Pat

I mostly go to Cameo for coffee and Slice Joint for pizza, but I like the Red Apron as well. They have a bodega with breakfast tacos, etc. early in the day but I haven't tried that. It's a pretty good mix of places. Lots of people camp there during the day working on their computers. Definitely a notable addition to the Hill.

(I have trouble with my phone, vision, and QR codes, so that aspect can be a problem for me. I've had no problem getting an employee to use their Toast app terminals to order me a pizza, though.)

Last night:
Spaghetti squash casserole with turkey meatballs & leftover sauce from braised turkey thighs; grated Parmesan
Leftover mac and cheese

For New Year's Eve:
Cornbread
Endive Spears with White Bean Radicchio Salad
Instant Pot Braised Turkey Thighs
Rice Pilaf

New Year's Day Dinner:
Cornbread
Collards with Black-Eyed Peas and Salt Pork
Macaroni and Cheese

I used some cornbread crumbs to top the mac and cheese. The cheeses were Vault No. 5 Cheddar from Jasper Hill Farm, the last of a piece of Port Salut, and a few oz. of Monterey Jack left from making nachos a few days ago. It was a really good, melty combination. The Port Salut stood out just enough to give it a distinctive flavor. I will have to remember that one.

Did the collards and peas in the InstantPot. I used 2 bunches of collards and probably should have only used 1-to- 1  1/2.

I made the turkey thighs for NYE that I couldn't find for Thanksgiving. Whole Foods now has a bountiful supply. Go figure 🤷‍♀️. This was the recipe. The sauce was too good to discard and there's quite a bit left, so I'm going to use it over some spaghetti squash later in the week, I think.

I had saved the liquid from my Christmas InstantPot lamb shoulder. It cooked down to perfect gelatin with an easily removable fat layer on the top. So it became the base of lamb stew for lunch. I used dried onions but everything else fresh: rosemary, garlic, turnip, gold potato, white sweet potato, and previously roasted carrots. Remembering Dean Gold's advice about how San-J Tamari adds flavor, I added a couple of shakes of that, as well as a couple of squeezes from a tomato paste tube. It was fantastic. We had it along with pita from Yellow and WF roasted garlic hummus.

I made quesadillas with most of the leftover Christmas lamb for dinner last night. Cheeses were chevre, feta, and mozzarella. I seasoned the mixture with some Calabrian chili oil and gochujang and added sliced radishes as well. We had this with more of the leftover Belgian endive salad. The quesadillas came out great.

Emptying the dishwasher before dinner, I set one of my favorite Corning casseroles (from a set-- in the 80s, I think?) on what turned out to be an unstable surface😖. Now I have to decide if it's worth buying a replacement used at a steep price. The lid crashed to the floor too and is perfectly fine, so I don't have to buy one with a lid. Have too much kitchen stuff. But that's such a useful little casserole...

Christmas dinner reprised the wine, cheese, and crackers/bread. We also had roasted eggplant soup from a recipe I've made several times this year. The meat was an Instant Pot lamb shoulder (with anchovies in the mix) and more of the rice pilaf. More cookies for dessert.

I'd planned a salad but got behind (even though it's a quick prep), so that got moved to last night, along with the last of the wine and cheese. The main was leftover broiled cod with mixed vegetables and rice pilaf. The salad was Endive Spears with White Bean Radicchio Salad, from Sunset Magazine. It makes a lot more filling than I had large endive leaves, so we'll be eating it for a while, but it was quick and delicious. Finding the endive and radicchio in a store was the hardest part.

Christmas Eve menu:
Where’s Linus Rosé 2021
Jasper Hill Farm Conundrum Cheese
Atwater Rye Crackers
Rice-Stuffed Grape Leaves
Bacon-Wrapped Filet Mignon
    ~ Quince Mustard
    ~ Sautéed Mushrooms & Shallots
Rice Pilaf
Christmas Cookies & Meringues

The wine was from DCanter. We had it at Thanksgiving and they kindly ordered me some more because they no longer had any in stock when I went back to resupply. I had originally stumbled upon it when I was in there and asked if they had anything they'd recommend as a Fall rosé. Being most definitely not an oenophile, I had no idea if such a thing existed. They pointed to a few and I picked this one because I liked the name (), label   (), and price point (about $25). It hits a perfect spot as a lighter-bodied red wine. It does not look like a rosé and is not sweet.

My husband's family traditionally has the grape leaves at holidays, but I haven't made any in quite some time. I picked these up at Wine & Butter, and they are a worthwhile substitute. The family also always has to have pilaf for holidays. I made a very large batch and added pine nuts as well as the noodles. I usually just add noodles, but it's Christmas!

The beef was from Harvey's at Union Market and was excellent. I brushed some of the mustard (from the same order from Jasper Hill as the cheese) around the center of the tenderloin roast and used that to adhere the bacon to the meat. That more or less worked but adding a toothpick or two would have been a good idea.

Last night was Caesar salad, sourdough bread, broiled cod loin (w/seasoned lemon butter & various cracker crumbs), and...frozen mixed vegetables, the last of a package I keep around for soup. Kind of fell down at the finish line there. Cod from District Fishwife was, as could be expected, excellent quality.

Tonight is low effort. Salad. Pre-cooked shrimp to use the last of the cocktail sauce. Beef burgundy from the freezer over buttered pappardelle with chopped parsley. Roasted romanesco with the last of the pesto from the last romanesco I made.

Moe (Maureen) Tkacik is a writer I have read for a long time. She is a leftist labor activist and feminist. Her writing is awesome. As best I can puzzle it out she used to work at Fiola Mare as a server and her husband was a chef there. It sounds like quite a stressful place to work.

Last night I made a recipe I found a few years ago via Joy the Baker, for a pasta dish with braised chicken and mushrooms. It's quite good but takes a long time to make. There are too many detailed steps, and at some point a while back I was trying to find a way to streamline the process. It just doesn't seem like it needs to be as complicated as it is, but it's delicious. (I buy the Pipe Rigate pasta at Whole Foods. Cool shape.) We had it with a strange but good salad of marinated gigande beans over celery leaves, and we also had whole wheat sourdough bread.

Tonight I am making pork again because I bought apple butter at the farmer's market last week before it closes for the season and had seen this recipe. We will have leftover cheese grits with it and fig walnut bread.

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.

10 hours ago, Bart said:

How did you place the order?

I attempted to order something last friday night and their website/app simultaneously said they were "taking online orders" and "NOT taking online orders"!  Then I pivoted to trying to order something from Wise Guys and found out that you had to use THEIR app to order.  I didn't feel like downloading an app that only works at one place so I had a frozen pizza instead.  😉

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.

2 hours ago, bookluvingbabe said:

Well…

Our thanksgiving restaurant was Annabelle. 
 

It was the most bizarre meal we’ve had from Frank Ruta in the 20 years we’ve been stalking… I mean enjoying his food. 
 

yes, I should have chosen turkey. But I wasn’t in the mood for turkey. 
 

Mr. BLB, a wiser soul than me, had the pasta dish and it was pretty close to perfect. Thank goodness that doesn’t change. 

 

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.

11 hours ago, DonRocks said:

Where did I dine on Thanksgiving? (I wouldn't say this was representative of what I've had here in the past, but it fit the bill, especially for leftovers today.)

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?