Our Year in Food: 2013

2013 was an interesting food year for us. Some overall themes which made it different from previous years are more home cooking, less delivery and eating out, more trips to the grocery store (summer of the pluots!) and no international adventures. Even though we stayed domestic, we still had lots of food adventures and discoveries. You can check out our favorite food memories of the year in the following posts, but here's our overview of our 2013 in food.

The first restaurant meal we ate in 2013: New Year's Day lunch specials from Room Service, New York. Steamed dumplings, tom yum soup, chicken peanut sauce fried rice, and spaghetti panang curry.

Our Thai lunch specials from Room Service

The first homecooked meal we ate in 2013: A put together this semi-homemade Japanese-style chicken curry and it was delicious and hearty for a winter night.

Box of curry + panko chicken = tasty

The last restaurant meal we ate in 2013: New Year's Eve lunch at Schnipper's with some of our favorites. Green chile turkey burger, mac and joe, and fries.

Schnipper's favorites (some of them)

The last homecooked meal we ate in 2013: A (with a little prep help from M) cooked a delicious New Year's Eve dinner - bistro dijon chicken with an easy winter ratatouille on the side. (Cooking posts to come.)

New Year's Eve dinner

# of different restaurants we tried in 2013 (together and separate): 254. Only a few off from last year, which was a bit surprising considering we've done so much home cooking this year. Maybe we did more snacks or food crawls this year?

Cities explored (outside of NYC metro area): Los Angeles, CA; Lancaster/Palmdale, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Princeton, NJ; Lancaster/Lititz, PA; Harrisburg, PA; Uniontown, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Gettysburg, PA; Frederick, MD; Portland, OR; Vancouver, WA; Chicago, IL.

# of cookbook projects we did in 2013: Too many to count. With our new emphasis on home cooking, we've tried out a lot of recipes from our cookbook collection and online. It might be time to retire this as a year in review category since it's no longer a monthly thing (or an attempt to do it monthly).

Our first cookbook project of the year (post here)

# of new Shake Shack custards reviewed: 5. Not as many as previous years due to many returning flavors, trying to eat healthier, and honestly just forgetting what day of the week it was until it was too late to try a new flavor.

Most visited restaurant in 2013: New Spring Garden, Brooklyn (8x, thanks to family dinners). Runners-up were Panera (7x, thanks to family meals) and Schnipper's (6x). Kind of crazy that at home the most we've eaten out at a restaurant together is 6 times in one year. We're not really "regulars" anywhere.

Some of the dishes from our most recent Spring Garden dinner

Progress on WorldEats challenge: Canada, Cuba, and Jamaica are done (even if we're still only up to blogging about Cuba). Bahamas skipped due to no Bahamian spots. Haiti is next and we're excited as neither of us have ever had Haitian cuisine before.

2013 blog series that will someday be completed: Los Angeles trip, Philadelphia weekend trip, Chicago weekend trip, PA road trip, Portland Thanksgiving break.

Favorite overall meal of 2013: Our early engageaversary dinner at Empellón Cocina in New York in June. We had the salsa sampler, red snapper ceviche, squid with black mole, roasted bone marrow special, pea tacos, shortrib pastrami tacos, and a special roasted peach dessert. All together, it was one excellent composed meal. (Honorable mentions to our Burmese feast at Rangoon in Philadelphia and our anniversary dinner at Louro here in New York.)

Empellón dishes that we enjoyed

Looking forward to fun eating adventures in 2014!