Pat

The Pacci's in the former Park Cafe space on 13th Street just south of East Capitol looks very close to opening. I'm really happy for them, as they have had to do a tremendous amount of work on that space and it has dragged on seemingly forever. There are still permits in the window, so DC bureaucracy could be an issue, but they have tables and chairs set up inside and what looks like a very nice bar in the back (with someone behind it when I went by yesterday).

Last night was St. Louis spare ribs with cheese grits and a roasted romanesco with pesto. I love the white grits TJ's used to have. They have been discontinued, and I have very little of my stash left. The night before was Instantpot beef stew from flanken ribs and a bunch of root vegetables (white sweet potato, red potato, onion, yellow and orange carrots, parsnips, and turnips); sourdough bread, and shrimp with cocktail sauce.

Went here for lunch yesterday with friends visiting from out-of-town. We had a a really good meal, including the kebob platter, a falafel sandwich lunch special, and fries. Lots of the wonderful bread and the toum and other condiments. Totally hitting on all cylinders. It was very loud when we first arrived but people started heading back to the office and hearing and speaking got easier.

I placed the DB order online through Toast. You might have tried to do it right around the time they go online for accepting them. I've had that happen with other restaurants that use the Toast app. Close it out and come back 15 minutes after they say they begin taking orders and it should work. Sorry about the frozen pizza😞

I should add that they now have chairs for the tables inside. I saw no indication other than that if they are doing dine-in and I forgot to ask. There are only a few tables. (I updated the title and tags - ha - for the topic but didn't add dine-in since I don't know.)

We finally got pizza from the Hill East location. Their hours have continued to be erratic but currently seem to be 4 - 9 Tuesday through Saturday. The few times I've seen people walking by on the street with pizzas from here, the boxes seemed really small. Given that and the price, it's taken a while to pull the trigger. I decided to order a Detroit style with sausage and mushroom and a thin crust with mushroom and pepperoni. Even the thin crust has quite bit of bread to it, so I way under-calculated on stomach capacity. Having read the descriptions of long fermented dough, it occurred to me that the feeling I had after a couple pieces of pizza was not unlike eating a bit too much injera. We probably only needed one pizza. We ate about 1/3 of the total of what we ordered. I think the Detroit is not our thing, but that is one puffy bread dough.

Last night was the last of the beans, greens, and wings from Thanksgiving, with the last couple slices of pork tenderloin from the same meal. It was accompanied by noodles and cheese, my version of the kugel-ish casserole my Armenian MIL made the whole time my husband and his sister were growing up. Tonight I am making meatballs (pork & beef) that we will have with the last bit of the leftover ravioli and some of the leftover noodles and cheese. I wanted to make spaghetti for the meatballs, but that seemed extremely redundant. I feel like I should also make a salad but don't have the energy, so probably not.

Tonight was leftover ravioli, salt bagel, air fryer bbq salmon and broccoli. Last night was Balsamic fig roasted brussels sprouts, toasted sourdough, and Stachowski's chicken, apple, and wine brats over frizzled radicchio.

OMG. I was going to guess that but when I looked at the menu online it didn't seem to match. Of course, I didn't see a specifically Thanksgiving menu, but, yikes.

Corduroy?

Is that tofu and beef or fish and beef?

With the turkey shortage, the options weren't so great for a two-person meal this year. Didn't want to do a whole turkey. Considered a breast, but there weren't many I could find and they were too big. I wanted to make braised thighs but no store had them. They appeared to be available for delivery from WF and Giant, except none of the 3 WF stores I went to had them and neither did the only nearby Giant. Giant's sub for if they didn't have them was drumsticks, which I didn't want. The H Street Giant only had drumsticks, so...I concluded thighs were not a possibility. I punted and made a pork tenderloin from Red Apron that I had in the freezer. I marinated it in pineapple juice, bourbon, lots of garlic and black pepper, and a little bit of bottled vinaigrette. I made a cranberry - clementine compote, also with a little bourbon. The turkey component of the meal was InstantPot black-eyed peas, collards, and smoked turkey wings. (This kind of dish is one of the really good timesaving features of an InstantPot and delicious.) The appetizer component was a plate of cubed cheddar cheeses; the clementines that gave their peels for the compote; stuffed grape leaves from Wine and Butter*; and, Belgian endive spears stuffed with feta or blue cheese, a bit of ranch, and crumbled rosemary pecans. We had cheddar scallion biscuits from Souk and were supposed to have a Nightingale salted caramel ice cream sandwich and pecan-bourbon mini-pie (theme!) from Souk as well but never got to dessert. Maybe tonight. *One of the previous owners has a catering business and several of the prepared foods the current owners sell are still from him, so far as I know. They seem the same.

Can't believe I forgot this one for vegan/vegetarian. Mustard - Parmesan Whole Roasted Cauliflower. Making it tonight. Edit: Obviously not vegan with Parmesan, but nutritional yeast would probably work as a substitute.

This would be vegan. It was great when I just made it, but I'll go either with less soy sauce or low sodium next time. Maybe doesn't match the rest of the Thanksgiving foods. What about sesame noodles with tofu?

Last night was a improvised leftoverish meal, plus baguette slices with butter and/or hummus. I cooked up some expired wild rice mix before it got too aged. I cooked it in some beef "Better than Bouillon" and threw in sauteed button mushrooms, leftover fried tofu cubes, leftover scrambled eggs and chopped scallions and green tops. I also squeezed in a good amount of sriracha. Quite good for what it was.

Air fryer Chicken Parmesan with leftover sausage ravioli casserole, steamed broccoli, and sourdough bread.

Seeking to use a bag of Asian greens I bought at the farmers market, I made this Food Network recipe for Udon with Tofu and Asian Greens last night. I only had about 6 1/2 oz. of those greens, so I added in about 4 oz. of baby kales I'd also gotten at the same stand. It was excellent. We had this with the remaining few lamb rib chops from a rack of lamb. I made a small amount of yogurt/lemon/feta sauce for the chops. This kind of undermined the vegan aspect of the meal, but the small amount of lamb made a nice companion to tofu, greens, and noodles.

Last night we had chicken noodle vegetable soup I'd made recently along with turkey Swiss burgers topped with avocado. I mixed some jarred Calabrian chilies and fresh chopped basil into the turkey mixture. The night before was this recipe from the Dinner: A Love Story blog. I used beet greens and butternut squash. The only hazelnuts I had were part of a TJ's Nuts about Rosemary mix, so I fished enough of them out to toast and then also added some dried rosemary to the squash when roasting it. It came out quite well.

I made a nice salad plate last night -- the last two orange tomatoes I had from the farmers market, each stuffed with salad made from the leftover broiled salmon. I topped each with an olive and plated on a bed of gorgeous huge lettuce leaves from new lettuce from the same market. I scattered some cooked potato cubes that I'd dunked in a little ranch dressing around the leaves. We had this with toasted sourdough and a sausage ravioli casserole.

Last night we had broiled salmon (Costco) and this brussels sprouts and potato hash. I omitted the egg from the hash but it would be great if making only the hash for a meal. I used my round Staub cast iron cocotte, which worked very well for cooking the hash ingredients. Keeper recipe. I topped the salmon with a buttermilk - yogurt topping before putting it into the oven. Satisfying meal.

Making my way through a lot of leftovers. Tonight was a salad (radish, cucumber, radicchio, red leaf and romaine, pimento stuffed green olives; buttermilk ranch); reheated sirloin tips aka beef stew with carrots and fingerlings plus roasted mushrooms; and reheated roasted cauliflower.

Last night was InstantPot sirloin tips with fingerling potatoes and carrots from the farmers market, as well as a whole roasted mustard - Parmesan cauliflower, also from the same trip to the market. I opened a bottle of Malbec, some of which went into the beef stew and some of which was consumed with the meal.

The rings do roast relatively quickly but also look pretty. Sometimes I'll fry an egg in the center of a mostly cooked ring to finish it. I have a few more delicata on hand that I need to use. They have some staying power but don't last in their raw state indefinitely. Last night I made collards (very in season!) with black-eyed peas and smoked turkey wings in the InstantPot. We also had a plate of red grapes and apple slices, along with a slice of pumpkin quiche from Boulangerie Christophe .

Ha! I should have looked at the posts above it before I made the one yesterday. It seemed like a year since I'd been, but I was last there in the late winter/spring.

After having not been here in a year, I stopped last weekend and got oysters and shrimp. Everything was great, though pricey. The last time I'd gotten shrimp they'd been a bit fishy, but these were back to being very clean and wonderful. Still love this place but stop here less these days than at Solace.