"Grounds For Sculpture" and brunch in Brooklyn

On Memorial day weekend, we went to New Jersey and Brooklyn and had a wonderful time.

First, we went to this place called "Ground for Sculpture" in New Jersey. This is a big property with lots of green and sculptures throughout the property. There are many sculptures which are funny. It was quite a drive from where we live and it was such a hot day but we really enjoyed this day.

This one photo has our son in the sculpture. He is being part of the art :-)

On the way back, we stopped by at a Japanese supermarket called "Mitsuwa" and had a ramen noodle for dinner and purchased many Japanese grocery! I love Japanese supermarket.

Next day, we went to Brooklyn to meet up with one of our friend and have brunch with him.

He lives in Williamsburg which is a great place for stroll because there are many cute restaurants and shops. He took us to this restaurant called "Rabbit Hole". Since it was bit early, we were able to get a nice table for all of us including our baby with stroller!

I had salmon omelet with homemade herbed biscuit.

Homemade biscuit was good! I would love to make biscuit at home sometimes!

My husband had egg's benedict. The egg was perfectly cooked. Soft and runny inside!

Our friend had French toast with berries. This also looked good!

After brunch, we went to a flea market which was happening close by. There are many cute venders but what I liked most was all the food venders! There are lots of them which looked really good. Since I just had a branch, I didn't eat anything but next time I would love to go there to eat from all these venders at the flea market!

One of these venders had Horchata which is my husband's favorite drink! We bought two of them and enjoyed chilled sweet horchata. (For those of you who are not familiar with Horchata, it is a Mexican drink which made from rice, cinnamon and sugar and taste wonderful ) I promised myself to try making horchata at home this summer.

At the flea market, I found a really cute jewelry vender called "Birdhouse Jewelry". All of the jewelries are so cute and price were reasonable. It was very difficult to pick one but I bought this one necklace. Isn't this so summery and adorable? I love it!

I checked their website and it seems like they also sell some of their stuff online so if you are interested, here is their website address.

http://birdhousejewelry.com/

Williamsburg is such a cool place to hang out. There are many young people and it was different from places we normally hang out. I think there are so many interesting things where there are many young people. I think I should explore more of those hip places even though I am not that young and hip. It is good to see many different things and experience different atmosphere.

Anyway, summer is finally here in NY. I am so excited to spend this summer with my husband and our new baby. We are planning to have BBQ soon. Our baby's first BBQ party!

Dinner with a friend

The other day, we invited one of our friend for dinner. We wanted to meet up with her earlier but it had been already over a year since we last met. She is very busy and she is always helping others and very positive person. There are lots of things which I should learn from her. Anyway, even though she is a great cook and we love her food, since we wanted her to relax a little bit so we decided to invite her and make some dinner.

This was also first time for her to meet our son. She brought many gifts for him and also for me!

I made chicken enchilada again! This is the dish which our friends who came to visit us from South Africa made the other day. It is still not as good as his chicken enchilada but it was quite good.

I also made some rice which I learned in a Cuban cooking class a few years ago. (Click here for that post)
This was somehow watery and was not a success but my friend liked both of the dishes :-)

We talked about lots of things. It was really nice to have a nice dinner with her.

She is such a great cook and she cooked many great dishes for us in the past. I love learning new dishes from her so we promised to each other to cook together again sometime soon. Here is the link for the post of Shrimp Biryani which I learned from her and tried. 


For dessert, I made strawberry tart. I made tart crust and then add custard cream and whipped cream and topped with some strawberries. This was easy but really good. I know I will be making this again.
It also look pretty isn't it?

It was so nice to have her over for dinner. We definitely should do this again very soon. Next time, I am looking forward to learn new Pakistani dish :-) Can't wait!

Easter and Golden Week

We had some more visitors to our place during Easter holiday and Golden Week (Japan's holiday in May).
First, we had our friends who live in South Africa came to visit us with their son (about 2 years old). This is their first visit after we had our son so we were super excited to introduce him to them. Especially, I was curious about how their son react to our son.

Their son loved our son! He was very curious about our baby and wanted to see him and touch him. He was very nice to our son. When he hears our son crying, he would say "Baby, Crying" and he makes surprised face. He is so cute. I wish we live close by so their son will be our son's big brother and he can teach lots of things to our son :-)

Anyhow, as I have wrote here before, the father of this boy is a great cook and he always cook something great for us every time they visit us. (I know, they are visiting us so we should be making something for them but we just love his cooking so we have to have something from his cooking when we see them)

This time, he made chicken enchilada with mexican rice and beans. He showed me how to make this in a very easy way using store bought roasted chicken and enchilada sauce and stuff. It was really really good!

It is a great idea to use already made roasted chicken. This was great dish which we can make with quite a short time and effort but still taste excellent!

He also made some beans and rice and salsa. Since I don't like beans, I didn't eat beans but looks pretty good.

We also had visitors from Germany. My husband's best friend and his girlfriend were here for a few days. It was very nice that they got to see our son in person also. They loved playing with our son. They were so good with him!

Since it was Easter when they were all here, I made egg's benedict for everybody. This is something I make every Easter and my husband absolutely love this dish. I always think that I should make this more often since my husband gets so excited about this dish but I always forget about making this dish. So normally, we have this once a year on Easter weekend.

After Easter holidays, we had my sister visiting from Japan because Japan had a holiday on the first week of May called " Golden Week". My sister was not sure until last minute if she should come visit or not since she can only stay for 5 days and the fights were super expensive. However, if she miss this chance, she wasn't sure when she can come visit us next time and she really wanted to meet her nephew so she decided to come.

It was such a short visit but we had a great time and I was so happy that our son and my sister got to meet and spend some time. I am so thankful that she spend so much money and made an effort to come here and meet him. I have a wonderful sister! I love spending time with my sister.

When she was here, I made the chicken enchilada which my friend made for us during the Easter Holiday. It came out pretty good. It was not as good as his chicken enchilada but I think I replicate it pretty well and it was quite easy to make!

This is the one I made.

Mine didn't have enough cheese and sauce. I will try to have more cheese and sauce next time. But everybody loved it. I know I will be making this more often because it is easy but tasty!