Dinner at Home

On Sunday Phil had a night out with some of his old highschool friends, so I headed to my mom's house for dinner with Mandy and her husband. My mom made garlic zucchini and squash, chicken curry and pork chops. Yum!



After dinner I hung out with the family for a bit, and my mom was showing off some of the new clothes she bought recently - like this new hat! Mandy and I think she kind of looks like Paddington Bear in that hat...check out the comparison and you decide ^__^

Yogee Restaurant

This Saturday was another big lunch outing with Phil's extended family. We headed to a new restaurant called Yogee Restaurant on Chrystie Street. This restaurant has Cantonese style food - from congee (rice porridge) to noodle soups. We ordered an entire table full of food - 2 noodle soups, 2 bowls of congee, and 4 noodle dishes for 9 people. One of the best parts of the meal for Phil was the bill - $50 including tip for 9 people...only in Chinatown.



Phil's cousin Kevin had just come back from a trip to Japan and brought back some KitKats that we passed around for dessert. Japan is infamous for their weird KitKat flavors. This time there was Corn, Royal Milk Tea, Black Raspberry and Passion Fruit, Ginger Ale, and Green Tea. The Royal Milk Tea and Black Raspberry Passion Fruit weren't bad, but I could definitely pass on the Corn and the Ginger Ale. Something about chocolate candy that fizzes is just too weird for me...

Double Tree Cookies

One of Phil's cousins, Lydia, sent me a recipe for Double Tree cookies. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Double Tree and their famous Double Tree cookies, Double Tree is a hotel chain and when you first check-in they always offer you a warm chocolate chip cookie. But this is no ordinary cookie...these cookies are out of this world. They're so popular they have a separate page off the hotel website where you can order them specially.

But what's better than ordering cookies? Finding the recipe online and making them yourself! Lydia found a website that claims to have the original recipe for these infamous cookies.
http://www.foodgeeks.com/recipes/18302

So, with some free time on the weekend I decided to give the recipe a try. The result? Over 2 dozen delicious cookies. Phil, the ultimate cookie monster, gave them 2 thumbs up. He said they were fairly close to the real thing.


So if you're looking for a good cookie recipe (and you're not allergic to nuts) I'd highly recommend you give this recipe a try.

Famous Dave's

Over the weekend Phil and I decided to head out to Famous Dave's for lunch. Famous Dave's is a chain of BBQ goodness. Their portions are usually pretty big, but we were feeling hungry.

One of the signatures of Famous Dave's is their caddy of sauces that they put on each table. Even though we've been here before we always seem to forget what the sauces taste like and have to do the taste test all over again.


Our food came pretty quickly, which makes sense since most of this stuff has already been barbecuing for hours. Phil gets ready to smother his plate in BBQ sauce and have at it.


He ordered ribs and the Texas brisket.


I ended up ordering the pulled pork, which I think may be my new favorite dish at Famous Dave's.


Not surprisingly I didn't finish all of my pulled pork, but Phil pretty much devoured his entire plate minus 1 rib. As you can see it's time for Phil's post-meal nap...

Secaucus + Sports Resort

On Sunday we headed into Secaucus to visit our friend, Ghimel. It was after lunch, but there was still plenty of food to snack on. She made pizza - check out the fancy pizza stone!



She also had fries and some mini tacos. And there were sugar coated donuts that Tejal and Conrad brought with them.


I didn't have time to bake anything, so we brought over a box of European cookies that we got from Phil's aunt for Christmas. The box looked super fancy, and inside there were cookies from 4 different countries (Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands) all sectioned off and individually wrapped. So cute. ^__^

Ghimel recently got the Wii Sports Resort, so we tried it out. I think this is a shot of Conrad and Ghimel canoe racing. Unfortunately, most of my other Wii shots came out blurry, but we were all laughing and feeling the burn by the end.

We even did a little American Idol singing. I think I sang an R.E.M. song. Phil must have taken this picture before he "fell asleep" because my singing was so boring... (~__~')

Congee Village and Brooklyn

After the holidays and the trip to Cleveland, we finally made our first trip into NYC after New Years. We met up with Phil's family, some of his cousins and his aunt and uncle. We went to Congee Village, which we hadn't been to in a while. We had the Chinese fried donuts with sweet sauce, my personal favorite.


Ribs and noodles in a stew type broth.

We tried their "famous" fried chicken. According to Phil's cousin, Lucia, it took them 4 years to perfect this chicken. I have to say it was pretty good. Definitely worth the 4 years of work.

Then there was the deep fried tofu, which looked and tasted more like regular fried tofu. But it was super yummy. I'm not sure what the sauce was, but whatever it was tasted really good.

And beef noodles. You're hungry now, aren't you? ^__~

After lunch Phil and I headed over to Brooklyn to pick up some blown up photos from our wedding photographer. I was able to snag a quick photo of the Brooklyn Bridge while we were driving across the Manhattan Bridge. It was just with my point-and-click camera, taken from a moving car, but I thought it turned out kind of nice. The sun shining out from behind the bridge makes it seem so much warmer than it really was.

After Brooklyn we headed back to Phil's parent's house in Queens for dinner. My sister had brought us back a lot of chocolate from her trip to Turkey, so we decided to try one out. It's called "Rodeo", and it basically has all of the same ingredients as a Snicker's bar, but it wasn't as sweet. I actually think I liked it better than a Snickers.

Here's Phil chowing down on his Rodeo bar, apparently having a little trouble with the caramel.

House Update

Ok, so this has been a long time coming, but I finally got around to taking some pictures of the house post-rennovations while it was actually clean. So here they are!

First we have the living room. All of the rooms on the top floor were repainted, and we added some carpeting and ceiling lights in some rooms including this one. I know, the carpets are white, but we love it and hopefully we can keep it clean...




The living room leads into the dining room and kitchen areas.

You know you like the new cabinets and shiny new appliances. I know I do! ^__^

Next we move onto the bedrooms. First we have our room, otherwise known as the green room. And boy is it green. Let's just say that Phil and I discovered we are not very good at picking paint colors...but it grows on you.

Then we have the yellow room, a smaller second bedroom that is currently serving as my craft room. We were trying to go for a pale yellow here, but again it came out a little brighter than we anticipated...

And the final bedroom, the blue room - the only one that came out a decent color. If you ever come to visit us this is probably where you would be staying ^__^

The first level of the house is a bit of a mess so no pictures of that for now, but that's our place. I hope you enjoyed the tour!

Goodbye Cleveland

We dragged Steve and Rebecca out of bed early in the morning to have breakfast with us before we hopped back in the car to make the drive home. For breakfast it was back to Bob Evan's. (Can you tell Phil really likes this place?) Rebecca puts on her best smile even though she's secretly wondering what she's doing out of bed so early. ^__^


Phil had an omellete.

I got the blueberry french toast - yum!

After we said goodbye to Steve and Rebecca we hit the road - back into the misty white wonderland that is Cleveland.

As we got past Cleveland and the snow belt and made our way into Pennsylvania things cleared up considerably. There was still snow on the ground, but the roads and the skies were definitely much clearer.

We'll miss you Cleveland! (minus the cold weather of course) Hope to see you again soon ^__~

Cleveland Day 5

We spent our last full day in Cleveland taking it easy. First we headed out to Cleveland's "chinatown" to Tom's Seafood for their all you can eat dim sum. (Although, if you were thinking about heading over to try the place out you might want to think twice. We found out from a waitress there who was an old friend of Phil's mom that the restaurant closed a couple days after we were there! I hope it wasn't because something was wrong with the food...)

Here we are at Tom's Seafood waiting for Anthony and Su-Kyi.




We got a little hungry, so we had some food while we waitied.

I had to take a picture of this because they just started piling random things onto this tiny plate. There's fried turnip cake somewhere on the bottom, a random dumpling, and some egg thing on top.

Anthony finally arrived with Su-Kyi, but she was very unhappy for some reason. She wasn't crying, but she had this zoned-out look the whole time. I think she may have just been tired. Look at her frowny face with her eyebrows all furrowed. I guess she wasn't as happy to see us as we were to see her.

The plus side of Su-Kyi being zoned-out though is that she let everyone carry her without making a fuss. Rebecca is definitely happy to get to carry her. I even think I see a smile starting to break through on Su-Kyi's face!

After dim sum we headed back to Rebecca and Steve's place. Rebecca and I rode in the car with Anthony to help him with the baby. She was out like a light as soon as we started driving. A girl after Phil's own heart. ^__^

Back at Rebecca and Steve's I stayed in the kitchen with Rebecca so she could start baking a cake for Anthony's birthday.

The boys went to hang out and play with their toys. They decided to try their hand at fixing the Wii guitar (with Su-Kyi's help of course). But unfortunately they had about as much luck as Rebecca and I did...which was not much...We all managed to figure out what the problem was, but sadly it was beyond repair.

Afterwards Phil took charge of entertaining Su-Kyi. Here he is trying to put her in the dishwasher.

After the cake was in the oven Rebecca started working on dinner. This time she made beef curry.

Group photo! Everybody's ready to eat. (From left to right: Rebecca, me, Phil, Steve, Anthony and Su-Kyi)

After dinner it was time for a round of "Happy Birthday" and cake. Rebecca had made an apple coffee crumb cake. It was super fluffy and delicious. I may have to steal the recipe and try this myself sometime. ^__^

Then it was back to games for the boys. They worked at breaking in our Wii Fit Plus we just got for Christmas. Meanwhile Su-Kyi was fast asleep in Rebecca's lap. I guess Phil must have really tired her out!