Trip to Sedona AZ - Day 1

We decided to go to Sedona in AZ for this spring vacation, before my job becomes much busier.
7 hours of flight time with 3 hours of time difference - I guess they don't use day time saving, and 2 hours of mountain drive from the Phoenix airport, finally we arrived in Sedona. The views from the car were stunning, surprising and beautiful. Up and down hills gave us a few times of ear pop-ups too.
After getting off route 17, the view totally changed to RED rocks. All the mountains and hills were RED.

We had dinner at close to the hotel bistro restaurant. Local beers and some good american food - burger and salmon. Bed early for early start on Saturday.

Walk and The Pie

I have been liking to take a walk after dinner these days.
Weekday evenings attract a bit different crowds at the park, it seemed - more locals maybe, but still many people were taking pictures. It was very nice day yesterday.
I have crave for apple pie for some reason some time (or always). Lucky me, I have a great place to buy apple pie near by. I think they started selling individual size (still too big to finish by myself), so I bought one of them (vs. a slice of pre-cut pie). Their pie filling is so fresh and it tastes just a hint of spices not overpowering. Cut in third, so it should stay for 3 days, but not sure I can resist from the temptation...
Walk and The Pie, sounds like Sex and The City, right?

Summer Like Weekend

Even though it just turned to May this weekend, it feels like one of the weekends in July. Very warm and humid.
Our weekend started on Friday. We cooked easy Chinese style noodle dish. I usually don't follow the recipe but I got the idea from some website. I swapped fried Tofu with chicken, and changed the cooking method a bit, but follow the mixture of the sauce. I did not have time to cook rice - we eat brown rice which takes much longer time (90 to 120 minutes), so we used thin Asian noodle. (like So-Men in Japan).

Because the dinner was VERY light, we did not feel guilty having desert - velvet cake from Baked. It had a hint of cinnamon and cocoa. Baked does not use cream cheese frosting, but butter cream, which I thought was unique. The cake was very moist and good. I might like to have a bit more cocoa taste though.

We went to Philadelphia on Saturday to meet up with my friend, who is having THREE babies this fall. To meet her in the afternoon, we decided to have lunch on the way in NJ.
I think that NJ is the capital of diners, and we picked the one supposed to be the best in NJ. They serve the buns - cinnamon and cheese (both are sweet) to every table. It was like 6 by 6, meaning not too small, and steamy hot (just out of the oven). They were not too oily/buttery and good.

Our main dishes were bagel with smoked salmon and white fish (no surprise),

and typical breakfast egg and home fried potato. Both were huge and really good. I only know a few places' white fish, but theirs was bit more sour (not just mayonnaise).
A lot of Italian sausage, onion and belle peppers, this egg dish was awesome!!!

Finally we arrived in Philadelphia - very different from NYC even though it is only 2 hours drive away. I could not point anything specific but you can feel it is a different city.
Have you ever seen a mother with three babies? She is only three months pregnant but she looked like already 8 months pregnant. We will go back down there this fall or so to see the babies. How exciting...

Flowers and Carriage House

It was a spectacular day yesterday, even thought the win was blowing all day.
It was still bright out after finishing the dinner, so I went outside to take a walk. Passing through the Promenade park, where many tourists were taking pictures and many locals were jogging.
I was a bit afraid to be out side last several weeks due to the allergy but MY season seems to be over, and I did not sneeze even once while I was out. Found this gorgeous flowers on Willow street just in front of famous houses. Love this time of the year.

Strawberry Break

We don't see local strawberries till later May or June, but we see many from California and Florida these days. I have to be honest that almost all the fruits here are not as good as we can get in Japan - not as sweet/soft/dense as it could be. Strawberry is not exception, but these days I am pretty much satisfied with the ones I can get here. I don't think Americans eat it with anything, but itself, while I grew up eating it with milk and sugar, or sweetened condense milk, that's what I did for today's "strawberry break", vs. coffee break.

This Past Weekend

Rainy weekend.

I think April/May is kind of rainy season in NYC, which improves greens in the city so I don't mind. It is so beautiful when you walk around the city.
We went to a BBQ place for Friday dinner. The seating assigned to us was so cute - look as this.

We had Buffalo chickens as appetizer, and one and half baby back to share. Don't even think about the calories... Guilty pleasure, which we needed.

We were supposed to have Memphis stile for a half portion but entire dish was source base, so the waitress brought ANOTHER half with Memphis spice rub version, which means we had TWO racks of baby back ribs. They were all good.
I don't know what went wrong but I was sick on Saturday and no appetite (can you believe this?).

Luckily it came back by Sunday afternoon, so our dinner was Shabu-Shabe. A lot of vegetables and premium rib-eye meats. As usual, the table was protected by the papers (I wonder how people do... I grew up this way, so it feels so natural.) No Shabu-Shabu pot and we just used an ordinary pot we have. It was very decent meat. I wonder how I would feel if I ate premium meat in Japan. Would I see the difference or $20 per pound meat would be good enough for me after living here so long???

Night Out in NYC

It has been a while since last time I went out in the city - yup I guess I am getting old not to go out for dinner or drink in the city, or just I don't work in the city anymore.
Anyway, I met up wit my friend B for drink/dinner. ACE hotel was the place we decided to meet, which is by the way a very interesting hotel and the lobby was fulled with the people chatting/checking e-mail and drinking coffee/beer. I was not sure they were tourists or locals. Next door was a famous coffee shop.

No decent restaurant close by, so we decided to walk several, actually over ten, blocks towards Chelsea area. On the way, there was a bagel shop - Murry which named familiar and I asked B about it and he said it is famous. We decided to go in and I bought FOUR. Store was very modern compared to Ess-a or Bergen, and their bagels were a bit smaller than Ess-a, and taste just  in between my favorites - so I am giving them 4-4.5 stars (of course Ess-a is 5 stars and Bergen gets 4 stars). It lacks a bit of chewiness since it is a little smaller than Ess-a.

We went to a Thai restaurant - not authentic side but modern side. B recommended key lime pie martini - yup you can find any types of martini in NYC, and it did taste just like cake. And we did finish our meal with a piece of key lime pie.
It was nice to be out for dinner and catching up with my friend., AND finding another good bagel store.