Bridgewater

After a day in the city, we spent Sunday in Bridgewater, NJ to check out my sister's new place. Here we are with my sister and my brother-in-law, Tam, in front of their new town house.
As you can see, my sister is very excited about the new place.
Don't the floors look shiny? Apparently Tam's mom is as into cleaning as Phil's mom is. My sister suggested they have a clean off or start a business together.
Now it's time for the grand tour.

There was a nice little half bath in the front entrance by the door.

Straight ahead from the front door is the living room, with the gigantic windows and vaulted ceiling.

Off to the left of the living room is the formal dining room.

The dining room leads into the kitchen, with a small balcony on the other side of the sliding glass doors.

Next we took a look at the basement. Very open with plenty of space.

That's my mom - trying to emphasize how much space there is. Either that or contemplating doing a cartwheel...

Next we visited the upstairs. There's a nice loft-like feeling from the stairs as you look down into the living room.

Upstairs there are 2 rooms. This one is the second bedroom, which I think my mom has claimed for her own when she comes to visit.

Next is the master bedroom. They just painted the walls a pale green. Definitely not as obnoxious a green as our room...Although I think the pink carpet will have to go.

The master bedroom has a master bathroom. Complete with tub and standing shower. Phil was having a hard time trying to figure out how to get in and out of the tub...

After we finished our tour Tam was excited to have Phil try out a new game he had on the XBox.

While he was playing their iRobot randomly came out of its docking station and tried to attack Phil's foot. Apparently the iRobot knows unclean when it sees (or smells) it. ^__^

Once the boys were done entertaining themselves with video games we headed into downtown Somerset for some lunch. We stopped at a Japanese restaurant called Yukata.

The decor was very nice so I made Phil take a picture with me.

Here are my mom and my sister.

We all ordered box lunches, except for my mom who went for the sushi.

Like most Japanese restaurants our lunches came with a bowl of miso soup and salad.

The food had nice presentation. This was my mom's sushi dish.

Like the decor, everything looked nice, but the food was only so-so.

Phil had Tempura....

My sister had Chicken Katsu, which is basically chicken that is breaded and fried.

I had the Chicken Terriyaki.

And Tam had the Beef Negimaki, but the picture was a bad angle, so you don't get to see that one.

Overall the lunch was OK, but we definitely liked Fujiyama Mama's better. Phil and I are still waiting to take my family there for half-price sushi sometime. Stay tuned for more food and adventures...

Vietnamese food + cute puppy = fun Saturday

This weekend it was back into the city to hang out with Phil's family. His cousin Lea is in town for the weekend, so we all met up at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown called Nam Son.
I think this is the same restaurant chain that I went to with friends back in December.

Here are Phil's mom and Lea getting ready for some good eats.

Phil's ready for some good eats too - no surprise there though. ^__^

They had very nice decor there. Not sure how authentically Vietnamese it is, but still nice.

We ordered tons of food (as usual)...It may not look like a lot but there were only 7 of us. I don't know, it seemed like a lot to me. Plus there's a dish of stir fry noodles that's missing from the picture.

There was pork chop in a nice sweet sauce and sour veggies on the side.

Some Vietnamese Phở - 4 giant bowls in total, with some bread for dipping.

And beef with vermicelli noodles (at least that's what I think it is...) that you wrap in lettuce leaves. This one was my personal favorite.

After lunch Phil went to get his haircut, and I took a walk with his cousins to look for Almond Roca candies and get ideas for wedding favors. While we were walking we passed by a restaurant where someone had left their dogs tied outside while they ate. One of the dogs was so adorable!!

Isn't he cute?

After I met back up with Phil we did some hotel shopping in Flushing for the wedding, and then headed back to his parent's house for dinner.

And what would a trip to NY be without groceries to bring home? I promise I'll try not to make this a weekly habit, but there was so much food this week I had to take a picture.

Here is the before...I know it looks empty, but there was almost enough to get us through the next week (there are only 2 of us...), so the plan was just to bring a little bit of food back from NY...

This is what we ended up with...

3 containers of soup, 2 containers of cow tail, over a dozen oranges, and over 2 dozen apples...

I'm not really sure what we're going to do with that many apples and oranges between the two of us...

Doesn't it kind of look like the bottom shelf is starting to strain under the weight? I think we need a more heavy duty fridge...

Tomato, Egg & Beef

This is a random post for Phil's cousins - in case any of them happen to visit.
Apparently Phil's grandma used to make tomotoes and egg when they were little. And I happen to make tomotoes and egg (with beef) on occasion. Since they were talking about it recently and I happened to have tomotoes this week I thought I'd provide a little flashback.

Not sure if it's exactly like grandma used to make, but...

Valentine's Day in the City

We spent the Valentine's Day weekend in the city. With Phil's family being in NY and it being so close we spend a lot of time there.

On Saturday we met up with Phil's parents, his Aunt Chan and cousin Lucia at a Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown. His cousin brought us some rainbow cake. It was disguised in a See's candy box. I think Phil's mom was more excited when she thought the box had See's candy in it..

As you can see, Phil was getting hungry just thinking about cake. In case you're wondering what rainbow cake looks like underneath all that plastic wrap, it almost looks like play-doh, but definitely tastes like cake.

Back to our Valentine's Day lunch at the Malaysian place...

Tons of food as usual - chicken

Lots of spicy noodle soup...and some kind of thick noodle in brown sauce... There was something very wrong about Phil's chopsticks, but that didn't get between him and his food.

After we left lunch we passed by a Smart car parked on one of the side streets of Chinatown. Only with a car that small could you squeeze into a parking space like that. Considering how much time you spend looking for a parking spot in the city it doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

Sunday morning we had dim sum in Flushing with Phil's grandma and his aunt and cousin from his mom's side. Doesn't it look yummy!

And dim sum wouldn't be complete without some kind of dish that's bound to make someone go "ewww". This is duck's feet (or foot in this case...) and cow intestines.

And a very festive looking dish of coconut jelly for dessert.

Wii Night

This was one of the few weekends that we didn't go into the city. Instead we headed over to Seacaucus again to visit our friend Ghimel. She made pork chops and beans w/ sweet potatoes, and I supplied the Kahlua chocolate chip cookies. No food pictures this time (sorry...).

But I did get some photos of our post-dinner Wii playing. After some Tetris Party and Raving Rabids, our hosts busted out Sing It and put on quite a performance. Here's a shot of Ghimel giving her rock star pose with Jessica.
Phil's not much into the whole singing thing so he just sat back and watched. Although we did convince him to sing a song from High School Musical...let's just say it wasn't pretty. ^__^

NYC with the Cousins

One of Phil's cousins was visiting from San Francisco, so it was back into the city on Saturday. We went back to Congee Village for lunch. Since there were so many of us they sat us at one of the larger tables in the back. Here we are still a little disheveled from the cold wind outside. There was a portion of the floor that was decorated with this really nice backlit glass pattern. Too bad it was completely covered by our table. You would think with something so pretty they would have put it somewhere people could actually see it...

There were about 10 of us at lunch, including Phil's parents, his aunts and uncle and 3 of his cousins, and we still managed to eat for less than $60! The joys of cheap eats in Chinatown ^__^

we had 3 huge bowls of congee... and that tofu looking thing at the bottom was like a Chinese donut which you dip in a sweet frosting. Yum! Who said you can't eat dessert first.

Then we had 3 noodle dishes. I took a picture of the flat noodles we had. There were also 2 dishes of Singapore noodles.And, to end with, a bowl of beef tendons. The bowl was deceivingly shallow...

Phil and I posed with the cousins near the front entrance before we headed back into the cold.

(Left to Right: Phil, Lucia, Kevin, Lydia, me)

After lunch Phil and I walked around with his cousins Lucia and Lydia. Our first stop was a little coffee shop and chocolatier called Cocoa Bar. It's a tiny little shop and was full of New Yorkers working away on their laptops. They had a whole display of different kinds of chocolates. Although with $3 prices for something the size of a Hershey's Kiss we decided to pass on the chocolate and just order some drinks to keep us warm.

Phil and I shared a mint hot chocolate. It was very rich, and also a little chunky...not sure if that was intentional...Lydia ordered a spicy hot chocolate. I didn't try it, but it came in a cool glass cup where the inside looks suspended.

After we finished our hot chocolate we made a stop at a restaurant deli called Katz's so Lucia could buy some pastrami for a Super Bowl party.

Once you enter the restaurant deli you get a ticket that you take with you when you order, and then you have to present it to the cashier when you leave to pay for everything. I didn't realize it until Lydia pointed it out, but apparently a scene from the movie When Harry Met Sally was filmed here.

Our last stop before heading back to Phil's parents' house was a cupcake place called Sugar Sweet Sunshine. Considering how cold it was there were a decent number of people crammed inside the store enjoying their cupcakes. We took ours to go.

Here we have the "Bob" cupcake on the bottom and the "Ooey Goey" at the top.

The cupcakes themselves didn't look super fancy, but they tasted pretty good. The "Ooey Gooey" tasted like it had a hint of cherry, although Phil didn't agree. I think he was still sour about being caught on camera while he was trying to enjoy his cupcake.

After dinner with Phil's parents we headed back home. But we didn't leave empty handed. For those of you who know Phil's mom or have at least heard stories from us before about the mounds of groceries, Saturday was no exception. These are all the bags that we ended up bringing back with us. Now, some of you may be saying to yourselves this doesn't look that bad...so I took some more pictures to put it into context.

This was our fridge before...

And this was our fridge after...

One thing is for sure. Phil and I will never go hungry!