AMERICA for a hot second

North America » United States » New Jersey » Ocean County
October 22nd 2012

Published: January 29th 2013

For too brief a time I was heading back to America to visit my family. I never thought while I was here I was going to venture back home, but when my mom, aunt and brother could visit Thailand leaving behind my dad and other brother I was willing to make my own trek home to see them.Ok I wasn’t just willing I was uber excited.

I had decided to head home in October for a number of reasons but the two biggest being Michael, my youngest brother, was turning 21 and my all time favorite holiday ever, Halloween, lured me home. True the fall weather was a bit horrifying, but I was slightly excited to wear a sweater again so it wasn’t to much of a set back to know I would be home when the temperature fell under 80 degrees.

The flight home was long but worth it when I saw my mom and dad and did the terribly corny thing of running to them. We then loaded ourselves into the Jeep and headed home. Determined to kick jet lags butt we headed out to dinner shortly after the greatest hot shower of my life.

Food was a huge thing when I was home. I went out to eat as often as I could, but that wasn’t often enough because Super Storm Sandy hit while I was hoping shutting most places down for most of my visit, but here are the restaurants I hit up while I was home.

 Bonefish Grill: I didn’t just go here once, I didn’t even go here just twice, I went here three times while I was home. Why? Because the food is just so delicious. It was the first restaurant I went to when I got back and my meal with a delicious salmon salad topped off with an apple cinnamon martini. The second time was for an early dinner with my mom where I got the Beet, goat cheese, and fennel salad and my mom got the salmon salad and we did a little swap but before getting to that we had ourselves some Tuna Sashimi. Such a fan of the Sashimi, when I returned on my last night in America, I ended up ordering the tuna sashimi again with edamame salad and the fish tacos. Each and every one of these meals were delicious. Oh yeah and for good measure my last meal was topped off with an espresso martini YUM!

 Urban Kitchen is a tiny little place in Brielle that my mom and I checked out after thrift store shopping. Boy am I glad we stopped off here. First we tried out their healthy green shake and then my mom ordered the falalfal while I got the tuna sandwhich with avocado. Now we aren’t talking tuna from a can folks, were talking a huge chunk of tuna with wasabi sauce and deliciousness all on amazing whole grain bread.

 Buffalo Wild Wings scared me at first, I wasn’t sure exactly how one makes wild wings healthy, but now a foodie I realized not every meal had to be the most healthy one. A fan of allowing my friends to choose whatever we were going to eat now, she ordered fried pickles, and two sets of bbq wings, one with a parmesan cheese sauce and the other with a spicy jalepeno sauce. After living in Thailand the spice was lacking hard core but overall the two types of wings were tasty although I will have to pass on fried pickles from now on.

 Triumph Brewery is where my family and I chose to go to celebrate Mike’s 21^st birthday. Down by his school I had heard rave reviews about their espresso martini. Now this in and of itself wasn’t the greatest of all espresso martinis but it was tasty none the less. My turkey sandwich with avocado was tasty but what was the real stand out was the brussel sprouts. I don’t even like brussel sprouts, scratch that I’m not sure I’ve ever had brussel sprouts but these ones were off the chain amazing. As we all tried each others dishes it was clear that every meal was tasty. Better yet my newly 21 year old brother ordered the beer sampler allowing all of us to try the nine types of bear the brewery offers.

 Rella’s Tavern was more for the drinking crowd watching the football match, but we chowed down on some wings that were quite good and even better was their brick oven pizza. Oh how I had been craving some good pizza and Rella’s Tavern delivered.

 Showgun was amazing! I’m not sure when my love of sashimi and sushi kicked in but I’m glad it did before I came to this place. I had the tuna sashimi and it was even better than Bonefish grills. My date ordered three other types of sushi and each one was spectacular. Even the cucumber and avocado rolls had something special about them. My mouth waters at the thought of it.

As tasty as all the restaurant food was, nothing could beat the meals my mom and I were whipping up at home. My mom was shocked to find me cooking it up in the kitchen having always been in fear of doing anything in the kitchen prior to my Peace Corps stint. Now a foodie who actively seeks out healthy recipes, to have all these ingredients at my every beckon call AND a way to cook them other than a hot plate I was in heaven.

 I whipped up egg frittatas and pumpkin pancakes, smoothies and pumpkin mousse, I even tried the chickpea cookie dough dessert from health weekend. Salads were being made, some even being quite fancy for example the edemane salad that was fantastic and soups were being concocted. I managed to make a delicious salmon dish, tasty sweet potato fries and even a goat cheese and beet course, ok the beet dish was all my mom. It was so much fun to be in the kitchen coming up with these healthy meals that nobody could deny the deliciousness of. Ok maybe they could deny the ridiculously spicy pumpkin soup I made, but other than that everything was tasty I swear!

 While I was home, in the midst of my foodie journey I was also pursuing my exercising. Turns out in the time I was gone this amazing invention called X-Finity was created and purchased by my family. No matter what time of the day you could turn that sucker on and find a work out video to do, it was AMAZING. Not only that the first week I was home I became a P90X graduate! And if that wasn’t grand enough, my running was going great, in fact I found out I was running about a 10 minute mile and I was up to running 5 miles, a huge improvement for someone who never ran before.

 As all this was going on, including two parties for my brother and a great Halloween shin dig, something devastating happened, Super Storm Sandy. I admit that when I heard she was going to hit I didn’t think much of it. I wasn’t there for Irene and heard that Jersey wasn’t hit to bad, so when the news was telling us to stock up I thought everyone was exaggerating. They weren’t. Sandy hit and she hit hard. The power went out and would stay that way for a while. Homes were destroyed, people were evacuate, boardwalks were no more and total devastation was hitting certain areas. My family was very lucky, not only did our house not sustain any real damage, but we also only lost power for a few days. Some of my friends, 2 weeks later, were still powerless when I left the country. There were gas rations if you could find a gas station at all and there was no access to beaches which were left in ruins. When access was finally granted to Pt. Pleasant, I went up there for a run. It was so sad to see people’s lives on the side of the road, everything the water touched had to be thrown out. The boardwalk, although still there was all janky and left in pieces in areas, the golf course I occasionally went to was gone, literally no more. It was sad to see, it was the last real sight I saw before I returned to Thailand. And if Sandy wasn’t enough a little over a week after she hit a Nor’easter decided to grace us with its presence. Many of those who had regained power were suddenly powerless once more. Not to mention the 6 inches of snow that was now coating the ground. As if it wasn’t hard enough to drive around, now we had snow to contend with. It was an odd experience to be home while this happened. I missed my flight and ended up staying in America for an extra week which honestly may have been the only blessing to come from the destruction of Sandy and her nor’easter friend. At the same time, I’ve said it several times, I am glad that I was here when it happened. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be able to really comprehend what had happened. Worse I probably wouldn’t even know about it for days afterwards just with how my schedule is and when I would have had internet and when my family received power back.

 These storms cramped my style just a bit, because of it nothing was open and nobody was driving around due to gas restrictions so I spent a week chilling with the family and a few friends who lived close enough to waste gas to come and pick me up (I was a bit fearful to drive and also don’t have a license I’m not sure where that went). Overall my time in America was interesting to say the least. I got to celebrate my brothers 21^st birthday, Halloween was cancelled, the craziest storm to hit New Jersey struck, I got to taste some great American food, and I spent plenty of time with friends and family that I had missed greatly while being away. Going back to Thailand wasn’t easy. I thought after three weeks I would be chomping at the bit to be headed back but the truth it having that taste of America made me want to stay with my friends and family or at least move on to my next adventure. I’m getting antsy and ready for the next step in life, whatever that may be.

AMERICA for a hot second

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