Opening Menu:

Day turned busier than I expected so I went with plan B, which was a piece of fry bread from Mitsitam and leftovers reheated in office microwave for dinner. Oh well. There will be other times. I do appreciate the suggestions.

I did not realize the JA restos stayed open all day. Thanks!

ISO recommendations. I'm going to finish an appointment in the vicinity of 13th and K NW around 4:15, then need to be at the S. Dillon Ripley Center (near the Smithsonian Castle) by 6:30. Need something approximating dinner in that time. Happy hour snacks at a bar would be fine. Will be on foot so wherever it is, I need time to walk to the Ripley after. (It takes me about 15-20 minutes from, say, the Partisan). Don't mind catching a cab if I must but would rather trust my own two feet. It doesn't help that the national xmas tree lighting is tonight (oy), so I'd really like to stay away from that event horizon.

Help?

Once when I was in high school I borrowed my mother's car and accidentally left a mix tape of Dead songs in the player. A few days later Mom asked whose music it was, then asked me for a copy so she could listen to it in her Walkman. 

A few years after that I scored tix to a Dead show, on the field at RFK Stadium. In addition to my brother and his wife and some friends, I brought my parents. They had a blast. They loved the music (except for the space jam), loved that everyone was dancing, didn't mind all the joints being passed around (though they didn't partake).

My parents were generally conservative but open-minded when it came to music of any kind. 

I don't remember how many shows I went to, but not enough.

No answer to your query but perhaps you'd be interested in watching The Man Who Knew Infinity.

Also, are you familiar with tau?

Take this for what it's worth, but based on the admittedly statistically insignificant sample size of one, I'd say Reren Lamen in Chinatown is in serious contention for best XLB* in the area. I'll be going back to try more. 

*on the menu, "Shanghai Steamed Soup Bun". So maybe it's not authentically XLB. Maybe it is. I don't care, it was great - good wrapper, small enough to eat all at once, rich, piping hot broth, good porky filling.

On 11/9/2016 at 1:31 PM, Simul Parikh said:

Did a trial run of Food52 recipe. The dough didn't rise, I'm not sure what happened. I put yeast in warm water and it seemed activated after 15 min. So, grilled it on griddle. About 2 min per side on high heat. It tasted more like a chapati. Didn't look bad. Would have been acceptable, but it wasn't naan.

Did you put it in a warm enough place? Ambient temperature plays a major role here.

22 hours ago, Simul Parikh said:

Did you follow it exactly ?

I did. It took a few attempts to get the skillet to the right temperature, but when it was the top of the bread bubbled up nicely and the bottom was nicely browned and lightly charred. And I cut the recipe in half, and with half the amount of yeast there were no problems.

Again, no idea if it's truly naan, but fresh bread hot off the skillet is a joy regardless of authenticity.

On 11/7/2016 at 10:23 AM, ktmoomau said:

I don't have a grill - so the one I was looking at is by Carey Nershi at food52.com.

But I read through the comments before I make things on food52 just to check out suggestions, such as that recipe lacks salt (which many like, but some don't) so some people suggest adding between 1/4-1/2 tsp.

Thanks for posting this - it was very timely, as I've been cooking a lot of Indian recently. I have no handle on authenticity but the taste and texture were great (yes it needs salt).

Closed.

Exposition. From Wikipedia: "Narrative exposition is the insertion of important background information within a story"

existing thread here

After a long time hemming and hawing about it, I got an AmEx Platinum a few months ago. Mr. P and I now refer to it as the American Express Bait and Switch Card. There are a few benefits we've used, and maybe the points will add up, but I'll probably not renew it.

Example: booked travel to Europe. Single biggest reason why I got the card was to take advantage of the companion fare. Called AmEx travel to price out the trip: $X on KLM with a 2 1/2 hour layover connection through Amsterdam. Then I went online and bought us two business class tix through SAS - for about $X - 200. Nonstop flight, no layover.

So the companion fare cost more, takes longer, and involves a connection (on a flight that doesn't have business class as such). The only benefit to buying through AmEx is the flexibility to cancel the trip without penalty.

phht.

ps I agree with ozgirl about Ramen Momo, especially after ten days of fish. We had a grand time talking with the owner, who loves Washington, DC and its ramen scene. 

When dining in Iceland, the thing to remember is that there's Reykjavik, and then there's everywhere else. Not to disparage the country, as there are many things to love about it, but it is so sparsely populated outside the capital region that the options are limited. Here's how sparsely populated it is: portions of major highways are gravel. There are at least three tunnels under mountains that are several kilometers long and are ONE WAY. Not only are there very few traffic signals outside of Reykjavik, there are very few stop signs; yield signs are all that's needed. In many places sheep in the roadways outnumber cars.

How do you find good food outside Reykjavik? First, although there's not a lot of really great food, there's also not a lot of bad food. A sandwich from a privately-run parking lot concession stand near a waterfall was wonderful: basic ingredients, but treated with respect and freshly assembled. I was expecting just fuel but instead had a real treat. At a tiny crossroads on the far end of a ferry route in the Westfjords there was a little cafe that sold a really good hotdog. There was a food truck by another waterfall that had the best fish and chips ever.

I quickly formulated a rule: to eat well, keep it simple. Go for what's fresh, which is often fish. Also, keep your eyes open for the unexpected.

For example, after the 2 1/2 hour ferry ride that took us from the Snæfellsnes peninsula to the Westfjords, we had an hour and a half drive (partly on unpaved roads) over mountains to Þingeyri, a hamlet of about 250 people, which has exactly one food establishment, called Simbahöllin. It's a cafe with free wifi, good coffee, good pastries, great waffles, and, after 1800 (they use the 24 hour clock), lamb tagine. The sheer incongruity of this actually drew us back for dinner one night when we were staying in Ísafjörður, a forty minute drive north (including a 6km long one-way tunnel). And as you might expect, it was excellent. It's the only savory dish on the menu.

If Þingeyri is in the middle of nowhere, then Rif is at the end of nowhere. It's on the north side of the Snæfellsnes peninsula, and consists of two to three dozen houses, and a building that holds the post office and Kaffihús Gamla Rif, a tiny space with five tables arranged along a banquette, seating a total of 20. Gamla Rif has free wifi, coffee, cakes, and one savory dish: fish soup. The shop is owned and run by two women. The story is that their husbands are fishermen, and whatever the men catch, the women cook. Served with good homemade bread, it is absolutely wonderful.

Discoveries like this are often the highlights of my travels. Reykjavik has the highly regarded Dill, which you can easily argue is superior by any objective measure, but I enjoyed my meals at Simbahöllin and Gamla Rif so much more. I prefer good, honest food in almost any setting over fine dining, so take that for what it's worth.

There is one extraordinary dining experience outside Reykjavik, though: Tjöruhúsið, in the small city of Ísafjörður. The description "all you can eat fish buffet" might be a turn-off to the cosmopolitan diner, but let me tell you, it is excellent. Well, the fish is, anyway. The restaurant is in a historic building. You sit at long tables in a low-ceiling room, order your drinks, and help yourself to the good but not great side dishes on the buffet. On one end of that buffet is the fish. The chefs periodically come out of the kitchen bearing gigantic skillets of fish in any of a large variety of preparations. We quickly figured out that the strategy is to wait until you hear the sizzling, then queue up for whatever just came out. The night we were there, there were at least six different types of fish, each one prepared according to the chef's (or chefs', not sure if there are one or several) whim, in whatever style is deemed best for that particular fish. What fish they cook depends on what was caught that morning.

We spent ten days in Iceland last June, going from Reykjavik to Snæfellsnes to the Westfjords to Akureyri, then back south to a little place called Hella, near the volcano Eyjafjallajökull. Gamla Rif, Simbahöllin, Tjöruhúsið, and the fish and chips truck were the culinary highlights of the trip.

A few of the things I loved about Iceland:

• Most of the hot water in Reykjavik is piped in from geothermal sources. Most homes are heated by it. So are some roadways (so I was told, haven't been able to verify).
• At almost every restaurant, the table is set with glasses and a carafe of water. The water tastes great.
• There is no tipping, anywhere (except some jars at coffee houses, a recent trend).
• People are friendly without being intrusive.
• Credit cards are used everywhere, for everything (except a few countryside attractions that ask for a cash donation to help with the cost of keeping the facilities clean).
• According to one recent study, Iceland has the lowest crime rate in the world. (True story: a relative left her purse, with credit cards, ID, passport, etc., in a crowded bar in Reykjavik. By the time she realized what had happened, the place was closed. She couldn't get in contact with anyone until the next day, when she learned that someone had found it and handed it over to a bartender, who kept it safe until she could retrieve it. Nothing was missing.)
• According to another study, Iceland is the second happiest place in the world, after Denmark.
• People care about their environment. No litter anywhere.
• Lopapeysa. Scratchy but warm and cosy.
• The language is funky, impossible to pronounce, but has similar roots to English so given context you can often figure out meanings.
• Wildflowers. Like any other high latitude/high altitude place, the growing season is short, so once things start blooming they really go to town.
• The geology is fascinating. So is the natural history (why so few trees? humans + sheep). But it's beautiful in a barren sort of way.

I hope some day to go back and explore the east side of the island. But there's the whole rest of the world to see first.

Just in case anyone is wondering what to do with pawpaws other than eat them out of hand, I can report that they're good with yogurt. I have some pulp frozen for smoothies sometime in the future. They make a great substitute for bananas in old-fashioned banana pudding (simple cornstarch vanilla pudding, pawpaw pulp, and Nilla wafers). They make a wonderful ice cream. And, mace makes a nice complement to pawpaw, though a little goes a long way.

There's a small farm out near Lovettsville that has pick-your-own pawpaws. I got two pecks for ten bucks yesterday. The season isn't quite done yet, so they'll likely be open next Saturday morning as well.  For more information send email to the owner at wwnursery@aol.com. (This is not a big commercial operation that you can just pop into - you need to contact them first.)

If you do go, consider having brunch at Market Table Bistro afterwards.

I probably haven't dined at 2 AMYS as often as Don has, but I'm not far behind, either. I can't recall the last time I even looked at the regular menu. The daily specials (white, single page) menu is where it's at.

If it bites you and you die, it was venomous.

If you eat it and you die, it was poisonous.

Jellyfish (some) are venomous.

I suppose it's possible for something to be both. 

"Toxic" is often misused.  It's not a synonym for poison.

There isn't a general Hawaii thread, but there are these two threads:

Maui and Kauai

Oahu

Congratulations on your anniversary.

Mark, thanks for writing such detailed reports both here and in the Bali and Indonesia threads! Great reading.

Hey Don, bit of trivia for you. You know what a rebus is?

TSA Pre✓^®

TSA Pre Check is great when available but it isn't always available. It depends on both the airport and the carrier.  For example my last two international flights were on a carrier that wasn't part of the program, so even though we departed from Dulles, we couldn't use it.

Coming back from Las Vegas last March, every single security booth was open, but there were so many people trying to get through there weren't enough bollards to contain them all in line and it was just a crowded effin' mess in the main hall. I walked right past all that and through security in about two minutes.

People will complain that Pre Check is becoming so popular, the lines are too long to make it worthwhile. I disagree. The lines are sometimes longer, yes, but they move much faster, because people aren't unpacking everything and removing their shoes. Even if the line isn't faster, it's still less hassle.

I've posted about Global Entry in a few other threads, but in summation: it's a hell of a lot faster than the normal CBP lines.  We arrived at LAX at the same time as another large plane - estimated about 500 people trying to get through at the same time. It took us only a few minutes, and the only delay was because another traveler asked for help, so we walked him through it.

I've a friend who isn't willing to "bribe the government" in order to travel with less hassle, and I admire them for holding to principle. If you have no such concerns Global Entry and Pre Check are worth it.

We've yet to determine if NEXUS is worthwhile. We went through all the hoops and had our interviews at a US facility, only to find out that the last step is an iris scan that can only be done at a few Canadian airports. Oops.