Category Archives: eat

Happy belated Valentine’s Day!

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I really wanted to write yesterday and I had all these ideas but I never got around to it between work and then our Valentine’s Day dinner. Then I promised myself this morning that I would try to at least get some thoughts down during a break, but today was one of those days and I definitely didn’t get around to that. So regardless of any excuses, this post is going up today!

Today was one of those days that was non-stop, without minutes to even run to the restroom. I know busy days are good, but sometimes extremely busy days are just bad. I planned on attending a barre class today and I left work later than I wanted and just felt so beat, I decided to not go. I hate missing workouts; it makes me feel like I didn’t make enough time for myself that day and then it reminds of my former career when I had an excuse every day of the week. I never want to fall into that trap again. Regardless, writing this post will hopefully make me feel better. While it’s not going to give my quads as much of a burn as barre, it will give me a chance to reflect on the last couple of days.

I decided yesterday that Valentine’s Day should be a celebration of love… love of anything, not just your significant other, but love of family, friends, food, activities, your passions, really, just anything. So yesterday, we did just that — celebrated our love(s). I went for a recovery run after work; and we went to dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant, probably, actually one of our favorite restaurants of all time, Robongi; drank a bottle of Riesling; and came home to relax on the couch with our DVR.

Robongi is amazing. It was reviewed in the NY Times last year and I don’t think the critic did the restaurant justice. It is a neighborhood sushi restaurant that offers a large and fresh variety of sushi and cooked dishes but more importantly, like I mentioned, it is a neighborhood restaurant. There is no other restaurant that I have ever been to where they make it a point to know and remember you. We’ve been going to Robongi for almost a decade now, but their former manager was just like that and their new manager, just as good, maybe even better! I believe, it was Tom Colicchio, seriously one of my favorite chefs ever, who said on Top Chef something along the lines of how you don’t go back to a restaurant necessarily for the food as much as for the service. Robongi does exactly that; you keep going back because they make you feel special as soon as you walk through the door.

Also, it is a BYOB restaurant, which for us, typically doesn’t matter since we’re not big drinkers and ever since I started training last year, we’ve been even less so. However, Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love and what better to do it than sharing a bottle of my favorite kind of wine, a Riesling from a vineyard in Canada that we got last year while attending a friend’s wedding! Ravine Vineyard‘s Riesling is probably one of the best ones I’ve ever had. I am a not dry Riesling fan; I go for the sweet ones but if it’s too sweet, I won’t like it either. Typically, I’ll like a German Riesling so I was little skeptical when we bought this bottle at the vineyard, but I was pleasantly surprised yesterday. I highly recommend but it’s a shame because it doesn’t appear to be available online right now.

Finally, what better way to cap the evening than lying on the couch watching something off the DVR. Last night, we watched Person of Interest, which for anyone that knows me knows that any action show or movie will generally keep me awake!

Valentine’s Day didn’t end yesterday! I came into work this morning to a delivery! At least my day started off with a pretty orchid that I promise to try to take care of. Last time, I received one I didn’t do a very good job keeping it alive. This time, I saved the instructions that came in the box and I will be sure to try to follow them as best as I can. Fortunately, the instructions mention very little sunlight needed because there is no sunlight in my inside office!

And oh, in the world of running, I signed up for the New Jersey Marathon after weeks of deliberations. The race is in May and I convinced myself that I wasn’t insane for signing up for another one since I was running two half marathons between now and then, so it won’t be too much more additional training. With all these races coming up, I finally started “actively” training again after two weeks off from Miami. So far this week, I logged three days of running including a speed workout on Wednesday and hopefully, I’ll fit in a longer run this weekend. Also, Josh helped me create a dynamic mileage tracker on my blog (see right side of the page). The mileage tracker reads from Nike+, so as I upload a run off my watch, the tracker should update. Pretty neat, huh? We thought so at least!

To cap off this blog off, I guess I need to talk about shopping, huh? I’ve been trying to avoid the world of shopping. I spend so much on race registrations and months ago, spent a fortune on winter running clothes. I’m also trying to avoid buying too much other clothing or accessories because my closet and drawers are just overflowing. However, my recent purchase is hopefully a practical one. With upcoming work travel, I decided it was finally worth investing in a backpack that had a laptop sleeve. After much deliberation about whether I should get a tote, laptop sleeve, laptop backpack, or casual backpack, I decided on the North Face Recon. More to come on my review of the bag, but in the mean time, I love Zappos — one day delivery and always amazing service!

Okay, enough rambling for me. Happy weekend everyone!

Happy Year of the Snake!

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A weekend of eating and not so much running; that’s amazing and I am going to pay for it starting this upcoming week.

However, we had quite a full weekend to bring in the new lunar year. Unfortunately, due to the snow, I missed brunch with one of my oldest friends. I was really looking forward to a long overdue catchup over a hearty brunch, however, Nemo had other plans for us. The last time we saw each other was the weekend of the Philadelphia Marathon and I really just wasn’t a lot of fun to be around that weekend. I am hopeful, though that we will be able to reschedule our date soon. Fortunately, the snow didn’t prevent us from the rest of our weekend festivities. We were able to head into Brooklyn for an engagement party where we ate well – goat cheese and onion flatbread, amazing lemon shortbread cookies, popcorn with truffle oil and rosemary, and much more! More importantly though, we’re really glad we were able to celebrate with the happy couple because, yet again, another long overdue get together.

Following Brooklyn, we drove back into New Jersey to celebrate Chinese New Year with my family. On the eve, I am usually responsible for setting up all the sweets. It’s always a blast doing this as it gives me a chance to sample everything! Also, the dinner before the new year is usually quite diverse and yummy. This dinner is something my mom has spent hours preparing — bean curd and oyster soup, Chinese broccoli, vermicelli, sauteed vegetables with chicken, whole chicken, roast pork, Chinese sausage, and shrimp with snow peas. After such a large meal, we stayed awake waiting to ring in the new year ready for sweets (I promise I only had grapes!).

The morning of new year is always a meal without any meat as it is believed that this will ensure longevity. Typically in the morning is when we receive red envelopes or hong bao, now that we’re married, we definitely give more than we receive, but still just as much fun. It is expected that the bills in the red envelopes are new. Now if we went to a bank in Chinatown, that would be fairly easy to get. However, it was a little bit of an ordeal trying to convince a local branch in town that I needed a bunch of new bills in random denominations. This year we were able to get gently used bills. I didn’t realize that is something you can pre-order!

As I grow older with each year, it makes me realize how much I miss the annual traditions we used to have during the holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Chinese New Year were always the times of year I spend with both sides of the family, laughing, eating, and just enjoying the company we’re with. While, we still celebrate with family when possible, it’s not the same without the grandparents. I really hope in upcoming years, we can set some traditions of our own.

Regardless, I hope everyone had a happy and healthy new year with lots of prosperity and good fortune! Of course, it sounds much better in Chinese than it does in English; maybe one of my Chinese New Year resolutions will be to learn to write and read some Chinese!