lperry

Spinach salad with hard cooked eggs in a honey-mustard dressing. Mango sorbet. (Prepared when it was warmer).

We walked to dinner at Caboose Cafe last night. We pick up sandwiches for lunch fairly often - I love the spinach and mozzarella on ciabatta - but this was our first dinner. We had a caprese salad (I had a craving despite the reality of the tomatoes right now) and the Ethiopian veg sampler. It was all good, it was nice to sit outside, and the service was excellent. We will be back.

Thanks Bettyjoan - I'm back in DC. I spent yesterday with my family (I have lots of aunts and uncles in Atlanta), so the food was good. It's really difficult in that section of downtown. I understand that it takes a while to revitalize areas, but I figured with all those conventions going on, there would have to be some good food we could walk to. I'll be better about researching next time.

I'm at a conference at the Marriott Marquis at Peachtree Center, and because of the timing of symposia, I'm somewhat trapped here. So far I've had Starbucks breakfasts, a food court lunch that I'm trying to forget, a dinner at Haveli Indian that was not good, and a quick dinner last night at a little pan-Asian place next door (forgot the name) that was pretty good, but nothing special. Saturday we have a group of about 25 going to Thai Chilli (sp??) - this venue was chosen by someone else. It's tough at a conference in a group - anyone know of anything close by that might be a better bet?

We've been having mixed green salads to counteract less-than-optimal meals while traveling.

Tonight's ramp-free dinner: Wilted dandelion salad with walnuts and roquefort in a sherry vinaigrette Spiced pears Baked macaroni and cheese made with Irish cheddar and pecorino romano 2006 Querceto Chianti

I haven't started anything that will go out on Mother's day yet, but I do have a nice plot with cress, arugula, radishes, lettuce, borretana onions, scallions, carrots, and swiss chard. Everything is up, and as much as this weather annoys me, it seems to be doing wonderful things for all the little greens. I also moved all my herbs from various spots around the yard into a dedicated bed. They also seem to be happy. Now it just needs to get warm enough for basil. This is our second year in the house, and I'm hoping to get most of the yard landscaped. That plan includes two or three more beds that I'll need to dig before the summer vegs go in the ground. As part of an unscientific study, I decided to do everything on the schedule that the Farmers' Almanac recommends. My Grandparents planted with the moon phases, the calendar they got every year from the feed store had the appropriate days marked on it, and I figure they probably knew more about it than I ever will. Plus, I want loads of flowers and vegetables, and I'm going to do everything I can to stack the deck in my favor.

Black bean chili with various add-ins, the favorite of which was the feta cheese.

Last night: Leek and Potato soup Crusty bread with herbed chevre

Last night: Phyllo triangles filled with mushrooms in red wine sauce, feta, and pine nuts. In retrospect, I should have run outside and cut some thyme. Roasted fingerling potatoes with a chipotle sauce Ya pear

I'm sure they were great. You can also sneak extra flavor in by using stock instead of water for the soaking, although I don't think this is traditional. I know some people who use milk. The extra crispy quality is usually the result of about twenty minutes in the oven after you griddle them. I'm usually too much in a hurry to do this step, and I'm also usually making just one big one for my breakfast. Maybe I could figure out a quick way in the toaster oven, but I haven't messed with it. I'm not much for innovation in the morning. I've seen the electric arepa pan - it was first coming into vogue in Venezuela when I was there the first time. Bettina had this old, wooden handled iron instrument much like the old waffle makers you would use on the stove. I guess it simulates an oven somehow, and you get that crispy shell in one step. I looked for a year for something like that and never found one.

Yum! When I was in Venezuela, the woman I stayed with made me arepas every morning for breakfast, and I had them with the local fresh cheese and a scrambled egg. She had this little stovetop cast metal griddle that made them perfectly crispy. I wish I knew where to find one of those. Mine are always somewhat rustic looking.

This is more of a "what's for tea today and breakfast the rest of the week" post. I made Maidda Heatter's Savannah fig cake today for the first time, mainly to use a jar of figs in syrup. It is delicious. Delicate, moist, very lightly spiced, with a crust of toasted nuts all over from using them to coat the pan. I didn't make the glaze, and I'm glad. I think it would have been too sweet. I'll toast it for breakfast and have it with goat cheese to add a little tang.

Asparagus and Meyer lemon risotto. The perfect spring meal.

I'm not an expert on meat, but it's my guess that it will taste distinctively like freezer and not be worth the trouble of cooking it. Otherwise, I've heard stories of people eating meat from animals that were preserved for centuries by glaciers or other ice, so assuming proper cooking, you'll probably survive. Then again, I don't work for the USDA. The government would not approve of most of my canning. I use the dreaded steam canner that has not been tested, so is deemed "unsafe." With acid, sugar, or brine, I don't worry. When it comes to something like low-acid and pressure canning, I'm there on the USDA site taking notes.

^I won't admit the ages of some canned foods I've eaten. I figure if the seal is intact, it has nice color, and it still smells and tastes good, it's fair game, although for the most part, I try to use things quickly. Sometimes, though, there's that renegade jar that hides in the back of the cabinet... In other news I'm happy to report that the home-canned chick peas are delicious. Creamy texture but firm enough to hold their shape. I'm so pleased because the frozen ones always ended up in hummus because of the soft texture. I'll be able to use these in dishes where they need to be whole.

I had a few hours last night and did some experimentation with home canning dried beans. I have no real good reason for doing this, except that I have an aversion to buying canned beans because they always have an odd taste to me, and they tend to be mushy in texture. Having cooked beans around seems to be positively correlated with eating beans, even though I have a pressure cooker and can, in theory, prepare them on a whim. My old method was to cook a huge pot full and freeze them in individual containers. Freezer space is more limited than shelf space, however, and those in the food blogosphere promise home-canned beans have nice texture and flavor. So a pound of black beans and a little over a pound of garbanzos got processed last night. One pound of dried beans made four pints of cooked beans. Here is the method I used - it is identical to the one in my old Ball Blue Book, although this one concedes that you can quick soak. The only thing I changed is that I did not throw out the soaking water and use fresh for the final cooking. I'm curious to find out how they taste and will probably have some of the garbanzos at lunch. I also started some pink pickled turnips. I went a little overboard on the beet, and it appears that I will have fuchsia pickled turnips, but as long as they taste good I'll be happy. Searching with Google, I found recipes for making them with brine only - a fermented pickle - and with vinegar. I have no experience with making fermented sour pickles, so I used vinegar.

I think that your situation is much more common than mine. The way our schedules work, it's best only to have a few day's worth of perishables on hand. It minimizes waste when one of us goes out of town unexpectedly. I also imagine it is much more time consuming shopping for a crowd instead of for two.

It is interesting to hear about the freshness - spoilage factor. I haven't had this problem, but I tend to shop two or three times a week and cook that day or the next, relying on what looked really good in the store rather than planned recipes. This is a result of living in Southern Illinois for a while where I couldn't rely on any store having what I wanted for any specific dish. I'm also pretty picky about what I buy. There were some weeks recently when I passed through the entire section of the Grand Mart at LRT and didn't buy a thing except some citrus fruit.

Here's a second recommendation for Grand Mart, Great Wall, or Super H depending where you live. In addition to their produce being much lower in price, there is excellent turnover, so it is a lot fresher than what can be found at the big stores. I love a store that has three guys doing nothing but continuously stocking the produce section.

I guess that makes sense. It might be difficult to concentrate on your job of protecting someone if you are being chased by a cloud of bees. Although my Grandfather kept bees, and I never got stung. He always used one of those smoke-bellows contraptions, and they seemed to be rendered pretty docile.

^I was really surprised by them. The last time I tried a store-bought falafel, it was one of those mixes and it was inedibly awful. Thanks for the tzatziki idea - I've got some dill I need to use. I'm also contemplating finding a recipe for those yummy pink turnip pickles.

Last night we went to Alladin with a friend who just moved to town. If I can remember correctly, we had hummus, the v-nine soup (my entrée, very nice), Jasmine's favorite, and the lamb plate. Everyone enjoyed their food. Even though it is a chain, we like Alladin because it is consistently good and the service is always great. This is in contrast to other Shirlington restaurants where the food quality can swing pretty wildly.

I'm not a big packaged food person, but Mr. lperry loves those ladies at Costco with the electric frying pans and smiling sales pitches. As a result, I now have a huge package of falafel in the freezer. Thursday night I toasted a few in the Toastmaster, made up a quick tahini sauce, and rolled them up in chipotle tortillas with a green salad. Despite the cross cultural issues, it came out quite well and was a nice, light dinner that only took a little while to prepare. The falafel was very crispy out of the toaster oven, so I didn't even have to heat oil for frying.

I need to head over there. I drive more than twice as far to Bailey's Crossroads just because the Old Town location is (was??) so cramped. When the weather gets nicer, I can even bike.