the return of the muggy hot weather means return of no-appetite. couldn't think of what we wanted to eat, so after ambling around uninspired we ended up at cammareri café. we saw that they had new things on the menu (or their specials) so we tried "adult" mac & cheese, and bbq sandwich.

holy cow, were these the best things we have gotten here! mac & cheese had cheddar and gorgonzola béchamel, topped with crushed walnuts instead of breadcrumbs, which was brilliant. and the pulled pork bbq sandwich was even better than at bbq joints (like smoke joint, e.g.) since the bread was better and they put greens and pickles in it. so delicious it made us so happy.

ojinguh-bokum (spicy stir-fried squid & vegetables) & jolmyun at café 232 for dinner.

poor m was a bit sick and it was a bit late to get any other food but these were pretty decent today.

not sure if it helped the sickness though! 

recently, i've been really into this meal - scrambled egg, fried kimchi over rice - and some roasted gim/dried seaweed sprinkled on top and/or wrapping each bite. so simple but so good!
last time (unphotographed) i made this, i had some hot dogs at hand, which was good chopped up in the scrambled egg. yummy & simple, like a little kid's meal.

we had our first birthing class today (!!) for home birth, which happened to be nearby our old old favorite spot from 5-6 years ago. the last time we were here was after hurricane sandy last year, almost a year ago (which was the first time back in a few years). we forgot how good good sushi can be, having only been eating them at janky places near by. all these pieces in sushi deluxe set just melted in our mouths, even the california roll. we also got miso soup and kara-age (fried chicken) besides the sushi, but i forgot to photograph them.

then after, we biked a block down to chocolate room, where we haven't been back in about 5 years.

we got our old favorite, fudge brownie sundae with vanilla ice cream - holy cow i can't believe how rich this was. we must've gotten old (well, by like, 5 years -_-) because we could BARELY finish this.

i believe there were several times that we got this with some other chocolatey things - hot chocolate or a piece of flourless chocolate cake or something. O_O still very good.

a coffee shop recently opened near by, brooklyn roasting company in the navy yard, and we've been hanging out in there on hot days (or whenever it's hot in the house). they have mini sandwiches and donuts from Dough (yummy!). i normally don't even like raised/yeast donuts much but this cinnamon sugar one is my favorite from them. a little be reminiscent of asian bakery donuts. their roast beef sandwich is one of our favorites there. unfortunately(?), the donut isn't nearly as gigantic as this photo suggests. it IS on the bigger side (even larger than the doughnut plant ones?) but perspective and the mini-ness of the sandwich makes it look exaggerated - and leaves me drooling. -_-

late dinner at café 232 - last few times we've had food there it was hit or miss (miss, especially with soups, being too salty and spicy). today we played a bit safer and got jolmyun and soy sauce dak gui (grilled chicken), instead of the spicy kind we got last time. jolmyun noodles were perfect, chewy (but not gummy) with not too spicy and slightly tart/vinegary sauce. it paired well with the teriyaki-ish sauce of the chicken, in fact, it helped the sweetness of it.

pretty good, not bad, i guess we shouldn't complain. :)

after a leisurely bike riding around, putzing around kind of day in bushwick, we ended up at roberta's for the famed pizza (that none of us had tried yet). we got a rosso (cheeseless for our vegan friend jli), a margherita, and a "carlos danger" -  it's got reading & parmigiano cheeses, squash, fresnos (chilis), onions and chili oil - which turned out to be amazing and so perfectly funky & savory. the dough was a lot like paulie gee's, maybe a bit on the doughier side, but still made perfectly. delicious meal to share on such a beautiful day (albeit in such a crazy hip(ster) environment with insane sound system & music).

i made a pretty half-assed kimchi fried rice omurice for dinner with some pre-cooked microwave rice my parents sent us. unfortunately those microwave rice, though yummy, tend to be really wet and gummy for our taste, especially for fried rice, for which you want old, drier rice. i tried to dry the rice out but it was still very sticky after being completely cold and being aired out for an hour. -_-
we didn't have cabbage kimchi either, so i used radish kimchi, with some hotdogs thrown into it. i would've made a proper omurice out of this, except i realized we have no ketchup. so i just dumped the omelette part on top, with some scallions and perilla leaves for extra flavor.
despite the stickiness of the rice, it was pretty darn good!

too hungry to go anywhere far, we stopped by castro's for dinner. m got a steak burrito and i got 2x fried catfish tacos. they are, as always, pretty darn good and cheap, but man, do we feel pretty crummy in our tummy later on. such a bummer!

half classic and half grilled chicken banh mi at hanco's - i could hardly finish it but we had some time left before an appointment so had to stuff my belly!
pretty darn good today.

breakfast (a very very late one) at mike's diner! i do love me some big brekkie.

m got steak & eggs (over easy), with a side of grits & toast, and i got scrambled eggs, pork sausages (that lump on top of the egg is butterflied, curled-up sausages), and pancakes!!!

although, as usual i couldn't finish the pancakes... sometimes we need these things in our tummy.

i cooked! >_<

it wasn't hot (more of a beautifully cloudy, almost rainy kind of day), but after a long walk, i wanted to try making something lighter and refreshing for dinner.

i kind of cheated, by using this bibimmyun noodles - but i did make the cold cucumber soup from scratch, to mix with (though i didn't necessarily use that recipe linked). topped with some young radish kimchi, tofu, and soft-boiled eggs, it was tart, spicy and refreshing! kind of a soupy, spicy version of hiyashi chuka, in a way.

another gorgeous, beautiful, breezy day for sitting around the flea and the park watching people.

after doing that for a while, we biked down to national thai for some fresh-ish meal. we got som tom (green papaya salad), salmon spring roll, and squid stir fried with vegetables in garlic sauce.

the two appetizers were excellent - the squid dish, which we'd tried in basil sauce before, wasn't as good this time in garlic sauce. but still they sure knew to cook everything to perfect texture. 

my iPhone 4s takes better photos than the older one, but still it's so so dark inside café 232 downstairs that i could hardly even walk without stumbling into chairs (that and preggo clumsiness).

we got spicy pork bibimbap and spicy dak-gui (grilled chicken breast) to share. somehow they've been changing things up over there and (we've been seeing new plates and dishes every time lately) and maybe they're experimenting with their recipes and menu... so things have been hit or miss lately.

their bibimbap has always been consistent, but today it seemed not as good as some other days. but the chicken, on the other hand, was better than ever! so odd. 

 kind of a lazy day but wanted something clean and healthy-ish, we flipped a coin (so inspired) and went to pillow café. we got our usual and went halfsies - egg salad sandwich and a garden bagel.
i love how they make their egg salad - never pre-mixed or assembled, they just simply layer sliced hard boiled eggs (never over cooked!) with mayo and capers, just as you would any other sandwich ingredients. and the dab of pesto makes the garden bagel sandwich so brilliant. such a good meal.

what a gorgeous day!! august has been like september so far, and it's been amazing... my favorite kind of weather today - breezy, cool, dry and just plain gorgeous out. we couldn't help but jump on our bike and take a little excursion since i hadn't been going far outside the neighborhood lately.

we went over the bridge to chinatown, walked around, popped in and out of weird shops with mysterious animal parts cooked in awesome sauces, stopped at bakeries to stock up on our favorite cheap chinese desserts, then ended up at cutting board again. this time m ordered spaghetti with meat sauce (bolognese like but with more veggies and a sunnyside up on top!), AND an appetizer plate of spare ribs - and i tried their omurice with beef curry. the spare ribs were amazing - the meat fell off the bones, they were cooked tender and sauce was right on the spot as well. the pasta was cooked perfectly  like last time, maybe a teeny bit past al dente, and the meat sauce was tangy and meaty and all that's good. the curry omurice was interesting - the "rice" part in omurice is usually some kind of tomato-based fried rice like this, but this was just simply rice fried in butter, i think. so the flavor was a little bland, with the curry not really giving much of a high-note flavor or any kind of punch this kind of needed. we tried the meat sauce from the pasta on the omurice and it was actually perfect (which i would've gotten with the omurice had it not been for the meat sauce pasta we'd already ordered). so next time we'll know! 

 then after we walked off the fullness of the dinner, we walked around the eastern chinatown (my favorite) under the bridge, and looped back around for some dessert at a new dessert joint, indessert.

we got green tea shaved ice - shaved ice topped with green tea ice cream, red beans, mochi, and grass jelly, sprinkled with condensed milk and honey. it was really yummy except for the goopy mochi.

next time i'll try the tropical fruit shaved ice here now that i know they use real fruit!

one of the bakeries we stopped by was called audrey bakery, with a big grand opening sign. i popped in their to pick up this twisty donut, which the girl with the tray (somehow chinese bakeries have this now where you can't pick up baked goods yourself, they come with a tray and help you get the goods to the register) nicely shoved into this little waxed paper bag. even the cashier girl was stunned at this, the girl who did it was just shrugging, and i thought it was so funny. so chinatown!

what a great day.

oh choice market you mock us! sometimes you get it and other times you're just a terror.

we went in there thinking it was pretty slow and empty but still took more than 30 minutes to get our food. ugh! but they keep you coming back for more abusive relationship by feeding us with decently priced good yummy food. i got a roast salmon sandwich with mango and corn, and m got a steak panini (that second photo is a perspective thing - the panini was NOT the size of one of his fingers). they were both darn good, making us leave feeling a little confused (according to m - he felt a little violated).

dang.

holy yowza does iPhone 4s take bright photos! went for some light-ish meal at pequeña.

we always say they're a hit-or-miss kind of place, and luckily tonight was a good one.

m got a pork enchilada dish with both roja & verde sauces, and i got 2 grilled fish tacos (with chipotle mayo and pickled veggies). good balance of fresh and cooked, the beans and rice were great as well - so yummy!

 a cool, early autumn-like day today (or this whole week, i guess), and we happened to be in manhattan. so we decided to head over to menkuitei for their elusive (only because we never make it) lunch special, and alas, we had just missed it by 15 minutes.

we still ordered our favorite cold noodle dishes - cold jar jar men & hiyashi chuka. 

the middle & bottom photos are those of the dishes all tossed and mixed up.

then for dinner, m cooked up this amazing bean stew/chili - full of so many delicious veggies!

celery, carrots, onions (mirepoix), garlic, pink beans, turkey sausages, potatoes, kale, tomatoes and corn. it felt sooooo good to eat home cooked real food after too many days of eating out (it'd been too hot to cook). i can't wait to dig into this tomorrow again!

we've had a series of rather disappointing meals at our frequent places lately, so we decided to revisit some places we hadn't been in a while. it had been over a year, i think, since we last had eaten at maya taqueria. i got a "special" burrito (=with cheese & guacamole) with chipotle chicken, and m got a ranchero style steak burrito - but he forgot to make it "super" or "deluxe" or whatever it is that makes it huge and have more stuff like guacamole & cheese, so it came out all small and without extra stuff. 

still, they have great salsa bar selection and i thought mine tasted pretty dang yummy.

something about having a cleanly good tasting burrito, albeit small in size (it wasn't small for me), was pretty satisfying.

we couldn't figure out what to eat for dinner, even after walking around for a long time, we were still let uninspired. finally decided to go to choice market, and luckily it was pretty empty inside. we ordered me a salmon burger with salad, and m a turkey burger with fries. seems like these are the best to get here, and probably the best time to come eat there. everything was cooked perfectly! so satisfying.