zgast

4 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

I finally cut the cord.  Upgraded my fios internet, got Sling, and Netflix, and Peacock, and Disney+ and ESPN+.  

Welcome to the other side.

I've got nothing here.  Fishy flavor?  Everything is free range (doesn't mean they're not fed fish meal necessarily), but I've never picked up a fish flavor from the chickens.  Only nine months in, though.  We've got time.

3 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

Isn’t lamb worse than beef for the environment?

 

Who knew our food blog would devolve into a robust discussion of flatulence across various animal groups?  Short answer is (from what I've read), it's generally not seen as being as bad.  I'd say that while I recognize that lamb or even beef might be more environmentally harmful than say tempeh, I'm going to switch to grazed meat sources and consume less (which I do anyway) rather than eliminate them.

And for your viewing pleasure, a discussion of the treatment of methane in greenhouse gas emissions relative to carbon dioxide.  Who knew chocolate was this bad for the environment?

13 hours ago, saf said:

Where are you?

I can't bring myself to buy supermarket meat of any sort any more. I get it all at the farm market. Much better, and I can confirm for myself that it isn't factory farmed. OK, except when I break down and have to have a hot dog. Then I just ignore the cognitive dissonance for the duration of dinner.

Meat-wise, we eat mostly chicken, pork, and the occasional beef. So no comments on lamb.

I moved to London at the end of September.  My son, who claims to only eat fish and chicken, misses Jimmy Dean sausage with Grands Biscuits the most, so cognitive dissonance is a-ok in our household.  He gets leftovers or frozen foods on lamb night, which he actually loves.  Basically a junk food night for him.

14 hours ago, DonRocks said:

As much respect as I have for vegetarians and vegans (both of which I consider to be more fully evolved than I am), I'm completely with Poivrot Farci on this one. Instead of weeding the garden, they've decided to carpet-bomb it.

This is as good a place as any to write this: Try the "Isa Essor" Pintades Fermières at Joyce Farms - $39.99 for 2 birds, and you'll never again want a supermarket chicken - the legs are huge and the breasts are small, which is as it should be. I can also vouch for the "Gloucesterchire Old Spot" Pork Chops, the Whole Rabbit, and the Ground Beef (all of which I liked enough to order a second time).

Piping in from over the pond, the chickens over here look like completely different animals from those in the States.  We'd actually stopped buying chicken breasts from the supermarket completely - there was just something wrong with them, no matter how you cooked them.  The difference over here is huge.  Supermarket chicken is far better, but we're doing most of our purchases at the local farmers markets and the difference there is stark.  I'm not sure we've bought much beef, but the lamb is plentiful and great.

15 hours ago, Mark Slater said:

Humm has a gig London too.

I just looked at the menu (only the terrace menu is available, so can't comment on inside dining as it's not open at the moment).  Someone may need to convince me since the 'snacks' start at around £22 (about $30) with entrees up to £125 (albeit for steak for two).  If I'm paying that much for outside dining, I want views and ambiance, not a department store.  I'll check out the inside dining menu when it's back online, although I'm unlikely to do much indoor dining until I'm fully vaccinated at the end of July.

22 minutes ago, Mark Slater said:

Well, here I am again gushing about my favorite restaurant in Georgetown. My friend and I went to celebrate not only our recent vaccinations, but also his 81st and my 69th birthdays. As mandated by the District, seating is reduced, so no crowding. We had the front room all to ourselves. Martin, as always, was very welcoming. Henri, our captain whom I've known for about 30 years, was on point as usual. I never dine here without starting with the wonderful Oysters Chaumiere- super plump baked oysters with spinach, hazelnuts and very light cream sauce. For a fish course, I had the best soft shell crab I can remember having in years. Simple, sauteed with lemon butter. Couldn't have been better. For mains, I had a craving for veal. The special of the evening were Grenadins de Veau au Porto. It was accompanied by copious amount of wild mushrooms. I found it very satisfying. We passed on the souffles and instead chose creme brulee and chocolate cake (no candles, no singing!!). Martin invited me to bring Skippy, my canine companion, but it was past his bedtime. Skippy retires at 7PM for the night. He missed some stellar table scraps. 

I never made it past the Quenelles for an appetizer.  Always meant to try other things, but then they just called me - softly, subtly, but oh so nicely.

17 hours ago, curls said:

@zgast thank you so much for the recommendations. No need for upscale on this trip but maybe for another trip. What do you recommend if we continue towards West Chester?

Google was recommending taking Route 1 for the last bit of the drive and I was going to go that way but nice to know that a you recommend it too!

Finding a place that's open for outdoor dining in West Chester was a bit harder than I anticipated.  Mercato has been pretty good in the past - https://www.mercatowc.com/

If it were me, I'd probably go to Gadaleto's, which is a seafood store run by a former chef just outside of West Chester (closer to the gardens).  They are doing a takeout menu now to replace the business they've lost as a restaurant supplier. Eat outside nearby as it's mostly fried or sautéed, but I can vouch that we've never had anything that wasn't very good from there and my kids demand their crab cakes and salmon every time we go up, so we eat there every time we go.

Enjoy the gardens, they're bound to be beautiful this time of year!

The Mexican places near the gardens are better than one might guess in ex-urban Pennsylvania.  Evidently the mushroom farms have spurred a mini-Little Mexico in the area.  Can't really flag anything more upscale unless you're willing to go past Longwood towards West Chester.  Dilworthtown Inn was great, but now closed.

I'm sure you know, but getting off at Exit 93 and taking Rt 1 up is a much nicer drive than continuing up I-95.  My parents live up in this area, so we're old hat at this.

On 4/9/2021 at 3:41 PM, Bart said:

Anyhow, back to the topic at hand, I took my daughter to Sushi Taro for her 21st birthday last November and we got the $100 Kaiseki meal and it was transcendent.  I probably ruined both kids for "regular" sushi for the rest of their lives, but maybe I'm naïve and clueless (guilty!) but I find it hard to believe that this meal would be twice as good as what Sushi Taro put out.  I realize that "twice as good" is a ridiculous and unmeasurable statement, but if I had $200 burning a hole in my pocket, I'd hit up Sushi Taro twice, in a heartbeat.

This is one of the guiltiest pleasures of parenting. Show them something they won’t be able to afford for years. About ten years ago my family got a 4 person upgrade to business class on our flight back to the US. I actually posted a picture saying this may be the worst thing that ever happened to me as a parent. Well - several upgrades later (BA is liberal with these when you’ve got Gold status) we took a train trip to Venice for Carnival. My 4 year old lost his s!^t in his seat. Once we calmed him down he explained that his seat was broken because it wouldn’t turn into a bed so he could sleep. Oy. 

8 hours ago, DonRocks said:

Dinner Menu 3.19.21.pdf 294.01 kB · 7 downloads

 (!)  (!!)

One order each of ! and !! (*) would make a perfect carryout dinner for an adult couple with medium-sized appetites.

God that looks good.  5 months on from my last restaurant meal (other than what can be delivered).

9 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

Link for those with Wapo subscription and want to read the comments.  

Don't ever, ever read the comments.  Anywhere.

Inquiring minds.....

Anyone know a recipe for making something similar at home?  Thinking of breaking out my souls vide to give that a try. Roast breast always seems to dry out. Perhaps I’m just overcooking it. 

38 minutes ago, Katya4me said:

LOL, I wish I had known about that.  "Lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool, ideally overnight in the refrigerator. Strain through a fine mesh strainer and discard the solids. You should have about 3 cups of thin syrup."   The syrup is good, but it was definitely semi-solid the next morning when it was time to strain it..

59 minutes ago, saf said:

Cook with cranberries, but not too long because they are FULL of pectin, and you don't want your syrup to gel. Both of these recipes should work well.

The pectin is exactly what I was thinking of - basically how do you keep it thin?  Thanks for the links!

On 11/2/2020 at 6:33 PM, DonRocks said:

I promise I wasn't being a douche with a thesarus; I actually suffered through Gulliver's Travels once (it's a very old (1726), very long (300 pages), slog-of-a-book with Gulliver visiting four lands - the land of Brobdingnag (giants) was the opposite of the land of Lilliput (teeny-tiny people)). I figured after thirty years, I could throw the word in one time (if I use it again, slap me).

@DonRocks - The WSJ must be reading your posts!

What Is the Brobdingnagian Base? The phrase, a nod to ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ describes a stock-price pattern that some analysts believe is particularly bullish 

8 hours ago, saf said:

Years ago, when Ray's the Classics first opened I think? Maybe a year or two into it? Anyhow, one December quite a while ago, Nick had this cranberry champagne cocktail on the menu. It had a cranberry simple syrup, sparkling wine (I think it was a prosecco? They had a nice prosecco), and a star anise floating on top. It was quite tasty. I was so sad that it never made a comeback. I made him tell me how to make it so I could have it again.

Would Ray mind if you shared it here?  I've been experimenting with simple syrups and would love to try a cranberry one.

53 minutes ago, lion said:

We're wrapping up our New Year's Day leftovers, Halibut with pesto and pasta. Our son will eat white fish but mainly his fish favorite is still salmon. 

The perennial question, has anyone had any good results with trying a new recipe for kids? 

Yes!  We've appeared to have a breakthrough with our blanditarian son.  And it all started with Szechuan peanut sauce (little sweet, a little spicy), which opened him up to the idea that flavor might not be all bad.  Specifically it was Jade peanut sauce, but we've made our own and even branched out into dan dan noodles and currries since.

Salmon remains king in our house too.  Teriyaki, preferably.

6 hours ago, DonRocks said:

I saw this yesterday in North Arlington - what on earth is it?

OK - I bit.  Fairly cool backstory.  No idea what the connection to Z burger is though.

11 hours ago, eatruneat said:

The second was when I finally got to use this line on some douche bro, "You know what they say about people who wear sunglasses inside? You're either blind or an asshole." 

Sadly, they're never blind.

2 hours ago, weezy said:

South Korean study of Covid and airflow in restaurants  https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-12-09/five-minutes-from-20-feet-away-south-korean-study-shows-perils-of-indoor-dining-for-covid-19

 

Terrifying. Eagerly awaiting the vaccine. 

7 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

Maybe @Andy Hayler or @zgast can take one for the team.

I'm going to defer to Andy for this one.  Who buys these things? 

Last time I lived in London, I almost rented a place near Harrods.  After returning in the evening to check out the neighborhood, the constant rumble, then acceleration, of car engines was noticeable and quite annoying.  Turns out there are individuals who still turn out every afternoon/evening in the vicinity of Harrod's to show off their Lamborghini, Ferrari, Aston Martin, whatever.  Almost as bad as the planes constantly flying over Richmond that made us say - no way.

We saved over $100 per month dropping cable (and phone).  Our bill was a bit inflated since I wouldn't do a two year contract, but the savings are real.  We went from 100 Mbps to 1Gb internet (not that we ever got that speed level as we discovered the wiring in our house couldn't go that fast and wifi sure couldn't 3-4 years ago) and still had those savings.

17 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

The only thing I watch is the Mandalorian.  I think even the kids are running out of shows to watch on D+.

I'd agree with this.  We're debating a rotation strategy for our streaming services so that we have access to say D+ for 3 months, then HBO Max, then whatever is next.  It fits with the way we binge.

1 hour ago, Bob Wells said:

LOL I once made a special trip to visit Route 11's old location in Middletown VA. Unlimited samples of chips! 

Same here. Except production was closed and all you could do was buy bags of chips in the lobby. All part of what my family still describes as the worst vacation ever.