Divinity at Tribeca Grill

Mmm, I just came back from a delicious dinner at the Tribeca Grill. The restaurant is a former warehouse, and it really shows: it's very open, with exposed brick wall and huge ceilings. I told my parents that should it suddenly become a loft built for one with my name on it, I wouldn't complain. Righto!

What's dinner out without bread?


We ordered a delicious bottle of Sandy Cove, a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.


I started with Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Cinnamon Crème Fraiche. This. Was. Heaven. I'm pretty sure that without the crème fraiche, it would have been completely vegan. (The drizzle on top is molasses.)


My dad and I split two entrées, since I couldn't decide which one I wanted and Daddy-O is always very accommodating. This is the pan roasted brook trout with chestnut purée, haricots vert & celery root in brown butter. I ate about 1/3 of a filet... the soup really filled me up. The green beans were my favorite part of this dish.


This was the star of the evening: Spinach and sheep's milk ricotta ravioli with rainbow chard & picholine olives. By the first bite I was completely full, but I could not let the poor ravioli sit all by their lonesome. You know how it goes.


Bring on the desserts! Here we have chocolate truffle cheesecake with morello cherries:


Pumpkin, oatmeal & pecan torte with vanilla ice cream:


And a strawberry semifreddo with a meringue "baton":


We split all the treats in three, but my parents were having trouble finishing their cheesecake. Lilveggiepatch to the rescue! You'd think the pumpkin would have been my favorite, but I didn't even finish my portion in favor of extra cheesecake!

I'm pleasantly and happily- (almost) always happily- full. It's going to be an easy movie night tonight.... We have The Science of Sleep (which I've already seen 1.5 times before) and American Teen. Should be fun! Have a lovely evening.

Meet & Greet

Good evening, all! I just had a very exciting night. It was a first for me: a blogger meet-up! Caroline, Erica, Nicole and I met (how many ways can I conjugate that verb?) at Josie's for dinner. This was the first time I've broken the "blog-wall," so to speak; I was a little nervous, I have to admit! The girls were all really nice, and it was so fun to dish (pun intended!) with other people who also snap photos about 435 times a day.

So... what do you get when you put four food bloggers at a table together? Strobe-like, seizure-inducing camera flashes, foodie news and gossip, indoor photography woes... I could go on and on, but if you're reading this you probably know what I'm talking about, anyway!


The bread basket came around and we all chose seven-grain bread... sameness was sort of the theme of the night! Josie's makes delicious sweet potato hummus. It's delicious, and seems pretty simple to make (although I've already forgotten the third ingredient besides sweet potato and tahini).


The basket came back... Caroline and I split pieces of cornbread and focaccia.


We all ordered exactly the same thing for dinner: Seared Asian Marinated Organic Tofu Salad with baby arugula roasted vegetables, chickpeas and avocado.


Now, this should have been simple enough, but we all decided we did not want the balsamic vinaigrette the salad came with but rather not one but TWO special dressings... and on the side, please. Ha. Totally worth it, though, because the dressings were amazing: carrot miso and red wine wasabi vinaigrette.


The salad itself was so, so good, and it was nice to be able to dip into two different dressings. It was actually pretty big, so I bagged what I didn't finish and took it home.


We did not, of course, skimp on dessert. They were all vegan and very, very tasty.


Warm pumpkin pie with "soy drizzle" :


Ginger berry pie with oat-y crust and soy vanilla ice cream:


Chocolate pecan pie with graham cracker crust and soy ice cream. This was everyone's favorite!


But, as you can see, we weren't really in the mood for dessert.


That's it for me... I'm brushed and in bed like a good little girl. Hope you've had fabulous Fridays!

Busy Bumble... and a product review

We stayed up very late watching All About Eve last night... what a great movie. Ari was quite taken with young Miss Norma Jean! I got a boxed set of Bette Davis movies for Christmas, and we're working our way through them.

I was feeling pretty snacky by the time I got home last night. I really wanted an orange, but we didn't have any, so I settled for the next best thing... an Orange Cranberry Gnu bar.


This morning (er, 12:30 PM) I had a big bowl of oats.


3/4 cup oats (made with skim milk)
1 tsp peanut butter
1 banana
1 tsp maple syrup
sprinkle of pecans
sprinkle of chocolate chips

I went to the gym and had a decent workout:

20:00 minutes stairmaster
16:00 minutes bike

ab series
stretching

total: 50:34 minutes
maximum heart rate: 174
average heart rate: 143
calories burned: 4- -?

I try to avoid eating a nutrition bar right after exercising, but since I slept so late and I'm eating dinner our at 7:30, I settled.

Product Review: Amazing Grass Organic GreenSuperFood


Ingredients: Organic dates, organic agave nectar , Amazing Grass Green Superfood (organic wheatgrass, organic barley grass, organic alfalfa, organic spirulina, organic spinach, organic chlorella, organic broccoli, organic açai, organic maca, organic carrots, organic beet, raspberry, organic rosehips, pineapple, green tea, organic flax lignans, L. acidophilus, alpha and beta amylase, protease, lipase, lactase, cellulase, organic peppermint), organic cashews, organic almond butter, organic rice crisps, organic almonds, organic sunflower seeds, organic dried cranberries, organic pumpkin seeds, organic dried coconut, organic vanilla extract


Nutrition Facts:
230 calories
8g fat, 1.5 g saturated
36 grams carbohydrates
5 grams protein


I liked this bar. Although the color was slightly off-putting (dark brown/greenish), I've definitely eaten more questionable things before. It had the texture of a Larabar, and tasted both earthy and sweet. The calories and fat are a little high considering the only moderate level of protein, but I would probably buy it again.

I came home and had a Sunkist navel orange:


And made the recipe I've gotten the most mileage out of: Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Squares (and cleaned the bowl, thank you!).


I'll have a treat for you later tonight... stay posted!

Gives you hell...

Sorry, but that song has been in my head all day. Moving on...

Another late morning! I don't know what's up with our sleep schedules, but it is funking me up. I had a lunch date in the early afternoon, so I just grabbed a banana and a coffee on my way out. This was not my finest coffee-making day... it tasted so watery!


I met Kalle for lunch and we went to our usual, Tomo, and had our oh-so-yum bento boxes. I had a bowl of miso soup (which also tasted watery! I poured in some soy sauce...) and a cup of hot tea.


Clockwise from leeft to right: tempura, California roll, brown rice, seaweed/ soybeans, tofu teriyaki.


I had one of my figgy bars on the street:


Kalle and I went back to my house and played with nail polish and watched silly TV, just like the goold ole days.


I rushed down to the gym for a quickie.

20:00 minutes on the stairs
arm machines
ab series

42:32 minutes total
maximum heart rate: 180
average heart rate: 142

I rushed over to dinner at Eatery, where I met my parents and Stewart.


The waiter brought out some kind of sweet and crunchy rice crisps. I forgot my wallet at home tonight, which meant no ID so no vino for me!


We split the shrimp spring rolls with grilled banana, Japanese eggplant and black sesame dipping sauce.


For my entrée, I ordered a salad with black tea crusted salmon, smoked tofu, grilled pineapple, organic mixed greens and avocado-jalepeño vinaigrette on the side.


I had a triangle of whole wheat pita. Bad contrast!


We were going to a play tonight, so I got a cup of coffee as a preventative method... it failed and I snoozed through the entire first act (Pal Joey is a musical, I might add, so sleeping should have been difficult...).


We shared a bar of this dark chocolate four ways.


I snuck two clementines on the way out of the theater.


I have a very exciting day day planned for tomorrow, so I want to get enough shut-eye so I can fully enjoy it to the max. Bonne nuit!

Edited to add: Head on over to Oh She Glows for a chance to win some delicious Honest Foods products!

The girl with one left shoe

Hello and happy Tuesday! I'm currently blogging from the bathroom (hooray for WiFi) while I wait for my shower water to heat up. Yesterday was wonderful in terms of eats and movies, which makes it an A+ day in my book.

Last night before dinner, I had a glass of white wine as I caught up on the blogs. I wasn't a huge fan of it, so I sipped one glass throughout the course of a few hours.


My parents prepared a wonderful meal, starting out with a loaf of the first bread that my dad and I ever made together (way back when): Anadama bread.


In case you're not familiar with Anadama bread, the history is as follows (courtesy of The Food Timeline):

"Anadama bread. A bread made from cornmeal and molasses. The term dates in print to 1915, but is probably somewhat older. If it were not for the frequency of their citation, it would be difficult to believe the story most often cited is of a Gloucester, Massachusetts, fisherman's wife named Anna, who gave her husband nothing but cornmeal and molasses to eat every day. One night the fisherman got so angry, he tossed the ingredients in with some yeast and flour and made a bread in the oven while muttering to himself, "Anna, damn her!" A more affectionate story has a New England sea captain referring to his wife with the same name expletive as a phrase of endearment. This Anna was apparently adept at bread-baking, and she became well known for her cornmeal-and-molasses loaf among the fishing crews who appreciated this long-lasting, hearty bread. There was, supposedly, a gravestone to this legendary woman that read, Anna wes a lovely bride, but Anna, Damn'er, up and died. One source contends that a commerical bakery called ist product "Annadammer" or "Annadama bread."
---Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 6)

The meal was a joint effort on my parents part (my role being happy recipient). My mom made a delicious risotto using seven different kinds of mushrooms, with a shaved parmesan garnish. My dad made a lovely spinach curried with Greek yogurt and supplemented with tofu to make a complete protein.



We all split an avocado, which was drizzled with tangerine vinegar, salt & pepper:


The house is being painted, so we had a cozy TV dinner while we watched Midnight. Oh, go see this now... Claudette Colbert is lovely and funny (and plays a girl from Indiana!), and it takes place in Paris.


And then came the desserts. There's a small bakery in the West Village, Patisserie Claude, that my dad sometimes stops at to pick up tasty treats for us. "Tasty treats" is the understatement of understatements, by the way.

Chocolate chestnut cake:


Cappuccino mousse with brulée topping:


Apple tarte tatin:


Heaven, pure and simple. We split each dessert three ways.


When I got home, Ari was finished with work so we decided to make it a movie night (part II, for me). We watched Atlantic City, with Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon (and Wally Shawn in a cameo as a waiter). It's gritty, grimy, and wonderful.


This morning I had another PB&J breakfast cookie. It started off as a peace sign but ended up looking more like a flower...


1/2 cup oats
1/2 scoop protein powder
1 tbsp peanut butter
1/4 cup skim milk
1/2 sunkist orange
1 tsp + extra strawberry jam for garnish
dried fruit (craisins, currants, apricot, dates)

I also ripped off a hunk of Anadama bread.


I had a large coffee with skim on the subway; it was too much liquid for me so early in the morning (well... at 11 AM) so I only had half.


I got all the way to the gym (about a 45 minute subway ride in the opposite direction from both of my apartments) only to discover I had left one sneaker at home. Whoops! I went chez maman et papa to do a 20 minute detox flow from Yoga Downloads so at least I could do something active.

Picked up some staples at the grocery store...


This was my first experiment with butternut squash fries. TASTY.


I made a very voluminous salad for lunch.


baby arugula
1 chopped apple
chik'n strips (Morningstar Farms)
cherry tomatoes
raw green beans
dressing (fig infused vinegar, EVOO, grey poupon mustard)


I'm off to go play with Greg, then hopefully cook something scrumptious. I'm on my own for dinner tonight (movies! empty kitchen! debauchery!), so I'll try to think up something fun.

Have a lovely evening!