July 18, 2008

le burger

It's sort of funny that it took a transplanted Frenchman in America to help start a French craze for the oh so American burger in France. And it all wouldn't have happened without the popularity boom of upscaling the 'humble' burger and its variations on America's own dining scene. And then, doesn't it just go back to simple but good ingredients and a happy context? There's something about that aspect which jabs at the idea of a trend.

Whatever, I know I'm not making much sense. But what I really want to know, is what is the rectangular block accompanying the burger and the salad in the lead photo in the article??? Is this rectangular block tasty??? Now THAT's a story.

Posted by janet at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2008

runs on [pause] imagination!

I'm all for the health of kids. But I think I do miss the all-out gluttony of Cookie Monster. Well, I guess he still has monster-like eating habits, even for the fruit. And that is what is endearing.

My favorite monsters on Sesame Street were Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster. Telling eh?

Posted by janet at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

June 9, 2008

you gogurt

There's a supermarket in my town that is totally lame and should have given way to another REALLY NECESSARY bank branch or drug store. It's the store where one grabs one or two things because it's on the way. A recent trip there included a five minute search for avocados. When we found them, we realized, Oh, it's because they look like shriveled green walnuts. GROSS. Were they fossilized? Tiny New York bodegas are stocked better, luxuriously even, in comparison.

This particular supermarket, like many others, has a wall of yogurt. Next to the six brands of shredded cheese. MM! Mexican cheese! This particular wall of yogurt seems to offer that proud American freedom of choice. The challenge?? Finding full-fat yogurt. Not one. A WALL-FUL OF SUBSTITUTE FOR HUMAN EXPERIENCE!

Posted by janet at 9:35 AM | Comments (2)

December 3, 2007

chocolate show

Uh, hello Chocolate Show. You are like a month old. You can gurgle and coo. And focus with your cacao bean eyes. Except you are over. Ok, metaphor gone wild. Wooo, show your words! Hahahaha.

Ah, brain, who needs one? So I guess this was a "trade show," so it's for vendors to get the word out about their products and pique some media and public interest blahblahblah? Or it's an opportunity for the mere mortals to pay $20-something to devour "free" samples in Augustus Gloop-like fashion, except you can't really do that because there is a huge crowd of people and also there aren't troughs of samples for chocolate piggies to snuffle around (or drown) in. I have to admit, it's all sort of a weird concept to me, but after making the rounds and sampling enough chocs to actually make me dizzy, I thought it was definitely fun times.

Su Good Sweets highlights some valid gripes about the show, which include charging for sweet, sweet, palate-cleansing bottles of water, needless booths for credit cards and hotels, and paying more for certain booths' samples. She also points out two booths that offered French truffles made with hydrogenated vegetable oil. I believe I bought one of those boxes of truffles for my officemates. Whoops! No wonder they were smoothilicious. But it's actually quite funny because as we were invited to try these samples, the lady with a very Frenchie accent was so threateningly severe: "DON'T CHEW EET. Let eet melt on your tongue! Eet iz an old French family recipe!" Was it all just bollocks? Was that a real accent? No wonder a box only cost like $7.

More than not, I intentionally passed on the NY-centric tables, like Chocolate Bar and stuff I saw all the time, like Lindt, Sweetriot cocoa nibs and Chocolove bars, though I couldn't resist me some Jacques Torres ménage à trois truffles. Sounds saucy doesn't it? They're truffles with three mystery flavors and the ones we tried were super yummy and I had NO idea what the flavors were. Me and my champion palate win gold medals from the supermarket quarter toy machines.

Some of my favorite parts of the day were trying chocolates — I think, at the Michel Cluizel booth — from different places and getting that duh! realization that they actually do taste different even with the same percentage of cocoa content. I hadn't really forayed into the whole origin-focused chocolate consuming thing — because of the plastic ball enclosed champion-ness of my palate — but now I'm more willing to give it a whirl.

The Japanese Mary's Chocolate had strikingly beautiful sweets and works in progress — the dude in the picture above is from that booth — but they were charging for everything and also there was a huge crowd. All in all, the different aesthetics and packaging choices of the companies were very interesting to note because they did have an effect on whether I was prompted to try or pass on them.

Bloomsberry, for example, went for the humorous packaging, which I thought was pretty cute, but it didn't get my tastebuds crying out for cocoa.

My other actual purchases were some chocolate lip balm from Sweet Beauty Spa, out of Seattle. The lip balms are made from all natural ingredients with good stuff like beeswax and babassu seed, aloe vera and avocado oils, etc., plus various strengths of organic/fair trade chocolate. It actually stays on pretty well if you can resist just eating it which is the point where you should just eat some regular non-oil-infused chocolate, but I've found the smell of putting some on is effective when I need a little psychological uplift or if I'm hungry.

I also got some bars of chocolate from Romanicos Chocolate, out of Florida. They had huge lines forming to try their 38 calorie truffles, which actually tasted pretty yummy to me. Their shtick is no preservatives and top notch fresh ingredients so no worries about partially hydrogenated oils there. I'm a little confused about how they don't use any (cocoa?) butter or sugar at all, so it's all cocoa solids... and how all that works. But I got two bars — Mission Fig and Sea Salt Soy Bean. I like the mission fig a lot — it's a nice balance between the really sweet fig and bittersweet dark chocolate. The sea salt soy bean is a little too overpowered by the extreme nuttiness of the soy bean for me, but of course I'm going to finish it, hello. In both cases though, the star doesn't seem to be the chocolate. Maybe it's all about the combination, or maybe there are "hundreds" of results in my gmail when you search "chocolate," maybe I have four different kinds of chocolate bars in my desk drawers. "Whatevers."

I did fail in my attempt to find a nice salted caramel chocolate. I tried Charles chocolates' version but the flavors were way too muted for my liking, though I did enjoy their raspberry truffle which tasted like actual fresh raspberries. I've become a little obsessed with that salty-sweet caramel flavor combination and my favorite in chocolate terms so far has been Fran's and I should have picked up some of Recchiuti's when I was in SF.

Why is this so long? I should have just posted ZOMGOGGOWQWE_E!!! I love chocolate wheeee!

There was an interesting piece about chocolate and the company Dagoba, specifically, in the New Yorker by Bill Buford but that's not available so look at the pictures! And here's a chocolate blog! And here's robyn's flickr set of the chocolate show!

This is no fun when you can't taste the things.

Posted by janet at 4:38 PM | Comments (2)

October 15, 2007

kimchi confidential

My friend Caroline and I have started a new food blog about Korean food called Kimchi Confidential. It is rad. And so are people who visit it... as well as people who say "rad."

Posted by janet at 12:22 AM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2007

food studies

When I was in San Francisco briefly this past June, I passed by a bar called "Social Studies." What a great name. So perfect! Plus you can have dorky quiz nights! But I can't find proof of it on the interwebs. I should have gone in and done some social studying of my own. Oh ho!

Was "Social Studies" at school just another word for "History"? I can't remember. See! This is why there's no way I'm naturally adept at these subjects. Because I have the memory of mouse brain. I'm pretty good at rushing around a maze-like contraption to find a chunk of cheese though. Not like neon orange cheese though. Puh-lease. I am a gourmand mouse-brain, thank you very much.

So I recently finished David Kamp's United States of Arugula, but not recently enough to have a bunch of cool, intriguing facts I learned from it to entice you to read it. This melting pot — no, mixed salad (oh ho! ok I'll stop doing that) — of information is admirably comprehensive and jam-packed (mm!) in that you can go through and find just about every foodie-related proper noun you can think of, but delivered in an easy to read reporting tone and an easy to read, near-gossipy dishiness. Mrowr! The latter might put people off, but it seems to resonate with the close-knitness of the food world and the undoubtably "character" characters which inhabit it.

I had sort of a 'duh' moment when I realized that not only were foods like pizza and sushi uncommon in the food-consciousness of Americans, but more recent terms like "free range" actually come from somewhere! And stores like Dean & Deluca and Williams-Sonoma are named after people! One thing I was delighted to learn and that I do recall is how Wolfgang Puck sort of originated with the Chinese chicken salad, an idea that has landed on menus far and wide, just one example of how certain innovations and innovators have influences that bloom geographically and across classes, in ways good and bad. (Here is a funny video of Margaret Cho talking about Asian chicken salad.)

Michael Ruhlman's The Reach of a Chef overlaps with US of Arugula in the discussion of the business part of being a famous chef and what that entails. Hello Las Vegas! Ruhlman's is a more intimate book, focusing on individual chefs like Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz in addition to giving us his own voice and experience. Ruhlman's writing is generally closer to my hungry heart, I think, but these two books are nice to read together. These times are interesting as we're able to watch "food studies" become this actual field, I guess, as the consciousness of consumers (well, errr, humans) grow.

P.S. I am glad I am young enough to have missed the fad of dishes like this: pear halves in green Jell-O topped with a dollop of mayonnaise and grated cheddar cheese. GROSS! And people complain about offal?!

Posted by janet at 3:54 PM | Comments (0)

August 30, 2007

jersey gardens

You know, often I get the New Yorker a day or two later than people in NY. Which sucks. That means I can't be as hip and like, in the know. Being in the know is like a prerequisite for being a New Yorker. Cuz then you can be like, oh that, I've heard of that, and then you're totally cultured. Like yogurt. I'm sorry I couldn't help it.

Whatever. The result is, though, that the past few weeks that I've gotten the magazine in the mail, I've felt so ... New Jerseyan. But that's cool. Because I am.

These Edible magazines sound interesting. I like food. I live in NJ. I want to check one out, but my county is not even listed here.

NJ is the birthplace of many cool people, like all these chefs and food peoples. Tom Colicchio is from Elizabeth. Alice Waters is from Chatham. She also sounds like maybe she hasn't been here for a long time and would not enjoy herself here. But we are a great and variegated state. By the way, I'm writing this in a Dunkin Donuts that's attached to a diner that's inside a mall that's on the turnpike next to a factory. Where can you get that in Berkeley, huh? Maybe you can. A miniature replica made out of cheese made from the milk of grass and cotton candy fed cows. I don't know.

It's no secret that there's very good Asian and Indian foodplaces around me. Because, surprise, there are a lot of immigrants. It's a cool place to be. But that foodie-type train goes right by this part of the Northeast Corridor. We're too ethnic.

I hate that term.

Posted by janet at 4:16 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2007

chicken fckin' nuggets

Slate talks about pre-made food and megacompany Sysco, who also by the way, offers "Serve Smart Chicken": "unique 3-D technology gives you the look and texture of a solid muscle chicken breast, at a fraction of the cost. … Available in four great flavors: teriyaki, BBQ, fajita and original."

Unique 3-D technology!!! Jamie Oliver, Crusader of Healthy, Tasty lunches for school kids demonstrates this great human advancement with his Chicken Nuggets demo. Le sigh. I wish these DVDs were available States-side.

Posted by janet at 5:24 PM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2007

when life hands you lemons...

... don't make this tart. Thanks, NYT, for helping me waste precious lemonsssss. Precioussss. But I've learned my lesson. Don't make a recipe because the picture looks pretty, you superficial fool.

Of course my brain caught up with my eyes in the middle of preparing these ingredients. The suspicion started to grow as I looked at the heap of steeping lemons slices, and even with the substitution of some meyer lemons, I thought, "Really?? This is not going to taste good." I typed into the computer with my pruney, lemony fingers and confirmed my worst fears.

I went into lazy damage control. I took out some regular lemon and added more sugar and meyer lemon. I cut some of the slices into slivers because I thought there'd be a big chewiness problem. Tarts are not supposed to be full of chewy rinds. I substituted the regular sugar strewn on top with crushed sugar crystals the Mom buys for coffee.

I just should have stopped. Made a clean break. "You may be pretty but this just isn't going to work out. I'm leaving you in pieces, pieces, pieces of you." And the lemon tart components would have done a little jig.

I had a slice. Grossness confirmed. I threw the rest of it out. The crust had been fine, the sugar fun to crunch into, the insides? Bitter, pithey (those lemons, they aren't longwinded), chewy, unpleasant. I should've stuck with my original idea of lemon cake with raspberry jam.

So I whipped up a batch of banana muffins and added the bar of Scharffen Berger gianduja I had lying around, thinking I'd go for the Nutella banana combo. Not enough choc, but it diverted me from acid lemon tears.

Posted by janet at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

November 2, 2006

I'm all lost in the supermarket

Sometimes I'm still in NY-mode whilst in NJ. I found myself getting some groceries yesterday at A&P and tiring from the sheer size of the supermarket. You're screwed if you forget tomatoes if you've already gotten to the milk. In NY, sometimes those stores are so small that you'll find your juice next to the Drain-o. The dairy and produce sections in suburban groceries are like two different continents, separated by oceans of potato chips and Chunky soups and sacks of pet food and bright lights. But it's like that most everywhere in America I suppose. I'm just lazy.

I don't mind the effort, of course, if the grocery is nice and interesting, like Wegmans or Whole Foods or farmer's markets and such. Because I'm snooty like that. So, it was great visiting the grocery stores in Germany. Even though when people think of Germany, it's all beer and wursts and potatoes, they do much more, in all food-tastic respects.

Checking out grocery stores in another countries is fun because you get an idea of, well, how other people live. Like in Frankfurt, the jam sections are amazing, the dairy case a treasure trove of creamy delights. There just seemed to be more variety and higher quality stuff in smaller spaces. Snoot snoot snoot.

One crazy 'grocery' we stopped at was at the huge department store in Berlin, the KaDeWe, which is short of something, but I'm too lazy to look up right now. It's two floors of sheer beauty. Yeah you might get tired walking around, but who cares when you're looking at baskets of eggs?! Some of them still had feathers on them, which freaked out my friend who hates birds. I mean, can you just imagine??? You go to your local Krogers or Pathmark or whatever and the eggs still have feathers on them?

KaDaWe really had some fancy shmancy stuff. You name it, it's there. I did sort of mentally faint, however, when I saw their little bottles of Monin syrups and these sugar boxes. So pretty!!

OK, I'm feeling flat and trite, like day old soda. Time to stop reminiscing about amazing foodstores.

Posted by janet at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2006

Commuting Perks

There are few commuting perks. Commuting on NJ Transit is actually a jerk, a bitch, and not enough sleep all rolled up into one ugly wound of life. Anyway, recently I've been coming in early thanks to different getting-dropped-off-at-the-train-station arrangements. This thrilling detail was no way my idea. I basically have the capabilities of a drunk three year old until I've had some caffeine and am safely seated or enveloped by breakfast fumes and basically by then it's lunchtime.

So since this little lazy piggy doesn't always want to arrive at work an hour early, I've been a-wandering now and again, doing some croissant investigative analysis (CIA!) (not as extensive as the wandering eater's cia) at Patisserie Claude, La Bergamote and Petrossian Café, and yesterday I was going to the union square greenmarket when my sleepy eyes spied a flag at Max Brenner's: $1 special of chocolate waffle and coffee. !!!!! A chocolatey imaginary bell rang as I remembered reading about such arrangements at lovescool.

Surprisingly, I'd never eaten anything at Max Brenner's chocolate factory. I did go in to look around the day it opened but got intimidated by the interior somehow and ran away. I don't know why. Perhaps because the place is so large? Who knows. There's a coffee/pastry bar type area for takeaway with a smattering of tables, a spacious restaurant dining area, and then a store full of pretty and pretty penny chocolate packages. Not to mention the tubes and whirley machines and crates of chilis and such. The decor is definitely chocolate chic. Coming to a Pottery Barn near you!

Back to the best deal ever, especially because the 'coffee' can be either a latte or cappuccino. The surly lady who took my order slapped a waffle out of a tub onto one of those rolling toaster thingies and a nicer guy made me a pretty good cappuccino and a less nicer guy put the waffle on a piece of cardboard (cardboard chic! coming to an urban outfitters near you!), shook some powdered sugar on it, and went to a cauldron of chocolate and ladled some on the waffle. I ate with relish (and pickles... kiddingggg!) whilst reading depressing news about the world. The waffle itself was alright, probably rather forgettable by itself (like me!) but with the yummy accompaniments, it certainly hits a sweet spot.

I don't know how long this is lasting. Either 'til friday or the end of the month. But conclusion: Best $1 deal ever. If Max were closer to my work, I'd be fattening up on those babies every morning. Good thing it isn't, so that if a cannibalistic witch lures me to her gingerbread house, I won't be able to fit in to the oven. Man, Hansel and Gretel is kind of a horrifying story isn't it?

Posted by janet at 9:22 AM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2006

buzzbuzzbuzz

So instead of stealing one of these babies, I took a picture of them. I like the red one. Vroom vroom!

Illy is doing some sort of "journey of the senses" promotion thing at the Time Warner Center with events and displays and such. The best thing? Free espresso. Until October 9th. Vroom vroom!

Posted by janet at 1:37 PM | Comments (0)

September 5, 2006

grub burg, part tres

TAPAS TIME!

You can't be unhappy at tapas time. There are all these yummy little plates vying for your attention. With bread in one hand and a glass of sangria in another, all's right in your dining kingdom. Sure, I am substituting food for other holes in my life, but at least I could have an imaginary tiara made out of olives. On with the final installment of Grub Burg.

7. Praise be to paella!! La Nacional in Chelsea has wonderful paella, served in an epic platter. The challenge is how one is to partake of this platter of ricey goodness after enjoying tapas time and awesome sangria times. Yeah, I lead a tough life.

Unfortunately, since it's been a few weeks, my pea-sized brain's not doing too well with the specifics of the tapas. The table was hectic with seven or eight people of meat-eating and vegetarian variety snarfing down over half the tapas menu. Definite recs: shrimp in garlic sauce and either/both red and white sangrias.

The is-this-a-restaurant first impression makes it easy to miss, even when you're looking for it. La Nacional is in the basement of the Spanish Benevolent Society and you might encounter futbol playing on the tube, old men drinking wine at the bar, and merriment in the cosy dark of the dining room. Sometimes, as we did, you will hear the rhythmic thud of flamenco dancers through the ceiling. We didn't go check it out though, since eight little piggies were nursing our very full stomachs, squealing all the way home. Truly a sexy bunch.

8. Oliva on the lower east side seems to have garnered great thumbs ups for their food as well as disappointments with their service. Well, at 6:30 on a Tuesday, the food was excellent, the service attentive, and with rain spitting outside on a gray and chilly fall-approaching day, you'll toast your table-mates with more glasses of sangria and thank the tapas goddesses (with all sorts of olive tiaras at their disposal) that you stumbled upon this place.

Starting out with a perfectly fine but few slices of manchego cheese platter tricked us because the six or seven plates that paraded triumphantly out afterwards were not only tasty but hearty, good-sized portions. Standouts: steamed mussels, which nature custom made for humans to sop up their steamed garlicky juices with never ending bread, fried calamari reminiscent of that of La Nacional, very lightly battered and perfectly accompanied with aioli, and 'txangurro' crabs breaded in panko with pepper and tarragon. The menu didn't ring exactly as 'authentic' as La Nacional, nor was the sangria up to their awesomeness, but this seems like a really fun place to while away some eating and drinking time when the restaurant's not too busy. Biggest con: advertising that they take amex and then telling us the machine was down when it came time to pay.

9. Cupcakes!! Last but not least in this batch of food entries is a visit to the lower east side's Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery. I'm not really part of the cupcake-crazed, but these lovely creations at $1.50 a pop pleased me well, even leading me to trade in my olive crown for ... more cupcakes, especially with names like Ooey Gooey and Sexy Red Velvet. Sugar Sweet Sunshine is a cosy café, and when I say cosy, be careful of the charmingly, old looking chairs.

And speaking of Olives and Sunshine, go see Little Miss Sunshine. Because I love it.

Posted by janet at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

September 1, 2006

grub burg cont'd, savory village

No sweets-talk today guys. Sad but true.

But there will be EELS! Nothing can go wrong. Unless they start playing xylophones. If there's nothing scarier, it's grilled, saucy eels playing some saucy tunes with mallets. They have no hands!!

5. Falafel discs! I walked gracefully (translation: hobbled in new heel-y shoes) over to Azuri Cafe in Hell's Kitchen to sample their falafel goods. Why? Because it's on that NY Mag Cheap Eats List (translation: interpret 'cheap' as you will). And you know us. We are slaves to lists. This entry itself is a list. It's really hopeless when you think about it. Play, strange eels with hands, play a diverting melodious song!

Anyways, I was filled with a bit of trepidation because I had read that the dude there is supposed to be gruff and mean, but maybe he wasn't there, because my dude was not giving me hugs or anything, but nice enough. I think Azuri is an Israeli food place, as opposed to a 'generic middle eastern', with dishes like shakshuka and Israeli bottle drinks in the fridge. I got a mango one, and the falafel small plate. The small plate was very filling, so I'll leave you hungry bears to get the large plates. The falafel were very tasty, and if I remember correctly, herby. Herbacious! But, as you can see, they were flattish, like discs, which is a first in my falafel experience. What was actually the best was that the platter comes chock full of different salads and dips - hummus, eggplant, white beans, and more - which, frankly makes everything more exciting. Everything was fresh and yummy and if I worked closer, I'd go all the time. Alas, I dont.

6. EELS. If you are a fan of japanese style grilled eel with that sauce that might include crack it's so tasty PLUS korean style bibimbap in a stone pot, you will LOVE the 'mix eel rice', or hitsuma bushi, at Chikubu in midtown. This dish is only served on monday through thursday, cuz friday is RAMEN DAY (I hear this is excellent as well. Must return!). The foods, even with a lunch menu, are a bit pricey here, but japanese food tends to be pricey, and dammit, everything was so quality and unstingy. The mix eel rice is basically an unagi-don but a-crackling in a hot stone pot. The entree came with a few pickley things, miso soup, and a little kettle of either hot water or light stock. Basically you eat a lot of the rice, then pour in the water, and voila! A tasty soup-type thing with crackly rice bits!! My friends had excellent noodles and sushi. And if I had more money, I'd go all the time. Alas, I don't. Oh the emerging themes.

Okay, there will have to be one or two more installments of Grub Burg. Because that's just how we roll there. Like sushi.

Posted by janet at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2006

grub burg

You poor sillies. You had to read a bunch of rot in my previous entry, yeah? But whatever, aren't you used to it by now?? 'Rot', by the way, was an answer in today's nyt crossword puzzle. I know, I know. I'm such a help. It's a good word.

So did you know 'grub' backwards is 'burg'? So mathematically speaking, that means 'burger' backwards is 'regrub'!!! Brilliant! Where's my Genius Award? burger=eatmorefood!

So you know how I haven't updated regularly in, like, forever? That means, you get a whirlwind tour of notable past grub. Why? Why is there a world? Flummox flummox.

In no particular order:

1. Lime tart thing (above) from newishly opened Tisserie on the northwest corner of Union Square, a nice addition to the Square of Togetherness. This tart was tart and sweet. Tart+Sweet=Trweet. As I was eating the tart, it finally dawned on me that 'tisserie' is short for 'patisserie'. Beams of light ensued. I mean, did the Enlightenment Age have lots of pastries? Sure, society might need that contract, Jean-Jacques, but did you take a close look at your desserts? Sweets=peace!

2. Strawberry tart at Fauchon: one of the prettiest, et oui, tastiest things ever. Strawberries standing at attention in a lightly sweet glaze on some custard in this perfectly crumbly tart shell with a sprinkling of syrupized pistachio pieces. My contribution to the world was eating it. Don't go too late in the day for the fruit tarts here. They run away into people's mouths pretty quickly.

3. From the cuisine of France to that of North Africa to Nomad, in the east village. Sietsema's linked review talks modestly about the couscous, but I thought it was excellent — fluffy, light, and duh, couscous-y, nothing like that instant stuff you make from the box. The entrée comes with everything under the sun, wonderful merguez sausages, really tender lamb and chicken, and lovely veggies and is enough to feed you for roughly half a week. I liked it more than the couscous I've had at Cafe Mogador (another wonderful place). Nomad has a cosy ambience (with a lovely bathroom, might I add), if a bit dark, with friendly service. I want to go again soon (hint, hint.. to who? I dunno).

4. And now for something different, let's zoom back to the good ol' South for breakfast. Before I moved out of Williamsburg, I went twice to Egg, which shares a space with a hot dog restaurant, Sparky's. Breakfast by morning, hot dogs by after noon. Logical, no? I had to go twice, because the first time was so damn good. It was dog-day hot outside, even though it wasn't August, and the AC made faint attempts, humming alongside the rumbling tunes of Johnny Cash. That first time, I got this hunky breakfastwich - golden buttermilk biscuit with melted Grafton cheddar, this delicious rich, salty ham, with a bit of fig jam - served with perfect Anson Mills grits and a personal french press coffee. You can see the lovely butter tracks on the plate, if you squint a bit. Can breakfast get any better? No. Am I going to order bags of Anson Mills grits? Yes. (You have to order a minimum of four bags... anyone in?) Do I curse people who don't work during the day and can eat here a lot? Resounding yes.

Why, in my four years, in North Carolina, I never had good grits, I will blame on college cafeteria grit preemption. I was like, what is this crap?? (Shaking head) Oh, the lost opportunities of beautiful grit-dom.

Okay, second installment to come. In the whirlwind tour of GRUB BURG!!!!! We have a lot of ground to cover.

Posted by janet at 12:00 AM | Comments (3)

July 11, 2006

the mostly pies edition

Friend and I went to check up on the buzz on Pies n Thighs a little over a week ago. It's certainly not the prettiest place to get your hush puppies and pulled pork, but who ever said that Williamsburg is pretty? (My neighborhood however is festooned, yes festooned, in Italia flags, but I digress.)

We ordered some sweet tea, mac n cheese and baked beans, fried chicken and a pulled pork sandwich. The fried chicken was quite nice, crispy and moist, and the biscuit, oooooh the biscuit, was buttery, crumbly biscuity heaven.

I'm afraid I didn't have the palate for the pulled pork, meaning that I can't drink straight shots of vinegar and then crush you like a bug. I mean, I do like my pulled pork sort of vinegary, like a spirited spinster, but I really couldn't eat much of it. It hurted. My friend seemed unfazed though. The beans were tasty and the mac n cheese was slightly spicy, an idea which I like in theory, but I couldn't stop the slightly disturbing thought that I was eating the macaroni form of cheese nips somehow. That didn't stop me from eating more. And every time thinking, cheese nips! cheese nips!

We finished our meal with a slice of excellent rhubarb pie, the filling tart and the crust tender and flaky and everything all meldy in the mouth. The pies are worth the trip. The menu, like most, depends on your tastes.

Last week, another friend and I went to Empanada Mama before hitting up the singularly named play, Millicent Scowlworthy. Thankfully, the empanadas were very smileworthy. Harharhar. Perfect little pockets of $2 fried goodness. I had a pork one which was thankfully sans vinegar and instead tender and spicy. We split a spinach and cheese one, and my friend got the fun pizza! filled one. We had to split for the play so that's all we tried. Otherwise, I could have stayed all night, eating empanadas up to my ears and drinking yummy looking fruit smoothie drinks, and then you could roll me out like Violet, except I'd be all greasy and angular instead of blue and round.

And lastly, over the weekend, I made this cherry cobbler with the sour cherries I got at Union Square. Sour cherries are a new food for me; I didn't really know they existed before this year, or I didn't match up that the cherries in baked goods I've had taste nothing like the sweet cherries you eat in the summer. But they are lovely. This cobbler is suuuuuper easy to make - after pitting (I found that it's easy to do this with those wooden kabob skewers), you just syrupize the cherries a tiny bit and then make a really easy dough and plop that on top and then bake. The cherries mellow out and taste tart and sweet and the dough becomes biscuit-y, light and golden on top. Go eat some!

Posted by janet at 1:30 AM | Comments (4)

June 26, 2006

more foodstuffs

Finally! Chowhound is redesigned and doesn't take years off lives while loading!

More Bourdain love:
at Salon and Bookslut

Posted by janet at 1:31 PM | Comments (0)

Heat. Food. Good.

Those food men are the size of that guy's head!

I wish that big square behind them was actually a block of chocolate!

So, I'm not good at captions. Nor do I know how to tap dance. Your entertainment, I'm afraid, will be sorely lacking today. Plus, I would never win one of those New Yorker caption writing contests. Sometimes they're not all that funny anyhow. That guy's head above in the picture is hiding the refreshing bucket of beers for the three. That has little to do with anything. I just wanted to say Bucket of beers. (The alliteration of bees is getting a bit out of hand now. Bzzzzzz.)

This past Wednesday, I went to one of those handy talks at the library, with foodie extraordinaire Robyn, to see the current food world's three B's, Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, and Bill Buford. Not, of course, without a little creepy walking, not stalking, mind you, on the way in.

Bill Buford has just come out with a fantastic book called HEAT: (an amateur's adventures as kitchen slave, line cook, pasta-maker, and apprentice to a Dante-quoting Butcher in Tuscany), so the event was tied to that as well as Bourdain's latest release of collected writings, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones, and Batali's general empire of restaurants and own celebrity chefdom.

Robyn has a bit of recap of the conversation that went down, the insults to Rachael Ray, etc. Buford repeatedly recycled bits/anecdotes from his book, which Batali called him out on. I forgive him because he pretty much said everything he wanted to say in the book and that's the whole point, no? Throughout, Batali's energy and passion for his work, his mini-empire, was evident and Bourdain was consistently well-spoken, funny, snarky, irreverent, etc., moderating the discussion until the Q&A with the audience, which was actually interesting and not disastrously self-involved people coming up to the mike just to hear themselves talk. Did I mention I heart Bourdain? (Man, I hope I don't continue this heart-ing business in every entry. But I know I have one more coming up soon...)

Even with the recycled bits of information, from all parties involved, it was very interesting, especially the discussion about celebrity chefs and food trends and the public perception of those and how that's all related. Buford makes the point in his book too, that many of us just don't think about what we eat. It's not really the American way. Think megamarkets, costcos, fast foods, chains, ready-made, ready-packed, gogogogo, gogurt... And this isn't the case in most other parts of the world. (One good thing about growing up in an immigrant household, at least mine, is a deviation from that. No TV dinners. All homecooked Mom-food and you can't get better than that.)

I mean, when you think about it, the US has some pretty weird, divergent attitudes about food. We're fat monsters because our portions are Texas sized and so we go to the gym to look like people on TV and we get eating disorders, we count calories, we only eat meat, we only eat vegetables, and our whole strange Puritanical roots as a country combined with our love for size has yielded this ironic guilt about the substance that we need in order to live. Everything tasty is bad for you - sugar, salt, dairy, fat, bread — so instead of gorging on them, people stay away from them like they're riddled with plague. Mmmm plague.

Anyway, go read Buford's book, if you in any way enjoy eating food. Like some friends of mine can't remember whether they've eaten meals or they just think of food as a nuisance sometimes (sad! I know). This book is not for them. Because it is about obsession, sheer obsession, with food and the making of it. Buford had an impressive career as writer and editor for both the New Yorker and Granta and he quit his desk job to cook, and with every next page of the book, he goes deeper and deeper into food mania. He works in the Babbo kitchen, travels to Italy to learn how to make pasta and carve up a cow. He hauls a whole pig home to his New York apartment on his Vespa and uses most of the parts. A whole pig. Along the way, the book touches on an extraordinary range of topics, not limited to fascinating portraits of Batali and other chefs that Buford meets, a real look in the hot kitchen at a hot NY restaurant and how that is different from being a home cook, the kitchen's attitudes toward their diners, and food history focusing on Italian cuisine and the enigma of when the egg was first introduced to pasta. The love for food is great. The writing is fascinating. Gush gush gush. Heart heart heart.

I don't think I'll be bringing whole animals to my tiny underequipped kitchen any time soon, but I've been noticing myself becoming more involved with food, thinking more about it, trying more recipes, reading more books and cookbooks and blogs. The Dining section of the Times is the highlight of my sad, empty week. I eye those brightly colored Kitchen Aid mixers and those heavy Le Creuset cookwares with lusty glances. I mean, I'm thinking about purchasing an ice-cream maker. Who the hell needs an ice cream maker? It's a slippery slope, I tell you.

Bourdain's book is just what it is, a collection of his previous writings, a bit disjointed. His other books are more engaging, I think, though the best part of Nasty Bits is the Commentary section, the book equivalent to the commentary extra feature on a DVD. The thing that I admire about Bourdain that he owns up to change. He admits his mistakes and is good at that whole perspective thing. It might be, as he puts it, him becoming a wuss being out of the kitchen and all that, but I think the whole travelling thing has really worked out for him. He also turned fifty last week.

Okay this entry has to stop.

Posted by janet at 12:54 AM | Comments (3)

June 1, 2006

strawberry bliss

That sounds like a lip gloss flavor. Strawberry bliss.

I finally made it to the Union Square greenmarket the other day. This means waking up a little early. Otherwise, I don't have much chance of making it there because of the whole working hours thing. Waking up, for me, is when I turn into somebody not myself, no reasoning skills, no logic, no inner strength, or outer for that matter. I pay no attention to alarms going off left and right. I will convince myself that I do not need to get up. If you call, I will lie to you. Hi my name is Janet and I'm a sleepaholic.

This has caused many a late entry into the office (frowned upon) and sadly, no time to putz around the apartment settling into the day with some coffee and carb o' choice. And no going to the greenmarket. But ah, yes, I finally made it. And it was the most beautiful thing.

I didn't even get that much stuff. But how could I pass up these gorgeous strawberries? Tis the season. I really shouldn't go back to those supermarket ones ummmm that are out of season and shipped from across the country, all no taste and big and disguised in their deep red colors when they're not ripe at all. Forget you.

And so, I ate some, and put some in a bowl with some ciao bella gelato (fragola, of course) and it was good. Life should be so good, more of the time.

Posted by janet at 12:19 PM | Comments (1)

May 17, 2006

Minar & NJ

The title makes it sound as if this entry is about some character (whimsical yet pensive) and his pal NJ, who smokes and is really dirty and love tomatoes. But no.

This past weekend was not only Mother's Day, it was Celebrate Hometown Day, an entirely made-up holiday strictly observed by going to eat Indian food, randomly running into many people from high school throughout the day, and discovering that part of the movie School of Rock was filmed in the ol' Hometown. (I've googled to no avail; I don't know what the connection is? Why Edison, Jack Black? Why?)

Edison and neighboring Iselin is always mentioned when the New York Times talks about any Indian food. It's got a huge south asian population, and there's a stretch of road that will spark recognition in knowing eyes all over the country. In a funny twist, it's been rare for me to actually go out to eat Indian food here. Indian food was always mom-made (let's face it, the best kind, especially tea) at friends' houses. So saturday, Mr. D, as his school-kids call him, or maybe I've made that all up as a wild inventor of lies, took us to Minar. They have restaurants in New York (more than one?) and just recently opened this one.

We started with a platter of vegetable appetizers. Samosas and things which I don't know the names for but basically, they're all the same: Fried Goodness. And I had a yummy mango lassi, something, like emails, that I can rarely turn down given the chance.

We talked about the Future, with a capital F, whether we were finally going to get cars that float and all that. And how those weird east asians are the only cultures not to have bread in their meals. Actually I don't even remember, besides a trip down Kaavya Lane. (Incidentally, she is from NJ, though not from our stomping grounds. And plus Mr. D should, like, totally ask her out. Doesn't he understand her pain?? He's nodding, I know he is.)

And then our main stuff arrived like a party. Garlic naan! Saag paneer! Some other paneer! I'm blanking out on it. Matar? I don't even know how to spell these things, but then, I can't really be wrong can I? with this whole transliteration thing? And my glorious lamb curry. The saag paneer was a little bland but everything else was quite tasty. Try to hold in your enthusiasm over my brilliantly descriptive words. Tasty, yes, TASTY.

Mr. D also let us in on the onions secret. As in eat them. I've never been served a plate of (raw? pickled?) onion pieces at Indian restaurants before. But they sort of, in a weird way, freshen up your palate for the strongly-flavored food at hand. So it sparked up the curry.

And dessert! Again, the failings of the brain translate to the err.. more failings. My friend got rasmalai, which was good and sweet and pistachio-y. And I had some sort of ice cream concoction that was very melty and had all sorts of things on top. Wooo! Brilliant! And that's all the details you'll get out of me today. Until floaty cars fly by next to pigs with wings.

So yeah, my corner of NJ has the culinary ups of a really diverse population and the downs of blah-yawn-suburbia (chains, indeed). And right now because it's super late and I've been talking about food, all of sudden, I'm craving some Grease trucks. I haven't had one in years.

Posted by janet at 12:43 AM | Comments (4)

May 15, 2006

Gribouille: Best French Toast Ev-er

I've been away a long time again. The sea-faring life is tough, but still, I return. Pour vous. Yes, you. Feel special. Feel special while you put off what you are supposed to be doing and coming here instead. It's ok! We like you.

I wanted to talk about some french toast and things I had over the weekend. The sad thing is, though, I have no pictures. How will you see this beautiful food? Ah, now there, we use the imagination, the mind's eye. Or eyes. Can your mind have more than one eye? Welllll sure! So get those brain-eyes ready and some charming accordian-y amelie music in your brain-ears.

Saturday morning, I strolled over to a new-ish French café in the neighborhood called Gribouille. Originally, I was going to breeze in, say "Bonjour"...in my head ... and get some coffee and a croissant. Simple pleasures. But noooo. I walked into a charming, cosy sunlit café and ended up ordering a full-blown multi-course brunch.

Gribouille was opened by a French ex-pat, so French is in the air and the service is lovely and friendly. The cappuccino is just how I like it: strong and creamy. It's served with sugar cubes wrapped in paper with little sayings printed on them. I unwrap one and read, "Vous êtes seul dans la vie?" (Are you alone in life?) and underneath there are two boxes, oui and non. I mentally check, Oui, but am too distracted by the packaging to care. I've turned down a carrot-ginger soup for a salad of baby greens, and they are green and baby and lightly dressed in a sweet-ish balsamic vinaigrette. It is, admittedly, a bit strange with coffee.

People come in to take away a pastry or two, or sit down to brunch. It is not really crowded and the whiffing of conversation is pleasant. I hear someone mention strawberry juice and make a mental note, must get strawberry juice next time. I mean, juice? made out of strawberries?????

The french toast arrives. It's not one of those hulking platters of french toast, throwing up with french toast ornaments like whipped cream and fruit or what have you. I dare say, it doesn't even look very impressive. But I take a bite, and can't help idiotically smiling a big food-makes-me-happy smile.

See, the french toast is made out of brioche, so it's all soft and light on the inside, with just the right amount of crisp from the eggy mixture coating and lightly sweetened from a drizzle of syrup. The balance is perfect. The accompanying strawberries are sweet. The crème fraîche (I think it was crème fraîche - my memory is blanking) is buttery and slightly tangy and rich and melting all over the toast. PERFECTTTTTTTTTT. By now, I'm just sort of pretending to read the newspaper.

Now and again, a guy (maybe the owner?) asks if it is good. I am all giddy and giggly and incomprehensible in the English language (or any other language). He maybe thinks I am an insane person and collector of sugar wrappers, but at least I am enjoying my food.

And then, as I had opted out of ice cream and for the mini-eclairs, I receive a plate with three things. Two mini-eclairs, about two inches in length - one chocolate and one caramel with dollops of chocolate and caramel sauces - and a lemon square, about one and a half inches. I order a coffee, because I had finished my cappuccino, duh. The eclairs are light as air, and this lemon thing. Seriously. Best inch of food you will ever eat. It's just a perfect balance of flavors - the crust, this lemon part, so tart but sweet at the same time, and strips of candied ginger on top.

By the time I walk out of Gribouille, I am walking on air and vow to become a regular and also be a food-nerd and bring a camera next time. I do like a nice café.

I have no clue why that was all in present tense.

Gribouille has a puzzling name and little mascot. He looks like a cross between keroppi and a cyclops. A cooking cyclops. And I had to look up 'gribouille' in my big french dictionary from college just now and according to that, it means 'short-sighted idiot' or 'rash fool', an interesting name for a café. Maybe this is why he has one eye? And maybe our mind's eye is singular, not plural, like the gribouille. Short-sighted fools are we. Who love french toast and pastries. And brandish whisks.

Posted by janet at 1:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 21, 2006

mosto mangiare

The other night was springey and breezey, like a good fabric softener. Clunk! Anyways, it was time to dine by a large window or outdoors, as is common springtime in the city. So whilst strolling in the east village, the restaurant was chosen by such criteria: Window! Check. Evening air? Check. And lo and behold and nevertheless, the food was quite good! (SUPPLIES!!!!!, they shouted with glee.)

(I had trouble remembering the name of the restaurant when I got home. I kept thinking "Mongo" but you go try searching on the interweb with "Mongo" and "italian restaurant" and see how far you get. It doesn't even sound Italian. It sounds like a silly British word, a cross between bongo and mung bean or something rather ridiculous. But it was easy to find the right name ==> MOSTO. Which according to my handy translating widget thing means MUST in Italian and makes much more sense. Because who the hell would name a restaurant Mongo. Yes, maybe me.)

The Mosto Osteria (osteria is the equivalent of French bistro?) is airy with varied lightings to suit your moods, and it transports you a bit out of New York. Or maybe I'm projecting. But the waitstaff speaks Italian, and they serve tap water in bottles and have wine available in half-liter carafes and play euro-hip thumpy music which, while not really my cup of tea, keeps up a sort of energetic vibe.

We opted to skip the appetizer and instead went for a pasta each and a shared entrée, so we got that real multi-course sort of feel. I suppose I wasn't expecting much because Italian food in the city, it can go this way or that. But I was very pleasantly surprised with my spaghetti alle vongole. The pasta was firm and the dish well balanced, not too oily or garlicky. And ... so many clams!!! Don't they look happy all empty of their meats? My face was just as happy and bright too, especially after sopping up the lovely juices with some crusty bread.

Continuing our delight with containers, Mosh was taken with the fact that the parmesan came in a big mug. Her penne all'arrabbiata was also top-notch, the sauce being all robust and kicky. Our shared entrée was Gamberoni Grigliati con Crostino (at least according to menupages), which the dude made me say once more (with feeling!) because I was being all tentative with the Italian. The grilled shrimp (prawn? what's the difference?) were seasoned well and served with these fabulous tomatoes over toasted bread, which made for nice textures. They were just super tomato-ey. Mosh and I spent a good few minutes discussing whether they were treated with some sort of tomato sauce or something because I couldn't conceive of these as just really good fresh tomatoes (because where do they get them and I want some). I hope they were...But I suspect not... On the side, a lightly dressed salad of greens and a buttery dome of basil couscous and yum!

After that, we were stuffed like gobble-gobble so we had to say no to dessert even though the server was pressing the panna cotta. This means I'll have to go back soon to try their desserts, because you see, desserts and me, we have a relationship. The prices were pretty decent for the quality/quantity, especially if you stick to one main dish. Hoo-ray for eating! And Hoo-ray for chancing upon places to eat! I'm putting Mosto on my imaginary list of places to go back to and Mongo on my imaginary list of idiosyncratic restaurant names.

Posted by janet at 10:21 AM | Comments (1)

February 22, 2006

Sapporo ramen

Last week, some friends and I with our noodle brains went to fill our noodle stomachs at Sapporo in midtown. We came in from the cold-winded, coldhearted outsides to the steamy ramen fumes. Two of us got the "special" ramen, which has all sorts of things, almost none of which I remember (pork and corn and.. stuff) and others split a veggie ramen with extra noodles. The bowls were big enough to swim in, especially if you are a very small, champion-broth swimmer person. Look at the not-small hand which seems to be conjuring ramen by miso magic. Dwarfed by bowl! It's created a monster!

My ramen was okay. Friend Who Had Been There Before said their broth was off that night so maybe it's usually better. The ingredients and noodles were fine but the soup was pretty blah, especially compared to the richness of Rai Rai Ken's broth. But they had a pretty varied selection of ramens and other japanese foodstuffs like katsu and curry rices and donburi, so noodle brains can return to try more things. (Return of the Noodle Brains!! DUNDUNDUN!!!!)

But these fried gyoza were fantabulous. The way to my heart, in more ways than one, is fried foods. They tasted like my mom's, which is very high praise. Cuz you know korean moms are the best cooks, a label which they like to play with by force-feeding you delicious feasts and then commenting on how fat you are. How cutting-edge!!!

Posted by janet at 12:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

I had no snarky retort ready...

... for my friend's reaction when I remarked that my gmail search for a cookie recipe that Other Friend had sent me came up with 50 results. "Chocolate" was even worse, with over 100 results. "Having a life" or "do I talk about anything else besides food?" would have probably number zero, or zed, as they like to call it else-wheres.

Friend shut up after having some cookies. That's right.

allrecipes recipe for Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies – Other Friend also recommends cinnamon, 1/2 cup less oats and 1/2 teaspoon less of salt. I forgot these kind words. But the batch came out alright anyway. They're a bit heavy though, with the oatmeal, so if a horde of militant cats invaded your kitchen, you'd be able to drive them away throwing cookies at them. But then, who wants to eat cat-hair cookies? Blaugh.

Posted by janet at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 12, 2006

c is for cookie quest

I found myself a little horrified a few days ago after I started blathering to someone about my quest for the best cookie in manhattan. I just went on a bit toooo long and the she's-not-so-sane-let's-edge-away-slowly bells might have started to go off in my patient listener's head.

Anyways, it's not even like I've been very diligent about this quest. Mainly, it's an excuse to visit new bakeries/cookie places that I haven't been to. Plus, I have come to the realization that I'm a tad picky about the sorts of cookie that I want to buy. Or that I am picky about cookies in general? Some great bakeries won't have good cookies. Even some great cookie places won't have my kind of good cookie. See? The blather is starting already! It's inevitable.

But seriously. They're cookies. I can make them at home. I'm not Miss Baker Extraordinaire, so it is sad if cookies I buy are worse than those that I can make. So the cookies I buy, they can't be rocks or heavy or über-mediocre (that doesn't make much sense does it) or simply gross. Maybe it's the heaviness factor that I am most against. It's a cookie; you shouldn't feel as if you've just eaten a brick of dessert, no matter how chocolatey and yummy it might be. Like the whole foods cookies. They taste good but eating them is kind of like work. Texture counts! ... at least for me.

Levain might be an exception to this because while they have some amazing cookies, they are the size of small baby heads (mm, appetizing). And even if they are heavy, it's not that the cookie-ness itself is heavy. It's just their sheer size. STILL, to me, this is not really a cookie. Cookies are flat-ish. Not like champagne.

In my course of tasting here and there, but decided it was time to visit Ruby et Violette during a lunch hour, after finding about the establishment on nycnosh and roboppy, whose better photo-taking skillz are shown below.

This very cozy pink place is just lovely and the size of a very small elephant who gets picked on all the time but shows the rest of them how cool he is when Santa picks him to lead his sleigh. In the back is the bakery where all the cookie magic is magicked and up front, the cookies, baked every morning, are laid out in the display, beckoning in that sweet way they have, and I was Indiana Jones on the quest for the holy grail of cookies.. err... except I didn't have to go through snakes or Nazis or anything. All I had to do was walk a little bit.

Ruby et Violette is named thusly in honor of the owner's daughters. Though when I went into the store, there was a very pleasant Japanese woman at the helm who metaphorically walked me through the crazy amount of flavors, including espresso, lemon white chocolate, strawberry champagne (!!). I asked what her favorite was cuz I couldn't decide. She apparently couldn't either because she ended up going through all the flavors. I picked "Perfect", your basic chocolate chunk (plus that's why I was there). The name comes from the owner's opinion that the ratio of sugar, flour, and butter (I think) is perfect. And then I picked Rose. Because I wanted something out of the ordinary but not ker-azy.

"Perfect" is like chewy homemade cookies made with love, only better. Could have eaten like twenty. Rose was very nice. The rose flavor was strong without being too overpowering and was well balanced by the chocolate chunks. I definitely would not want to eat a whole bag of these though. You can find a recipe for the perfect cookies in the nyt archives from October 27, 2002. Overnight refrigeration!

Ummmm okay! Maybe r&v are #1! Who knows!!!

Aren't you glad I have such constructive projects?

Posted by janet at 12:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 27, 2006

best vanilla blob ever

Click on over to robyn for more fooding adventures. She should start a series of Choose your own Food Adventure. I bet they'd be super popular. But I guess if you are like me (ie. cheater), you'd just read ahead and 'choose' the right one.

Yesterday's adventure included a stop at Taralluci e Vino, one of my favs. And there was an inexplicable black out, as if the electricity just didn't feel like shining anymore. Sometimes I feel like inexplicably mentally blacking out. Oh but wait I already do. But who cares when there are lots of these little jelly-wobbley like vanilla panna cottas with raspberry centers and sprinkling of vanilla bean things. Vanilla was never, say it with me teen girl squad, SOOOOOOO GOOD.

(pic from roboppy's flickr)

Posted by janet at 3:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Afghan Grill

Last weekend, I was in DC. And that only means one thing. Fill-my-stomach-buster. Ohhhhh. That was pretty awful, even for me. Too bad fill-my-stomach-busters do not prevent Bush from appointing his boyz to the Supremeizzle Courtizzle.

We did go back to last visit's discovery of culinary gold, Belga Café. But one of the nights, a party posse of fourteen (it is easier putting pants on an octopus) had reservations at Afghan Grill in Adams Morgan(?) for dinner at 9:30pm.

If you will permit me to use that young-ish internet parlance – OMG. We waited like a million years. Because this place is the size of your living room, or a New York apartment. And there was another large octopus party. And it was our fault for choosing a small place with a many legged party. In conclusion, my judgment might have been a wee bit skewed by the stomach acids digesting itself.

The owner guy was very very nice and very very apologetic about the wait. After we were seated, he offered us a prix fixe of appetizer, salad, and main course that would nicely cover the range of the menu for $25. Our brains had also been digested along with our stomachs. We nodded. Or our heads sort of flopped around. In hindsight, or more like ten minutes after this, we realized it might have been cheaper to not do this. But we pished and poshed and waited for salad and appetizers.

Perhaps you, like me, have not had Afghan food before. I didn't really know what to expect. But basically, the flavors were full but mildish and not spicy at all. It was sort of a mix of Mediterranean, Indian and ummm I don't even know.. Persian?

We started out with bowls of 'Afghani Salad' (Tomatoes, Onions, Cucumbers, Bell Peppers With Mint Dressing) and plates loaded with different appetizers. There were some Bulanee (Leek or Potato Filled Turnovers Lightly Fried, Then Sprinkled With Mint), Sambosy Goshti (Lightly Fried Pastries Filled with Ground Beef, Chick Peas and Green Pege). These were very much like samosas....Bring on the fried foods!!!, she roared! And then there were Aushak (Leek Dumplings Topped with Yogurt and Meat Sauce) and Kadu Buranee (Sauteed Pumpkin with Garlic Yogurt and Meat Sauce). The Meat Sauce made everything look not so nice. But it sure was tasty. I was surprised that there was a lot of pumpkin throughout, but it's such a nice flavor and color, especially flavored with garlicky yogurt, you won't find me complaining.

Then there was rice and eggplant and spinach and more pumpkin (pictured above) plus this:

PLATTER OF MEAT. Can't go wrong with Kabob. Man, I'm such a slogan master. Lamb, beef, chicken - oh my! The chicken was especially yummy and again, the spices and flavors and nice char-ry kabob tastes were strong and meld-y but not overpowering. I don't know why I thought the food would be spicier and maybe I should not describe food by adding the letter Y to everythingy.

Our tummies full, we didn't have room for dessert (which I was a wee bit sad about, since I'd heard raves about their cardamom and rosewater ice cream.) Plus by the end of the meal, the clock was striking midnight and we'd have to go soon for fear of our coach turning back into pumpkins (yum!) and our clothes to tattered rags. Well, more like there was further fourteen person party partying to be done.

(pics from a friend of a friend, both non-imaginary)

Posted by janet at 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 27, 2005

belga café

Hope everybody had a nice holiday whatever whatever you celebrate. I did attend church with the Momz on Christmas and had an incredibly awkward experience not belonging there (oh! just like life!) though there was a special EngRish highlight where after the mass during the eating in the church basement festivities included the priest taking the mike and saying, "Happy Jesus!.... Birthday!!" Oh, those funny Koreans.

Anyways, I'm going to write some more about food. Because it provides me with much happiness. If I were at a Chinese restaurant, apparently, this would be called Double Happiness. And it would include like.. pork, chicken, water chestnuts and some sort of brown sauce. But Double Happiness this is not!

I seem to do more fooding in DC than in New York. This might be true. Because I tend not to go to fun places by myself and instead hurry home to my brooklyn burrow after work and eat some old pasta or hummus and watch tv and grow blobbier ... but visiting! That's different! You're obligated to eat, drink, be merry!

A weekend or two ago, I was in DC visiting some friends. We had planned on brunching at Eastern Market on Capital Hill, because they're supposed to have great pancakes there. And my only request for the weekend was.. "PANCAKES!" Eastern Market is this outdoors market full of a jumble of stuff, stalls for food and clothes and knick-knacks and even rugs with tanks on them and I got to try out a Tibetan singing bowl. (Wow, that was a really poorly constructed sentence, like made out of Tonka tools and lincoln logs.) They have a food corner with all sorts of goodies like NC bbq .. BUT they do not serve brunch on Sundays. THUS, no pancakes.

But somebody positively brilliant steered us towards Belga Café, a few blocks away. And it is my FAVORITEST PLACE EVER IN THE WORLD!!!!!

Because they have everything wonderful that I love. Waffles. Pommes frites. Desserts. Fabulous coffee. Even Lambique beer that tastes like magical raspberry juice, though I did not partake in any that day.

The inside is rather all clean lines and lots of light and Euro-hip with the clientele verging more on the not-very-young, (comparatively) sophisticated side, but the service is nice and just look at the food! I had plain belgian waffles which was crispy and light and fluffy and came drizzled in brown sugar, a drizzle of syrup, fresh whipped cream and some raspberries. Sublime. I also split a plate of scrambled eggs with fresh herbs, english muffin and potatoes and the table split a few orders of belgian fries which were nicely not too oily and crispy. All for that necessary balance in life called Salty & Sweet.

During the course of brunch, I also had four cups of strong Illy coffee. And made our waiter think that I had been drinking a different sort of drink because I was acting all strange and happy-like. Chuh.

A friend had a savory waffle with goat cheese and oh, I forget, but isn't it pretty?

And you can't leave without dessert. This was a sampler of creme brulées. Vanilla, chocolate, and pumpkin with raspberry coulis. The sugar brulée was perfectly crunchy. Lovely lovely lovely!

And though I say I never go fooding in New York, I must report that yesterday included a near robyn-style full-day excursion with stops for shwarma and falafel at Mamouns, almost tortuosly thick hot chocolate at Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven, some ginger snaps and a chestnut-honey madeleine (their best!) at Sweet Melissa's Patisserie on Houston (an offshoot a Brooklyn fav.), a pitstop at Jamba Juice, and then some tea and scones at Alice's Tea Cup. To put up the front that we were in the city for reasons other than food was a half hour visit to the Met Museum which closed on us and some time browsing the Strand with their usually skinny clientele. We should have brought them with us and fed them things.

The end! Eat nice things! Because the rest of the world is depressing!

Posted by janet at 10:58 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 14, 2005

grilled cheese

I always feel a bit daft (yes, daft) ordering grilled cheese at diners. I mean, it's grilled cheese. Yet I often do and perhaps this explains why I am daft (1: silly, foolish; 2: mad, insane; 3: not to be followed by punk), oftener than not. Most likely, it consists of two slabs of wonder bread drenched in butter with some slices of Kraft singles, maybe served with fries or soup. Greasy Goodness, the alliterators like to call it. Most people can make an excellent grilled cheese of their own at home, with nice bread and nice cheese. But whatever version, there's not much better simpleness than a grilled cheese sammich.

But really, I should stop ordering that crap. The end.

Anyhow, my point? Yes, points. Before going to see the always excellentExplosions in the Sky the other day, some friends and I went to a li'l restaurant on the lower east side called Grilled Cheese that had been tucked into my little brain in the to-eat-at-list which I can never access. Somebody who knows about brains should do something about that.

Anyway, the sandwiches here would so win fights against Krafty concoctions and remain just lovely, not even breaking a cheesy sweat (ew!). They're grilled with olive oil (according to this Columbia piece) in a sort of panini press, I think, so that they're just crunchy enough with nice ingredients and real cheese. I got the "Grilled Garden" which is, if I remember correctly, cheddar, hummus, tomato, cucumber, red onion, some greens, and a touch of vinaigrette. Cheesabulous! and came with chips. Chipabulous! My tomato soup was a bit..marinara-consistency, but it was fresh-tasting and I got to feel virtuous for not getting fries.

My friends got other kinds of sandwiches. I don't remember. But not because they were imaginary friends or anything. They got fries too. They were similarly pleased. The menu includes other goodies like milkshakes and salads and cookies and wine and beer. All in all, a nice little spot in the über-trendy side o'town (not SoHo, as that Columbia journalist tries to point out).

My new fantasy future now includes opening a restaurant called Cravings. It would serve the major basic cravings of the general populace. You know, because you can generalize like that with no problem. The menu would be listed as 'eclectic' and include cheese-based things, chocolate-based things, and bread-based things. And fried stuff. And some Korean dishes. And hummus. And turkish coffee. OK, maybe it would just serve everything in the world and we'd all sit down together for a good meal and then I would single-handedly bring about world peace. The End.

Pics of eits here from Robyn who I randomly ran into (whom into I randomly ran??? hahahahhaha) at the concert.

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November 17, 2005

healthy wealthy and wise

I love Hummus Place. You can spend less than $10 here and get stuffed with hummus and pita until your preppy-button down shirt pops off like a cartoon with a big ping! and then your eyes get all big like saucers. Plus they have mint tea and turkish coffee and baklava and yrmrmrmmummm.

They also have a salad on their menu called "Health Salad" that is quite refreshing (and cuts the uber-hummusness of every bite) and quite easy to make. Or imitate, at least. The ingredients are listed on their menu, and I decided to try making some.

What to do:
Chop up a tomato or two. Pretty small pieces - that goes for the rest of the chopping.
Sort of peel and chop up a cucumber or two
Chop up some red onion. Go easy if you will be breathing on people.
Chop up some parsley
Squeeze some lemon. Don't be stingy.
Pour some nice olive oil. Do not call it E.V.O.O.
Add a pinch of salt.
Mix that up.

et Voila! Health! Salad! SO EASY! I like having it with the Sabra hummus I get from the store, sometimes with a boiled egg, and warmed up pita or flatbread.

There's a picture of it at gothamist that YP took if you are curious to see what chopped up vegetables look like.

Posted by janet at 12:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 13, 2005

the sympathetic nod

In compensation for not being able to attend the Chocolate Show, an extravanza of a substance which Robyn most appetizingly called, "the best turd colored food in existence," I bought a nice bar of Jacques Torres Wickedly Spiced 60% Dark Chocolate. Best $5 therapy I ever had. The description on the site says: Imagine what dark chocolate with ancho and chipotle chilis would do to you. It's a warm penetrating heat in your throat. Share this with someone special. I think sharing with all my selves count. They're all nodding back at me with ancho chili smiles.

Anyhow, last week, I was supposed to meet some friends for tea on Monday. When we were on the phone discussing a meeting place, I was clearly not really paying attention. I said something about tea and I said something about sympathy and see ya there. I went to Sympathy for the Kettle while my friend went to Tea and Sympathy. Our collective sympathetic bads.

I decided to go meet them as I'd never been to the Brit ex-pat outpost. We met up at, well, a café across the street (called "Soy". yeah seriously.) because there are rules. You follow the rules at Tea and Sympathy. The customer is not always right. You can't be seated without the whole party. But I brought the party and we entered the cosy establishment. (There are some rules on the door and on the menu - stuff like you can stay if there's nobody around but leave if there are people waiting. $9 something minimum per person. etc etc)

The atmosphere was at once warm and butter-like. In that it smelled like butter. It was fantastic. You can come here for traditional English fare like shepherd's pie, baked beans on toast, welsh rarebit and pretend you're in the land of the queen mum. Our service was brisk but not unfriendly. My friends got scones and something with rhubarb, I don't remember. And I got warm spicy ginger cake. I was unprepared because I didn't realize it was a pudding. So it was warm spicy ginger cake in a bath of warm custard. I was positively giddy. GIDDY with custard and cake sugary joy. Paired with black ginger tea, perfectly brewed and tea strainer provided (I kept forgetting to use it), it was a lovely nighttime teatime. It sounds kinda pricey for tea time but it was just as expensive as a fancy martini. CUSTARDDDDD!!!

I also found Teamap, a pretty nice tea directory with pictures and reviews etc. so go find a new tea house and drink a cuppa.

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October 13, 2005

Banana Bread is for Winners

I made banana bread yesterday night to ward off negative thoughts and the chilly, relentlessly rainy crappiness outside. I was quite the domestic diva, making a cracked out version of bibimbap and banana bread – thank goodness I didn't get the two mixed up!! Gross!

Baking is the bestest because of the smells. I used this very easy recipe with a few moderations. The bread didn't rise very much, which is why you see a very squat piece of not very glamorous looking brown carb-mass above. (I think my camera is broken - everything comes out all fuzzed.) But it was pretty tasty and moist though next time, I will use more banana.

Ironically enough, in the corner of the picture, you will see a postcard advertising a gym. It's even my gym. I'm fighting a doomed battle, wielding breads and cookies against weak exercise. To the bottom right is part of the new Broken Social Scene album which I still need to listen to. They have little to do with banana bread or gyms. Until the whole collective starts a franchise of bakery-slash-gyms all over Canada. You just wait. Diabolical, yet incredibly cool, those Canadians.

Oh the recipe is below. This is great for mushy bananas you forgot were in the fruit bowl.

For one squat loaf in a 7x3 loaf pan. EDIT: Obviously, I have no eye for measurements. The loaf pan I used is clearly not 3 inches wide, nor was it seven inches long. But you know what? It doesn't really matter. It was a loaf pan. Not a Milkpan.

* 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 cup white sugar
* 1/4 cup brown sugar
* 1 egg, beaten
* 1/8 cup butter, melted
* 3-5 bananas, mashed (I used 3 smallish ones and felt it wasn't quite banana-y enough. So use more!)
*EXTRAS:
You can put in whatever modifications you like. I suggest not using beef or asparagus or something. I used some chocolate chips and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon (maybe more. I spilled a little) and a pinch of ground cloves. I know walnuts are a popular addition to banana bread, but I'm not the biggest fan of walnuts. I wouldn't want to live in a house made of walnuts. Pistachios on the other hand...

1. Grease and flour 7x3 inch loaf pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In one bowl, whisk together flour, soda, salt, and sugar. Mix in slightly beaten eggs, melted butter, and mashed bananas. Stir in any extras. Remember... no beef. Pour into prepared pan.
3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour (mine was done at 50 minutes), or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Posted by janet at 11:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 26, 2005

food memememememe

Well, I've been tagged for a food and wine meme by Roboppy.

This fact alone, I must admit, caused me a couple minutes of cloudy thinking. It should be known that sometimes my brain likes to drive like a grandma... on a sunday... on nyquil. I've had similar speeds of processing happen with understanding things like bittorrents, movable type, my math class senior year called 'super-calc', my future, and finally, what exactly a MEME is. It sounds vaguely amoebic and if pronounced MIMI, it would be a small shapeless selfish organism, very dangerous and very blobby which we would all get vaccinations for, along with, say it with me - measles mumps rubella!

But it's not. And I've basically got the gist of it. Answer the question and pass it around. (See? Kind of like a disease.) So I will address the question at hand, originally posed by basicjuice to recall the best bottle/glass of wine sampled over the past 30 days and for foodies to say what is the best, wine-friendliest dish tasted.

This whole issue is made easy by the fact that I am poor. While I love food and enjoy a nice wine (still learning on that end), I mostly eat and drink rather simply. Luckily the past month was one where I bought a bottle of wine. One day I stopped by 67 Wine and liquor because oh I dunno – sometimes you just want some wine. Inspired by a lovely glass in Rome from a couple months ago, I originally stepped in the door to find an Italian red, a Sangiovese. But when the wine guy (they're very nice and knowledgeable @ 67wine) who was helping some other dude that was hanging around the squishy corner of Italian reds was in the midst of recommending trying a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, I stepped two inches to the left and slightly changed course. Helpful Wine Guy said, "Try it! It's smoother than the Sangiovese," though in a sort of distinguished 'I drink wine all the time' kind of way. But sure, I'm all for the smooth, and well... the bottle was under $10. Sign me up! I walked out the door with Caleo's 2003 Montepulciano d'Abruzzo.

My palate is nowhere near sophisticated enough to be able to find seemingly impossible (to me) hints of strawberries, tobacco, grass, when 'hipster' will disappear from the collective lexicon. But I did like it a lot, especially for the cost. It was dry, yet round and full, perhaps a bit ragged and sharp on the edges. I might as well paint you an abstract expressionist work (it will be titled Amoebic Meme #2!!!!) because I don't know how to describe wine and that last sentence was full of inconsistencies. I'm still under a three tier evaluation system: like, dislike, spit out.

As a non-topic-specific blog, I'll just go ahead and answer the food part as well, another easy one because what's more wine-friendly than when wine is an ingredient? The wine made friends with a pasta I made that lasted a week, which is what happens when you're cooking for one. The food gets saltier along with the tears. Kidddinggggg. Anyways, basically when it comes to pasta, I just throw a bunch of stuff together. Ground meat was browned with onions and seasoned with salt, pepper, oregano. Tomatoes were cooked in olive oil and garlic, salt and red pepper to spice it up (though I hear the Italians don't cook dishes with onions AND garlic) until they were mushy. Deglazed the meat pan with some of the Montepulciano and put everything in one pot and put a bit more wine during the simmer because I got a little bored. And that was that.

Time to pass the baton to Mishmosh because she's DUE FOR AN UPDATE and errrmmmm Amateur Gourmet, because I'm not too familiar with the food-blogging community and I really like his writing.

Posted by janet at 11:50 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 21, 2005

Pamplemousse followed by French Laughter.

This is a picture of champagne grapes. I like to pull them all off of the stem while washing them into a cereal bowl and then eat them with a spoon. If I were in a particularly ghoulish mood, I would pretend they were eyeballs. Really small eyeballs. Just kiddddinggggg. Champagne grapes, according to this grapelover are Black Corinth or Zante grapes, a variety from Greece. They're small and sweet and pretty. If you eat them off the stem, instead of my cereal-eyeball method, they make you feel like you are in ancient Rome, being epic and ancient and errr. Roman.

Here's another picture with a regular-sized nectarine so you get the size thing.

Grapes or no, I have been proved to be prone (bad songtitle, proved to be prone) to more 'high-end' foodstuffs, mainly from one of many on list of tragic flaws - Whole Foods. I was relatively ignorant of this fact until my roommate stopped me one day to ask, "Is that your chocolate pudding in the fridge?"

I nodded. Pudding=Good. Chocolate Pudding=Great. FOODMATH!

She continued,"Well I figured it was Andrew's (ex-roommate). Cuz it's SwissMiss."

Well, all the better isn't it? Who the hell wants fancy pudding?

Anyhow, it's also now become proven that Mikhail the Cat is also a food snob. Nancy and I both tend to buy good cheeses. Mikhail also loves cheese. Our newish roommate Charles likes eating grilled cheese for meals and once offered Mikhail some of the sandwich. Mikhail turned up his pink nose and walked away with fluffy tail turned high. "Kraft singles are just so bourgeois," he rumbled.

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July 29, 2005

gelotto

I was only in Rome for a mere handful of days so it hardly gives me the authority to miss things, namely espresso and gelato. But then, who needs authority to miss things you hardly know? Or know so well from the bottom of your very heartful taste buds? Veer, veer, veer towards incoherence...

Before I went home yesterday for a delightful farce of an evening meeting potential roommates, finding one to-be-ex-roommate very very drunk and one less half bottle of scotch, I stopped off at Washington Square Park to try some gelato from the Gelotto Cart. Run by Batali's restaurant Otto Enoteca Pizzeria, the cart offers a few rather steadfast flavors, all handmade at the restaurant by Meredith Kurtzman. I opted for the canteloupe sorbetto and lo and behold, it tasted like canteloupe in icey dessert form! It was a tad melty, and thus a tad watery, though and so I finished it by the time I crossed over to the other side of the park.

I am trying to find the NYT dining section again to no avail. I want to look at the calendar again cuz I know there is some sort of gelato demonstration or something something with Laboratorio del Gelato this week. I wasn't pre-ice-cream hallucinating or anything I hope. Sigh.

Anyways, the cart's at the NW corner of the park til sevenish (say it with me, dusk, dusk, what a nice word) until the autumn (another nice word. pair the two and you have a veritable verbal cocktail. or an awful-smelling perfume).

Posted by janet at 11:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 21, 2005

the soy of cooking

Well, I traded off my Clap Your Hands Say Yeah ticket for a soyful dinner. What? you blurt out in disbelief, you sold your ticket to the hype-tastic band du jour for fake buffalo wings served on a wooden-stick-for-bone? Yes. Yes, I did. (How's that for a band name? Soy Buffalo Wings. We ROCK! and we're CHEWY! It's better than the Dostoevsky of a name like clap your hands etc etc etc.... )

While I do enjoy the raucous and circus sounds of CYHSY's album, I just wasn't in the concertizing mood so I made plans instead with some pals for dinner. We ended up going to Red Bamboo on W. 4th. The cuisine? Vegetarian Soul Food!! What does that mean? Fake meat! Awesome!!!

Perhaps their mission statement of sorts will help us out a little:
Red Bamboo focuses on creating unique and authentic vegan and vegetarian meals using the finest soy, gluten, fruit and vegetable products available. Our foods, ranging from Carribean spiced seitan to Creole soul "chicken" to Thai summer rice rolls, reflect the wisdom of diverse culinary traditions. We sincerely hope that every meal at Red Bamboo becomes a festive and memorable experience and at the same time, a meditation on what truly nourishes you.

Mmmm. Well, they did succeed in piquing our curiousity into just about everything on the menu. As a group, we had all eaten soy meat products before but didn't really know what goes into it, how it's made, how they make something fishy as opposed to chickeny. And it wasn't just "fish" either, there were codcakes and salmon on the menu. Like do they sit down at the soy lab and say, hmmm, how can we make this more salmon-like? as opposed to flounder? Are these places like super secret about their concoctions and do they have soy spies? I say concoctions, because no matter how tasty the stuff is, I can't but think these are concoctions, some sort of magical complicated scientific recipe. I think my friend DC said "alchemy" - and that's about right. Alchemy - the mysterious art of turning everyday objects into gold, or in our case.. meat.

DC is a former meat eater turned veg. and thus the menu was particularly delightful for all the meaty things he misses. Like buffalo wings and philly cheesesteaks. T (I just realized I don't know her last name. This is making me feel guilty.) ordered codfish cakes with mango something and I got creole soul chicken, mostly because it was "panko-crusted." You can't go wrong-o with Panko. I'm missing a life of fame and fortune as a composer of jingles.

Everything tasted almost like they were supposed to. The buffalo wings were a bit chewy but looked like Mcdonalds chicken nuggets on the inside (I suppose whatever they use is just as much a concoction), my chicken was tasty but I think it's hard to go wrong with anything crispily fried, the codcakes tasted fishy and smushy, and the cheesesteak tasted not so much like it's supposed to, but it did taste like meat. I was actually more weirded out by my mashed potatoes which were mixed with sweet corn, alternately too smooth and sweet.

The portions were very generous and on the whole, pretty tasty. As a whole-hearted meat-eater, I wouldn't mind going back there again and trying something else. I can say, I've never thought that much about the makeup of food.

I tried doing some research on soy meat products but only for about a few minutes. What I did find:
Henry Ford loved soybeans. He was a soy fanatic - using them in cars, making ice cream, and even wearing soybean fiber suits!

The Soy Story is a long one. Three thousand years ago... it all started in China and two thousand years ago, "The great Chinese art of meat substitution was born." My favorite sentence: "In soy milk processing, the Chinese were perhaps inspired by their nomadic, animal herding, milk guzzling northern neighbours, the Mongols." Hahahaha. Milk guzzling.

Posted by janet at 11:03 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 18, 2005

the district brunches twice

Whiled away this weekend in DC and besides getting caught in apocalyptic thunderstorms and crashing some weddings with owen and vince, mes amis et moi, we dined at Cafe Bonaparte and Mocha Hut where the cream of brunches rose to the surface. I enjoyed them with a Cheshire Cat of a smile.

Cafe Bonaparte is down the street from a great Argentinian (Argentine?) gelato place called Isee Icy, where the sorbettos (sorbetti?) are divine. (They're changing their name to Dolcezza though. Yawwwn.) In the poshy posh posh shoppy shop area of Georgetown, those two establishments make these three or four blocks of Wisconsin Ave perhaps my favorite spot in DC. Because Good Food Pleases Me.

Tangent: Somewhere in DC or Virginia or some 'burb, we passed a church with a sign that said "w