Happy Thanksgiving - TBT Recipes

Happy Thanksgiving Astoria!

Hope that everyone is having a wonderful holiday and has some festive plans in the works.  For those of you who are keeping it low-key and spending time at home, I wanted to inspire you with a few tasty recipes to grace your Thanksgiving table with.  These all come from my previous posts, so I call this my Thanksgiving #TBT tribute.  Enjoy!

Dan's Thanksgiving Kitchen Sink Pizza - While this may be a good one to experiment with after Thanksgiving, it can also be a fun, non-traditional spin on your holiday feast.

Wild Rice Stuffing - If you're looking for an alternative to bread stuffing, this one is delicious and it's veggie friendly too.  However, you can also spruce it up with meat such as ground chicken sausage.  

White Chocolate Pumpkin Truffles - One year, I tried making my own chocolate truffles and thought they came out well.  Sure they're a little rustic looking but our guests appreciated the homemade touch.  You can also do them with dark or milk chocolate - depends on your preference.

Classic Lattice Apple Pie - Although this pie definitely takes some love and care to put together, your guests will thank you and will be super impressed.  Once you get the lattice method down, it's a lot of fun and makes for beautiful photographs (and yummies in your tummy).

Caramelized Apple Pecan Pie - One more pie recipe for good luck never hurt anyone.  If you can't decide between an apple or a pecan pie, create a hybrid with this sophisticated dessert creation that's a cinch to put together (especially if you use a pre-made pie crust).

A Few More Valentine's Day Doings

Image by Teaspoon Bakeshop

Since Valentine's day is almost upon us, and you've probably already read my original round-up of things to do, there's still so much more, so I wanted to send a gentle reminder.  Here are 3 other last minute things you can treat yourself and your loved one to:

Teaspoon Bake Shop - Although not in Astoria, Teaspoon's delectable treats are totally worth the trip to Bayside.  With things like their signature cake balls (pictured above) in flavors such as red velvet, triple chocolate chunk, banana chip and more, you an put a smile to your honey's lips.  They also have gorgeous chocolate heart cookies, pink heart macarons and all sorts of cupcakes.  36-41 Bell Blvd, Bayside.  718.224.4626

Astor Bake Shop - Always in the festive mood, Astor Bake Shop is making some pretty awesome-looking, tongue-in-cheek goodies for V-day.  I spotted pics of cute little sugar cookies that say naughty things such as "Sexy Time," cupcakes that say "sweet talk" and other indulgent yummies.  12-23 Astoria Blvd, Astoria.  718.606.8439

Astor Room - What's sexier than the plush atmosphere at Astor Room?  It's perfectly intimate and a great place to bring your loved one, especially because the menu sounds sinful.  Think local fried oysters, black sea bass with chantarelle risotto, surf and turf, and sweet endings such as bittersweet chocolate dipped strawberries.  Throw some live music into the mix, and you've got a winning combination.  34-12 36th Street, Astoria.  718.255.1947

Looking for more ideas? Check out Mackenzi's awesome V-Day post on We Heart Astoria.

Get Ready for LIC Market's Trufflemania

I wanted to share a last minute, but really interesting foodie event happening this weekend at LIC Market, which caught my eye.  If you adore truffles like I do and enjoy them in all sorts of foods, you'll love their Trufflemania night they're putting together this weekend.  Featuring a 4-course tasting menu, featuring both white truffles from Alba and black truffles from Perigord, it'll be a night made for food's little luxuries.  

Paired with locally sourced products from neighboring farms, you'll not only be supporting a fabulous local business but also the slow foods movement, giving back to our local farms.  Here are the deets, and if this intrigues you, make sure to call for a reservation soon.

LIC's Trufflemania - Saturday, November 10th 
2 seatings - 6 p.m. or 9 p.m.
$65/person (excluding tax and tip)

LIC Market - 21-52 44th Drive, LIC NY 11101
718.361.0013
7 Train to 45th Road/Courthouse Square
http://www.licmarket.com/

Queens Swap at Sweet Afton Was Awesome

Another Queens Swap under our belts, and we couldn't be prouder.  Our fourth swap, which was held last week at Sweet Afton Bar was best yet in terms of attendance, and the items swapped were high in quality.  What I loved most about the swap though was meeting new people who came from all over the place, not only Astoria/LIC and Sunnyside but also Long Island and New Jersey.  So yeah...we had a pretty diverse crowd that kept us honest and always striving for more.  Here's a spotlight of the awesome things we exchanged last week:

AJ's dehydrated lemons and preserved lemons
Meg's water kefir soda pop and almond shortbread 
Kimberly's homemade granola bars (almond joy and "the Linsanity special")
Lauren's homemade rosewater marshmallows, chocolate truffles
Amy's kale chips, spicy pickles, and chocolate chip cookies
Tom's homemade hot cereal and homemade sauerkraut
Bella's mojito cupcakes
Carmen's fresh eggrolls and red velvet cookies
Caitlin's kimchi, blueberry jam, apricot jam
Lisa's sweet and hot red pepper jam and pistachio pesto
Liz's coconut bread
My bacon sea salt

Everything looked amazing, and the swap went on for quite some time, as people really took time and care in scoping out the goods, placing bids and then negotiating.  Even though I brought just 6 items, I was careful in my selections and was really happy with everything I got, including:

AJ's dehydrated lemons, which I already used while entertaining last week. I served them as a decorative touch, with Spanish cheeses, crackers, Caitlin's blueberry jam and dried cranberries. It looked gorgeous on the serving tray, and I got compliments on it. Thanks AJ!

Amy's spicy dill pickles were also partially eaten and the juice helped make a sour pickle martini (more on that soon).

Tom's hot cereal, which I had for breakfast the other day, was delicious, mixed with dried cranberries, which plumped up beautifully in the hot, savory porridge.

Lisa's pistachio pesto that has been used on nearly everything in our household from pizza bagels, crackers, hummus sandwiches and I can't wait to see what else...

Lauren's chocolate truffles, which we've already gobbled up were made of bitter chocolate, so they were naturally fabulously rich and delectable.

Carmen's homemade eggrolls were the real thing - crunchy on the outside but deliciously savory on the inside, stuffed with shrimp and veggies.

I'd like to thank my fabulous fellow co-organizers, Meg and AJ for another great event and for Sweet Afton for graciously hosting us.  Until next time in April...and I hope I've inspired you to sign up.  Check out our site for more info about Queens Swap and how to get involved. 

Vosges - Haut Hot Chocolate

After lunching on those delicious hand pulled noodles I told you about last week, Vicky and I headed over to Soho's Vosges Chocolat for another indulgent treat - chocolate!  Recently paying a visit to this amazingly sophisticated sweet shop with my friend Wanda, it was still very much on my mind and I couldn't wait to actually sit down at their communal table and enjoy a gourmet hot chocolate.

Atmosphere:
Located on the busy part of Spring Street, not far from Mercer Street, Vosges enjoys nice foot traffic from busy shoppers and of course from chocolate loyalists.  And though I've feasted on Vosges' truffles and chocolate bars in the past, I haven't visited the actual store until recently.

I love that the interior is decked in deep purple colors and overall, feels very girly.  Unlike some other haut chocolatiers, it feels chic but not stuffy and you'll find all sorts of clientele browsing its shelves. As I've hinted above, the Soho boutique doubles up as a little cafe, where you can sit down at the lovely marble table and enjoy a freshly made hot (or haut) chocolate.  That's exactly what Vicky and I chose to do, and aside from drinking our indulgent elixirs, we also feasted on amazing samples of truffles and bark.

Treats:

Hot Chocolate - We each ordered different flavors of hot chocolate - me going for the spicy Aztec and Vicky choosing the sweet Parisienne.  Aesthetically, both looked the same, being served in long tubular glasses that reminded me of oversized test tubes.  Once we took a sip of each respective drink, we fell in love - me really digging the spiciness of the ancho & chipotle chilies that warmed the back of my throat, and Vicky indulging in the dark chocolate with Madagascar vanilla flavorings.  Both drinks were rich and sophisticated, and a definite step up from your ordinary hot chocolate drink.  I also liked that even though saturated in chocolate flavor, they weren't heavy and weren't hard on the tummy like other versions that only taste good at the time (and which you pay for later, if you know what I mean).

Truffles - Seeing a handful of beautiful dark chocolate truffles, resting on an old fashioned scale at the communal table, we couldn't resist trying them.  Looking gorgeous, with a dark red dried cherry on top, they were irresistible.  Consisting of Kirsch, velvety dark chocolate and the tart Michigan cherry on top, popping this into our mouths felt like we went Paris and back.  All we had to do was close our eyes.

Service and Cost:
Even though I won't rant and rave about the service, there's also no reason to complain.  I felt that overall, the staffed lacked some general enthusiasm and umph that would've been nice to see from such a magical place, but they by no means faulted us in any way and provided satisfactory service.

Costs are expensive and are about $4 for each hot chocolate.  Truffle prices vary and you can check out their site for the specifics.

3 Chocolatey Mmmms

Vosges - 132 Spring Street, New York NY 10012
212.625.2929
6 Train to Spring Street
www.vosgeschocolate.com 

Happy Thanksgiving Truffles

Even though I'm not hosting Thanksgiving at our place (never have and will try to shirk it as long as possible) - I'm of course contributing to a fabulous feast that's about to take place at Dan's cousin's house.  And since I've been on a truffle kick lately, I decided to have another go at it, creating these white chocolate, pumpkin truffles.  Similarly to my first try at truffles, I see that I still need loads of practice, but the good news is that the end result still tastes yummy.

I made two types of truffles, as you can see here - one is coated in white chocolate and includes a pumpkin (butternut squash in my case), cream cheese, white chocolate, cookie crumbs, cinnamon, sugar and orange zest filling and is coated in the white chocolate.  Like a proper truffle should look.  The others are a bit more rustic, as I ended up mixing the remainder of the white chocolate with the above mentioned filling and then coating it with the cookie crumbs.  Still yummy but just a different look.  Hope you have the patience and appetite to try something like this - while the pumpkin (or the butternut squash lasts).  

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and I can't wait to hear about the yummies you cooked up.

White Chocolate Pumpkin Truffles Recipe (courtesy of Whole Foods)