Happy Holidays and NYC Fun and Food!

NYC fun and food around the holidays. New York City is a magical place at Christmas time!

I hope everyone had a Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas! Can you believe the new year starts tomorrow?

My family and I have been enjoying this holiday week with plenty of fun and food. It started right before Christmas, when my neighbor came over to teach me how to make pierogi. We hand rolled out 6 dozen each and I promise I will do a post on making pierogi in the near future as several of you asked for the recipe. I just have to make them again by myself and figure out the exact amounts of ingredients I used. They are delicious and I have several dozen in the freezer which we will be eating at New Year's dinner.

Christmas eve was spent with the cousins at my brother's new house. The kids had a blast and it was necessary to take at least a few silly pictures.

On Christmas day, our family had a nice brunch, opened gifts and then later that day we headed to New York City for some fun and lots of good food. One of our first stops was the tree at Rockefeller Center. It was beautiful at night.  I wish everyone could experience New York City fun during the holidays.

We visited St Patrick's cathedral. It is undergoing lots of renovations but it is still a spectacular sight. I loved looking at this beautiful church at night.

We also went to the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. The show is such a tradition for so many people and the inside is breathtaking especially during the holidays.

We were in NYC for a few days so I am going to show you some of my food favorites. My thirteen year old son's favorite thing was pizza from one of the 99 cent pizza places. It was actually decent pizza but when you are in New York city for three days and eat all the wonderful things we ate, you know he is far from a foodie. He was much happier at Niketown. There were floors and floors of jerseys, sneakers, balls and other sporting equipment. I was afraid he might want to sleep there but we were finally able to get him to leave so he could use his new soccer ball. This is really his idea of NYC fun!

We had dinner one night at The Smith .  It is a casual American Brasserie with lots of classic dishes with a twist. My daughter and I split a seared tuna salad and the seafood cerviche. It was so fresh and good.

We decided not to have dessert at the restaurant but instead visit a few bakeries later in the night. I love New York City because the city never sleeps but either does the food. You can have whatever you want late night or early morning. We picked up some eclairs and macarons at Éclair Bakery.  They were so good. My favorite macaroon was the salted caramel one. I have been eating a lot of salted caramel things lately. We also bought some cookies and milk from Insomnia Cookies. The cookies are still warm when you buy them. The place is open until 3am and they will deliver cookies to your door. How great is that? We had some snickerdoodle cookies and a giant peanut butter chocolate chip cookie.

 We finished off our visit with lunch at Patsy's Pizzieria.  A visit to New York City is not complete without getting some NY pizza. We also ordered a side of meatballs. I am a meatball snob and hardly order them anywhere because I like very few that are not homemade. These were delicious and I will order them every time I go there. So good!

Happy new year to you and yours. 2015 is going to be a great one! See you next year!