NYC Tastes

I had to throw in this picture from Halloween night of one of my favorite candies in Large size!!! We were in the Duane Reade and ran across a bag of Boston Baked beans that were absolutely huge!!! Look at this bag!! I've never seen these in anything but a small box! I even put some other candy bars near it so you can really tell the size. I mean come on! This is a party sized bag! I really wanted to buy it but then I would have just gorged myself silly on the sugary peanuts. I did happen to buy the smaller candy bar in the back called Carlos V. It had a picture of a king on the front that I assume is Carlos V himself . He reminded me a little of the Burger King guy. Unfortunately the chocolate was disgusting . Next time I'll go for the big bag of beans!!

So we had been planning to get tickets for the Bills Jets game on Sunday for a couple of weeks now. We both took Monday off so we could go early and tailgate without any worries for the next day of work. Unfortunately fate intervened and took all of our money basically. In the last week BOTH of our televisions, the living room one and bedroom one broke, and our Laptop stopped working. We basically had a technological meltdown in our apartment . Luckily our laptop is still covered under warranty , so we just mailed that out in the hopes that we will see it again soon fixed (knock on wood), but our TVs were another story. I hate to say it but we have both become slaves to technology and couldn't last a day without the stupid thing. So we spent many late hours going to Circuit City, Best Buy, J & R, basically anyplace in the city that sells Television's - we went to. In the end we came home with two fantastic new television's that should hopefully last us for a while. T

We met up with some friends and hopped in a cab down to 88 Palace which is located in the mall directly under the Manhattan bridge. This is my favorite part of Chinatown. When you're more west, you see a lot of tourists and get some spillover from Little Italy. Down here there's none of that. This is the heart of Chinatown. In order to get to 88 Palace you take a huge escalator up to the top where the restaurant takes over the entire floor. In case you didn't know, for dim sum the food is wheeled around on a trolley by servers. As the servers pass they tell you what they have and then stamp your card once you take something. You're never quite sure what's coming next which makes it kind of an exciting way to eat! We walked in, got our card and were ready to go! As we sat down, our friend said "Okay, we gotta remember to pace ourselves". About three minutes later there were already five different plates in front of us. Pacing is not an option he

I know I've talked about going to Zum Schneider a lot in previous posts but I've never actually taken any pictures of the food! Well finally I have! With Oktoberfest being over Mr Trekker & I decided that we would have no trouble getting a table at Zum Schneider last Saturday night so we took our time. We walked around the East Village a little, did some shopping and even stopped into Nolita House for a quick drink. Finally around 7:00 we decided to head over. Walking up to the place we could already see a crowd of people standing outside. We could not believe how packed it was! Luckily most of the people waiting were larger parties and we were able to snag the last table for two outside. I prefer the inside and the ruckus and commotion that comes with it much better, but we were starving so we took what we could get. Zum Schneider is your typical beer garden with a ton of great German beers that come in 3 sizes small, regular and large. Of course being that we love b

We returned from our trip to Florida on Wednesday and were beyond tired out. Mr. Trekker did the correct thing and took the rest of the week off from work. I went in on Thursday & Friday and of course had two of the most stressful and hectic days ever. Luckily I get out of work early on Friday's and was home by 3:30. Since Mr. T was home as well and neither of us had had lunch yet (since he was just waking up), we decided to grab a late lunch at Casa Mono. Casa Mono has been in our neighborhood for years now and always gets rave reviews. Unfortunately the place is super small and seating is a little cramped. It is also filled to the brim for dinner at night with at least an hour waiting list. The nice thing about the place though is that they serve their menu all day! So we figured it being an off hour we might be able to have the place to ourselves. It was a really rainy and gross day so we hurried into the place and found it almost empty. There were 2 couples dining at th

We stopped by the new Italian place in our neighborhood, Bocca on Friday night for an after work drink. I got there a little before 7:00 and there were plenty of seats still available at the bar. I ordered a glass of Tocai Fruili and waited a couple minutes before Mr Trekker showed up. The space is pretty nice. The walls are painted red with gold accents and the bartender was engaging and entergetic . Many of the tables were filled with people dining and it was very lively. After Mr. T showed up the bartender brought over some complimentary bar snacks for us! Not your ordinary peanuts either. This whole spread was just for us! Fried olives, bruchetta , ham and cheese croquettes, fried mussels and some weird cubes of bread with garlic, olive oil and orange maybe? To be honest nothing was amazing but the croquettes were decent and it was free! That's hard to come by in the city! We didn't stay for dinner since we wanted to rest up for our flight to Florida the next day b

I love Top Chef. Let me say that again I Looove Top Chef!!! It is one of my favorite shows in the whole world. Which makes it odd that we have never gone to any of the Craft restaurants even though most of them are in my neighborhood and Tom Colicchio started all of them. So the other day I was heading home and walked past ' Wichcraft . I decided today was the day to try out some Tom cooking. I grabbed the menu and immediately decided on a fantastic sounding roast beef sandwich. As I approached the counter and ordered I was informed that the sandwich was actually no longer on the menu. Needles to say I was a little sad but I quickly changed my order to the slow roasted pork sandwich with coppa , pickled pepper relish & fontina on grilled country bread. The sandwich itself was pretty good. Everything was obviously very fresh and the melted cheese and pork went really well together. Unfortunately the pickled relish was way too spicy for me. It was covered in red pepper

Stopped into City bakery the other morning on my way back from shopping. This place is really close to my apartment but I never seem to swing by and pick up their delicious pastries . As I was browsing the baked good I ran across a Miso Garden muffin. This sounded interesting so i decided to pick one up. I also grabbed an Ice Coffee and headed home with my goods. Here's a close up of the muffin: The top of this muffin was excellent- nice and crusty on the edges but also chewy. Perfect texture. The inside of the muffin had nice texture as well. Unfortunately I did not like the taste. The miso flavor was very light and the rest almost tasted a little bit like carrot but it just didn't go together for me. Luckily Mr. T seemed to like it so- to each their own I guess. The one thing I do have to say is their Iced Coffee was fantastic . Not too bitter, nice and smooth. I will definitely be going back for another one of these. Next time I think I'll try their Blueberry Corn

As you already well know, I love good beers. Especially of the German variety . So it goes without saying that I love Oktoberfest. Every year I try to go to some sort of celebration. Growing up we would go to Oktoberfest in Ellicotville and peruse back and forth between all of the tents trying different beers from the microbreweries up there. This year I was excited to go to Zum Schneider for their celebration to have some big beers and listen to some music from the Oompah band. Unfortunately when we showed up last Saturday the place was already filled WAY beyond capacity and the waiting list was a mile long. I was pretty disappointed. We were going to try to go back this past weekend but it just didn't work out. So yesterday we decided to try out a local German place the Silver Swan and have one Oktoberfest beer. Walking into the Silver Swan I immediately noticed that everything about the place seemed old. The wrought iron bar stools, the dining room which was furnis

It was an unusually warm and sunny October day on Saturday. A little too warm for the season if you ask me, but Mr. Trekker and I decided to go out and enjoy it anyway. We were craving some good beef jerky and had heard there was a place in Chinatown that we had never tried before which was supposed to be better than our usual place New Beef King, so we headed down. We had to stop at J & R to pick up some cables for our new receiver so we jumped on the 6 train. When we arrived at the Brooklyn bridge station we were feeling a little adventurous so we decided to stay on the train and do the loop to see the old station that used to be used. I have to tell you it was a little scary. We were the only ones on the train since it had been the last stop and there's something a little eerie about being completely alone in the dark depths of the subway tunnel. Halfway through, the train came to a complete halt for about 3-4 minutes. I had a mini panic attack of being trapped there forev