Chinatown Brooklyn Style

Last weekend I went to the Chinatown in Brooklyn. It is different from the one in Manhattan because it has more unique fish, fruit, and vegetables and is a little less expensive. We went to get crabs for gumbo and we also saw a lot of cool foods.

Brooklyn Chinatown has been around since the late 1980s. It runs on 8th Avenue from 42nd to 68th Street. You can get there on the N/R and D subway trains. The neighborhood is very crowded with many, many stores all along the block.

Some of the coolest, and strangest foods I saw: eels, crabs, carp, roots of some kind of plant, exotic mushrooms, seaweed, frogs, turtles with no shells, mackerel, trout, and many more but if I tell you this blog post will be eight pages long.

I love discovering new types of food and eating them, so I was excited to go into a bakery and try Chinese buns. I had a hot dog bun, two pork buns, and a sweet bun that had coconut on it. I really liked the hot dog bun. It was like a pig in a blanket, but the bread was really soft and fluffy.

I recommend going there. Take a trip in honor of the Chinese New Year, which happens in early February this year. Or you can go just for fun.

Sweets for the Sweet 16

Last weekend my cousin Tashawn's turned 16. In honor of her "sweet 16" we had a sweet treat: cupcakes.

We got them from a new store called the Cupcake King on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. The store is very cute and colorful. We bought five very large red velvet cupcakes, two chocolate ones with white swirls and three chocolate mint with peppermint patties on top.

I liked the red velvet best, because it was so creamy and sort of melted in my mouth. Cupcake King is a little bit expensive; the large ones cost $3.75, the smaller ones, $2.75. It adds up. But it is worth it.

Valentine's Day is coming and cupcakes are great for a present. If you really like someone you should go here. The info is here: click here: for website

in the shop

Birthday Heaven!

Sunday it was my mom's birthday, and we celebrated by having dinner with friends and family. My Godmother Jackie came with her partner Juliet and their two kids, Toshi and Jackson. My Auntie Jane came as well.

My sister made a great salmon dinner topped with pea tendrils (pea sprouts) with snap peas on the side. The marinade for the salmon was made up of the soy sauce and ginger. I was assigned to grate the ginger. She let the salmon soak in the marinade for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, she sauteed the snap peas and the pea sprouts. She broiled the salmon for 6 minutes, and then she put the pea sprouts and peas on the cooked salmon. She also roasted fingerling potatoes, nicely seasoned with olive oil, salt and thyme.

I took a bite of the salmon and it was really good. I could have fainted. Actually I was impressed that my sister was able to create a dish from a recipe in Bon Apetit magazine. I was eating a piece of the best thing in the world. I could live off of that dish. I even took it for lunch the next day!

After Juliet made an amazing cake. It had a fish on it with a hook in its mouth, because my mom loves fishing. Juliet is a great baker and she is so fun. I had a bite and went crazy. It was so rich and good. I love her and my sister. My mom felt so special when she was eating and opening presents.

Katie's Kookies!!!

Throughout the holidays, I got to eat the best cookies I have ever tasted. Every year, my mom's co-worker Katie Garton takes a couple days off work and makes 1,000 cookies from scratch. WOW, that is as many I can make in my life.

She gave us over 50 cookies: Snickerdoodles, Vanilla Trees, Chess Squares, Thumb Prints and many more melt-in-your-mouth cookies. I tried every kind at least once. My very favorite was the Chess Squares, though it is hard to choose. They taste like a piece of heaven.

Though Katie already has a job, she should start a cookie business. I would be her first customer.