hudson river foliage

the highlight of our day was house hunting in hudson! house hunting may be an aggressive description, more like dream house hunting? kevin woke up feeling ill (i think i gave him what i had...), so we meandered around warren street, checking out the saturday morning farmer's market where we picked up the illustrious, yet elusive chocolate croissant from the bonfiglio & bread stand, and a coffee down the road at a new spot, or gallery & tavern. armed with my croissant, coffee, and pb bagel, we caught a ride to our favorite area, mount merino, in search of a little country home.

we did not find anything little about the first house, but we were greeted by the most gorgeous and protected views of the hudson foliage. the price tag and the five bedrooms seemed, however, excessive. a half mile walk down the mountain brought us to the next place, which was on the river, but had been lived in by the original owner who passed in her old age not too long ago. it was a complete mess and too much work to fix up. i think i'm done with remodels for a little while at least :)

we grabbed a quick dinner by the lodge at food studio, where kevin ordered a soothing chicken broth ramen, which i ate most of, and i ordered a salad from the appetizer section of the menu. it turned out to be 1 lb of sauteed pea shoots (LOL). needless to say, we ate what we could, and retreated back to our room early to watch ... the METS METS METS! they lost 3-5 ...

we're back in hudson!

this afternoon, we left work a little early and hopped on the 3:15pm amtrak from penn station and enjoyed a lovely two hour ride along the hudson river. we arrived in hudson by half past five, before i would have normally gotten off work.

we walked from the train station to our lovely lodging for the weekend, the rivertown lodge, a recently renovated former lodge and prior to that, former movie theatre. the lodge was impeccably decorated, with a mid-century and industrial feel.

dinner at swoon kitchenbar, of course, was our first stop ~ followed by a vanilla malt milkshake to-go from grazin. afterwards, we watched the mets win their first and the third game of the world series 9-3!

totto ramen

tonight was my first time trying totto ramen (east side) location!

i have to admit, i was a bit surprised initially because they were chicken broth ramens, but it was soo tasty (and just light enough for me). we shared the taiwan rice (not pictured -- soooooo good), eggplant appetizer, grilled saba, taiwan paitan ramen with a side of corn, and spicy paitan ramen.

butternut squash

it's the time of year again for root vegetables, citrus fruits, and more! we made a simple, healthy butternut squash soup tonight. the ingredients are simple: a butternut squash, a medium onion, 4 cups of chicken broth, nutmeg, and black pepper and salt to taste.

2 sisters isabella gouda

i was craving some NUTTY cheese and kevin surprised me with an assortment from murray's! 2 sisters isabella is my all-time FAVORITE gouda and im giving the other two a try as well :) the gouda is the nuttiest though!

boston mtgs

... mean that i get to hang out with my sis, jess !!! :) here we are sharing a slice of paul's delicious rhubarb custard tart, a hot chocolate, and a cafe creme!

larb for two

first homemade meal in a few weeks tonight :) yep, we like our larb chock full of herbs, but there is some meat in there!

tgif

TGIF ... our first week back was a little startling each morning as the alarm sounded. pretty busy at work this week, given it's my new analyst's second to last week before moving to the west coast, so we didn't skip a beat at work and i worked till past 6pm today. yuck.

cats and dogs were raining sideways when i was walking out of the office, but luckily i was walking just 50 meters to the nearest ootoya where kevin had saved us two seats at the bar. it's been a while since we've been here - thinking back, not since august for yuan's birthday! for dinner, we shared a beautiful grilled sanma mackerel and the buta kimchi nabe. it was perfect on the cold, windy, wet night!

 

the search for general tso

i don't know about other asians, but general tso's chicken was never prepared in our household (or any other asian households i went to), but always served in the chinese restaurants we would go to.

through the years, i noticed different configurations of the name of this dish, named "general tso's chicken", "general chao's chicken", "general tsao's chicken". one began to wonder, is this a real chinese dish? and is general tso a fabled character created for marketing purposes?

tonight we learned the truth behind general tso's chicken, including a lot of interesting history on the proliferation of chinese restaurants through even the most remote parts of the US in the 1920s. and we learned that general tso is in fact a real general from hunan province in china, though the dish was created originally in taiwan and then brought to nyc.

a short fun documentary - totally worth the watch!

gastropod

kevin drove around 1500 miles during our two weeks in new zealand and often times, we did not have access to radio or internet. how to pass the time, other than me reading descriptions of our cities of interest from our various guidebooks and literature? we listened to hours of gastropod!

gastropod, introduced to me by my cousin, kristy, is an awesome bimonthly podcast in which co-hosts, cynthia graber and nicola twilley, discuss the history and science behind a food or farming related topic. one lives in brooklyn and the other in boston, and together they put together very interesting and witty 20-40 minute podcasts with the help of scientists and restauranteurs, and more. 

they are all really comprehensive and interesting, but to give you an idea of some of the topics, some of our favorites have been:

• the bitter truth, september 22
• the united states of chinese food, august 25
• the scoop on ice cream, july 22
• crunch, crackle, & pop, july 14
• savor flavor, april 21
• no scrubs: breeding a better bull, february 17
• breakfast of champions, january 20
• the microbe revolution, november 11
• dan barber's quest for flavor, october 14

i just saw that the latest episode has been posted! what an incredible topic - the good, the bad, the cilantro - can't wait to listen to this one!

happy 2 years

happy 2 years to my amazing husband and partner in crime! looking forward to another fun-filled year :)

back in nyc

after a two week hiatus (i will be back with updates once we've had a chance to sort through our collections of +2000 photos :p), we're back! we landed in JFK late last night and managed to keep ourselves quite busy today to fight the jetlag.


in the am, a quick 13.1 mile race at central park (just over two loops) and then a short jog home.

in the afternoon, coffee and snacks at dominique ansel bakery with yvonne and her sister, natasha, in town from taipei. best croque monsieur i've ever had and cute step seating inside!

in the evening, we had dinner with relatives in town from australia at pastai. fei liu, sitting next to kevin, is my grandfather's oldest brother's grandson. our grandparents fought on different sides during the chinese civil war; while the party my grandpa was part of retreated to taiwan after the war, his grandpa remained in hunan, china. it was insightful and quite amazing to be able to meet these relatives and learn a little bit about my grandpa's life in hunan.