ktmoomau

Last night I made a watermelon/tomato/feta salad with tomatoes from my garden!!! We also had chicken breasts baked with mural of flavor seasoning from Penzey's and a little olive oil. Ramp bread that I thawed from a delicious bakery up in WV that my uncle procured for me. I also made a clear the fridge spaghetti sauce with- the last of a bit of red sauce that came from the freezer, leeks and broccoli stems sauteed in garlic, and the last of the crab for lunches today. Prepped for other meals this week by putting more chicken breasts in the instant pot with a store bought Rick Bayless taco seasoning.

Pupusas, are made with masa, in my humble description, are almost like johnny-cakes that are crisper, but stuffed with good stuff, but not like directly in the middle, it spreads out and becomes an integral flavor, to me the best ones- have enough cheese that a little bit of the cheese oozes out and helps form even more crust on the outside. These aren't too hard to make at home, but getting the filling to spread out just right and the right porportion of filling to masa can take some tasty trial and error. Empanadas are like hand-pie pastry turnovers that filled with savory toppings mostly, but not always- there can be sweet ones too. It is essentially just the Spanish speak for hand pie/turnover. The dough is thinner and can be made with wheat or corn flour or a mix. You can buy empanada dough disks in the grocery and make your own with a variety of fillings. Saltenas are larger and more soupy, they are almost like a eating a turnover shaped hot-crust (as opposed to cold made pie crust) pot pie. They generally have more traditional fillings than a normal empanada, and more broth- it's generally meat (or not), olives, raisin, potato. Saltenas are by far the hardest to make.

This was one of my past purchases I wasn't crazy about. I think I also have gotten a very saucy country-style one from somewhere that I also wasn't crazy about. Thanks for the suggestions!

What are your favorite kimchis (brand/type) and where do you buy them? I love kimchi when I get it out at a restaurant, but I never seem to buy ones that I really like, I feel like sometimes they have too much tang and not enough heat maybe. I don't know. I just feel like I could do better. What are your favorites?

I made banana blueberry muffins topped with struesel last week, which were a big hit at office and at home. I will make those again.

If you are at the Spy Museum (you may not be) I think it is fun to walk down to the Wharf- in addition to all the restaurants, if your kids like seafood you can get steamed/fried seafood, seafood soups, etc and eat it at the tables/stands they have there. They also have a mix of restaurants and fast-casual places if you want to check it out.

I don't know how I even survived on what I survived on the past couple weeks, I was in heavy, heavy trial prep. Since that ended- I made spaghetti al bianco, which is a huge hit in my house (Hubby actually ate ALL the leftovers too). We had steaks on the grill with Chicago steak seasoning, and I cut up bell peppers from the garden, onion, poured in the last of the cherry tomatoes, and some mushrooms which went on the grill basket. While in Chestertown we had a small soiree for the neighbors and I boiled corn, shrimp, made a cheese and fruit tray. We had crabs too. Mom's friend made hamburgers and hotdogs and neighbors brought some great side dishes. I made crabcakes the other night with the leftover meat I picked, although I didn't put in enough binder and they fell apart a bit, still good. We ate them with steamed broccoli with garlic.

Yesterday was a crabcake sandwich on a kaiser roll with lettuce and a cherry tomato from my garden.

There was a table of little girls near us while we were watching the end of the game on Sunday. The comments they made warmed your heart. Things like, "these are the real heroes," "Mommy if I play soccer enough can I do that?" "she got two trophies!" It was fun to hear them, I really hope they get equal pay.

Another stop by Chop Shop Taco. We had a couple rounds of drinks, and found the classic marg, whiskey smash and paloma to be quite tasty. We had the smashed avocado, and that was tasty, BIL and SIL said the rice balls were delicious. We had a sampling of tacos, and besides the fairly hefty portion of cilantro that I picked off (I am one of those people) the brisket and pork taco were very good, although the pork was not in a banana leaf, as the menu made it seem, just a taco. I think because of the weekend and storm we were able to find a table. Service is very friendly.

It's been at least a year, but we had brunch at FoodE and enjoyed it. We also enjoyed burgers at Vivify. Sadly the little whole in the wall Italian restaurant we really liked closed.

Back in Chestertown for the weekend- I had dinner at the Chester River Yacht and Country Club- it was Mexican night, the chicken enchiladas were edible and not terrible, but they weren't really chicken enchiladas in the real sense either. That night we drove to Rock Hall to see the 3rd of July fireworks show there- that is a pretty big show- 20 minutes of fireworks. We watched them from the back bar of Waterman's. The next day we had jalapeno poppers and burgers at Rolph's Wharf at the Sandbar while a storm passed through. This is a fun place to stop on your boat as you can pull up on the beach and they have a bar and grill right there. The burger wasn't special, but it was a decent burger you could get on your boat with a full bar. The jalapeno poppers I am sure were likely out of a frozen bag, but again for boat/bar food it was definitely not bad. That night we went to the Fishwhistle in Georgetown. This was probably the best meal I have had near Chestertown- although there are a few places (Cafe Soto, Loiuse's) that people have mentioned that I haven't been too. I had the cioppino and it was delicious. A friend had the cuban and it looked good, I had part of it cold the next day and thought it was tasty. My Mom wasn't crazy about the crab cobb, she thought some of the crab was a little mealy. July 5th we had neighbors over and had shrimp from J&Js that were delicious and huge, and crabs from the Chester River Seafood Company, which were also huge and delicious.

Stopped in today to get some lunch in the cafe and watch the end of the Women's World Cup Final. I was watching YouTube earlier and was craving a spicy noodle bowl, so I got the spicy beef ramen. The broth was a miso ramen with some added spice, not super spicy, but a nice you can eat this and go one with your day without worry heat level. I was also excited that they had Vasen, raspberry lime otter, one of their sour beers on tap. Hopping they get the cans of this in. The egg was definitely not soft boiled, but was fine. The noodles were fine, nice veg, and thin sliced beef. It hit the spot and I will be back to try other items. It just has a nice selection of things that make it just slightly more interesting than some other nearby places. Hubby had beef bulgogi and a seaweed salad and was quite happy with it. Don- you may want to have this in both the restaurants and shopping and cooking forum- it's a nice little small grocery, but also has a restaurant and bar in it.

I'm interested, but might not be able to make the date, I could do Aug 31, and then the dates in late October, but not the 13th, but don't plan around me!

I am going to throw in some suggestions- Second Magnolia. What about Bastille? It might not be in the part of Old Town you wanted. Hummingbird has a nice view and is solid foodwise, not exciting, but solid. Hank's Pasta Bar is fine, it's pretty easy to find parking in North Old Town so that is a plus. I think the Regular Hank's is better, but mostly seafood. Virtue has a nice varied menu, I find it very stable in consistency with good options. I really like their salads. I haven't been to Urbano 116, but really want to try it out. Might be worth a gander. I like many items at Sunday in Saigon, it's not as good as some places in the Eden Center, or some other Vietnamese favorites of mine, but you can get some decent items. Skipping Japanese and seafood suggestions. If you don't want pricey, I will leave off La Fromagerie, Brabo, Landini Brothers, The Warehouse.

Last night was a tossed salad with veggies from the garden with a faux blue cheese dressing (boursin instead of blue cheese because Hubby doesn't like blue cheese). I also made some buffalo and sichuan roasted cauliflower bites. The sichuan was a combo of grandma's chili oil, hoisin and soy sauce, that I made when I ran out of buffalo sauce halfway through the sheet pan.

I agree, I just hate trying to get to this location and/or find parking around La Fromagerie at anytime around rush hour, or on weekend nights, although I go with a friend who lives nearby and park at her place. I can walk (previously to Ballston, now to Del Ray) to Cheesetique, which gives it an important leg up for me.

So my kale was attacked by cabbage worms. I fought a fierce battle with some organic caterpillar killer, and picking off caterpillars and sending them to a soap-water grave. The kale is now coming back, it was in a bad state- they attacked while it was really rainy, so I didn't see it until it was pretty bad. Our neighborhood just really doesn't have a huge amount of birds, I have noticed all the roses and bushes out front on the HOA property are pretty ravaged, I suspect by beetles. The lettuce has pretty much stopped producing due to the heat, it had an aphid attach that I quickly quelled with some neem and it rebounded, trying to decide if I want to plant something else in there, like some annuals just for looks the rest of the summer. The mint must have been attacked by a fungus, people said different things on websites about whether it would rebound. It was a pretty health plant, some leaves took a beating, but then it bounced back and now seems to be fine, other than the last couple days of rain mean it needs some cutting back. My thai basil really never has not grown much at all, I am not sure why it just seems to be content staying it's same size, not very happy about it's growth. On the balcony, the tomatillos are forming baby tomatillos, the tomatoes have fruit, but not ripe yet, one plant isn't quite as robust as it had a flooding incident that waterlogged it, bouncing back though and now has some fruit on it. I am thinking any day the cherry tomatoes will start to get some color. I have baby squash that I am just waiting until they get to a decent size to pick. My bell peppers are robust, I have already harvested 3, and they are weighing down my plants, I have had to steak them up. Beans are growing. The balcony is just amazing because there really is no threat of anything eating my produce, so it's been great.

Yeah, I really don't see a need for the curtains, the Ballston space was much more airy, but I agree the retail space wasn't separated well enough. I love the menu though- it all tastes good to me, and it's great for a casual meal, and really easy to take someone who is low carbing and get a nice cheese plate (in which I hog all the bread). I just had lunch at the Alexandria location a few months ago Cubano sandwich was good.

This morning I used some fruit I juiced and blueberries from the fridge, blended with some kale, ginger, lemongrass and lemon juice and a little ice to make myself a smoothie. It is a decidedly ugly brown color, but tastes good.

Happy hour from 3-7pm, $2 off rail drinks, $5 mules, $5 house wine. Thursday has a raw bar happy hour all night. My friend got oysters that just weren't super plump and had very little liquid in them, I think they just weren't shucked super well. I had peel and eat shrimp that were good. Mule was good, not too sweet.

http://www.falafelinc.org/ We took a group of college kids to the new Spy Museum via the Alexandria water-taxi to the Wharf. After the spy museum we walked down to the Wharf for dinner. We had a vegetarian in our group, and all the group agreed that Falafel Inc sounded good. It is fast casual, with a little machine that pops out falafels to order. The drink options seemed a little limited. You could get a sandwich (in a pita), or a bowl (salad), with add-ons like hummus, zataar fries, tabouli, etc. I think there was a small confusion on what a bowl and sandwich were for the group when we first walked in. It seems like they could just say pita or salad. There are no tables inside, but outside there were high tops and tables you could stand/sit at to eat. They have sauces you can add after you get your sandwich- those have names, but the names don't really correspond to what it is- I would prefer if they just said like cilantro sauce, mild spicy, spicy, etc. I figured the bright orange was a hot sauce of sorts and got that, I was right and I quite liked it. Anyway, the naming could be better, but the sandwich really was pretty decent with the sauce. Fries were good, not quite as good as those from Lebanese Taverna Market, enough for at least two to share. I can't remember if the sauce descriptions were on the hanging menu, they were likely on the printed one, if there was a sign right above the sauces that would help. But also having one that says it can't be described is a bit trite. Anyway, good for a not too expensive grab and go at the Wharf with a vegetarian.

Last night was a riff on a steak and cheese sandwich, the night before was pasta with a spicy red marinara sauce that I had made for a dip and then froze the rest of, it had chopped olive, as well, to which I added some chopped leeks and roast beef that I sauteed in olive oil, turned out better than expected.

I've only been to 5! So I guess I have some new places to try out.

Last night was more veggie curry, rice and flatbread. Need to get some energy and bounce back for some cooking tonight.