Concrete Jungle and Snowcones

Hey ya’ll! Sorry I haven’t been around lately, but I have been on a whirlwind of events. I ended up deciding to go to graduate school at Columbia University in THE New York City. Best decision of my life. I have recently moved up here (recently being this past weekend, I drove all the way from Texas – woooo). I’m now living with my best friend from BU and another girl that went to BU. We all three go to Columbia, but I’m the only one that studies nutrition. I love my program! It is so amazing and I will definitely go on and on and on about it, but right now I’m going to share my first NYC adventure with ya’ll!

My roommate, Carrianne, and I ended up going to Greenwich Village to go on a hunt for something we needed for the apartment. However we ended up at this really cute pet store that had a ton of puppies on sale. Of course we had to go in and look at all of them just for fun. We definitely will never be getting a dog up here, but it doesn’t hurt to look at them. This cock-a-poo was so cute. I was tapping the glass with my finger and she was chasing it around. You could tell she did not want to be in the container. I wish we could have taken her out for a walk. I have a weak spot for adorable little puppies. After we had our fun, we went on the real adventure: to get a snowcone (ya’ll shouldn’t even be surprised at this point).

Ya’ll know how I love snowcones, especially New Orleans style. This place was so cute. It was called Imperial Woodpecker Snow-balls. It was tucked away in a street filled with restaurants. It was sort of like a food stand just out on the street. The guy was sitting there with the ice machine in front of him and all the bottles of flavors. This was the huge menu of flavors! It was so hard to pick what I wanted. I am definitely going to have to venture back to Greenwich just to have one of these snowcones before the September 15th close date.

I eventually decided to go for a booze theme and get flavors that were named after drinks. I chose margarita and mojito. I loved that the snowcone came in a takeout container. It was massive and definitely worth the 5$ price. It was sweet and tangy. The flavors matched each other perfectly as did the color. It was just a visually appealing snowcone with phenomenal flavors. I was in heaven as we walked around Greenwich looking at shop windows. I wish it was a never ending snowcone.

Just look at the majestic power of this container of shaved ice! It is seriously delicious. There are not enough words to describe the flavor sensation I experienced as I bite into this. The flavors were less fake and syrupy. It tasted as if they had made the syrups themselves instead of ordered them from a standard shaved ice company. They actually even had all natural flavors such as jalapeno watermelon and Meyer-Lemon Basil. Ummm yes. Who doesn’t want exotic flavors like that on a cup of ice?

Imperial Woodpecker Sno-Balls is the place to go! If you are in NYC currently, make it down to Greenwich village by Sept 15th to enjoy this tasty treat. The sad thing is that the manager is moving out of NYC, so this will be the last summer with Imperial Woodpecker Sno-Balls. I know, right? I discover something delicious in the city, and it is already leaving me! Oh well, I am going to make one more trek out there in order to try another flavor. Carrianne ended up getting the King Cake flavor and said that it was quite delicious!

Later that night, we were originally going to go out, so we went to this tapas bar, Marcha, in our neighborhood before going out. We ended up getting a couple of cocktails and tapas. Turns out that we didn’t make it out, but we didn’t really care because this place was amazing. The music was great, the cocktails were even better, and the food was so good. I ordered a colada type of drink that had hints of pineapple, coconut, and mango in it. It was like drinking pure fruit with alcohol hidden throughout it. Carrianne got a strawberry drink with champagne and some other alcohol in it. It was delicious, of course.

We got an order of patatas bravas. I know this doesn’t look like all the pictures of my patatas bravas from Spain, but this dish was equally delicious. It had a spicy aioli drizzled across perfectly seasoned and cooked sliced potatoes. We inhaled these. The sauce was so creamy and rich. The spiciness was not overpowering either, which was amazing. We also ended up order croquetas, specifically ones with goat cheese, tomatoes, and a red wine dipping sauce. Holy heck! These things were amazing. I wish I would have taken a picture, but at this point we were on our second cocktails and feeling good. I’m so glad that this place is one block from my apartment. We decided last night that this will definitely be one of our neighborhood joints.

I’m so glad to be living in the wonderful city that is New York. Ya’ll we be joining me on my foodie adventures to test out restaurants and cook in my apartment. I am going to be making a ton of different recipes, recreating dishes that I try, doing epic restaurant reviews, and of course sharing nutrition tidbits from my classes and life.