Showing posts with label drinks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drinks. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

an unexpected new years eve

our original plans were to stay home, relax, hopefully make it to midnight to see the ball drop but if not i wasn't going to be upset.

instead....

drinking champagne and getting out of work early seemed like a good idea.
going straight to orale for margarita's seemed like a good idea.
stopping at e.tittlemouse to say hello was definitely a good idea (the wine there? maybe not)
drinking a few MORE drinks at home was just to keep my streak going.
heading out for more wine was (while we definitely had a great time) may have not been the best idea.

at least our NYE was fun while it lasted!!  the next morning? (ok ok the next whole day)… not so much.

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great company, fantastic pasta from pasta dal cuore, great night. thanks for the impromptu NYE celebrations, e.tittlemouse!  my new years resolution is to NOT be hungover on New Years Day next year :P

happy new year everyone!
jenn

Monday, June 2, 2014

lately.

how is it june already!? time slips so fast around here, and before you know it i'll be saying "we still need to go to the beach this summer" forgetting it's already september.  although this space has been quiet for a while, our lives certainly haven't been.  when the sun starts to shine in jersey city, people are OUT.  it's like a stroller haven around here. and bikes! goodness there are a lot of bikes.  it's so nice to live in a place where a bicycle is an accepted mode of transportation and isn't just for those less fortunate or those who stumbled on getting a DUI.  hung and i recently took our bikes to grove street bicycles to get them prepped for the season, giving us motivation to get out and about on those things for once!

last saturday (after i fell asleep not even 10 minutes into frozen the night before), we thought we wanted a quiet night in, just the two of us.  we spent the afternoon returning things to the mall (seriously, it felt like we were making so much money returning so many clothes i couldn't decide on without my trusty fashion expert/fiance). then, being the social butterflies we are, we decided that a night in "could" mean that we just bring the people to us, so we invited friends over for snacks and drinks.  nothing crazy, very casual, and much-needed! hung served up some cranberry, caramelized onion, manchego, and cheddar paninis on sourdough and we laid out some random indian snacks and cucumbers with hummus.  mixed with boxed pinot grigio and schofferhoffer grapefruit beer , our random night in with scramblings from the fridge turned into quite the fun night! 

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Monday, April 28, 2014

from the weekend

hello friends! how was your weekend? sunday nights should be for getting to bed early to get a fresh start monday morning, right?  well, that's the goal anyways, but i never fail to stay up later than usual making monday "seem" to get here later.  that is, until my alarm wakes me up at a sunny 5:45am (i swear it only stays dark out for an hour on sunday nights)

...and when sundays are filled with purging, putting things up on craigslist, giving things in our home a permanent home, doing laundry, and spending the evening with friends for an always-fancy sunday dinner , i'd have to say sundays are my favorite these days.  i don't feel obligated to get out of my pj's until i need to leave the house (which means, if i don't leave the house, they don't leave my body)  i don't feel obligated to be social. i can enjoy the crazy amount of natural light spewing into my apartment at the peak hours of afternoon sunshine.  and, most of all, i get to spend quality time with that roommate of mine that i normally refer to as my fiancé.

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Monday, April 14, 2014

we hosted our first dinner!

did monday come too fast for anyone else?  hung and i are finally starting to feel at home at our new place . as if we weren't homebodies anyways, we feel like we just want to stay home, in our house, together.  no matter if i spent the whole week home not going to work, i'd feel like i need "just one more day" to enjoy the new place. 

we had such a great weekend though, seeing friends every night, celebrating new apartments, seeing friends we hadn't seen in a while, and hosting our first dinner at the new place!  saturday we got a few drinks with friends at battello .  we went there once before for a "we finally got the house!" celebratory dinner, but our friends had never been.  inside the space seriously makes you want to pinch yourself to make sure it's not a dream that a place like this is walking distance from my house.  guys, it's BEAUTIFUL inside.  edison bulbs dimly light up the place just enough to make it cozy, and just enough to reflect on the walls of windows, blending into the already-breathtaking views of manhattan.

Monday, March 10, 2014

wake up!

did you wake up on time this morning? i surely did because i use the alarm on my trusty auto-daylight-savings-changing cell phone to buzz my ear off under my pillow.  i have to admit though, i'm slightly convinced that the quietness in the office this morning is due to the, shall i say, "older" coworkers who still use their non-auto-daylight-savings-changing alarm clocks and forgot to change the clocks... maybe i should give them the benefit of the doubt and say they got "stuck in traffic" or they "woke up but couldn't drag themselves out of bed quite yet" or, really, they're just on vacation.

either way, especially with the time change, we could all use an extra push to wake up in the morning.  what better way than a quality cup of coffee? (i say this as i drink what has GOT to be the worst-tasting coffee on the planet... everyone in the office agrees, i just need to bite the bullet and get a coffee maker for my cube).  i'm not talking about your local starbucks, or your local shop at all, really. and don't EVEN tell me you can't live without your k-cups... fancified instant coffee is just not my thing.  a quality cup of coffee comes from people who are passionate about coffee, people who insist that organic, fair trade beans are the only kind to roast, people who "get" what a good cup of coffee is, and how to make it.

44 north coffee is just that.  they "get" it.  since their debut, i've been a fan of 44 north coffee .  although i typically only drink the good stuff on the weekends, i certainly look forward to those saturday mornings when i'm NOT drinking the awful office coffee (i suppose i don't have room to hate on it, i am fully capable of making coffee at home) their latest newsletter came with a special free shipping over $25 (with code "daylightsavings") to catch a deal before they go on a small break (order by friday march 14th!).  but more importantly, it came with a video, highlighting their story and their passions.  i loved it enough to bring it to you today too!  maybe you, too, can try out their coffee to give you the extra boost you're gonna need in this transition to daylight savings :)

 
happy monday :)

 
cheers.
jenn

Friday, February 21, 2014

crimora mine retreat, weekend in virginia

hey friends! it's almost the weekend! no better way to celebrate than finding out more fun ways to entertain yourself right? right.  speaking of, here's a fun weekend we had in virginia now nearly two weeks ago.

hung and i drove over 6 hours to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday in middle of nowhere virginia at a place called crimora mine retreat .  it was a huge, beautiful cabin, set on over 100 acres with a lake, a hot tub (need i say more?).  the twelve of us ate a lot, drank a lot, and spent a whole day playing our own "olympic" games themed entirely around the birthday boy (we've got some creative friends on our hands, folks). for each main meal we all sat down together at the huge dining table, and teams took turns cooking the food.  our team was team "new america" (originally team USA, but hung decided his food was more like "new american" restaurant food).  mr p prepped everything at home, searing beef shank for wine-braised beef shank in the crock pot and making creamy lemon sauce for lemon pasta.  team greece, team italy, and team honduras also stepped up their game for their meals.

mr p and i made it to the house LATE thursday night, and friday afternoon most of us took off to visit a few wineries in the area (gosh that area is PACKED with wineries! it would be dangerous if i lived there!!) and a local brewery.

first stop was blenheim vineyards , where we learned that the owner is dave matthews , who also designed all the labels for the current list of wines. although i think my favorite wine of the day was from blenheim, i didn't want to overdo it buying wines, so i regretfully said no to buying any wine there (sad face).

next stop was trump winery , where we DID buy wine! bottles that, though delicious, were almost double the price (oops!)  we will save those for a special occasion or something ;)  we bought their cru wine , which is made from chardonnay juice and chardonnay brandy and has been aged in bourbon barrels!

a pit stop at starr hill brewery , and we were out, ready to eat food from team new america!  a special opening ceremony was held with glow sticks around the fire, shenanigans happened, and the night was over.

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saturday started off with team greece cooking breakfast, followed by olympic games including a t-rex relay, whitney houston lyric challenge, and a siamese-turtleneck, popsicle-stick-and-one-direction-duck-tape, bridge-building challenge.  team italy followed through with the last meal together, and we were off to closing ceremonies in fancy-fied togas.

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i can only wish my 30th birthday will be that fun (three years from now! bahaha).  mucho thanks to the organizers for letting us two from new jersey into your awesome virginia group for the weekend!

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and... of course... happy birthday to the birthday boy :)

cheers.
jenn

p.s. wanna know the best part about this place? there was room for everyone to sleep, and for the entire weekend it was only $100/person to rent!!

Friday, May 31, 2013

newbies in nyc

how do you entertain visitors in NYC who don't want to site-see, don't want to see museums, and don't want to walk a ton?

you do like the locals, and eat and drink yourself silly through the weekend!
....and insist they at LEAST go up in the empire state building (with prepaid tickets of course, less, line-waiting) and force them to put on their walking shoes (unless you want to use your entire vacation budget on taxis, you have to walk at least a few miles blocks to get anywhere).

i mean hey, i don't really want to see the statue of liberty AHHHGAIN, and in this food mecca, who wouldn't want to eat and drink all day?  besides the fact that i think i was in a food coma for the rest of the week, it was a pretty darn good weekend... you know, one of those ones where you forget to take your good camera with you because you go to restaurants so small there's only seating for 22 and bars are so rowdy the drinks are always 2-for-1 and the bartender brings them to your table 20 beers at a time (in 2 hands, no tray needed, 10 beers a hand, no big deal).

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(ok ok, so they DID want to see times square... but afterward, they agreed with me: it's fun for about 5 minutes, then you wanna get the heck outta there but there's so many people you're stuck for a good half hour)

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when my dad and his wife tina came into town a few weekends ago for the first time, we were on the go non-stop (well, except for the day the weather decided to drop a few 20 degrees and pour down rain  with insane wind)

we found out that skinner's loft in our neighborhood has a rockin' steak
(good lord it was good, tasted like summer)

i finally found a time at the frying pan when it WASN'T jam-packed
(turns out you have to get there before everyone ELSE gets off of work.  i mean, a bar on a boat really IS the prefect happy hour spot, isn't it?)

we got lucky at yunnan kitchen and walked right in to a table at 7pm on a friday night
(was it just me, or did that tingly-spicy fried chicken get even spicier?!)

we brunched and lunched at westville
(ahhh that dill dressing is to die for)

...and LITM
(hellllooo boozy watermelonade)

we had our fix of light and dark beer at mcsorley's
(those were the only two options. tina was not amused, but the rest of us could have stayed there all day :P)

....got some more at our favorite weeknight happy hour spot, phebe's
(too bad it wasn't a weeknight and they didn't have 10-cent wings)

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...and of course it wouldn't be a weekend at OUR house if we mr p cooked dinner for the guests.  this time it was pork loin, red cabbage slaw, salad with our version of westville's dill dressing, and bread with a sampling of our many infused oils and vinegars :)

next time they come we'll have to spend a day at the beach, because that was an exhausting 4-day weekend!!

cheers.

Friday, December 14, 2012

paninis and a party


the night started off with gin and tonics.
we moved on with panini-making on our panini-maker:
baguette with:
special buffalo sauce (see below)
thinly-sliced fresh mozarella
roasted chicken (we picked up a rotisserie chicken that night)
frank's red hot
red onions
crumbled gorgonzola
smash inside panini maker/george foreman/hot pan with brick on top until cheese is melty
done!

i opted for a kale and red-leaf lettuce buffalo chicken salad instead, using the special sauce as dressing

mr p's special buffalo sauce
(to be used as a thick and creamy salad dressing, or as a spread for sammiches with a kick, or dunking celery sticks)
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup miracle whip
1 cup greek style plain yogurt
1 tbsp spicy brown mustard
3 tbsp Frank's Red Hot
2 tbsp ranch dressing (could achieve similar taste by omitting the ranch and adding ing some spices, but we had this on hand already)

whisk all ingredients together in a bowl and it's ready to go!

after we devoured our sammiches and salads with the new favorite sauce, we headed on over to our local barcade for some brews (think walls lined with 25-cent arcade games and an always-changing, extensive list of craft beers on tap)
we saw lots of friends
we celebrated a birthday
we drank lots of beers
we may or may not have taken a shot of tequila
we scarfed down two boots pizza

then...

i went to work the next day.

was i feeling 100%? no.
was it worth staying out late with fun friends? absolutely!
it's so hard to say no to a night on the town at a place that's merely steps from my front door... gosh i love this town.

cheers to the weekend! what are your plans!?
we're going to santacon and a friend's holiday party :)


p.s. i'm obsessed with my new wedge sneakers , even though mr p says with hesitation "...i guess... they're sorta growing on me..."
p.p.s. santacon is this weekend!! you betcha we're doing it!