Well, winter hasn’t quite decided to take a vacation yet! The snow may have continued throughout the day, but Chris and I decided to get out of Manhattan and head to Brooklyn for some comfort food bites.

First up on our agenda? A trip to DuMont Burger. While I will definitely be back to try their burgers.. this trip was all about their mac and cheese. 

Let’s just say this ‘food tour’ wasn’t exactly on the healthy side.. but hey walking through the snow can work up quite the appetite (or at least I’m telling myself that). Chris and I decided to split a side of their onion rings and their famous mac and cheese.

I enjoy a good onion ring and DuMont does this just right. The Spanish onions are cut thick and then covered in a tempura batter that is the perfect combination of fluffy and crisp. I’d happily come back just for a side of these with their special sauce.

Next on our order was their mac and cheese. They offer a bacon add-in, but I suggested we opted for it plain. In my view, to really test out how great a mac and cheese is, you need to do so without any of the extras first. Otherwise it ends up shadowing the cheese mix a little. Their mac and cheese is made with radiatore pasta and a mix of parmesan, gruyere and cheddar cheeses. 

So how do I think it stacks up? I was a big fan of the style of noodles. It’s a little different variety than most restaurants select and the noodles soak up the cheese just right. The cheese blend was a nice combination with a great combination of creamy without being too heavy. Finally, the mac is topped with a nice crust of melted cheese on the top which really finishes off the dish.

After we were filled up on fried and cheesy goodness we headed a little further out in Williamsburg to check out one of my favorite donut joints. 

We first had Dun-Well Doughnuts in the fall at Smorgasburg and I’ve been wanting to have another go at their donuts every since. At I continue my quest to find the best donuts in the city, Dun-Well currently sits a top of my list. The dough that their creations are cooked with is just perfect. 

I follow their accounts on Facebook and Instagram so my mouth was watering before we even made it in the door. We didn’t make it in until the afternoon so they had sold out of a lot of their varieties, but they still had the mini pie options that I had saw on social that morning so I was happier than a clam!

Okay… take a second to check out the bottom right menu item. Doughnut Sundae!?!? That’s just all sorts of fatty deliciousness sounding. If it wasn’t snowing I probably would have went with that route but since we were still pretty full from lunch we opted to take our treats to go. 

Now here is the part that kind of blew my mind a little… It turns out their donuts are vegan! Now I’ve certainly had delicious vegan options in the past, but being someone who doesn’t like missing out on ingredients.. my mind often just assumes that gluten-free or vegan bakeries are just missing a little in their treats, even if that’s a terrible theory.. Well, it’s time I officially throw that mindset out the window because Dun-Well proves that doing things a little different can have even more amazing results. I mean, look at these babies below!

Once we had our treats, it was time to head back to Manhattan. Not before snapping a picture of OMG Taco though. Um, how awesome is that name??  

I’d say our snow noms tour was a serious success. Delicious, and the perfect way to fight off some of the winter blues. Scoots wanted to say hi too :-)

The Blizzard of 2015, the blizzard that didn’t quite end up being a blizzard in NYC. We only ended up getting a little over 6 inches and while it’s certainly a decent amount of snow, it’s not quite the 1-2 ft they were forecasting.

We did what we were told as good little New Yorkers and stocked up on some of the essentials..

One of the more exciting parts about the storm was packing this little fur ball across the city. I’m cat-sitting for my friend and I didn’t want to leave the kitty alone soooo we went for a little ride on transit before they shut it down!

Even though I’m kind of bummed we didn’t get as much snow as planned… We all made it out safe, warm and stocked up on some snacks. I’m totally still going to build a snowman on my balcony today too!

For Christmas this year I decided to go the adventure route and got him a gift certificate to go snow tubing at a nearby resort, also complete with all of the snow gear needed. Call it my latest attempt to put a little dose of the great outdoors into this city boy’s life! 

After a series of busy weekends, we were finally able to head up to the mountain! When you think of New York City, mountains are definitely not something that comes to mind unless you want to count skyscrapers. It actually turns out that there are a number of resorts within 2 hours of the city! Not as close as the old Claw at home, but not bad. After doing some research I found a number of different bus and shuttle services that take groups from the city to the slopes each weekend. I’m not much of a skier (having only gone twice) and after seeing Chris on ice skates last year I decided that tubing was definitely the safest option for both of us! After comparing a lot of the bus services (that mostly cater to skiers and snowboarders) I decided that going to Mountain Creek was our best option. The resort is only an hour and a half from the city and the bus picks up at the main bus terminal, Port Authority. 

The only part of our trip I wasn’t that excited about was the alarm clock going off. The bus left Port Authority at 7:30 and is about 40 minutes from our apartments by subway, so needless to say it was an early morning! Nothing an orange juice (iced coffee for him) and some 7/11 donuts couldn’t solve though! Once we were on the bus we got a nice little nap on the way up to the mountain too.

The day we went up there was absolutely gorgeous! Clear, sunny and a little brisk. Our snow gear kept us nice and toasty though!

It’s interesting to me because Mountain Creek is actually mostly made up of man-made snow. This was kind of a new concept to someone who grew up right on the plateau of the mountain, but real or man-made, the crowds flooded to the resort! 

Our tubing session was a couple hours after our bus arrived so we spent some time exploring the resort before the crowds really took over.  It was a really nice place! They had a number of restaurants and a beer garden outside in front of a fire with german food, which was pretty awesome in my book.

After a few hours of exploring we headed over to the tubing area called “The Drop Zone”. I hadn’t been tubing since I was younger and most of the people lining up for our session were under the age of 10, but I was still hopeful that it would be fun! At least crossing my fingers in hopes that I didn’t end up giving a really lame Christmas present!

Luckily my memory served me well and it was just as awesome as I remembered it! We may have been the only adults without kids at the park, but we still had a blast! With 15 lanes to pick from we had so much fun deciding which lanes were the fastest. It didn’t take long for Chris to somehow master the art of speed down the hills, somehow always hitting the blob (as I called it), which was a big inflatable balloon at the bottom of the slopes that you would run into if the mats at the bottom of the hill didn’t slow you down enough. I’m not sure how he managed it, but he literally hit it every time.

After our two hours were up we were exhausted and ready to head back to the lodge for some grub! Tubing can be tiring! As a bonus to our tubing tickets we also got free tickets to one of their new attractions called the soaring eagle. It basically looked like a chairlift but was on a zip line. I like to think I’m not a total chicken but something about going backwards really freaks me out and this did exactly that. So you can bet your bottom dollar I was trying to talk Chris out of making me do it.. but when two 7 year old girls got off right in front of us yelling let’s do it again, I knew I didn’t have much of a case to back out. I pretty much had a death grip on Chris’ arm the entire time, but I am proud to say I did do it! Woh hoh! 

After the soaring eagle we headed to one of their outdoor fires and enjoyed the rest of the day keeping warm and watching the skiers and snowboarders come down the hill! We had such a great time and I’m really happy I looked into it! A lot of people just assume there isn’t anything for them to do at the mountain if they don’t ski or snowboard so this is a good reminder that tubing is the perfect way to have fun and get out in the snow! I’d definitely recommend Mountain Creek to anyone in the tri-state area! It also turns into a water slide park in the summer so we just might have to check that out too!