So, I did it. I bought an ice cream maker! It’s a cuisinart ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet maker that I purchased from Bed, Bath and Beyond on Friday night. Chris and I were eager to try out my new machine (I was a little too eager, actually). There’s a self-cooling feature that makes the ice cream maker very user friendly, but you have to make sure the liquid inside the container is actually frozen (otherwise, it won’t work). When we got home, we put the container in the freezer right away and put the freezer at the coldest setting. Two hours later, there was no noise when I shook the container, so I thought I could start experimenting (even though Chris wanted to wait until the morning…what can I say - I’m impatient!). I found a recipe for frozen yogurt that is supposed to be very similar to Pinkberry’s - it’s so easy, how could we not have tried it?! Making the ice cream is a cinch - all you need to do is pour the ingredients into the container and press the on button. Twenty minutes later, you have yourself a nice bowl of frozen yogurt! Our frozen yogurt:

My ice cream maker makes a big bowl of ice cream/frozen yogurt/sorbet and is so easy to make! Look at how much “Pinkberry” yogurt we made:

AND, no skimping on the topping (Chris went to Chinatown on Friday after work and picked up mangoes and blackberries):

Doesn’t that look fantastic? The texture of our frozen yogurt is pretty similar to Pinkberry’s, but we’re still working on the tanginess. Also, you need to add a lot of sugar to make it - we didn’t add a lot, but you’re supposed to otherwise the frozen yogurt will get too icy. On second thought, it might’ve been a good idea to not add too much ice to begin with since Pinkberry’s frozen yogurt is pretty icy to begin with. We also bought strawberries to make our perfect Pinkberry dessert:

I’m going to try more recipes next week - lemon basil sorbet is my next on my list!

Our usual Wednesday night dinners at restaurants have moved to Chris’ dining room/patio. Eating out all the time isn’t good (you don’t know how much fat they use, who prepares your food, etc) and it can get so loud in restaurants you can’t hold a conversation, so we’ve decided to eat at Chris’ place more. We bought all of our ingredients at the new Whole Foods on Bowery (it’s HUGE and definitely worth checking out from 6-8pm for the free samples!). We decided to make steak frites because I’ve never really cooked meat (only shellfish and pasta) and I was craving some juicy steaks, plus, it’s a pretty simple meal (it was pouring rain last night and we didn’t get back to Chris’ place until past 8:30). We’re going to Peter Luger’s next month for steak, but I figured you can never get too much steak. We started out by cutting up the potatoes and frying them to make pommes frites:

Chris was in charge of the fries and is really great at taking them out right when they’re crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside (the best kind of fry). Maybe he missed his calling at McDonalds?

Since I was making the steak medium rare, we saved that for last (so they wouldn’t get cold while we were frying the potatoes). Next, we made a simple salad from arugula, spinach, tomatoes, and a homemade dressing (red wine vinegar, olive oil, lemon, and a little salt):

I cooked the filet mignon and portobello mushrooms with a little season all (that’s all you need for steak, I swear!):

While the steak was cooking, I cut up the watermelon Chris picked out:

The watermelon is supposed to be seedless, but there were a couple seeds (no worries). We’re going to use the leftover watermelon to make watermelon sorbet this weekend! (Yup, I’m investing in an ice cream maker).

Our final set up of steak frites for two:

We also bought orangina and Peter Luger Steak Sauce (which tastes exactly like cocktail sauce…I would definitely pass on that). Dinner took less than an hour from start to finish! This weekend, I’m running in the 10K (pray that it doesn’t rain and that I actually FINISH), hopefully playing tennis in central park (if the weather is warm enough), and getting ready for my birthday! I’ll be back on Monday with updates!

On Friday night, my friend David had a college themed housewarming party at his new apartment on the west side (right by my old apartment, actually). I brought along Leo since I didn’t think I’d know many people:

We’re a matching couple! There was beer pong, taps, and lots of beer (just like a college party!). We didn’t stay too long since it was getting late, but I’m glad David moved into the city (finally) and that he likes his new Ikea-ed out apartment.

On Saturday, since it was so nice outside, I went running in Central Park. It was absolutely packed! I’m glad that the weather has gotten a lot better - now I can finally go outside instead of hiding in my apartment. After running, Chris and I met up to go shopping in my area and went to Bloomingdales to try their frozen yogurt (Forty Carrots). We ordered the plain (not vanilla - they WILL correct you) and chocolate. The plain was actually really good and creamy, like Mister Softee (although Chris likes Pinkberry more). I like Forty Carrots more because:

1. Their portions are HUGE (we couldn’t finish a medium),
2. It’s cheaper than Pinkberry,
3. It’s creamier,
4. Forty carrots is closer to my apartment, which means I can walk there over the summer!!

After frozen yogurt, we went to Whole Foods to buy ingredients to make gnocchi with salmon and peas with salad. I pulled the gnocchi recipe from Michael Chiarello on foodnetwork. Since Chris eats really healthily, I thought it would be a good idea to buy whole wheat flour. MISTAKE #1. Look at our dough:

We also had potatoes left over from the previous week when we made Lobster and Chips, so we baked them and shredded them for the gnocchi (like it says in the instructions). People usually eye recipes, right? Well, we definitely did a really bad job eying the amount of potatoes we put in the recipe because we put around 3 pounds of potatoes into the gnocchi. Mistake #2. I was really frustrated because the dough was too sticky and we kept adding flour to the mixture, but it was really grainy because the flour was whole wheat, not regular unbleached flour. We eventually just gave up and started adding flour until the dough solidified and put the little gnocchi’s into the water to cook. While we were cooking the gnocchi, we were also poaching salmon, boiling water for peas, and making salad dressing. Here’s the final product of the gnocchi with salmon and peas:

It doesn’t look too bad, right? Maybe because I put an entire can of marinara sauce on the gnocchi to mask the taste. We bought the marinara from Whole Foods (the store brand) and made it a creamy marinara, which actually tasted really good! I think if we made it again, we’d probably just make a creamy sauce and angel hair pasta. Here’s the table set up:

Chris made the salad dressing this time and was very successful - one part lemon, two parts olive oil, one part red wine vinegar, and a pinch of salt and pepper. We also had mangoes (frozen and from Whole Foods, which we defrosted while we were cooking), which was probably the second best part of the meal (next to the salad Chris made :)).

So, are you interested in how the gnocchi tasted? Well, Chris said, “I’m trying to find the best way to eat AROUND the gnocchi because the salmon and peas are good.” Thanks. Actually, the marinara was great and I basically had a creamy tomato soup with peas for dinner (I didn’t even like the way the salmon turned out so I ate around THAT, too). On top of not liking the dinner we made, it took two and a half hours to make! We ended up watching Saturday Night Live while eating because it took so long to make everything!!

What we did with the leftover gnocchi:

Well, you can’t win them all, right?

On Sunday, I refused to leave Chris’ kitchen with the idea that I cooked an incredibly disgusting meal the night before, so we decided to have brunch at his place instead of going out. We wanted to recreate Balthazar’s waffles with berries and sour cream for brunch, so we bought brioche bread from Balthazar (available at Whole Foods), and made French toast with berries and sour cream instead (no waffle maker = no waffles). Since the bread was only a day old, it wasn’t as stiff as I would’ve liked (especially for french toast), but we worked with what we had. Chris was in charge of making turkey bacon, I made the French toast and the eggs, and we made the smoothie together from the leftover berries we had. Since we had some extra eggs leftover, I made some scrambled eggs AND eggs over easy. Check out our brunch:

AND check out our seats:

We ate on his patio! I definitely redeemed myself, especially with the scrambled eggs (which were perfect - not too runny and not rubbery at all). We spent the afternoon lounging around, reading magazines, and catching up for the week. For dinner, we headed to John’s Pizzeria and ran into some of my friends from work, so we had an impromptu double date. The pizza, as usual, was awesome and a great way to start the week. This Wednesday - lobster rolls!

After eating out practically every night since I’m moved to New York (don’t tell my physician!) I decided to FINALLY cook dinner at home. Someone’s home, not my own. On Saturday, Chris and I went grocery shopping at Whole Foods and Food Emporium in Union Square to make a lobster dinner (he was in the mood for shellfish). I found some interesting recipes online, but the favorite was a lobster and chips recipe from Emeril! I usually don’t like watching Emeril on television because he says Bam! too much, but this recipe looked really easy and sounded GREAT! We had to buy most of the ingredients because Chris didn’t have a lot in his pantry, but now he’s fully stocked for future cooking adventures we’ll have this summer. Here’s our grocery list for the lobster tails:

1. Two lobster tails (we only prepared the tails, even though the original recipe calls for the entire lobster)
2. Ritz crackers
3. Parsley
4. Malt Vinegar
5. Potatoes
6. Lemons

The dish is really easy to make - all you do it crush up the ritz crackers, mix in some chopped up parsley, warmed up butter, and add some lemon juice to make the “crust.” You put the crust on the lobster tails (I cut the shells in half to open the lobsters up) and back at 450 degrees for 25 minutes and you’re done! Here’s what our lobsters looked like before we put it in the oven:

Look at how HUGE the lobster tails were!! Actually, the lobster tails were quite pricey at $20/piece, but they looked pretty fatty, so we decided to splurge (at many points in our grocery shopping, we were tempted to just leave our cart and go out for dinner). While the lobsters were baking, we cut up potatoes to make french fries, I dressed our salad, and we made a sauce for dessert (a berry parfait I thought of while shopping for groceries). We used a basic dressing for our salad - I combined olive oil, lemon juice (leftover from the lobster tails), red wine vinegar (there wasn’t any balsamic in the house), and some salt and pepper. Dinner took a while to prepare because we were working together and prepping everything (cutting, cleaning, frying, baking, etc). Here’s what our table looked like (we opened the wine that I brought back from my visit to Napa Valley):

And a close up of the meal:

The fries were PERFECTLY crisp and slighty chewy on the inside (the perfect browned color, too), and LOOK AT THE CRUST! It was soooo buttery and delicious - who would’ve thought to use Ritz crackers? Thank, you, Emeril! The salad was a nice way to end the meal (European style).

For dessert, we made a berry parfait, which is a really simple but DELICIOUS dessert. Our shopping list for dessert:

1. Cool whip (or you can use ice cream)
2. Frozen raspberries
3. Strawberries
4. Pound cake (I like the frozen kinds for some reason)
5. Lemon

You melt the raspberries and place the extra juice from the bag into a pan to warm up (add sugar, corn starch, lemon juice, and some strawberries) to make a nice sauce to drizzle onto the pound cake/raspberries/cool whip. I cubed up the pound cake to make them into bite-sized pieces, and then when we were ready for dessert, I found some cute glasses and started layering (pound cake, raspberry sauce, cool whip, fresh strawberries/raspberries). A picture of our desserts:

Better than Serendipity’s!! The meal was fantastic and cleanup wasn’t too difficult, either (except for a spilled oil incident that ruined Chris’ clothes).

Today, we headed to Tartine for Sunday brunch. They actually have a great deal - $13.95/person, you get juice and coffee/tea, and an assortment of breakfast foods to choose from. I ordered the french toast:

The bacon, which is HUGE, was really meaty and tasty, not like usual bacon strips you find at breakfast joints. Also, they put potatoes in the middle with their homemade hollandaise sauce. I usually don’t like hollandaise sauce because it’s too heavy, but this sauce really complemented the potatoes well (which were just the right amount of chewy/crispy/brown). They were also tossed with some tomatoes and green onions, which mixed really well together. The french toast itself was o-k, but I don’t think the bread was old enough (the toast was too soggy).

Chris ordered the omelet with onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, green onions, red pepper, swiss cheese, and ham, which also came with a side of their delicious potatoes:

The omelet was fairly standard and the egg wasn’t too runny (yay!). Overall, the best part of both meals were the potatoes (we were both big fans).

It’s been raining all day (not just regular rain, but MEAN rain…and MEAN WIND) so I’ve been inside doing taxes (they’re due on Tuesday, I still have time). This Wednesday, we are headed to Sushi Yasuda, one of my favorite restaurants in NYC!

Last night, our family hosted a holiday party (more like a dinner with friends). We went to their place the night before and had dinner/played Balderdash with them and we reciprocated by hosting a dinner on Thursday. Whenever we get together for dinner, we always play board games; Wednesday was Balderdash, Thursday was Ticket-to-Ride. Two funny things that occurred while playing Balderdash:

1. My mom was the host (meaning she was the one that held the card with the correct answer). She rolled strange laws and we had to write down what we thought was illegal to remove in theaters in Winnetka, Illinois. Most people wrote down shoes, socks, shirts, etc., which my mom read, and then she read the option “riding your bicycle into a swimming pool.” umm….okay. Sometimes we have really “out there” answers to throw people off (since some of the real answers are oftentimes really out there) but this one was just…so odd. ONE person picked riding your bicycle into a swimming pool and we were all kinda laughing (I mean, it didn’t even MAKE SENSE) and when we were tallying up points, my mom gave the guy TWO points for getting it right! Then my brother, who was sitting next to my mom, looked at the card and realized that two cards were STUCK TOGETHER! hahahaha - it reminded me of the Friends episode when Rachel makes the trifle with beef, peas, and mashed potatoes because pages in the cookbook were stuck together!!

2. We had to re-do a bunch of the cards because people weren’t following the rules so we just discarded the piles of notecards where we wrote our definitions/weird laws/movie themes/etc into a middle pile. James, who was sitting next to me, was the host and read two of my cards, so I asked if he had read every person’s definition of a word, to which he responded, yes. I asked if he was SURE, and he said YES, and then he showed me the card (which was my old card) and it was because Albert, James’ dad, crossed out MY name and replaced it with HIS! He didn’t care enough to think of something new! I could not stop laughing but I couldn’t tell anyone at the table because then we’d have to redo the card (and we’d been redoing cards ALL night).

On Thursday, we hosted a party at our house and had hot pot (similar to what we had at our aunt’s house in Raleigh). Here’s the set up:

We also had edamame and while my mom was preparing it, I asked, oh, is that edamame? And my mom responded, “no, it’s already made.” Sometimes my mom is just too funny!!

I also made MAGICAL cookies and a delicious chocolate cheesecake for the party:

The cookies are cream cheese based and to find the sprinkles, we had to drive to THREE different grocery stores (are those sprinkles just not popular?) I like the sprinkles we bought because I feel like they’re a bit crunchier than the jimmies that are easily found in grocery stores.

The chocolate cheesecake I made was SO delicious and it took FOREVER to bake because our terrible GE oven kept locking (and has been since we purchased it). Everything was made from scratch - even the crust! It was made from fresh oreo cookies (I licked the cream off every single cookie :)) Basking the cheesecake actually took around an hour total (including the crust). Here’s the final product:

After dinner, we played Ticket-to-Ride, one of the coolest board games EVER. James and I were on a team and we were thisclose to winning (if we had only won the extra 10 points by getting the longest chain). My brother, who played by himself, WON, with 112 points, James and I came in 2nd with 105, my mom and Shane came in 3rd with 89, and Albert and Cindi came in 4th. Here’s the final board:

Today (Friday) we watched The Devil Wears Prada, Mission Impossible 3, and The DaVinci Code (we’re taking advantage of the Blockbuster online rental plan, obviously). I also managed to highlight my hair (it’s much darker now) and I’m getting a cut tomorrow. We’re also headed to Raleigh tomorrow and on Sunday, we’ll be heading to Cindi and Albert’s for a New Year’s Eve dinner!