded laundry. I settled on doing two loads and then squeezing in a run – the sun was beckoning me.

I finally made it out around 4:15 and headed to the promenade along the East River. My run yesterday felt good, but it didn’t feel fast and although I should have been taking this run slow as a recovery, I decided to test my speed a bit. Here are my stats:

Mile 1 – 8:04
Mile 2 – 8:08
Mile 3 – 8:23
Mile 4 – 8:03
.52 – 4:35

Total Mileage: 4.52 miles in 37.13

It wasn’t particularly easy to maintain that pace, but it did feel good to be moving faster. I’ve decided I definitely need to work more fast runs like this into my week, along with some hill-work. It’s time to get serious if I want to try to qualify.

Have you ever tried to increase your speed – what kind of workouts did you do?

After my run, I cleaned the apartment a bit and then made some dinner. I was inspired by this recipe from Cooking Light.com, but definitely made some changes.  

Pasta with Chicken and Spinach

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 cup)

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups of wheat pasta  (9-ounce) package fresh cheese tortellini (such as DiGiorno)
  • 1  tablespoon  pine nuts
  • 1  teaspoon  olive oil
  • 6  4 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 1/8 cup of chopped onion
  • 1  (6-ounce) package fresh baby spinach
  • 1/4  cup  (1 ounce) preshredded Parmesan cheese
  • 2 Laughing Cow Light Swiss Cheese triangles
  • 1/4 cup of dry white wine
  • 1 tablespoon of butter
  • 1/4  teaspoon  black pepper
  • 1 large chicken breast 2  ounces  prosciutto, thinly sliced

Preparation

1. Cook pasta according to the package directions.

2. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add nuts to pan; cook 1 1/2 minutes or until toasted, stirring occasionally. Then add garlic and onion to pan; cook 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add spinach and chicken to pan; cook until chicken starts to brown and spinach is wilted. Add the wine and butter – cook for 2 minutes. Turn down the head and add laughing cow cheese and mix until evenly distributed.

3. Add pasta to the pan and toss with chicken and spinach mixture.

I enjoyed my meal with a glass of red wine.

It was very yummy and the Hubby said he liked it much better than some of my recent “crazy concoctions.” 🙂

After dinner, we settled in to wait for the Oscars to start. To make it a bit more interesting, I printed two ballot forms from online and gave one to Hubby to fill out and one for me. Here’s my blue ballot:

A little while later I decided I needed a snack for the start of the show. I slathered some peanut butter on a few triscuits and finished up the blackberries.

And then we watched The Academy Awards. And boy did they go on forever! For some reason, I didn’t think this year’s show was all that funny or entertaining. I just kind of kept waiting to check off my ballot boxes.

What did you think of the awards?

As I said in a previous post, I wasn’t such a huge fan of The Hurt Locker, but my instincts told me it was going to win. And indeed, I was right. I ended up winning our ballot guessing contest by only missing 7 categories as opposed to the Hubby who missed 10. He picked Avatar to win more awards and I agree with him that it should have won more, but my gut said it just wasn’t going to happen.  

By the time the awards were over it was waaay past my bedtime. Hence, I’m a tired little lady this morning, but will hopefully wake up as the day progresses. Have a great Monday all!

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Delicious Dinner and Garmin Gripe

Posted on March 2, 2010 | 15 comments

Good morning – how is your Tuesday going? Mine has been pretty busy and productive so far. But first, let me talk a little bit about the dinner I went to last night.

Megan from the  Runner’s Kitchen organized a dinner gathering with a few fellow local bloggers and blog readers. We all met at Caravan of Dreams for what turned out to be a delicious meal. Our group of girls consisted of myself, Megan, Katherine, Liz, Irina, Jess, and Jacqui.  

Katherine and I traveled from the UES together and quickly realized that neither one of us is very good at navigating. We got ourselves a little lost and ended up showing up about 10 minutes late. Oops – sorry!

After we finally managed to point ourselves in the right direction and get there, we quickly settled in to look at the menu. Caravan serves organic vegan food and the menu was gigantic. I seriously experienced a slight feeling of panic because there were soo many things I wanted to order, I wasn’t sure how to narrow it down.

I settled on the: BURRITO MONOSKI with seitan, black beans, brown rice, sautéed vegetables, guacamole and salsa. I didn’t snack much yesterday, so I was ravenous and wanted something filling. We placed our orders and our salads arrived quickly – I pulled out my camera, turned it on and watched as it told me to change my battery pack. I’m a bad blogger. Seriously – everyone’s food looked amazing and smelled amazing. I’m sorry I can’t back that up with some nice photos. 😦

I chose the burrito monoski because it sounded great, but I was also interested in trying Seitan for the first time. So what is seitan?

Source: “Although it is made from wheat, seitan has little in common with flour or bread. Also called “wheat meat”, “wheat gluten” or simply “gluten”, seitan becomes surprisingly similar to the look and texture of meat when cooked, making it a popular meat substitute. Seitan is also high in protein, making it a popular protein source for vegetarians.”

I can say with all honesty that my meal tasted like a regular chicken burrito. Maybe even better. It was flavorful and large and had plenty of guac and salsa – what more could you want?

Caravan also has a diverse tea menu – yay! I ended up ordering the dessert tea, which had a delicious vanilla flavor and aroma.

Our dinner was very nice – I was at the end of the table, so I feel like I missed out on chatting with some of the girls on the other end, but overall it was great to talk about running, good food and more NYC restaurant recommendations than I can even remember. These girls knew their restaurants and I was trying to keep all the names in my head – no such luck.

Katherine, Liz and I headed back to the UES together and Katherine said she was game for a run the next morning. YAY!

So today my training plan called for a 7-mile run, but let’s be honest, with the way I felt after my Sunday 14-miler, there was no way that was happening. I was still sore and thought that a nice 4-5 mile run sounded manageable.

We met at the crack of dawn…actually pre-dawn, there was no sun yet, and set out for a run on the streets of NYC. I finally got to meet Katherine’s dog Bodhi and he was so adorable and such a good runner. I loved when I would have to run a bit behind him because there wasn’t enough room for the three of us on the sidewalk and he would look behind him every now and then to see where I was – like he was checking on me. 🙂

Last night, Katherine and I had been talking about running on the city streets and how she had heard from others that Garmins don’t work very well. I told her that mine worked perfectly last time and I thought we’d have no problem.

WRONG! Katherine was indeed correct – my Garmin seemed to have some problems locating us and ended up telling us we were running super slow, then super fast and then that we hadn’t run as much as we thought.

Katherine used www.mapmyrun.com to map out our route and it looked like this more or less:

It came out to be a 4.56 miles. Now, here is the Garmin run:

Look similar right? Well, when you zoom in a bit, things get a little funky:

It seems like we were zig-zagging and cutting corners left and right, but we really were not. At then end, I ran from Katherine’s apt to my apt, which added about .29 more to the total and according to Garmin the run only reached 4.29 miles. According to mapmyrun, when we reached Katherine’s apartment we were already at 4.56 miles.

So who knows what the precise mileage was, but I am a bit annoyed that my Garmin seems to have such a hard time when I run the city streets.

Has anyone else who lives and runs in a major city (with lots of tall buildings) experienced the same problem?

I like running on the streets when it’s too dark for the park or promenade, but guess I will have to settle for a general estimate of my mileage.

The highlight of the run though was most definitely when we saw the sun rise at 6:04 a.m.!!! So early!! Daylight Savings here we come! 🙂

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Wasted Weekend and Weather

Posted on February 22, 2010 | 5 comments

Good morning all – back to the grind, right? Ugh – I am not feeling well at all, hence the serious lack of posting this weekend. The weekend started out okay – I headed to Brooklyn to visit my friend Katie for some dinner and drinks.

Although, I noticed even before I left work that I felt a little off. I chalked it up to allergies and headed out to BK. We had a very fun night in Williamsburg. We went to the Manhattan Inn for dinner, which is a very small restaurant that is just adorable. Great ambiance. They even have a piano player placed in the center of the room.

They don’t have a menu online, but our/my food went like this: cheese plate (we got the last one available), bread with apple butter, mushroom spring roll things and then as my main meal I had the Vegan Polenta – per the waitress’ recommendation. Everything was amazing. The lighting was really poor, so these are the only pics that are post-worthy.

The food was amazing and we also shared a bottle of wine. After dinner, we headed to a nearby bar called Harefield Road for Katie’s co-worker’s birthday party. We only stayed for one drink because we were both tired and somewhere along the night I lost my voice entirely.

We headed home to bed and I could feel the congestion mounting in my head and chest. I tried to play it off like it was just my allergies, but by Saturday morning I had a feeling it was turning into a real cold.

We awoke on Saturday and my congestion and phlegm (sorry) was in full force. I managed to make it to brunch with Katie before heading home to bed. We went back to Harefield Road because they supposedly have a great brunch for $12. It did not disappoint. We each ordered the french toast, made from Challah bread, along with fresh fruit. Our breakfasts also came with coffee and a mimosa.

Brunch really hit the spot. However, I was unable to drink my mimosa – I was starting to fade fast. I said goodbye to my friend after brunch and trudged home.

I entered our apartment to find my Hubby doing exactly what I wanted to do: laying on the couch and resting. I proceeded to change into sweats and curl up on the couch and cough and blow my nose all day.

We watched as our temperature gauge showed that it was 46 degrees outside, while we both huddled under our blankets indoors. As afternoon turned to evening, I started thinking about my 9-mile run planned for Sunday. I wondered if I could push through the congestion to get it done. I decided it would be game-day decision, based on how I felt.

Hubby and watched the Olympics on Saturday night and I’m pretty sure I was asleep by 9:30-10:00 p.m.

I awoke Sunday morning to the sound of my own wheezing and phlegm rattling. I tried to speak and found I had no voice at all. Or if I managed to get a sound out it sounded like a small elf’s voice. Hubby thought this was hysterical.

So Sunday proceeded much in the same manner as Saturday. I decided that attempting my 9-mile run would be dangerous since I could hardly breathe. I was upset at first, but then decided that it’s probably lucky that this was a low-mileage long run week. If I had to be sick any week, this was probably the best one. I also know that pushing too hard when you’re sick can make you more sick. If my cold was just in my head area I probably would have gone, but it was in my chest as well and that’s what made me nervous.

So I watched in sadness as two 40+ temperature days passed me by without so much as a jog. Hubby and I alternated between watching the Olympics, sleeping, watching t.v. movies and watching Couple Retreat. We were a sad, sad pair.

Although, maybe it’s a good thing that we were both sick at the same time, rather than one person being sick first and then the other following a few days later. The bad side of this was that by Sunday night, it looked like a bomb had gone off in our apartment. It was a complete disaster, but I was too tired and sick to do anything about it. I was in bed again by 10:00 p.m.

Today I feel a little bit better – I still have stuff rattling around in my chest and congestion in my head, but all the sleep this weekend seems like it helped a bit. I am taking one more day off from running – I’m eager to get back into my training plan, but want to be sure I’m ready.

So how bout you all – did you enjoy the weekend?

And how do you cope with a cold? Do you tend to get sick if your significant other or roommate gets sick?

Have a great Monday everyone – hopefully it goes by quickly.

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Weathermen Stink

Posted on February 6, 2010 | 5 comments

Good morning – happy weekend! Did you get some snow in your area? We haven’t YET and I’m so frustrated. If I had known that the snow wouldn’t actually start until late morning today then I would have gone out for my training run. I was shocked when I woke up this morning and looked outside to see NO SNOW! Grrr – weathermen never get it right!

I apologize – yesterday I forgot my camera, so I don’t have many pics. I do have a photo of my breakfast, which was my first attempt at overnight oats. I followed Iowa Girl Eat’s recipe for this yummy breakfast.

It doesn’t look very good, but it was yummy! The coldness of this breakfast was a refreshing change.

  • 1/3 cup old fashioned oats (uncooked)
  • 1 fat-free Vanilla Chobani Yogurt
  • 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
  • cinnamon
  • 1 sliced banana

Then simply mix it up, refrigerate,  and eat it the next morning. This made a ton of food and I could actually only eat half of what I made. I saved the rest for Saturday morning.

My day at work on Friday was filled with much less than food than the previous day. I didn’t have a morning snack and then my lunch was chopped carrots, tomato and cheddar cheese with balsamic vinegar. Then I snacked on 1/2 bag of kettle corn light popcorn and an apple.

After work my co-workers and I headed to Stone Street for some cocktails. We went to a new placed called Vintry Wine and Whiskey Bar. I don’t drink whiskey, so I went with some Italian red wine. It was very yummy. While we were there we also snacked on an array of appetizers. We had a cheese plate with parmesan cheese, goat cheese and brie. We also had knishes, something called “the egg” and some almonds and fruit. Here is the spread.

Everything was really yummy. After a few glasses of wine and the delicious food I headed home around 9:00 and spent the rest of the evening reading and cleaning a bit. I’m pretty sure I was asleep around 10:30 p.m.

For the rest of the day I’ll be doing laundry, cleaning and then heading to Avatar this evening. I’ll finally find out what the hype is all about!

What about you – did the snow, or lack of snow affect your weekend plans?

Have a nice weekend!

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Greek Goodness and the Ballet

Posted on February 4, 2010 | 5 comments

Good morning – how is everyone this fine Thursday morning? Is this week going by fast for you all? It is for me. I am definitely happy it’s Thursday though. Wednesday was busy and was over before I knew it!

Breakfast yesterday was Kashi Heart to Heart cereal with blueberries on top. I bought a huge container of blueberries last week and they’ve really lasted well.

Lunch was a salad from across the street – romaine lettuce with cheddar cheese, carrots, dried cranberries, walnuts and chickpeas. Topped with balsamic vinaigrette.

Snacks for the afternoon were Chobani yogurt with Kashi Go Lean cereal and a bag of grapes. The grapes were on sale last week so I bought them, but they did not last very long.

After work I headed uptown to a restaurant called Molyvos Restaurant to meet up with my friend Katie, her brother and her brother’s girlfriend. I’ve had Greek food before, but never really out at a nice Greek restaurant. This place was very nice and food was delicious. The menu on their website isn’t correct, but the one on menupages is right.

 We started with some wine and two appetizers: hummus and Tzatziki, which is sheeps milk yogurt with cucumber, garlic, mint and dill. I loved both, but favored the Tzatziki a bit.

 For my entrée, I had the Yemista, which is a  stuffed local red bell pepper, with arborio rice, eggplant, tomato and manouri cheese.

Sorry – I had to use flash on this one. It was scrumptous!! Soo delicious. I tried a bite of everyone else’s meal as well. Here they all are:

Aglaias Moussaka: casserole layers on eggplant, potato, tomato, spiced ground lamb and beef, yogurt bechamel.

Kritharaki Me Halaassina orzo risotto style with calamari, scallops kozani saffron and feta

Makaronia rolled pasta stuffed with agiorgitiko slow cooked short ribs, three cheese cream sauce

ALL were amazing!! What’s your favorite Greek dish? I have to say that mine was good, but I think the Makaronia was the best – hello it had a 3-cheese sauce!

We finished up our food and drink and then hopped in a cab to Lincoln Center. We made it just in time! We saw The Sleeping Beauty, performed by the NYC Ballet. It was a really great show. The only other ballet I’ve seen is The Nutcracker, which I dragged the Hubby to last year. Both were amazing, but this one was kind of nice because I knew the story better (thanks Walt Disney) and followed along easily. I had kind of forgotten The Nutcracker story when we saw that ballet, so I spent some time trying to remember the story while the ballet was going on.

I will say the first half of the show seemed a bit too long – intermission was a solid hour and a half into the show. We left Lincoln Center a little after 10:00 p.m. and I hopped in a cab. I was tired and ready to go to bed and was riding along smoothly until we were almost through Central Park and then the cab got a flat tire! Seriously. I had to get out and try to find another one to finish my trip home. Never had that happen before – very weird.

I made it home via the second cab and pretty much fell into bed. I was so happy that Katie asked me to go to the ballet — her dad and step-mom bid on the tickets at a charity auction and won, but then neither they, nor the other couple they bid with could attend, so the tickets would have gone to waste. The ballet is generally something that I wouldn’t think to go to on my own. It’s just a reminder that there are still soo many things I have yet to take advantage of in NYC and I’ve been living here for almost 4 years!

How about you – do you take advantage of all the activities and cultural events that your city/town has to offer?

NYC is soo diverse – I could probably do something different every night of the week if I wanted to (and had the money)! I should add that goal to my 2010 Resolution List – take advantage of more of the things NYC has to offer. 

Hope you all have a good Thursday. Talk to you on Friday.

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Ethiopian Eats

Posted on January 28, 2010 | 9 comments

Good morning – happy Thursday! It’s almost the weekend. How was your Wednesday? Mine was infinitely better than my Monday and Tuesday. For starters, I actually got up and went to the gym before work! YAY. I wasn’t taking another chance that I might not make it after work.

And it turns out my decision to skip the gym on Tuesday night following my stressful day was probably a good one. After reading this article: 4 Tips to Run the Stress Off from active.com, I’m positive that forcing myself to squeeze in that run could have resulted in an injury, or at the very least exhaustion.

What about you – do you back off running when you’re stressed or do you push through and try to work it off during the run?

So I was at the gym and running by 5:45 a.m. on Wednesday and since there weren’t many people clamouring for a treadmill at that time, I was able to run 6 miles guilt-free. I ran it in 52:20. I did a few ab exercises, but I wanted to be sure I got to work on time, so it was pretty quick.

While I was at the gym, I realized that I had completely forgotten my food bag for the day. It was sitting on the kitchen counter all alone. So I stopped at the Food Emporium on the way to the subway and picked up a few things to tide me over throughout the day. No clue where my head was yesterday morning – probably still in bed asleep.

I got to work a little early and proceeded to have my make-shift breakfast of a gnu bar with coffee and a clementine.

I loved this bar and the banana walnut flavor! Yum – I will be buying this one again.

My mid-morning snack was an apple and I was ravenous by the time I ate it at 11:00 a.m.

For lunch, since I forgot my food bag, I had to run out in the cold to get a salad. Yesterday’s salad had romaine lettuce, carrots, cheddar cheese, cucumbers, chickpeas and peas.

Later afternoon snacks were Chobani yogurt with Kashi Go Lean cereal and a small bag of walnuts and raisins (undocumented).

All day I was thinking about what I needed to do after work – stop at the store, do the dishes, tidy up the apartment and make dinner. And then around 3:00 p.m. my friend Katie texted me and asked if I was free to go to dinner. Normally I’m not free – I’d be going to the gym. But since I’d already done that, I told her yes, I was very much free!

Katie and I like to try a variety of cultural and ethnic foods. Last night, we decided to try Ethiopian food at the appropriately titled: The Ethiopian Restaurant in my neck of the woods.

We started with the Sambussa appetizer, which was very small and was two, cooked ground-beef and classically-spiced patties.

We then split two entrees: 1) the ethiopian combo which was a combination of yebeg alecha, tibs wot, tikel gomen, misr wot and yabesh gomen; and 2) a chicken dish with the house sauce and spices.

I loved almost everything on the plate. The bean/lentil dish was a little too spicy for my taste, but I still ate a bit of it. And the cabbage and carrot portion was amazing!

My friend warned me that I may or may not like the bread because it has a unique texture and some people love it or hate it. I loved it!! It’s called injera.

Footfit.com’s page on Ethiopian food is really interesting – check it out! Here’s a small snippet.

“The cooking of the oldest independent country in Africa stars an array of spices that give its stews, sautéed meats, and vegetable dishes a deep, rich, aromatic, oft-times fiery taste….At the heart of Ethiopian cooking is injera, a flat bread that looks like a large pancake but has a spongy texture and a tangy taste reminiscent of sour dough. Injera is made from a tiny, highly nutritious grain called teff that is rich in fiber, iron, protein and calcium.”

Not only is inerja yummy and nutritious, it’s also your utensil throughout the whole meal. You pick up the various meats, veggies, etc. using this bread. And it works really well.

All in all, it was a great meal. The owner kept coming over to check on us, which was very nice and even offered to take our picture.

Don’t mind my slicked-back hair. That’s what happens when you shower at the gym in the morning and then put a hat right on. A nice little flat-head.

So what do you think – would you ever give Ethiopian food a try? What interesting or new food/cuisine have you tried lately?

I for one highly recommend you give it a shot! I was nervous going in because I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it was great!

Have a great day everyone!

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I Love an Extra Day Off

Posted on January 18, 2010 | 7 comments

Good morning. I hope everyone is having a good Monday and that those of you who have it off are taking full advantage of the extra rest day. I love having a day off and then a 4-day week – it’s great. Plus, when it’s a busy and fun-filled weekend (like this weekend has been) it really helps to have one more to catch up.

When I last posted, I just finished a 9-mile run with Katherine and was heading out to a bachelorette party at Foxwoods Casino. Before I left I ate a second breakfast after our good run. I had a granola bar, a clementine (two pictured, but I only ate one), a big glass of water and a coffee.

And let me warn you now – I was a bad blogger from here on out with taking photos of our food. I was more interested in taking pictures of all my friends and the fun we were having. Food photos kind of were forgotten.

I drove with Rachael from NYC to Foxwoods and was amazed at how HUGE it is!! It’s like its own little world. This was my first time attending a bachelorette at a casino and it was fun! We got there and got changed and headed to the bride’s room for some pre-dinner fun. Here are some of the goodies and games we had going on.

I definitely snacked on some tostitos with salsa and had two drinks before we left. We also had a bachelorette celebratory shot – and it hurt. I don’t do shots.

We headed to a Mexican restaurant in the casino and started off with appetizers – nachos were a must!

These were pretty darn good! There was also so great guacamole going around, as well as pitchers of margaritas. For my main meal, I shared a chicken burrito with my friend Tera and it was the perfect amount of food. Then we took a lovely group picture!

And a few of the girls got a little bit silly in the back there! It was the margaritas.

And here is Stephanie, me, Kelly (the bride-to-be) and Tera enjoying ourselves.

It was a great night. We followed dinner up with some dancing in one of the casino clubs and we were there until they turned the lights on and kicked everyone out. I haven’t danced in a while, so I was fully enjoying myself. That is the latest I have been out in a very long time. Many drinks were had, but I don’t have an exact count – my head was definitely hurting the next day.

Sunday was a lazy day for me. We drove home and I spent the rest of the day on the couch watching t.v. and I also watched Julie and Julia finally!

It was such a cute movie. I loved being able to relate to the blogging aspect of it and trying to cook new foods. I’m just about the last person to see this movie, but still, if you haven’t seen it – I recommend it.

I didn’t take many food pics on Sunday because I wasn’t too hungry and didn’t have the motivation. I went to bed early and am planning on making today a productive day – laundry, cleaning and hopefully a short run.

What do you like to do on days off – relax and lounge or get errands and “to-dos” done?

Whatever you like to do, I hope you enjoy the day off, if you have it off!

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Posted in Restaurants, Travel, Uncategorized

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Sharz, A Show and Sleepy Sunday

Posted on January 10, 2010 | 5 comments

Good afternoon blog world. It’s Sunday and I have to say it’s been kind of a sleepy one so far. It’s been a busy and fun weekend and it’s left both the Hubby and I a little tired today. Yesterday after my race, I had a second small breakfast – I was hungry after that run. I had some pineapple Chobani yogurt with granola and some light cranberry juice.

I may have also had a cup of coffee after my snack. I was feeling kind of tired after the race. But I also drank a lot of water throughout the day. The Hubby and I lazed around and watched a movie before getting ready for our night out. During the late afternoon I snacked on a Larabar.

I loved the Peanut Butter Cookie flavor – yum! But when don’t I like foods with peanut butter?

Around 6:00 p.m. we headed out for a quick bit to eat in our neighborhood. We went to Sharz Cafe, one of my favorites in our area. The Hubby doesn’t have the same love for it as I do, but I always enjoy the food. I also like the “Twilight Dinner Special” they offer. If you arrive before 6:30 p.m., you can eat a 3-course dinner for $21.50. A pretty good deal in my book. I have to apologize – I did not take any pictures. The restaurant is very small and Hubby got especially uncomfortable when I started to whip out the camera. My 3-course meal was:

Appetizer: Mesclun Salad with balsamic vinaigrette
Chef’s Special: Spinach Fettucine with wild salmon in a pink sauce
Dessert: Arborio Rice pudding with dried cherries

I loved everything! As I always do. Do you like dinner specials like this or do you prefer to have the entire menu from which to choose? The Twilight Dinner Menu was quite extensive, so there were plenty of options for me.

However, our late-ish dinner meant we cut our commute to the show pretty close, we arrived at about 7:58 to the theater. We raced from dinner to the theater on 45th and got there just in time.  For Hubby’s birthday in November, I bought tickets for God of Carnage.

It was a really funny show. It was pretty short, about 90 minutes with no intermission. It was only the four characters on one set, but it was hysterical. I really enjoyed it and recommend it. We tend to always see the musicals, but this was a nice change of pace. Do you enjoy non-musical shows?

After we left the show, Hubby went to meet up with one of his guy friends that was having his Bachelor Party that night in the city and I headed home. I tidied up a bit when I got home and went to bed. But when Hubby rolled in at 3:15!! he woke me up. So we both ended up sleeping until 9:45 this morning – very late!

Now it’s time for laundry and cleaning around the house. I pretty much have to do laundry every week or the pile gets out of control. Do you have a weekly laundry schedule? Do you do it on the weekends or during the week?

I also wanted to thank Meg for passing along the Beautiful Blogger Award to me. I did receive it from Katherine a little while back, so I won’t bore you with seven more random facts. But I feel honored to receive the award from Meg – I love reading her blog!  I added a new section on the right side of the page to display my award. 🙂

Have a nice Sunday everyone – back to the grind tomorrow. Boo!

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Posted in Races, Restaurants, Running, Uncategorized

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I’m Okay With a Little Stray

Posted on January 7, 2010 | 9 comments

Good morning blog world! Happy Thursday – yay it’s almost Friday. What fun things do you have planned for the weekend?

I have a few things going on this weekend. Friday night I’ll be laying low because I have a 5-mile race bright and early on Saturday morning in Central Park! Then Saturday evening the Hubby and I are having our first 2010 date night (sticking to those resolutions). We’re going out to dinner and then going to see God of Carnage on Broadway. It’s supposed to be really funny – don’t mind the name. I bought these tickets for Hubby’s birthday and when I originally bought them months ago James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) was the lead male. Bill loved the Sopranos, so I was kind of disappointed when they changed the cast. But I still happen to recognize two of the actors in this cast: Jimmy Smits and Christine Lahti. Sunday we are contemplating going to see Avatar. Everyone is raving about it, but neither one of us is too pumped to go see it. Have you seen it – feedback? 

Before I get into yesterday’s eats, I wanted to share this link with you from Foodfit.com – it’s their Winter Guide to Fruits and Vegetables. I get their newsletter and thought this list was pretty useful. There were definitely some fruits on the fruit list that I’d never heard of before, but sounded tasty.

Now onto eats:  I remembered to photograph my breakfast yesterday – it was oatmeal with banana and pumpkin butter. I hadn’t used my pumpkin butter in a while and it’s starting to get low. I also had a side of light cranberry juice.

For lunch I might have had a piece of pizza during our Marketing and Communications celebratory lunch. Some of our publications recently won awards, so we were celebrating. I can’t pass up celebratory pizza! Sorry – no pic. And then a little later I got my fill of veggies with cucumbers, carrots and grape tomatoes drizzled with balsamic vinegar.

A little later I had a few chippers…

And even later in afternoon I had two clementines for a snack.

I left work right at 5 p.m. because I was soo excited to go have dinner with my friend Katie! I looked for a restaurant near Union Square, but didn’t want to go to big place or a chain place – I wanted something smaller and cozy. I found some good reviews about Vintage Irving on the NY Magazine website, so I decided we should give it a try. It did not disappoint. Our food was so good. Here’s the rundown – I had to use flash because it was very dark and my photos were not coming out at all:

Truffle Chicken Mini Meatballs, thyme-scented sherry wine sauce

This was a Spinach and Artichoke dip, which is not shown on their online menu:

We also had an amazing cheese and meat place from the Chef’s plate portion of the menu. The Manchego cheese was amazing – if you ever make it to this place, that is a must. We both loved this plate a lot (half of it has already been eaten – we dove in before I could get the camera out).

We had a lovely mesclun salad as well, but it definitely fell behind the Chef’s plate.

And finally, we topped the meal off with some cheesecake. It was amazing!!

We also had a few glasses of wine with our many mini meals, of course 🙂 As you can see, I did not limit myself on this outing at all. But I agree with Katherine and Meg’s recent posts that healthy does not have to equal perfect and we should learn to live a little! Plus, I don’t see Katie all the time, so when we are able to get together we kind of go all out. Here we are (I turned it black and white to hide the our wine-stained red lips and mouths):

Don’t you hate when that happens? Or does it only happen to me? Katie’s red stains were not nearly as bad as mine.

So it was a delightful dinner and then I headed right to bed when I got home. How about you – are there times when you stray a bit from your healthy ways? I certainly did last night, but I am proud to say I don’t feel guilty about it at all! 🙂

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Posted in Dessert, Restaurants, Uncategorized

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