Chicken&Dumplings

hcc.jpg
Last month the band was able to get together for a meeting at Hill Country Chicken. I was really interested in trying their pie shake but was a little turned off with the pie shake of the day, apple cheddar, so did not get one. I’m sure it would have been delish but I couldn’t get past cheese in my shake! Anyway, I got the Mama El’s recipe, some coleslaw and a large cheesy fried mashed potatoes to share with the table. The chicken was good but the cheesy fried mashed potatoes stole the show! Besides the addition of cheese adding to the goodness, there were fries in it! That might not sound exciting to you but then when you taste it, you are filled with this euphoria of goodness. The fries were crisp and not mushy. Although I got a large for the table, I’m sure I ended up eating the majority of it (I’m sure the dirty looks I gave off as my band mates tried to reach for it had nothing to do with it!)
hccinmybelly.jpghccfinished.jpg
Tammy had to jet after dinner but the rest of us took a walk over to Eataly, read so many things about this place! I kept being drawn to the imported chocolates, they are packaged so cute! So expensive though! I did feel the air filled with a bit of pretension but that could have just been my own emotional state feeling like a tourist in there or because my belly was full of chicken and I just felt like a fat fart walking around! HA! Yves calls me a foodie and I’m all about the good eats but I also want to be satisfied after I eat without spending a fortune. I guess I’m a cheap foodie, which brings me to the second part of this post!

Soup dumplings in Chinatown! Yeah! Finally! Been craving this since our planned soup dumpling outing got snowed on! I decided to try Shanghai Garden after seeing my friend Cindy’s Facebook status that she just went to her favorite soup dumpling place! We went last month on probably the coldest day in the year! But hey, it wasn’t snowing! So overall everything was delicious but I do have to say my least favorite was the dumplings! Strange! I don’t know if it was because we got the order of dumplings last after we ate everything. Usually they ask you what kind you want (pork or crab) as soon as you walk in and it’s the first thing you eat. It was pretty busy in there and it’s a small place so I don’t know what happened but we ended up getting it last. Plus Joy ordered 2 crabs instead of one of each (reviews say the pork is better than the crab.) Oh well, we’ll have to go back!
joyeatsmim.jpg
Here are the soup dumplings with Joy sporting the shirt I made her!
spicybeefnoodles.jpg
Spicy Beef Noodles. Gotta ask Joy the name of this again. So good! Not that spicy since Yves also ate some!
scallionpancakes.jpg
Scallion Pancakes
shanghairicecakes.jpg
Shanghai Rice Cakes! MMM! How I missed you! Sienna liked these too.
brokendumpling.jpg
eek! A broken dumpling!
Not pictured, the mock duck we got (mushrooms wrapped in thin tofu.)

Nom Nom New Year

We rang out 2010 with a big feast and welcomed 2011 with a big feast!

My friends Jana and Allen invited us over for a 5 course dinner on New Year’s Eve. It was nice to get together without the kids around (they are the parents of Emma and Leah seen here) I haven’t eaten that late or stayed up past midnight in awhile! Allen did all the cooking and he did a great job. I do regret not taking a photo of our wonderful hosts but hey, here’s the food (priorities!)

1st course!
soup.jpg
I believe Allen might have said these were veal meatballs but honestly, I wasn’t listening to him because I was so hungry. LOL
2nd course!
salad.jpg
Because of Allen, I now add sliced almonds and avocados to our salad! MMMM
3rd course!
bakedziti.jpg
I think this speaks for itself!
4th course!
pork.jpg
Juicy, tender pork! MMMMM
Dessert!
dessert.jpg
I’m sure the brownie on the left is great on it’s own but totally got overshadowed by the awesome apple cake on the right!
I also forgot to take a photo of the sparkling wine we brought over to toast in the new year. Allen and Jana don’t drink so it was fun to see Jana get a little tipsy after a few sips. We should have opened the wine earlier! LOL

My dad stayed over to watch Sienna (although there wasn’t any watching since he came over when she went to bed) so we took him and my mom to dim sum on New Year’s day. We usually go to East Harbor for dim sum but decided to check out Bamboo Garden for a change (we’ve been there before but not in awhile.) It’s not as good as East Harbor but they have some different things that East Harbor doesn’t have. I was pleasantly surprised that they serve Shanghai soup dumplings! MMMM! I’ve been craving them since the big blizzard put the kabosh on our Chinatown soup dumpling outing! The meat part of the dumpling tasted good but sadly there was no soup in the soup dumpling! (I still ate like 6 of them!)
soupdumpling.jpg
soup dumpling
veggiedumpling.jpg
Veggie dumping (the skin was too thick and chewy)
shumai.jpg
Sienna’s favorite, Shumai
tarodumpling.jpg
Taro Dumpling
hargow.jpg
Har Gow aka shrimp dumplings
chowfunrolls.jpg
I’m not sure what this is really called but I call it chow fun rolls. I’ve only seen it here and it’s quite tasty. I think we got this twice!
dumplingsoup.jpg
Dumpling soup, it was just eh but it’s something I don’t usually see so I wanted to try it.
bill.jpg
The bill. $37 for 4 and a half people. Pretty good! There was more we ate that I didn’t take photos of. After a certain point, I just forgot and just stuffed myself!

2 kinds of sandwiches

A couple of weeks ago, before I got deathly sick (cue dramatic hand to forehead!), I met up with Pete for lunch. I was in the mood for a sandwich type and somehow found Num Pang, a Cambodian Sandwich shop. One word, YUM! Very similiar to Banh Mi, the Vietnamese sandwich except about half the size! (I joked that the Cambodians must not eat much.) We opted to get 2 different sandwiches and share them. I got the pork belly and Pete got the mackerel and we both got blood orange lemonade to drink. I can’t wait to go back!!porkbelly.jpg
My pork belly sandwich
mackeral.jpg
Pete’s mackerel
mideat.jpg
Alternating between the 2 sandwiches
peteeats.jpg
Pete eats
numpang.jpg
Num Pang decor

I left Pete after lunch since he had to go back to work. My next mission was Macarons! I don’t know why I didn’t realize this before and why it didn’t come out in my research but it’s gluten free!! This french pastry uses almond flour. Good to know when I go back to eating (mostly) gluten free. I have only eaten a macaron once before, at Almondines in Dumbo when I went to Etsy labs. I’ve decided that will be a regular stop before Etsy labs from now on (their macarons are only $1.25 and just as yummy) I read that Madeleine Patisserie was one of the best places to go for this (at $2.50 each, a special treat indeed)
fallmacarons.jpgmacarons.jpgmymacarons.jpg
I brought home chocolate, strawberry, caramel, pistachio with blueberry, cassis, orange with white chocolate and I can’t remember the last one right now! They were all delicious and they last a few days in my house.

Trick or Treat!

Yves and I have both been sick this week so I didn’t have much energy to do the follow up about Halloween until today!

I took Sienna out trick or treating with our friend Jana, Allen and their girls Emma and Leah. It was the first time Sienna went trick or treating. We didn’t go last year because we went to the Halloween festival at Owl’s Head Park. She got the knack of it really quick! She would ring the bell, step back from the door and wait. Sometimes I had to remind the girls to say trick or treat but at least they said a lot of thank yous on their own. Sienna would zoom to the next house and be at the door before Emma and Leah barely left the last house! That cracked me up. She realized that ‘hey, I ring people’s doorbell and they give me candy! How awesome is that?!’ I was half expecting her to ask to go trick or treating the next day but she didn’t. Guess she understood that it’s a one time thing.

gottreats.jpg
openup.jpg3trickortreaters.jpgeating.jpg I let her pick whatever she wanted from her stash and she picked pretzels as the first thing!
thestash.jpg
Check out her goods!

The Big E on digital

We went to the Big E a couple of weekends ago. We took Sienna out of school on Friday and had big plans on meeting up with “Uncle Peeder” and Mike. Both parties even reserved a hotel room for the night! Well, Mother Nature had other plans for us. I forgot the name of the hurricane but they were predicting heavy rains, flooding and wind. It didn’t turn out as bad as they said but we opted not to do the fair on Friday but went Saturday instead. Saturday was a perfect sunny day. Unfortunately, because Mike had work Saturday night, they could not do the same. It was a bummer not being able to spend the day at the fair with them. I hope it will work out for next year.

Driving up to the fair on Friday morning took FOREVER! What would normally take about 3 hours, took 6! Lots of traffic and congestion (and not at the spots we thought there would be-smooth sailing on the Whitestone Bridge!) We weren’t in a rush but it was bizarre how we were stuck in traffic not very far from our house and it was so long that Sienna had to pee. We had no choice but to put a pull up on her and at first we had to coerce her to pee in the pull up! We felt so bad that we were reprogramming her. We stopped for lunch at a place called Sherwood Diner. Not bad, your standard diner fare. We got to City Place Inn at around 3:30, went into the pool for a bit, showered and headed to the mall in search of dinner. We ended up eating at Friendly’s. We got back to the hotel and was surprised to see Pete and Mike sitting outside! We finally get to meet Mike! Of course Sienna was delighted to see Uncle Peeder!

Anyway, the next morning we had breakfast at the hotel. We didn’t want anything fancy so we can save room for fair food. Honestly, there really isn’t that much to say about the fair. We got there early (9:30) and breezed right in. Got the yummy mini donuts, saw some animals, Sienna rode some rides, Sienna started getting cranky, we started getting cranky, we ate some lunch and pretty much left. That was in 3 hours. I know we weren’t going to spend all day at the fair because we had to drive home but I was hoping to squeeze at least another hour out of Sienna. Oh well. Sienna was pretty tired because I don’t think she slept very well in the hotel. She ended up climbing into our king size bed in the middle of the night and spent it mostly keeping Yves up while I snored away on my end of the bed.

donuteating.jpg
Needless to say, Sienna enjoyed the mini donuts as much as Yves!
motorcycleride.jpg
Her first ride. I don’t know if you could tell but she wanted to get off by the 3rd go around.
jeepriding.jpg
No drama on this ride
ferriswheelriding.jpg
She seemed to enjoy the ferris wheel although she said she was scared even though we were all sitting together.
autoracing.jpgcowmilking.jpgbabychickviewing.jpgponyriding.jpg
I know she doesn’t look it here but I think she liked riding the pony. She wanted to ride the elephant afterwards but it was vetoed (only because we told her to pick either the pony or the elephant to ride and not both!)
giantpumpkincc.jpg
This pumpkin was over 1,000 lbs!

I had some fun fiddling with some photos and applying some retro actions and putting them in retro frames.
ferriswheelretro.jpgmidwayretro.jpgpigretro.jpg
I also did some fake lomos.
calflomo.jpgfeedinghorselomo.jpgminidonutssignlomo.jpgmidwaysignlomo.jpg

I’ll post some holga shots soon.

Happy Birthday Yves!

Today is Yves birthday! He doesn’t make as big a deal about it as I do for my birthday but I wanted to surprise him by making him carrot cake cupcakes. He LOVES carrot cake! I used this recipe from simply recipes here and they came out delicious! (I didn’t have cardamom so instead used extra cinnamon and added nutmeg and cloves and also used pistachios instead of walnuts).
carrotcupcakessienna.jpggcarrotcupcakessiennatouch.jpg

Sienna licked the cream cheese frosting, took a few bites of the cupcake and was done as she is not a fan of carrot cupcakes. BUT! I also did make these pear cream cheese muffins with the 2 riping pears left from our CSA pickup last week. They are also delicious! She ate a bit more of that but she still wanted to lick more frosting off the other cupcakes! LOL

We also celebrated with my parents last weekend (my mother has this strange superstition that you can’t celebrate a birthday after your birthday. See me rolling my eyes?) I bought strawberry cheesecake from Jean Danet in Bay Ridge and we also went out for dim sum.
yvesstrawcheese.jpgsiennastrawcheese.jpgjeandanetstrawcheese.jpg
Yes, you need 3 images of the strawberry cheesecake! 🙂

Is That A Pink Butt?

pinkbutt.jpgOr are you just happy to see me?

HA! Sorry couldn’t help that! “Uncle Peeder” came over last weekend and we had a BBQ. Both Sienna and Skippy were very happy to see him. Poor Pete kept getting harassed by Sienna to play with her. We told her after he finishes eating so practically every 5 minutes she kept asking if he was done yet. Fortunately, Pete got a kick out of her harassment. That’s why we love him! They played with chalk  in the driveway and Skippy sat right on a drawing, hence the pink butt! Too funny!

areyoufinishedyet.jpgchalkplay.jpgontheground.jpg

Somehow, Sienna convinced Pete to mimic her running down the driveway (those are bowling pins under their arms). I missed the going down the driveway but I caught the coming back up:

Yayayayayayayayaya from Lisa on Vimeo.

I made basil pesto pasta salad (basil fresh from our CSA!) and salsa (heirloom tomatoes fresh from our CSA!) and apple potato salad (apples fresh from our CSA! and potatoes from the supermarket). I used rice pasta for the salad and it did not do well cold. The pesto also did not have enough salt so it stunk all around (thankfully, it heated up well and Yves loved it and took it to lunch the whole week!) I also made some pickled cucumbers with kirby cukes we got from the CSA. They were a tad too vinegary but I thought it tasted well in the burger.

eats.jpgsalsa.jpg
We went upstairs for the dessert portion. Pete bought donuts from our favorite donut shoppe and I also made a blueberry peach crisp and I asked Pete to bring ice cream as well.
donuts.jpg

Pete did well to wear Sienna out because she really did fall asleep on him! (Pete was pretending for the photo’s sake)
sleep.jpg

Nate met Pete at our house so they could walk to Williamsburg! It’s 10 miles and Pete is warming up for his 12 miles walk for the Jimmy Fund Walk he’s doing in a couple of weeks. So he had to leave Sienna sleeping on the sofa. We tried to wake her up to say goodbye but she just didn’t budge. Wouldn’t you know it, she woke up fully a few minutes after he left and when she learned he had gone, she was so sad, she cried!

Nice weekend

The last weekend of July turned out to be beautiful. The weather was not too hot and we had a break in humidity so we were able to enjoy the fresh air. We started out the weekend by having a picnic at Owl’s Head Park. The first picnic we’ve had since Geneva and co. left for Maine. We tried to get a band started and brought a bunch of instruments to the park. I’m sure you can imagine how well that went with toddlers! I posted the “band” photos up on Facebook, if you are not on FB, you can still see them here. This is a shot of Sienna doing a ballerina twirl with a skirt borrowed from Mikaela.
siennaballerina.jpg

Saturday we headed out to Siam Orchid for dinner. It was really cute that Sienna wanted to bring her camera, just like her mom and dad! We took a little walk before heading over to dinner. Besides the boats in the marina and some swans in the water, there really isn’t much to see. I couldn’t decide which photo I liked best so I am posting both.
camera1.jpgcamera2.jpg

Here is Sienna calling after the swans:
swans.jpg

Yves with gorilla on his shoulders:
yvesgorilla.jpg

And on to dinner! Funny how Sienna loves satay but claims to not like peanut butter (satay is usually marinated with some peanut butter and soy sauce, among other things). One steak skewer escaped before I was able to snap this photo!
satay.jpg

It seems as if Sienna is saying, you’re coming into my mouth steak satay!
siennaeatssatay.jpg

I forgot the name of my dish but it was basically chicken with mixed veggies:
mychicken.jpg

Yves’ Pad Thai:
padthai.jpg

And we even got dessert! Coconut custard!
coconutcustard.jpg

Everything was yummy!

Birthday food!

My birthday was 2 weeks ago and I’m finally getting around to showing the eats!

Yves took me out the Saturday before my birthday. Since I didn’t satisfy my seafood craving while in Florida, I thought going to Randazzo’s would fill the need. I believe my dad took me there when I was younger (although he doesn’t remember) and I figured that it must be a somewhat decent place in order to still be in business. Unfortunately, I was not really impressed. To be fair, I wasn’t very hungry since we went out for lunch to Jay and Lloyd’s earlier that day and Yves isn’t a big seafood person so I didn’t get to sample too much. We shared fried calamari (they didn’t bring a lemon with it! What’s up with that?), Yves got a crab cake sandwich and I got stuffed filet with fried zucchinis. All I could say was eh. I am willing to go back and try some other dishes.
randcalamari.jpgrandstuffedfish.jpgrandcrabcakes.jpgrandzucchinis.jpg

For my actual birthday my parents took us out to a new place in Brooklyn’s Chinatown. I don’t recall the name but it used to be Ming Gee’s on 6th Avenue and around 63rd. Sadly, not impressed here either. We got peking duck to start and it was a bit chewy. Sienna didn’t care for it. The other dishes were Japanese style short ribs (I ended up being the only one eating this!), the usual Hong Kong style steak,  sauteed snow pea greens and fried rice (that took forever to arrive!). It wasn’t terrible but we definitely had better. Probably won’t be going back there anytime soon.
pekingduck.jpgsiennaduck.jpgchinesefood.jpg

Later in the week, Joy took me and Sienna out for lunch. I was still trying to satisfy my seafood craving and read that Rocco’s Calamari was good. When we got there, the gates were down as they were closed for vacation! Joy’s suggestion of Spartan Souvlaki turned out to be a great back up. As per usual, me and Joy ordered too much food! I ordered a cheese pie for Sienna and then we got grilled octopus and a salad to share. I ordered the Greek sausage pita with fries while Joy got the gyro sandwich with greek fries. I think Sienna filled up on pita bread and feta cheese because she didn’t even try the cheese pie plus she probably was leery of us as we got her to try the octopus and she didn’t like it. The octopus was absolutely DELICIOUS!And it didn’t matter that Sienna didn’t even eat the cheese pie because me and Joy chowed down on it! It’s made fresh to order! Feta and ricotta cheese in a flaky phyllo dough. MMMMMMM. The greek fries come with lemon, feta cheese and oregano. YUM! We didn’t finish the salad and Joy ended up taking one bite out of her sandwich before calling it quits. I only ate the insides of my sandwich and was quite satisfied. I liked the place so much, I went back the next night with Yves! So these photos are from that night.
sparsalad.jpg
This salad came with Yves’ dish! I was expecting a small scoop on the side of his main dish. We were able to share this.
sparoctopus.jpg
Yves enjoyed the octopus as much as I did and asked why I ordered the small plate.
sparsausage.jpg
Yves got the sausage and unfortunately did not care for it. There was something in the sausage that he didn’t like and that I did not taste in mine the previous day. Plus they didn’t cut it up like that in my sandwich. I wonder if they were different, well they must have been because mine didn’t taste like this did. Hmmmm…
sparroastpig.jpg
Every Saturday in the summer they have a pig roast. When we arrived, we saw the pig roasting outside in the front. I didn’t take a photo of it because I thought I would take one when we left. It was done by the time we left! Just the head was laying there.

Oops! I totally forgot to take a photo of the greek style fries! Oh well!

Band Meeting at Stand

bandmeetingstand.jpgOn July 7th, we had a band meeting with all the members! Woot! It’s hard to get everyone together. We went to Stand. I was craving a root beer float and they had that, along with lots of other goodies. We started off with some fried pickles in tempura batter. Quite yummy! I really liked the dipping sauce too. I opted to get the grilled shrimp po boy. I liked that it was grilled and the chipotle mayonnaise was delish but I hesitate to call it a po boy when it is served on a brioche bun. Pete got the mushroom beef burger and Tammy and Joy both got the bacon and egg cheeseburger. We also got sweet potato fries and onion rings to share. Their homemade beverages were awesome! We all ended up getting the fresh blackberry soda. I’d go back just for that! I got my root beer float that I was craving (and wolfed down as pointed out by Pete! ha!) Pete tried the ricotta pistachio shake (MMM! and I don’t see it on their online menu) and Tammy and Joy shared the cola float. Fun times. Hope to do it more often!
friedpickles.jpgonionrings.jpgsweetpotatofries.jpgshrimppoboy.jpgpetesburger.jpgrbfloat.jpgloverssip.jpgsololoverlick.jpg

« Previous PageNext Page »