Wasabi Mayonnaise

Earlier this year, I was reading some list of the most popular or highest rated Trader Joe's products, and while we had tried a lot of the ones listed, there was one that stood out that we had never tried - the wasabi mayonnaise ($3.29). If people loved the wasabi mayo that much, then we needed to try it! I picked one up on the very next visit to TJ's.

It's no wonder it's so popular. This wasabi mayonnaise is great. It's definitely got a kick to it from the horseradish and the wasabi (it has both in it). So far all we've done with it (many times) is combine a big spoonful of it with a can of tuna to make a zesty tuna salad (which then doesn't need anything else mixed in), but there must be other uses for it too. If you like wasabi mayonnaise, what else do you do with it?

Buy Again? Absolutely. Even if we don't do anything else with it besides make tuna salad, the answer is still yes!

Spicy Cajun Chicken Sandwich

Today's review is something that's a little different. Normally I'd write all about my brand new soup that I had from Hale and Hearty, but I wasn't feeling all that well today. I saw that they had what I consider to be the best soup to drink while sick. It used to be called the Yucatan Chicken, Lime, and Orzo, but today it seemed to be called Lemon Chicken with Spinach and Orzo. Regardless, that was exactly what I was looking for with how sick I felt today.

All that said, today's review is about my sandwich. I often just get my favorite, the Balsamic Chicken and Avocado. Somehow I've either never written about it or it's buried in one of my other soup posts. That being said, it's still my favorite sandwich, but the Spicy Cajun Chicken Sandwich gave it a short run for its money. The sandwich is described as "Spicy Cajun Chicken topped with Monterey Jack Cheese, Tomatoes, Baby Arugula and tangy Creole Mayonnaise."

As I noted, this is a really tasty sandwich. The cajun spiced chicken didn't have a ton of flavor, but that could also be because I was stuffed up. I figured that there would be more flavor to it, but it's still good. The arugula and tomato gave the sandwich a really nice fresh and clean feeling. I didn't think the cheese was wholly necessary, but I do love Monterey Jack cheese. The star of the show, to me, was the creole mayonnaise. It was smokey and creamy and had just the right amount of tanginess.

Overall this was a really good sandwich, and one I would get again. The balsamic chicken and avocado still reigns supreme with me, though.

Chocolate Green Beans

The other recipe I chose from the Superfoods for Life: Cacao cookbook for our first chocolate night was green beans amandine with dark chocolate. I wanted to have a vegetable dish alongside the cocoa jerk tofu for some balance. This one looked pretty good in the photo (I love cookbook photos) so we thought we'd give it a try.

For the recipe, we used:

- green beans, trimmed and cut ($2.69)
- salt to taste ($0.05)
- 1/2 cup of sliced almonds ($0.83)
- 2 tbsp of olive oil ($0.40)
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar ($0.35)
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract ($0.05)
- half a bunch of tarragon leaves, chopped ($0.60)
- 2 oz of dark chocolate, chopped ($0.60)

This was a little over $5.50 for our second dish. It was a little less expensive than the cocoa jerk tofu, but that one went a lot further for the money (and we liked it more).

The green beans were pretty easy to make and we stuck close to the book for this one. Basically you saute the green beans, salt, and almonds in olive oil in a large skillet on medium high for a few minutes. Then add the balsamic vinegar and cook for another 5 minutes or so. By that point, the green beans should be more tender and the almonds browned.

A helped cook the green beans, which was a huge help because it allowed me to prep the tarragon and chocolate without worrying about the green beans. Once the green beans are cooked, remove them from the heat and add the chocolate, tarragon, and vanilla.

When I added the chocolate, it melted into a thick chocolaty sauce. It didn't look like that in the cookbook photos at all, but here it turned into a sauce. The book says the dish is supposed to be served warm so it wasn't a surprise that the chocolate melted, but I expected it to be more like a light coating than a sauce.

This dish was not at all what we were expecting. It tasted like dessert with the chocolate and the almonds, but it was part of our (savory) dinner. The green beans provided some crunch and texture, but didn't have a ton of flavor on their own. A thought that the balsamic added a bit of a sour flavor that seemed out of place. You couldn't taste the tarragon at all and it was completely overpowered by the chocolate. It was really like eating dessert and so incredibly rich from the chocolate and almonds that I found it hard to eat that much of it in one sitting. A ended up eating whatever was left after our initial servings as his dessert.

We didn't really like this at all and would not make it again. But because of the awesomeness of the cocoa jerk tofu, we knew this cookbook did have good recipes. This one just didn't work for us. We hoped our next chocolate experiment would be more like the tofu and better for us than this one!

Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese

So I tried Mayhem and Stout once before, and I liked the sandwich I ate. I had read a couple reviews talking about how great their buffalo mac and cheese was so I decided I'd try that as well. This menu item is a bowl of mac and cheese with pulled chicken on top covered in a blue cheese aioli and also a buffalo hot sauce.

In my opinion, this was just okay. It wasn't the Earth shattering dish that these people had talked about. Perhaps I was over hyped, but at the end of the day I was't all that impressed. The mac and cheese was fine. The pasta had a nice bite to it, and the cheese tasted great. The buffalo chicken portion was really what let it down. Maybe it was how the chicken was stored prior to use, but it was really watery, and it made the entire bowl watery. The blue cheese aioli was very mild in flavor, and the buffalo sauce had absolutely no heat to it.

Overall I was disappointed. I think moving forward I'll just stick to the sandwiches.

Cocoa Jerk Tofu

Have you ever found one of those recipes that just grabs your attention from the moment you read it and then as soon as you taste it, you're just instantly in love with it? That was the case for me with the cocoa jerk tofu from the Superfoods for Life: Cacao cookbook. Even though I had a long list of possible recipes from the cookbook for the Week 7 challenge (since everything sounded so good), I kept coming back to the cocoa jerk tofu. I'm so glad I did, as it was a truly wonderful dish.

I often make adaptations to recipes for things that we have at home or things that we like, but when I saw the list of ingredients for the sauce here, I tried to stick to it as closely as possible. (If you want to see the original, it came up in Google Books when I searched the recipe name ... or just get the book.) One of the hardest things to get right in a dish is the seasoning, especially the balance of the seasoning, so I figured I would try the recipe as-written to give it its best chance. Amazingly, we had all the sauce ingredients at home already, which is awesome, because now it means I can make it whenever I want as long as I pick up tofu (or some other protein) and some peppers and onions!

For the sauce, I used (and I actually measured for once since I wanted to get the balance exactly as intended):

- 2 tsp Madras curry powder
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 2 tbsp sriracha
- 1/3 cup cocoa powder
- 1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
- 1/3 cup vegetable broth (for me, really 1/3 cup water + small spoonful of Better than Bouillon)
- 3 minced garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp agave nectar
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground oregano

The list looks long, but there wasn't anything to actually "prep" other than the garlic. Everything else came straight from the jar, bottle, or container, so it was much easier than it looks.

The non-sauce ingredient list was really short: 1 container of firm tofu, 1 yellow onion, 1 red bell pepper, and 1 green bell pepper. Very easy. Adding this to the sauce, the approximate cost of the recipe was $7.92. It made a good amount of food, so that was a pretty fair price. (It does need a grain or something else on the side, so tack on another $1 or $2 to the total.)

Making the cocoa jerk tofu was really easy. The process reminded me of another baked tofu recipe (here) that I really liked that I also did for one of the cooking challenges. Make the sauce, add the tofu and vegetables, bake, done. It really was that simple. Perfect for a weeknight meal because there is so little work involved! To make the recipe:

1. Mince the garlic and add to a small bowl with all the other sauce ingredients. Mix well.

The original recipe said to blend all of this in a blender, but I just used a spoon and a small bowl and it was completely fine. The only thing that would even really be broken up in the blender is the garlic and we didn't care if there were garlic pieces in the sauce. I mince garlic fairly small as it is, so why waste the blender?

2. Slice the onion and peppers into thin slices. Cut the tofu into blocks (or squares, whatever you want). I tried to make sure the pieces were thin enough to soak up as much sauce as possible.

3. Mix the tofu and vegetables into the sauce so that everything is well-coated. Let it sit for a little bit.

And here's where reading comprehension comes in again (just like here and here). I was reading the recipe right before I was going to start prepping and I saw that I was supposed to let the tofu and vegetables sit in the sauce for an hour. Oops. I didn't notice that the first time around when I read it. I ended up letting it sit for about 15-20 minutes as I let the oven preheat and I did some work. Maybe it would have been even better if I let it sit for an hour, but 20 minutes seemed fine if you're in a rush (or didn't notice the marinating instruction).

4. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes, stirring everything halfway through. The original recipe called for 30 minutes of baking and then some broiling, but skipping the broiling and just baking a little longer seemed fine to us. It really wasn't the most attractive dish coming out of the oven, but who cared what it looked like when it tasted so good?

Wow. That was basically our reaction once we tried this dish. It was fantastic! We had both tried a little bit of it before it went into the oven and the sauce was incredible. There were so many nuances to it because of all the different ingredients and you could definitely taste the chocolate, but the flavors were also so balanced. It was even better when it came out of the oven because the heat came through much more than it did when the vegetables were raw (not sure why). We absolutely loved this. I started thinking that maybe I should start adding cocoa powder to everything if it was going to come out this well. So much flavor and completely vegan as well, so we were good to both our taste buds and the environment.

This dish is definitely going on our "make again" list and it's the type of dish that would go into a rotation if we had one, because it's quick and simple to prep, we usually have all the ingredients other than the fresh stuff that we can easily get, and it was so delicious. We loved this so much that it was hard to believe that the other dish we made that night from the same book, which we'll talk about in the next Week 7 challenge post, totally missed the mark for us. We were as unenthused about that one as we were thrilled with this one. But overall, we are just so happy with this challenge because of this awesome tofu dish!

Dark Chocolate Crisps

Making good on our promise to work on old chocolate drafts...

I had been reading online last fall about Trader Joe's products (as I often do) and people kept talking about these dark chocolate crisps. I don't know how I got it in my head that they must be like Krackel in a skinnier crunchier chip-like form. Nothing about "thin curved waves of Belgian chocolate with crunchy bits" really says Krackel, but I guess I saw "crisp" and my brain (in wishful thinking mode) jumped to crisp rice. Since we love Krackel and for the longest time you couldn't buy Krackel on its own, I figured we could try these out.

The crisps are shaped like Pringles and after pulling them out I still thought they were going to be like crisp rice chips covered in chocolate. Only after I ate one did I realize that they weren't. They were basically just pieces of dark chocolate. They were slightly crispy, but the dominant feature was the chocolate, not the crispiness. That was disappointing to me, as I was hoping for more of the crispy part. A wasn't any more impressed than I was. He thought they would be like crunchy chocolate-covered potato chips based on their shape, but they weren't. They were just chocolate.

Buy Again? Not likely. They weren't bad, but we just don't like them enough to get them again. We've been working on the same box of crisps for months now, so I can't imagine we'll need another one anytime soon.

The Famous Chicken Place

One of the places I was interested in trying after M and I scoped out my new work area was The Famous Chicken Place. Since we had lost both Farmer's Rotisseria a la Brasa and Peter's Since 1969 in our neighborhood, I basically have a constant craving for rotisserie/grilled chicken. So on a really cold winter's day I made the not-short-enough walk for some chicken.

The restaurant itself isn't a huge place, but it has a large grill section in the front where they prepare the chicken and ribs, and the back has a few tables and side counter with some stools for people to eat. I decided to get the half chicken meal which was half of their grilled/flame broiled chicken and a pita. The dish also came with a small side of their house made salsa.

The chicken was really juicy and tasty. The skin itself didn't have a lot of flavor because it's not a rotisserie, but it had a nice, charred/grilled flavor, and it was really crisp which I like. The pita was a standard pita that was warmed on the grill as well. The salsa is tomato based and is really just like a normal salsa. It has a nice flavor, but it's nothing special.

Overall this really satisfies my craving for chicken. This restaurant reminds of me Golden Chicken and Ribs, a place that used to be right by our apartment. One day I might try a chicken and rib combo, but those are really expensive. For now I'll content myself to eating their chicken.

Erdbeere und Kokosnuss

New year, 2 new Godiva truffles. We're trying to get better about making sure we get to Godiva every month for our free truffle (we love this loyalty program!), and so far we're doing well with it this year.

I got to choose for January and I picked out one we had never seen before. Turned out it was one of the "Valentine's Day favorites" - sparkling strawberry.

This truffle has "strawberry ganache blended with a hint of champagne flavor" covered in white chocolate. The strawberry flavor inside tasted so familiar, but it wasn't until the next day that I realized what it reminded me of - the wild strawberry flavored Jolly Rancher. I would have never thought that strawberry mixed with champagne would taste like a Jolly Rancher, but I think that's what I was remembering. While the truffle was fine, we're not really huge into white chocolate and neither of us really loved this one, and we probably won't choose it again. A, for one, really wasn't a huge fan.

For February, A picked out one that we know we've had before and really like - smooth coconut.

The smooth coconut truffle is described as "tropical coconut ganache with coconut flakes, covered in milk chocolate." Basically, if you like coconut, you should like this one, and if you like Mounds bars, you'll love this one. It pretty much tastes like a Mounds bar, which is why this is one of our favorite truffles. This could be a good standby to fall back on anytime, sort of like hazelnut crunch. The only thing that we wish could be changed would be to cover it in dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate.

Can't wait to see what seasonal truffles are in the chocolate case on our next visit!

Week 7 - Chocolate

I was at the library last week returning an overdue book, and like I always do, I scanned the shelves of the new cookbooks section. I was intrigued by a book called Superfoods for Life: Cacao by Matt Ruscigno, as it had so many savory (and vegan!) recipes that used chocolate or cocoa powder, including recipes I've always wanted to make like mole. I was flipping through it when it hit me - the theme for the week after (so, this week) was chocolate! What perfect timing to find a book like that.

Instead of making just one dish from the cookbook, I decided to make 3 (over the course of 2 dinners), so those dishes will follow in separate posts. It was a really interesting experiment and lots of fun to try out new chocolate-filled recipes. In honor of chocolate week, we also finally broke open the new(ish) Fireworks chocolate bar ($1.99) from Trader Joe's, so we might as well start our chocolate week posts with that. Also, it seems like a good week to look through our massive drafts archive for any other posts dealing with chocolate to get those put up and keep the chocolate theme going.

The Fireworks bar looks like a regular dark chocolate bar when you open the package, but it is anything but once you try it. It's got lots of chili pepper and cayenne pepper inside, and on top of that it also has popping candy in it. So you get spice from the pepper, but you also get what really feels like little fireworks going off inside your brain. It was such an odd sensation. I think A liked this bar more than I did, but it was certainly an interesting experiment and such a strange feeling.

Buy Again? Maybe. For me, not my favorite chocolate bar, but kind of fun once in a while. For A, he'd get it again, but he prefers more traditional dark chocolate.

Coming up in the chocolate week challenge posts: cocoa jerk tofu, chocolate green beans, and chocolate vegetable tarts! It's been a very chocolaty week!

Week 6 - Two+ Ways

I was really excited when I saw the theme for Week 6 - two+ ways - and in flipping through the recipes in my folder, quickly stumbled upon 2 recipes that I thought would work perfectly for this challenge. Both involved carrots and yogurt, and I thought I would take it up another level by adding a third variation on top of those. We still had the majority of a giant bag of carrots from an old Costco trip, so it was going to be a very carrot-filled night.

The first variation, our "appetizer" course, was raw carrot sticks with a garlic yogurt dip. This was pretty easy, but didn't get served as early as I had hoped, mostly because washing and peeling at least 5 pounds of carrots takes a really, really long time. I figured it would be good to have an appetizer (in addition to the chocolate chip cookie dessert we had before/while prepping) since I had 13 steps on my cooking list for the night and I thought it might take a while since I'm slow in the kitchen. 

Once I finally had the carrots peeled (and the second variation of carrots in the oven, more on that later), I cut one large carrot into stick shapes, and then mixed together a dip made of a couple spoonfuls of plain Greek yogurt, 2 minced garlic cloves, and a few spritzes of lemon juice. I tried to plate the carrot sticks nicely with the dip and a couple of cilantro leaves, but it could have been more imaginative. This was good. A thought the dip could have used a little something else but wasn't sure what. I was okay with it since it was basically just garlic and yogurt, and that's all I need for a dip!

The second variation of carrots and yogurt for the night was roasted carrots with cumin yogurt, based on this recipe from Bon Appetit. I made some adjustments to the original recipe, some to account for ingredients we had and some to simplify since there was enough stuff to do for dinner that night. For example, they called for 3 pounds of Thumbelina or small carrots, but with that giant Costco bag of carrots, I wasn't about to go out and buy more carrots just to get small ones for the recipe. I also ditched toasting and grinding up the coriander and cumin seeds and just used our ground spices, because I really didn't have time to do otherwise.

Preparing the carrots for roasting was actually the very first thing I did in making dinner that night (after peeling the carrots), since roasting was the step that was going to take the longest. For the roasted carrots themselves, we needed:

- a few lbs of carrots, peeled and chopped (whatever size you like)

- orange juice, about 2 tbsp

- dried thyme, about 1 tbsp

- olive oil, a few tbsp

- 1 bay leaf

- salt and pepper

(All of these measurements are approximations. I didn't measure anything the whole night.)

I mixed together the orange juice, thyme, and olive oil, and then coated the carrots in that in a baking dish. After that, I added the bay leaf, salt, and pepper, and mixed it around some more. Then it was time to roast - about 50-60 minutes in a 450 degree oven, stirring once or twice during that time.

The dip for the roasted carrots was pretty simple (other than washing and prepping the cilantro, because the batch we got from the local grocery store was the dirtiest bunch of cilantro I had ever seen). For the dip, we needed:

- a few spoonfuls of plain Greek yogurt

- ground cumin, about 1 tbsp

- ground coriander, about 1 tbsp

- lime juice, about 1 tsp

- cilantro, finely chopped, a few tbsp

- olive oil, a few tbsp

To make the dip, you just mix all of those together well. I've made dips from a few different bases, but I haven't used Greek yogurt before. This 2% Greek yogurt from Trader Joe's was awesome for making dips. It was so creamy and smooth and so easy to use. I'm a complete convert now, and want to use this for all sorts of dips. In addition to being so wonderful texturally, it's healthier because it's yogurt!

The roasted carrots were good, but didn't taste like anything special - just roasted carrots with some thyme. The orange juice didn't come through very much at all, which was a little disappointing, since A lugged that home in a backpack in an exceptionally heavy haul from Trader Joe's and we would have skipped it if we knew it wasn't going to make much of a difference.  Sure, it's great that we now have orange juice for Vitamin C and immunity purposes in the middle of the winter, but we could have picked it up on another trip. The carrots were fine, but I think in the future I'll just stick to roasting them with olive oil and whatever spices we're in the mood for. The cumin yogurt was quite good. That would make a good dip generally.

The final variation of carrots and yogurt we had were carrot pancakes with salted yogurt, also from a Bon Appetit recipe. Again, we made some adaptations. In this case, it was to substitute for chickpea flour, and to eliminate the salad green component since our Trader Joe's has sadly been out of arugula for over a month or 2 now.

For our adaptation of the carrot pancakes, we used:

- grated carrot (from about a lb of carrots)

- cilantro, finely chopped, a few tsp

- 2 eggs, beaten

- Italian style bread crumbs, about 1/4-1/3 cup

- salt and pepper

I don't really know how much I used for the bread crumbs. I just kept adding in small amounts until I felt like it had thickened up the mixture a little bit (but only a little, the mixture should still be pretty loose). All of the ingredients get mixed together in a big bowl until it's time to make the pancakes.

I used a non-stick skillet for these pancakes (I learned my lesson from the bubble and squeak, remember?), coated it with a little bit of olive oil, and then put it over medium heat. Then I used a 1/2 cup sized scoop to pick up the carrot mixture and put it into the pan, flattening it a little bit into a patty shape. Our pan fit about 2 pancakes each time, for a total of 4 (with some extra small pieces from the remainder of the mixture). We cooked each pancake for a couple of minutes on each side until they had browned.

The dip was pretty simple - just a few spoonfuls of Greek yogurt with salt and pepper, all whipped together.

These carrot pancakes were wonderful, and they definitely did not need the salted yogurt with them. The flavor combination of sweet carrot, herbal cilantro, and the wonderfully seasoned Italian bread crumbs was perfect. I was definitely surprised when I tried the first bite about how much I liked them, and we both agreed that this was our favorite carrot part of dinner. (The cumin yogurt was our favorite yogurt part.) The pancakes were really so great on their own.

Overall, this carrot and yogurt experiment was a lot of fun, even if it was a lot of work and we had a late night dinner (again). We always roast vegetables like carrots, so that wasn't much of a revelation, but we definitely want to make these carrot pancakes again!

Short Rib and Brisket Sandwich

On my first day at work, I didn't want to go too far for lunch. I was new at the office, they had me come in late, and I wanted to be around in case they needed me for anything. Because of that, I decided not to walk too far. The closest thing to my office is Mayhem and Stout. This is an artisan sandwich shop that started as a stand down in Brooklyn's Dekalb Market before it closed down. The owners of Mayhem and Stout were able to parlay the experience and buzz there into a brick and mortar store.

For my first lunch ever at my new job, I went with one of their signature sandwiches that sounded like it would be everything I would ever want. It was a short rib & brisket sandwich with horseradish creme and onion confit. The meat was braised really nicely and flavored well. It was salty without being overpoweringly salty, and it was still wonderfully rich. There wasn't that much horseradish creme on the sandwich, but when I did get some I got a really nice spice hit. The onion confit added some subtle sweetness and also a vegetable to the ensemble.

Overall it was a very tasty sandwich, and I would love to try more of them. They're a touch on the expensive side, but they use high quality ingredients, and I'm willing to pay for premium items.

It's All GRK To Me

I had some extra time for lunch one day as the office I'm sitting in was being used as a conference room so I decided to walk a little further for lunch today. M and I had walked past GRK Fresh Greek during our walk around the area exploring my food options before, but I never thought I had enough time to walk all the way up to GRK.

I opted for the Lamb/Beef plate with their namesake tzatziki and their seasoned fries. I considered being healthy and getting brown rice but then thought better of it. As you can see from the picture, they pile on slices of meat off the spit with a griddled pita, the side you chose, the tzatziki type you chose, and a small salad made of romaine, tomatoes, and olives.

The meat was a touch on the dry side, but the overall spices and flavors were very tasty. I think if you come earlier in the day the meat will probably be juicier. I ended up going later in the day so the meat had more time to dry out on the rotating spit. The salad was okay. It was fresh, and the olives added a little saltiness to the mix. I didn't taste any dressing on the salad so it was a welcome bit of flavor. The fries were good as they had a bit of seasoning on them. In the end, I probably should have gotten the brown rice, but whatever. The pita was pretty standard for pita I've gotten in the past. The real star of this plate was the tzatziki. Most tzatziki I've had in the past has been similar in consistency to sour cream. The tzatziki from GRK was thick. You could really tell that it was made from real Greek yogurt. It was also full of garlic and cucumber pieces, not just shredded cucumber. It was rich, worked great with the meat and the fries, and was delicious.

Overall I was very happy with my trip to GRK. Aside from the slightly dry meat everything was great. The flavors were fantastic, and most of the items were very fresh. With the fries it ended up being a pretty large portion of food so if I do get a chance to go back I'll most likely try something lighter.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

We're not even close to St. Patrick's Day yet, but today our Trader Joe's was giving out samples of corned beef and cabbage. I had read some mixed reviews of their new uncured sliced corned beef ($4.99 for 8 ounces), but we definitely wanted to give it a try.

Overall, we weren't that impressed. According to the TJ's site, the corned beef is "intensely flavored meat" that is seasoned with lots of spices and seasonings, including garlic, onion, cloves, coriander, dill, allspice, and pepper, and then treated with salt, vinegar, celery powder, and cherry powder. We didn't really get those flavors when we tried it. We would agree that this was definitely less salty than most corned beef (it's often too salty for me), but we didn't catch those nuances of flavor at all in the corned beef sample. A even remarked that the whole thing seemed bland and flavorless, which was disappointing as he loves corned beef (and corned beef and cabbage). Perhaps the flavor is better trying it on its own, but the meat certainly didn't shine in this sample. It was mostly just a muted meat flavor.

Buy? Most likely not, unless they run another sample where it has a stronger corned beef flavor and we enjoy it. (Yes, for the shredded green cabbage though, as it's my favorite cabbage for slaw.)

Desayuno

Our fourth day in Cancun was our last full day there and we intended to enjoy every minute before going back to cold NYC. We woke up to blue skies and hoped that we might finally get a day without rain or storms, that we could finally have that perfect weather day. 

We started the day off at World Cafe like every other day, raiding the Mexican section of the buffet for as many tasty treats as we could get. We had really started looking forward to breakfast at the resort and ate until our bellies were full, since this was the best food we had had at the resort up to that point.

They had a lot of the same things we had seen in the past - refried beans and a couple of trays of chilaquiles - but this time they also had chorizo tostadas, so we grabbed those and topped them with some salsa and guacamole. I also got another Yoplait apple yogurt, but since that looked exactly the same as the last breakfast, no need for another photo. (Still haven't found that here in the States.) We also indulged in the juice bar.

We were so happy with our chilaquiles and tostadas and went back up for seconds. Sadly, they were running out of everything, so there weren't any more tostadas to get. Instead I made a plate out of refried beans and a ton of pico de gallo, which was completely fine with me.

Our meal wasn't that different from the offerings on previous days, but like always, we left our World Cafe breakfast very full and very satisfied. If only we could have a buffet like this every day for breakfast at home...

April Bloomfield's Ribollita

I like that Hale and Hearty has extended the availability for each Chef's Series soup to multiple weeks as opposed to just one. I used to feel like I had to plan out my work schedule to make sure I'd be around to get one each week before, but now I have a couple weeks with which to work around. The only downside is that I then have to wait a couple weeks for the new soup to be released.

The second offering for the Hale and Hearty Chef's Series soups is a Ribollita prepared by Chef April Bloomfield. It is described as "From Michelin star winning Chef April Bloomfield comes this marvelous version of Ribollita, originally a peasant dish from the Tuscan region of Italy. This robust vegetarian soup is brimming with Cannellini beans, herbs, and tomato and thickened in the traditional way with day old bread."

I loved this soup. It still won't take over the number 1 spot from Chef David Burke's Crazy Corn soup, but this is a fantastic soup. It's a tomato based broth full of classic mirepoix, some leafy green (vegetable? herb?), and Cannellini beans.Though it was described to have been thickened with day old bread, I didn't notice any chunks of bread like I did with Chef Mario Batali's Pappa al Pomodoro soup.

Overall this is an extremely warm and comforting rustic soup. It tastes extremely fresh and light from the vegetables, but it's also quite hearty because of the beans and bread. The herbs and seasonings balance out all of the flavors. It transports you to a cottage in the middle of a Tuscan countryside, and you can almost feel and hear the crackling fire that the pot of soup was placed above.

Smoked Andouille

The latest chicken sausage we tried from Trader Joe's was the smoked andouille. Andouille is a smoked sausage by definition (so the name is a little redundant), usually made with pork. We've liked it whenever we've had it before, so we were interested to see what the Trader Joe's version tasted like.

We've had andouille most often in Creole or Louisiana cuisine in dishes like jambalaya and gumbo, but instead of doing that with this one, we mixed it in a basic saute with kale, mushrooms, and onions. We find that making them this way gives us a much better idea of how they taste for our first try and if we like them, we can figure out how to use them in other things later.

We liked the andouille sausage but thought it would have a stronger flavor and more of a smoky flavor than it did. The flavors mostly come from "chicken seasoning" (salt, spices, mustard, garlic, paprika) and more paprika. It was good, but probably could have used some smoked paprika to give it a more vibrant flavor.

Buy Again? Sure, but not our favorite sausage from TJ's.

Our TJ's sausage rankings:
1. Korean inspired spicy chicken sausage
2. Smoked andouille (A) / Turkey cranberry apple sausage (M)
3. Reverse #2.
4. Sweet Italian style chicken sausage

February 2015 Custard Calendar

Happy February! First of all, congratulations to Shake Shack on their IPO. Second, time for a new custard calendar. It was so cold during January that we couldn't drag ourselves out from under our cozy blankets to go get some ice cold custard. Peanut butter banana sounded interesting, but wasn't compelling enough for low wind chills, and although we love s'mores custard, it was just so cold and snowy. Hopefully in February we'll do better.

Source

The custard calendar for February didn't go up online until this morning, so the last day of s'mores week (I guess that's Week 0 since Shake Shack on Facebook is calling this current week Week 1) is already gone. But the schedule for the rest of the weeks is:

Week 1 - Big Easy banana caramel (new to us)
Week 2 - Boston cream pie (7/10)
Week 3 - salty chocolate peanut butter (8/10)
Week 4 - coconut tres leche (new to us)

We are really excited for coconut tres leche, and even if it's freezing cold that week (although hopefully it won't be), we're going to try to get that one, no matter what. Overall, this seems like a pretty strong custard month and we're excited!

Danji

A's last day at his job was back in January. We wanted to celebrate the event with a nice lunch so we decided to go to Danji. We've both wanted to go to Danji for years, but every time we've thought about it or passed by, there was always a line since it's such a small spot. We're not big fans of waiting in line so we always figured we'd go another time. We thought it might be a little emptier for lunch and we were happy to be right.

We started out with a couple of their appetizers. One that we knew we wanted was the bulgogi sliders, but we debated a bit on the other since so many things sounded delicious. A was in the mood for wings, though, and since this was a celebration of him, wings it was. Spicy 'K.F.C.' Korean Fire Chicken Wings are their version of Korean fried chicken. They're smothered in a sauce made with honey, garlic, and four different types of chilies. Both of us were very happy that A had a craving for wings as these were phenomenal. The sauce had a beautiful blend of sweet, salty, and spicy. Even with the 4 chili blend, the heat wasn't so overpowering that you couldn't taste anything else. The honey was very subtle, but it balanced out the flavors so nicely with just that hint of sweetness. What we both agreed was that, due to decorum, neither of us should pick up the plate and lick up the remaining sauce. We certainly both wanted to, though.

As for the bulgogi sliders, M had one back in 2011, and ever since then she's been wanting more. The sliders come topped with a spicy pickled cucumber and scallion salsa. What they don't mention is that the buns are butter griddled which makes them AWESOME. This was the best thing we ate during this meal (although there was some serious competition). The buttery bun combined with the sweet and salty beef paired with the sour and spicy cucumber and mild sharpness of the scallion salsa to create one of the most wondrous flavor combinations either of us has ever had. A totally understood why M kept raving about these sliders for so long.

For the entree, M opted for Danji's version of the croque madame. They called it the croque ajuma (Korean for aunt) which amused us both. This sandwich was, beyond a doubt, a complete gut bomb. That doesn't mean it was bad; far from it. But it was huge and really rich and heavy. So what was in the croque ajuma? The croque ajushi (monsieur) was two thick cut slices of country bread with kimchi, bacon, gruyere, and bechamel. The ajuma added to the ajushi an egg on top and some truffle oil.

The sandwich was really good, but it was pretty large, much bigger than we thought it would be. We were so full by the end of this that we ended up taking a piece home for dinner. The egg was done perfectly, and the cheese and bechamel were broiled on top the way a croque madame should be. M didn't really taste much truffle oil, but A tasted a little bit here and there. The combination of kimchi, bacon, and cheese is always a good one, which we've known ever since we made kimchi grilled cheese at home (and didn't post about it), so we were pretty happy with the taste of this sandwich. We would get it again, but maybe not get any other entrees with it since it was so large!

A got the spicy pork bibim-bap and made it a set which added their trio of kimchi and a bowl of their daikon beef soup. At first glance the odd thing about this bibim-bap was that the rice and egg came in the bowl, but the vegetables - greens, carrots, mushrooms, cucumbers, and bean sprouts - and protein all came separately. Neither of us had ever seen that type of presentation before.

The bibim-bap was tasty. The pork had a nice sweet and spicy flavor to it, and the vegetables were light and fresh. The only downside was that we both prefer the hot stone bowls to crisp up the rice, but this wasn't that type of bibim-bap. Overall the dish was good but not that different from bibim-bap at other Korean restaurants, except for high ingredient quality. The kimchi trio was tasty and fresh. The cucumber and cabbage versions had a good acidity to pair with the salty and spicy flavors. The mushroom was less spicy, but they also had a really nice mild sweetness. The soup was delicious. It was warming, had good richness from the beef and bone broth, and was perfect for the cold day.

At the end of the day we were both very happy to have made it out to Danji for lunch. There have been so few weekdays off for the both of us so we really wanted to take advantage of A's last day. We really loved this meal, and hope that in the future we'll have a chance to make it back for either lunch or dinner.