Happy New Year!

It's a New Year!! 

The holidays are finally over, and so is 2010. Can you guys believe I forgot to make a sandwich with my leftover Christmas turkey!! That's my favorite thing to do with the leftovers, my grandma makes soup and pot pies with hers. 

 I had a few days off for the holidays and I spent them with my friends and family. Every year my friends and I have a Christmas cookie share, we all bake something and then come together and share it. My cousin is not a fan of baking so she usually  makes the dinner. This year we had tortellini in meat sauce and it was really good. For dessert I made carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting drizzled with caramel. I also made my first cheesecake, which was an adventure but it turned out good. I couldn't find a recipe I liked for the cheesecake so I took a few things from a bunch of different recipes, I think I'm going to try it again this weekend, I need to tweak it a little. Once I get the end result I'm looking for I'll be sure to post on my recipe page. Some other desserts we had were cookie brownie bars, which is a brownie on the bottom and a cookie on the top, they were good but very thick and made it hard to eat anything else after. One of my friends cheats every year and buys her dessert, this year she bought pound cake and topped it with peaches and whipped cream, and I have to admit it was really good.

So, what did everyone do to bring in the new year? I had planned to have a few friends over, it turned out to be a little more than expected! But we all had a good time, we had a few drinks and played cards and watched the ball drop. My cousin made hot wings for our gathering,  I made shrimp and rice, and we had a tossed salad for our veggie. 

 New Years Day at 300 Bowling Alley

On new years day a few friends and I decided to go bowling. We went to 300 in Melville. 300 is definitely different from the bowling alleys that I'm used to. We went around 10pm, so when we got there we were greeted by a bouncer giving out wristbands for people over 21. For a second I was a little confused, thought I was at a nightclub. The place is set up really nice with a big bar in the middle, nice tables all around to eat at. I thought it was clean and well kept. The balls are all kept in a back area and you have to go to a desk and tell the attendant what size you need. I thought that was nice, I usually spend to much time walking around the bowling alley trying to find a ball.  The staff was really friendly and the DJ was ok. Now lets talk about the important stuff.....The FOOD! The menu offered items like burgers, chicken fingers, fries, hot wings, chicken quesadilla and more. Pretty good selection for a bowling alley. I tried the chicken quesadilla, hot wings, and sweet potato fries. They were all so good! The drinks were good as well. The price for bowling was reasonable $7 a game, drinks were in the $8-$10 range, and food was a bit high for a bowling alley - $11 for six chicken fingers, however the portion sizes were very good. 300 is right around the corner from my job, the food was so good I'm thinking I've found a new lunch spot.

Now that the holidays are over I've decided to post once a week, I see a few new restaurants that are popping up around town that I'd like to review, and I found some new recipes to try. Next week is my daughters first birthday, I'm going to be making her the big cupcake so we'll see how it turns out. Any suggestions on what kind of cake?