We’re going to do a few mini entries.
The Jeffrey Craft Beer & Bites (***)
311 E 60th St, New York, NY 10022
I have been going to this bar for YEARS. It is a few blocks away from my former place of employment, and I passed it pretty much every day on my commute to and from work. While this place has countless types of yummy beers and unique cocktails, I never really had the food here . . . with the exception of the $1 happy hour oysters and probably the french fries. On Friday, I was STARVING, and my half dozen of oysters just was not going to cut it. The bar has an interesting list of tacos, and I decided to go with the Pho Tacos. OMG!!!
The Pho Tacos reminded me a bit of Birra-style tacos, but these tacos had a pho-based consommé. After the first dip of one of the tacos, I was this || close to asking my waitress for a larger bowl of the cosommé to eat as a soup. These guys were out of this world delicious. Looking back, I wished that I had ordered four instead of three
Thanksgiving
Harlem, NY
This year, I decided to stay in NYC instead of going to VA. This decision always makes Thanksgiving a bit bitter-sweet for me; however, you gotta power through adversity. The hubby and his friend pretty much made our Thanksgiving feast. It was a nice touch because they are chefs so we get some traditional bites with some fun and unique sides. I gotta say the six of us had a nice Thanksgiving . . . I guess they call it Friendsgiving these days.
Once again, my contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was dessert. For this adventure, I decided to make this White Christmas cake.
RECIPE: White Christmas Cake.
I know that the recipe has the word “Christmas” in it, but I wanted to make a cranberry-based dessert. While I did not have a baking meltdown like last year (last year’s meltdown post ***), the cake started off kind of a struggle. I was this || close to aborting the dessert after this happened.
I decided to power through this fiasco and continue with the cake by making it with three instead of four layers. I really have to give it up to the pastry experts or near experts out there because I did not realize the complexity of frosting and assembling a multilayered cake.
I deviated from the recipe a bit
Added whiskey to the cranberry jam
It was three layers instead of four because I messed up one of the cakes as you can see in the photo above.
Since I had so much cranberry jam leftover (remember, there was one less layer), I decided to mix the remaining butter cream with the cranberry jam. Actually, I think doing that somewhat masked my crappy frosting technique for the top layer. While assembling the cake with the buttercream and the cranberry jam layers, I was like why didn’t the recipe just mix the buttercream with the cranberry jam for the filling in between the layers.
Not sure why the recipe called for TWO cups of cranberries for the garnish. I think that I used about 20 cranberries for the garnish on the top layer. I guess if folks are huge fans of cranberries, one could use all 2 cups. With the cranberry jam-filled layers, I figured that topping the cake with 2 cups of cranberries would have been overkill . . . and this is coming from someone who loves cranberries.
Boy was it tough to cut the cake evenly for the layers, which resulted in the cake looking very lopsided. The hubby said that pastry work requires quite a bit of practice, and I have to agree with him.
Overall, everyone was pleased with the cake, and I will admit that it was delicious. Aesthetically, it looked like it was on the losing end of a knife fight.
Meal Prep
I’m still trying to power through Beachbody’s 21-Day Fix, and we’re going with the tuna noodle casserole with veggies.
It’s an interesting take on an American classic; however, I will say that it tastes “weird” without any cheese. I guess the lack of cheese is what makes this thing healthy. While the veggie component was kale and peas, I decided to up the veggie content by adding shredded Brussel sprouts, carrots, corn, and tomatoes.
21-Day Fix Container Equivalents: 0.5 green (veggies), 0.5 red (protein), 1.5 yellow (carbs)
I hope everyone had nice Thanksgiving . . . or a nice Thursday if you do not celebrate Thanksgiving.