Venerable Bede

regardless of what my in-laws will be making while my wife and i are in chicago, i will be having at least 2 or more tamales. some friends and i decided that we would try to make tamales last weekend. . .they took awhile, and due to space, we were unable to steam them standing up. . .oh well. based on our sampling, they still tasted good, even if they didn't look good.

i must say that my food issues are relatively minor in comparison to the people in that article, but they are issues nonetheless. i too prefer that my food not touch each other, and i eat one thing on my plate at a time. based on observations in my own family (my mother's side mainly), it appears to be something inherent- that is, my mother's father, one of my mother's brothers, me and a cousin on my mothers side all eat in the same pattern without food touching one another and one thing at a time. i do not touch the condiments- plain bagel, plain hot dog (unless its a polish with onions and peppers), plain cheeseburger (but with mayo cause it helps keep things in their place, and pickles- love pickles, but only those pickle chips, not spears); i also don't like salad dressing. . .stuff like that.

my fall dishes tend to fall along the lines of chili and butternut squash soup, and pies. . apple, pecan and pumpkin (and lots of jack daniels). just seems much more fall-ish for me. course, i live in san francisco now, so i don't really get a fall anymore. for a pumpkin pie, i basically roasted a cut in half sugar pumpkin, scooped out the flesh and put it into a blender to puree it. . .then, added the spices and whiskey to it for the filling.

when i was growing up out here in california, there were several 24 hour taco bell's that served breakfast; mainly breakfast burrito-type things. don't know why they stopped serving breakfast though.

i fear that i may get a talking to for this, but can you really have road food on an interstate? two things immediately pop into mind- 1) "feasting on asphalt" pretty much tried to emphasize this point, to find "road food" you have to get off the interstates, and drive the backroads, i mean, can you find brain sandwiches on the interstate (digression- the best chicken fried steak i had in texas was in a restaurant somewhere west of austin and I-10 on a 2 lane highway); 2) i am reminded of charles kuralt's quote- "The interstate highway system is a wonderful thing. It makes it possible to go from coast to coast without seeing anything or meeting anybody." now, i realize that most of us don't have the time to simply traverse and lazily drive the backroads to get to our destination, and i certainly do not mean to be mean on this point. i'm just raising the greater issue of where to find "road food" in this country. (i've told my wife that one thing i would like to do is drive u.s. 50 all the way from sacto to ocean city. . .just to do it, you know?) all that being said, you can always pop on in to pittsburgh and sample their cuisine (pierogies and french fry-topped sammiches, among others).

i made something similiar to a chilaquiles the other night. . .basically, make a tomatillo salsa, rip up some corn tortillas or corn chips, and cook it over the stove. i then used it as a sauce for some pork chops i pan-fried. tasted like a pork chop enchilada. the traditional recipe for chilaquiles calls for queso fresca or feta, but i didn't use it, but. . i would think it would taste just as good with it.

mmmmm, i miss me some chick-fil-a. . .however, i'll content myself with knowing that i am now 10 minutes away from an in-n-out burger.

i was more saddened to read that they are discontinuing their muscat vin de glaciere

mmmm, i love me some regional beer, especially at ballgames. natty-boh, old style, iron city, oly (although, i don't think they make that anymore), rainier, pearl, lone star. . if you go a step up, you have shiner, henry weinhardts. . . growing up, we used to have lucky lager. . .came 12 to a cardboard box. . .even found a place that was still selling blatz. in college, we found sportz (cheesy sporting picture on the box and all). however, i think there needs to be some distinctions made between local and crappy nationwide beer, such as. . .milwaukee's best can be found nationwide, but, can you find, say natty-boh outside of the baltimore city limits? does it really matter? i mean, there is nationwide derision for natural light, but what if natural light was only available in a portion of the u.s., does that give it instant cred? there are those unique, minor named beers that you can still find in the corners of your local safeway like schaefer or black label (oooh, that one night at chief ike's. . .). they are indeed crappy beer, but are they regional crappy beer? oh, and whoever brought up keystone. . .it's america's least bitter beer!!!

well, manresa is in nearby los gatos, but that would probably be in your super expensive category. edited to add- coming from san jose, i really hate it when people reference the dionne warwick song. but then, i'm cursed like that; i went to college in waco, texas. yes, yes. . i've heard it all before.

now that i leave, of course it's available.

last year, i spent half a game trying to locate the grill that was selling chorizo. . .eventually found it. as for other stadiums- pierogies from pnc (btw, the pnc primanti bros is nothing close to getting one from the restaurant, in much the same way as getting ivar's at safeco is not the same as actually going to ivar's). brats from miller park (if i remember, miller is considered to have the best stadium food in baseball, plus they have the lowest prices). but. . what i love most is when the stadium offers up its local (cheap) beer. wrigley sells old style, pnc sells iron city. . .i would love camden to sell natty-boh, or even rfk (after all, natty-boh was an big senators sponsor). heck, even busch used to sell allllll the busch varieties.

grabbed a lovely miner family rosato last month when i was in napa. haven't trotted it out yet this summer, but living in the sunset area of san francisco (and having a backyard that's under construction) has really limited the ability to enjoy it so far.

I'm here to post, if only to say that I am saddened that I was never able to make it out to a happy hour. As, alas, I have moved to San Francisco (I know, poor me). Nevertheless, I do find time to check in every once in a while to see how D.C. is going. That being said- I'm Chris, and I lived in D.C. for over 8 years. I came to DR from that other web page that Don used to moderate. I guess I found a place to hang out after my first visit to Rosa Mexicano, and found that I wasn't alone in my thoughts about it- ventworm and all. Anyway, like I said above, I hope to keep checking in every so often.

ahhh. . i have such wonderful memories of plates full of chicken fried steak and red mashed potatoes covered in gravy at threadgills. . that's white gravy, not that brown stuff that yankees call "gravy." ahhhh chuy's. . .more fond memories. not to mention the shiner bock.

highway 1 is now closed at devils slide, so. . you have to cut over to 280 anyway at half moon bay to get to san francisco. from half moon bay, i'd say it's about a 2 hour drive or so to napa, a little longer to places like st. helena and yountville.

i bet you like that thin and crappy new york style, huh? chicago-style is the way to go. oh, don't bother with either pizzeria uno or pizzeria due. here's the link to lou's, they also run the taste of chicago service, where you can order a lou's pizza, eli's cheesecake, carson's ribs and everything you need to make a chicago-style hot dog, but i think the portillo's italian beef set is a separate purchase. my wife is from chicago, so we had our wedding in chicago, and we all stayed at the mccormick place. and yes, i agree that other than mccormick place, it's not near anything else, except soldier field and the field museum, but that's because they aren't near anything else either. if you get a chance, i hear they are now doing "devil in the white city" tours, if don't feel like going to the art institute.

well, the chicago hilton is relatively close. there are also a handful of kimpton's in chicago, but i am unsure if they are south of the river or not. and, there's also the mccormick place marriott, which is probably the closest to the field museum. in addition to all the wonderful places listed above, should you just want a lunch or dinner of comfort food, go to lou malnati's for chicago-style pizza.

i had an 2002 Frog's Leap Zin last summer. I paired it with spice-rubbed grilled salmon that went over very well.

GB sells garlic fries, and only garlic fries at PacBall Park, err, SBC Park in San Francisco and, if I remember correctly, also at the Oakland Coliseum. For some reason, I think I remember a stand at RFK last season too. I like the garlic fries, but then, I prefer my fries slightly undercooked.

yeah, i think i would second the suggestion about using water and baking soda and boiling it. when i have dried caramel at the bottom of a pan, i fill it with water and bring it to a boil, that usually works.

i read garlic and sapphires over the holidays, and upon completion, i really enjoyed it. but after reading the criticisms of the book here, i must agree. i was hoping for a more behind-the-scenes aspect of being a critic, not just the one story about finding a restaurant in flushing (if i remember correctly), or the story about her co-worker. however, as the post-script noted, reichl took a lot of liberties when writing the book compared to the reviews, such as she condensed several dinners at one restaurant into one dinner. personally, i enjoyed reading about the dinners, and what she had to go through to sample the various restaurants. btw, anyone tried any of the recipes yet?

the two virginia vineyards that i like to visit are naked mountain and linden. wish i could remember more about their wines other than a) i liked naked mountain's chardonnay (free tastings, if i remember correctly) and linden has a beautiful deck that looks upon a little valley and has great bread to eat along with what wine you are tasting (they have free tastings as well, in addition to a cellar tasting for like $10). all that being said, a few months ago i was driving to harpers ferry using the backroads (route 7 to route 9 and over the mountain), and where they used to be just 2 vineyards, there's now 8 vineyards. i shudder to think what the wine at the new vineyards tastes like (suffice it to say, one vineyard sign i saw was advertising something like strawberry zinfandel).

the cookbook i tend to use the most is tom douglas' "seattle kitchen." i just find alot of his recipes relatively easy to cook (aside from the occasional recipe that uses ingredients you can only find out west). for a basic, i'll just echo the joy of cooking. . .that gives a great breakdown of foods and has a ton of easy recipes. also, if they are wont to do such a thing, the cake bible is also helpful.

how did it come out?