amazing how satisfying & comforting ramen can be on a cold, dreary day.

m cooked this for me while i fed the baby - customized with greens, shrimp dumplings, eggs, mushroom. soooo good.

this photo may look weird but it represents the best mac 'n cheese ever!
m made this huge bowl of mac 'n cheese with peas, corn kernels, toasted walnuts, broccoli and cauliflower, topped with fresh tomatoes and herbs - may sound strange but the texture and flavor balance and contrast with all the veggies is unbeatable.

another trader joe's convenience - toaster silver dollar pancakes and waffles!

i love silver dollar pancakes (more crisp edges, the better) and i do love breakfast food.

over-easy eggs, sausages, and silver dollar pancakes with maple syrup and good coffee. my favorite!!

one of our recent favorite meals - steak from trader joe's and some kind of vegetable dish.
since pregnancy/baby, we wanted to up the iron and protein intake to keep up with the energy expenditure and general health, we've been getting precooked meats from trader joe's, as we'd itherwise be eating vegetarian diet if we only cooked at home.
this time, sirloin steak with baby broccoli & veggies stir fry. so satisfying!

our first meal eating out since baby at castro's!

got to catch their breakfast special, since we're up so early - i got huevos rancheros, 

which looked very different than other ones i've gotten before, but really good nonetheless.

m got his usual beef burrito, which was still good.

first meal out was a success!

we are so lucky to have such sweet friends - audrey brought us this pumpkin soup with rosted pumpkin seeds. we put our garnish but the pumpkin seeds were the best one of them!!
thank you, audrey - it was so good (and gone in no time), and i can't wait to try the scones she brought us as well.

sweet julia silently stopped by without our knowledge and left this peanut stew with quinoa on our stoop for us. soooo amazingly sweet, we were so touched. and i didn't know there could be anything like stew made with peanuts, but dang it was so good!! thank you again, julia!!

m's yummy fry-up, courtesy of trader joe's ingredients (tj's and we have become fast friends since the baby). just perfect, one of our all time favorites.

delicious smoked clam pasta m made for us tonight - it was really amazing!
garlicky, slightly spicy with chili flakes, briny smoky flavor of clams, capers, just the perfect balance.
mmmmm~

m made this simple kimchi and tofu dish, with rice and seaweed, after several days of eating bready stuff. so simple but hits the spot every time!

so i had a baby a couple days ago, a mere couple hours before the official due date - it was a very nice homebirth, but i didn't feel like eating at all during the whole process. so we ended up with a lot of frozen food we'd stocked up - but today our friend julia came by and dropped off this homemade coconut chickpea curry with papadoms, which was nice to have. such sweet friends we have!

delicious ramen on an unusually warm/humid fall evening with audrey at menkuitei.

all of us could've gone for their cold noodles but they stopped serving them after the summer - first time this has happened in the 10 years we've been going there!

m got a mabo-don, audrey the roasted pork ramen and i got my usual shoyu ramen.

we got to hang out eating some choco-pie at m2m after when another friend came to meet us - gotta stock up on this before the baby comes! (due in 2 days!)

it's been a LOOOONG time (over 5 years) since we've last eaten at moïm (and that was the only time, i believe). brooklyn has come a long way since those days when we had to either trek into the city or find small places hidden away like this but since we were in the vicinity, we decided to finally give it a try. (plus café 232 has been upping their prices without much upping their game, so we thought this would be a worthy splurge.) we got our old favorite, the dak gui chicken dish (dish of the same idea/name here from café 232) as well as a seafood dolsot bibimbap. the chicken was saucier than we remember it, but dang it was soooo well cooked. perfectly tender with super crispy skin. all the jujube's and herbs flavored the sauce with layers and it was just so tasty to eat. the bibimbap was a bit too soupy (instead of crisped on the stone bowl) so it was more like a paella than bibimbap but still had great flavors. besides the weird, odd-mannered staff, it was all in all a really good meal!

sometimes you need diner breakfast food for dinner. pancakes & sausages, corned beef hash w/ over easy eggs & grits, copious amount of coffee at mike's.

these two dishes at cammareri café never disappoints - bbq sandwich and mac & cheese.

the first couple times had the sandwich, it had greens in it as well, and we didn't even notice that today's didn't have any until afterwards since it was still really tasty. i do miss having greens with it though.

the mac & cheese was still delicious, never too heavy or too cheesy. sometimes their roux tends to be a bit too grainy but i can get past it. very satisfying and cheap dinner.

after a loooong walk back home from south slope, we ended up randomly at joy indian restaurant, which we haven't been to in years. somehow i was in the mood for indian food since a couple days ago, and it was a lucky stumble that i hadn't thought of at the time. we ordered chicken tikka masala (theirs is so good) and a bindi bajhee (okra dish), with a side of cheese naan. somehow the two main dishes we got were such a good match - well-balanced flavors, texture, and even the color! so delicious, i was beyond full.

maybe because we also stopped at cousin john's bakery on the way up there while we took a little break with this huge eclair. we got two but one was enough for both of us as a pre-dinner dessert. good pâte à choux, good chocolate, and great custard cream. mmmm~~

last night, m made this huge pot of delicious lentil & vegetable stew - chock full of yummy delicious things, like kale, okra, corn, peas, baby broccoli, chicken sausage, with the mirepoix trio (celery, carrots, onions) in beef stock as well. i had a bowl as a midnight snack last night and again for dinner tonight. it was so so hearty and yummy, topped with fresh tomatoes and parsley. i had a side of grilled chicken breast strips m got me from trader joe's as i must've been craving lots of protein today. soooo good!

went back to il porto for their delicious pizza we'd tried last time. this time, we weren't nearly hungry,

so we got their rugola e parmigiano (arugula, parmesan and portobello mushrooms) salad, and got a large (18") seafood pizza. holy crap was it large - i barely ate 3 slices and i was over-the-top full. clams, mussels, octopus, calamari, with tomato, basil over simple marinara sauce, with drizzles of bouillabaisse, it's just so so good!!! although getting a large (good call, m -_-;; ) was definitely not necessary. we were both way too full for way too long!

it's been a while since we've eaten burgers at clinton park café, mostly because they have been closing so early (6pm) and we rarely feel like eating burgers for lunch (or breakfast, for that matter). somehow we caught them open past 6 or even 7pm, so we decided to go in for a bite. i got my usual veggie burger with sweet potato fries, and m got his usual as well - medium-rare mushroom swiss burger with fries. i'm never sure if they make their own patties for veggie burgers (i'd be surprised either way), but it's always so green and vegetable-y with peas and corn. makes me so happy! and the sweet potato fries were just crispy and well cooked, i ate them all up and didn't even feel that bad. :D

post-midwifery appointment meal at hanco's (=late lunch). we hadn't been here in a while, and luckily it wasn't too bad today. classic banh mi and pork vermicelli salad, as usual.

a rather hilarious (but almost requisite) meal at ikea that seems to come around maybe every 5-6 years.

we came down to red hook ikea for some pre-baby shopping, and had to recharge in the middle.

i got salmon lasagna with sad veggies, and m got 2 dishes - ribs (!!) with mashed potatoes, and swedish meatballs with mac & cheese and cornbread. everything else was decent except the lasagna/veggies i got. in fact, the ribs were excellent!

to replenish my diet with more protein (80g/day apparently O_O), m got me some pre-cooked sirloin steak from trader joe's along with many other frozen goodies from there.
he cooked up this huge platter for both of us - steak, hash browns (also from TJ), sauteed kale, and eggs. holy crap, i ate more than half of this steak (probably 2/3 pound) and i could've eaten my weight in that kale he made. nom nom nom so so good - and definitely well replenished in protein (so much so i couldn't sleep, i had so much energy).

m made amazing white bean stew/chili - all from scratch starting with mirepoix, then with chorizo, peas, corn, and a bunch of other vegetables. so delicious topped with parseley, cheese and tomatoes!!
it's so nice that it's finally cooled off enough to want to eat soup like this.

had an ultrasound appointment that ran 1.5 hrs behind, so by the time we were done, i was famished.

we walked a few blocks to naruto ramen (we wanted something soupy but didn't want hancos again).

we got their lunch special, shoyu ramen with gyoza and another shoyu ramen with chicken curry rice.

the sides came first and we gobbled it up - it was so satisfying. the ramen came, it was a little more on the unctuous side than we normally like, the noodles seemed a bit generic (like the supermarket kind, a little), broth a bit too oily and salty for our tastes, but the toppings and pork were delicious. it hit the spot for us nonetheless, proven by my waddly walk back to the train.

a very indecisive food day, and after a blustery walk, we just popped into pillow café, discarding our initial plan to go to café 232 for some korean food. since it was so windy out, m ordered a side of cup of turkey chili with some toppings alongside our usual sandwiches - garden bagel and egg salad sandwich.

the sandwiches were delicious as usual - unfortunately, what started as a $3.95 side of cup of chili, which seemed steep to begin with for a really small teacup, the toppings (avocado, sour cream & onions - onions, really??) combined together were additional $3.50, making the teeny cup of soup more expensive than either of the sandwiches!

i have no idea how they justified $2 for 4 little cubes of avocado, but man, should we never deviate from just ordering these two sandwiches and nothing else! otherwise pillow cafe is sheer ripoff.

beautiful fall equinox day (albeit a bit windy), we sat in the patio section of pequeña - it was actually empty enough for us to pick a seat, but alas, we picked wrong... next to some loudly gabby couple of ladies. :( even though we sort of had to rush through our meal quietly, overwhelmed by their noise & gossip, our food was good nonetheless - m got chicken enchiladas with roja & verde sauces, and i got fried fish tacos, which i hadn't tried yet there (i normally get sauteed fish). the fresh radish and pickled onions on the tacos really make the dish. enchiladas were delicious and well-cooked as usual too.

too bad some neighbors can ruin your food experiences, but oh well! it's nyc.