Monday, March 22, 2010

Eating Our Way Through The Big Apple


Given the sheer number of pictures of food that are on this blog, I assure you that Sarah and I do not each weigh 300 pounds. Although it is true that we love to cook at home and pig out on vacation, we try to be reasonably healthy the rest of the time. That being said, here are some pictures of our recent trip to New York, and all of the stuff we ate while we were there.

Promptly upon getting off the bus in NYC, our first stop was the Shake Shack, which may be one of the greatest burger places ever (it at least rivals In-n-Out for me, which is really saying something). If you're ever in the neighborhood, be sure to get the black-and-white shake. It rocks.


We spent a few hours trying to walk off the burgers, primarily so that we would have a reason to go to Levain Bakery later on. This bakery was founded by two ladies who regularly train for triathlons, and wanted a gigantic cookie to eat after they finished their races. They are famous for their chocolate chip walnut cookies (on an unrelated note, I think Sarah has a future as a hand model).


Don't worry, we did some cultural stuff to try and fill the hours between meals. We saw "West Side Story" on Broadway, visited a few museums and historic districts of Manhattan, and went to a rock concert at Madison Square Garden (the real reason for our trip to New York). Here's a shot of Sarah at the Museum of Natural History.


Here's me in front of a Triceratops. I waited until the sun went down, but it didn't come to life. I feel like Ben Stiller lied to me.


Our last snack before getting back on the bus to head home was a pistachio macaroon from Bouchon Bakery in Columbus Square. Unlike the American coconut-flavored version, European macaroons are more like an Oreo cookie, and quite tasty. Aside from that, we also managed to fit in Venezuelan arepas, bagels from our favorite deli, and ribs from Brooklyn's famous Dinosaur BBQ. Yay food!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Cafe Rio Night


Sorry about the lack of posting lately. School has been crazy busy, and I haven't had a lot of free time. However, Sarah and I have done some pretty cool stuff in the past few weeks, so I'll try to put up some more pictures in a few days (especially of our trip to New York). Over Spring Break, we decided to have a Cafe Rio night. For those of you who haven't spent any time in Utah or Arizona, Cafe Rio is an amazing Mexican food place that my wife craves pretty much all the time. So if your in the mood, just ask me for the recipes. All you need to do is go to the store and buy all this crap (oh, and set aside about 12 hours to make it all).


I think the real key was to making our own pork barbacoa (the secret ingredient is Coke) and our own tortillas. They aren't nearly as hard to make as you would think, but it can be pretty difficult to find the necessary lard. When I asked for it at the grocery store, the manager told me that lard was "out of vogue."


I had the pork burrito complete with all the trimmings, and it actually came out pretty spot on. And of course we had to serve them in the aluminum trays to complete the Cafe Rio experience.


Sarah had the pork salad, and she told me I did a pretty good job with the tomatillo dressing, which basically makes or breaks the salad. So overall, it was a pretty amazing dinner, and we had plenty of leftovers.