Hunting Expeditions (aka Provisioning Runs.....aka Grocery trips)

[Pool Boy]

I love a good Hunting Expedition. That is what my cats think I am doing, trekking out in to the worlds of danger, to get food for the larder to feed us all. But honestly, it is just a Provisioning Run. I would not call it a trip to the grocery store, because what I did today, and what I do quite often, is hit up multiple places, not just grocery stores, to get the foodstuffs and libations I crave and must have.  These are completed because I am desperately trying to make a recipe, craving something horribly or throwing a dinner party more often then not. It involves a grocery store hit, maybe a butcher or fishmonger or both, maybe a farmers market, maybe a specialty store, an ethnic grocer, or some other specialist (like a cheese place, a wine shop, etc). The sky is the limit.

Today was a good example. And I must be nuts (because I trekked from Maryland to northern-inside-the-beltway-Virginiaaaaaaaaaaaaahahhhhhhhhhhhhh! ARGH!). This trip was rooted in reading a recipe (I think it is a Boulud recipe) more than a year ago and WANTING to try it. But casual and then more pointed looks for a place to get a key ingredient (lamb neck) was proving impossible. So I pushed down the desire many times but in the last couple of weeks it has reached fever pitch in my brain. MUST.HAVE.BRAINS. errr LAMB.NECK!  So I finally get the tips that were an easy clickety clack away and voila I know what I am doing! Hunting Expedition!

So today. Run to Let's Meat on the Avenue butcher. Called Matt on Thursday early evening, described what I wanted and needed, he got it in Friday, prepped it all and set it aside for me. Got that, some really amazing looking coarsely ground pork too. And then there was the bacon. Calling me. Sliced bacon, but also in slab form! Slices for later, slab going in tiny cubes in tonight's variation on pasta fragiole but I digress. Then, knowing I'd be near Cheesetique, we stopped in to get accoutrements for our almost weekly Cheese-Baguette-Wine dinner my wife and I do (from Bethesda's Fresh Baguette most often, Mark's BreadFurst being a complicated veer in the wrong direction to me for a weeknight, but I again digress). I am under orders for No-More-Cheese, because when I see cheese I almost cannot NOT buy it. I am a Cheese-a-holic. But they also had some nice salamis that we snarfed up. I'd have gotten some of the pates too, but we had other things to do still, which is also why we did not stop to grab a bite (and PLEASE, Cheesetique, PLEASE keep trying to get a location in Maryland - if the Silver Spring location fell apart, please keep trying - I will be a regular!!!).

So....what's next? German Gourmet Deli in Falls Church. I am basically the equivalent of off the boat German. Both of my folks are immigrants from Germany, and my father got here by a small old school cruise ship and even won a 'Best Legs' contest. So I have needs. Germanic needs. Things that are just genetically entombed in my very gastronomical tracts. Smoked and cured meats. Cheese that make people run away screaming. Bread, glorious bread. Fleischsalat. Chocolates. Coffees. Bier. Sausages of every variety and sort. And yes, something everyone should have in the Culinary Bandolier -- Underberg!  So, after a Debreziner with good bread, sauerkraut  und senf (mustard) and a taste of my wife's Dortmund sandwich (and the pickles), we got to work. 4 or 5 pounds of large format (rye, farmers) bread, uncut, with two heels. Mini apfelstrudel sticks. Two kinds of chocolate. Vanilla sugar and clear glaze for baking und obsttorte. Two kinds of herring in different preparations (mustard and garlic if you must know). Fleischsalat (basically ham salad, but what ham!). Bratwurst. Debreziner wurst. Zwiebel brats. Frankfurters and more. Zungenwurst (tongue and blood 'sausage loaf - think like a bologna or a head cheese but so glorious). Westphalian (ham). Nusschinken (basically very small hams from the bottom of the leg I think) sliced so thin it is almost sheer. Veered away from my beloved tilsit cheese (it reeks, requiring at least 4 layers of protection to not destroy all food in your refrigerator and opted for a rich yellow looking bavarian swiss instead. And two tins of Underberg (this is MAGIC stuff for when you overeat. MAGIC I tell you.). Oh and plenty of bier! And I swear I am missing some things.

After getting out of there and schlepping a bit in NoVa traffic, we bailed on hitting up Arrow Wine, instead opting for raiding our 'cellar' for this weekend instead. No, it was off to the new Harris Teeter in our home base in Laurel, and we loaded up on all the rest of our required elements for dinner tonight, tomorrow's lamb neck and beyond.

This, this, THIS was a good provisioning run. Very satisfying and enjoyable.

[darkstar965]

You're definitely NOT "nuts." But this does explain more fully why you're a regular contributor here. :-)

Now I feel like I'm organizing one of those AA-like 'sharing' circles but so be it. Loved your post thinking, "No way, I'VE done that!" :-)

[ktmoomau]

Does going to Giant on Superbowl Sunday count as a hunting expedition?  I think it was, but I think I was more prey than hunter...

[LauraB]

I've had days like this....and loved them!

[Barbara]

What's changed for me over the years is the number of places I can forage for food on foot or a quick, convenient bus ride. There is even a Halal meat store a block and a half away. I don't even think about hitting the 'burbs for anything (with the exception of Costco). Smucker Farms on 14th Street is now carrying Jamie Stachowski's sausages, so I don't even have to trek to Georgetown for those. Compared to what was on offer around here in 1976, the mind boggles; truly it does.

[zoramargolis]

Good thing that I enjoy going on foraging trips like the one Pool Boy described. J hates any kind of shopping. He'll agree to run up to the neighborhood Safeway for a limited number of items, but only if I am incapacitated somehow.

[darkstar965]

This is a somewhat random, yet related thought. Really good topic btw, Pool Boy!

I wonder how much one's inclination to forage and enjoy such foraging correlates with a greater wanderlust or, at least, tendency to explore? Of course, if someone isn't interested in food, they won't possibly suffer from the same genetic defect that PoolBky, myself and many of us here do. But, an interest in food doesn't necessarily guarantee one will enjoy "hunting expeditions."

I think it maybe a venn diagram with the overlapping center where innate wanderlust/penchant to explore and passion for food (and all of its societal tentacles).

[porcupine]

Mr. P and I do this every once in awhile, usually when we have no other plans on a Saturday or Sunday.  We go to a bunch of shops and pick up whatever strikes our fancy, and graze and nibble our way through dinner.  Usually this involves cheese, bread, fresh fruit, marinated vegetables, olives, and charcuterie.  I love dining that way.

[LauraB]

Mr. P and I do this every once in awhile, usually when we have no other plans on a Saturday or Sunday.  We go to a bunch of shops and pick up whatever strikes our fancy, and graze and nibble our way through dinner.  Usually this involves cheese, bread, fresh fruit, marinated vegetables, olives, and charcuterie.  I love dining that way.

Which shops do you especially like to visit on these days?

[porcupine]

Which shops do you especially like to visit on these days?

Often it will start with one of the farmers markets - 14th and U or Courthouse on Saturdays, Bethesda or Dupont or Palisades on Sundays.  Cork Market*, if we're in that area.  Arrowine/Cheesetique/Artisan if we're in VA (sometimes with a snack at Taqueria Poblano and/or Dairy Godmother), or Grape + Bean/Society Fair.  Union Market.  Three Little Pigs, though we don't get there nearly often enough.  BreadFurst.  Stachowski's** and Baked and Wired.  BlackSalt.

It makes me sad that I can think of nothing in Maryland.

*Cork Market has a small but excellent selection of cheeses, and they're handled really well

**if you ask nicely and they aren't busy, they will pack all the ingredients for a sandwich separately, for you to assemble at home

[Pool Boy]

It makes me sad that I can think of nothing in Maryland.

*Cork Market has a small but excellent selection of cheeses, and they're handled really well

**if you ask nicely and they aren't busy, they will pack all the ingredients for a sandwich separately, for you to assemble at home

On Liberty Road, west of Baltimore, there is Olde Worlde Deli, which offers a lot of what German Gourmet in Falls Church does. I would have also suggested Bonaparte in Savage Mill, but there are rumors they have shut down and fled the country. One could argue to go to Balducci's too, but I only do that once in a blue moon.

[porcupine]

^Balducci's may be good, but it's a pale shadow of what it once was.  I go there once or twice a year for specific items but it's not in my regular rotation.

[DaveO]

That wide ranging expedition is so impressive.  Noting that you started out in the Laurel area and made it over to Northern VA among other areas "floors me".

Bravo.

A relatively short while I found myself in Laurel for the better part of a week.  Thanks to this forum I found myself dining at Pasta Plus several times, a restaurant to which I'd never been.   Terrific in terms of food and  value.  A wonderful find.  I ate there several times and finally spoke with the owner, Max.   Part of the conversation revolved around that it was a wonderful find, I attributed it to DR.com...and ultimately that I did the restaurant and I a disservice.  There was a longish period when I lived in North Bethesda...and I would have/should have gone there fairly regularly.

But in retrospect I wouldn't have made the trek from N. Bethesda to Laurel for those meals.  I wouldn't have done so.  There were excellent alternatives in my mind closer....(Il Pizzico imho--more expensive...but I would have probably thought it better...)

I wouldn't have driven the distance.   I mentioned Pasta Plus to a friend from that North Bethesda area....and he wouldn't have made the drive either....and he too is a fan of Italian food.

Would I range far and wide for all those delicacies???  Hell no.  But I admire it.  

BRAVO!!

[Pool Boy]

It is really funny about the traveling thing. I complain in my original post that veering south on Connecticut to hit up BreadFurst on a weeknight to get probably an even more amazing baguette than at FreshBagueet in Bethesda (where I work), but in reality it would add about 30 minutes to my trip home. Worth it for a weeknight? No. That was my point. But going there as a part of a Hunting Expedition it is utterly worthy.

I mean, I love Puputella. LOVE it. But it is over there in NoVa dammit. I won't go there because of the distance for long periods, until, that is, I cannot stand it anymore and I must go. And thus another Hunting Expedition stop is born.

I mean, I am a food nerd. I am pretty sure all of us are to some degree. This is what I do for fun. I don't do it regularly, but....regularly enough. Haha!

[darkstar965]

?...There were excellent alternatives in my mind closer....(Il Pizzico imho--more expensive...but I would have probably thought it better...)

Loved this reference. We haven't gone to il pizzico in years since friends in Damascus moved away. But good memories of it. Now wondering if it's still there and, if so, the same as I remember. Easy enough to check. Thanks.