Dog sitting in NYC

Chris's older brother and his wife went away to the Caribbeans and asked Chris to dog sit Mac and watch the apartment.  We had a great  four day weekend filled with delicious food and walking! 

The view from his apartment! 

Night time 

Food Pics :)

Banh mi from Banh Mi Saigon.   

We got thai food for lunch at Cafe Sage.  

Entree plus drink for 6 bucks. Not bad for a place in the city!

Yellow Curry

Chris's Pad Thai

Chris and I watched an episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate.  Euro Pane's egg salad sandwich was featured and it got me drooling!  We used this recipe to recreate it. Chris's brother lives in the Financial District and all the markets are upscale so we were able to find sun dried pesto, special bread, and chives easily.  

We decided to go to the East Village to get my free bubble tea from Tkettle. 

Banh Mi tacos from Xe May! I got lemon grass chicken and Chris ordered beef. .  

We ordered an original to go.  Look how much meat they give you!! 

I need to go back to get the beef banh mi.  

We walked all the way down to Chinatown to get soup dumplings from Shanghai Cafe.  Service was terrible as usual... but the dumplings were pretty good.  

Chris's brother told him about halal carts near his work.  Chicken and rice was tasty.  

My falafel sandwich.  The guy put way too much hot sauce on it.  

Sub from Pot Belly.  Way better than Subway's...but everything is better than Subways. I wish they had horseradish instead of mayo.  

Coconut juice 

My favorite drink is an avocado shake! 

I bought a living social deal for beer and tapas tasting at Stella Manhattan Bistro.  I forget the names of the beer we had but the beers were nothing special. 

Our tapas.  We ordered their Mac N Cheese (good), french dip (okay...can't compare it to Houston's), beef empanada (okay), Croque Monsieur (cheese and ham.. it was good), and fried oysters (Chris loved them..I didn't eat because I don't like mollusks)  

South Side Sea Port :) 

Take a look at Mac! He's the sweetest shih tzu ever! He was so well behaved except for the times he tried to leave with us.  

Here is my one and only Pazuzu.  He was so happy to see me that he frogged.  :) 

The little bugger woke me up at 5am for kisses and cuddles.  

I had a great time in the city with Chris :)  We ate so much but walked around 4-5 miles each day!  He just reminded me that our cruise is a month away.  I'm gonna have to start walking more.  I have a permanent food baby that I need to get rid of! 

Weekend with Chris

Chris had an empty house this weekend :)

We decided to make goi cuon (spring rolls).  Chris had most of the ingredients except for a few things which we picked up at the local super market.  I told Chris not to buy shrimp from Thailand anymore because the shrimp industry is destroying the fishing cat's habitat. So he bought over priced shrimp from the US gulf instead.Chris paid 28 in total which was way too much.  He was charged 16 for the shrimp! The label clearly said 10 dollars. We went back to complain about the price. The seafood department mislabeled the price and we ended up getting the shrimp for free!! 

 Spring rolls are customizable and easy to make! For our spring rolls you need:

shrimp

pork

mint leaves

avocado

chives

cucumbers

rice noodles/bean threads

rice paper

carrots

mango

lettuce 

Everything is optional! (except for the noodles, rice paper, and lettuce haha)  

Chris's grandmother grows plants and herbs in her back yard. We were able to grab a bunch of mint leaves and chives.  Chris reminded me of an ahjuma picking sesame leaveson a farm LOL.  

Lemon grass pork! Chris used this recipe . 

I had to slice the shrimps in half because they were huge!

Bean threads.  I prefer rice noodles but bean threads have less carbs and aren't as sticky.  

I love avocados in my spring rolls! Chris likes to add mango slices in his.  

 I sliced the carrots. I don't know what or how much he added.  I'm guessing you can use this recipe for pickled carrots.  

Peanut sauce for the rolls! So delicious.  

The big bowl in the middle is filled with warm water.  You have to wet the rice paper in order to roll it. 

Chris's final product.  My roll came out all deformed and broken.  

After dinner we played D3 for a little bit...I don't have a gaming laptop so we couldn't play ::(  After that we watched Game of Thrones until 5 in the morning. I'm disappointed that the directors changed Daenerys and Jaime's characters. Oh well...I'm hoping that next season they won't ruin her arc.  

On Sunday, Chris's sister had her birthday party at their beach house.  I didn't take that many pictures because I didn't want to bring my phone to the beach.  

So much food! 

Picture of a sea shell wreath.  

 

His uncle's dog.  She likes to frog like Pazuzu.  I tried so hard to take a picture of her frogging but whenever I got close to her, Chris's dog Gracie chased her off >:O!!! 

Last Week

I've been neglectful lately....neglected to update my blog, neglected my cats. It's all because of Diablo 3.  I've been playing non-stop ever since I got it on launch day.  

Got it at midnight at Gamestop.  Reminded me when I passed by an engineering frat having a party and it was all guys waiting to get in lol.  I was the only girl online hehe.  

I have been skipping dinner to play it (I actually lost some weight!) so on Friday my sister dragged me out to Soo Petite Chow in my town.  We got there around 5:30 PM and it was already packed.  We had to share a round table with other people which was okay but a family with a sick kid sat with us :(   

Soup Dumplings! I think these are on par with Joe Shanghai's in china town.  

I got chicken with eggplant.I barely touched it because the soup dumplings filled me up.  I packed it and wanted to bring it to Chris's house but my sister ate it :(  

She got scallops with ginger.  I didn't touch it only cause I don't like scallops.  My sister said it was all right.  

My sister bought me a cone from McDonald's.   Deliciousness for only a dollar :)  

Since my sister has her computer in her room, I asked her to sleep in my room.  Here is Pazuzu tired after trying to get my attention.  My sister refuses to sleep in my room again because he bothered her so much. I guess he wondered why we switched rooms.  

There's a monster named Pazuzu in D3! :)

Plantain chips from Trader Joe's.  I tried to stockpile healthy snacks for D3 lol.  

Past Week

                          Van D'Go by Essie                         Black with Envy by Revlon 

              

                            Chocolate Toms!                          Check from skin care study :)

                           Soba Noodles                          Timmy giving me the stink eye

         

Fatty Monday

It was my coworker's birthday on Friday and decided to eat at Mavi Meze Grill in Edgewater for lunch. It was my first time eating real Turkish food! I couldn't take any pictures, because we did family style.  We ordered fish, lamb kabob, chicken kabob, Turkish meatballs, Turkish dumplings, hummus, baba ganoush, and some eggplant tomato dish. Glad my boss treated us cause everything was so pricey!! I'd probably come back here again, but only order the lunch special which is reasonably priced...9.99 for soup, salad, entree, and a drink. 

Turkish coffee. They all started laughing at me cause there was black sludge all over my teeth. 

Desserts. The baklava was the best!  

My sister wanted to go to Houston's for dinner.  Even though I was stuffed from lunch, I couldn't say no to Houston's.  

Grilled Chicken Salad

French Dip with au jus and horseradish 

Cupcakes from Mr. Cupcakes

Strawberries :)

Pazuzu smelling a strawberry