astrid

Another vote for Vermillion. Excellent "modern American" food without too many fancy flourishes. Good service and very nice atmosphere.

Maybe Spike should buy into the Corporate Bar and Grill and solve the "executive burger" crisis in Silver Spring.

Bryan V has the chops. Although I find his cooking a bit lacking in personality, his kitchen executes everything perfectly. I recently sat through Table 21 in his kitchen, and that kitchen is obsessed about getting every detail right. He also doesn't strike me as a natural self promoter at all. He seems like a quiet, very intense guy who is really serious about cooking. If anything, I find that VOLT tends to take things too seriously and takes away some of the joy of having a meal there.

I suspect he went on Top Chef because he had a new, out-of-way restaurant to promote and his brother wanted to go.

I have only tried a few Ethiopian places and not Meaza, but I will second Catherine's recommendation. I've eaten at Enat 4-5 times and tried most of the menu. Everything they offer is good to very good. The service and clientele are also nice. You always see a few Ethiopian families eating here, which is surely a good sign.

Let's just blame the ignorant, Yelp-loving public for buying what Isabella & Co. are selling.

I planted peas, fava beans, sweet peas, beets and some Costco summer flower bulbs last weekend. Started some tomatoes, peppers, onion and shallots as well. I started some lettuce, kale, and escarole a few weeks ago and should be planting some lettuce and carrot seeds next week.

Hoping for a nice long soaking rain.

I was thinking of that as well. Maybe 8407’s lunch offerings were just too value priced to qualify as “executive burger”. Silver Spring doesn’t support much fine dining lunch options – 8407 tends to be relatively empty for lunches, Jackie’s and RtC doesn’t even bother to open for lunch.

Black Salt sells live sea urchin and will clean it for free.

I think Sanguinellos were what I saw at the Foggy Bottom WF today, next to the Blood Oranges, which are $1.00 per orange until Sunday.

Thanks for the tip! Must stop by Foggy Bottom on my way home.

I actually prefer Moro for their slightly bitter edge. For me, the taroccos are similar to "normal" tangerines and not quite as good as good honeybell tangerines.

Speaking of blood orange varieties, anyone ever seen Sanguinellos for sale?

My wish list would be some of the gorgeous multicolored corn, cantaloupe, and winter squash varieties that I see from Baker’s Creek and Southern Exposure. I understand that they’re probably tricky to grow and keep in sellable condition, but this is wishful thinking, right?

Ditto garlic – everyone sells Music (I’m sure that yields and keeps great) – how about some Spanish Roja, Chesnok Red, or Burgundy into the mix? Ditto Jerusalem Artichokes – everyone sells Stampede – are the other varieties that much lower yielding or harder to sell? Also – native persimmons, hickory, chestnuts, fresh ume. Yes, I know it can take 10+ years for some of these to start yielding commercially…

For something slightly more practical - have you considered growing hardy bananas or lotus for their leaves? That could be a nice specialty item during the summer/fall grilling season.

Blood oranges are back!

Amazon often offer better electronics deals, but the Costco no-question asked return policy is just fantastic. I believe it's 3 months for electronics and 1 year for everything else.

They do sell some organic meat and produces, though from mega-organizations that are probably not much better than the typical factory farm. I have gotten some good premium meats and grocery items from their Costco.com site. They always come well packed and very quickly, with easy returns to Costco if necessary.

I should mention that they now have a second location outside of Frederick, at

Black Hog BBQ & Bar

Phone: 240-699-0070

Address: Urbana Village Center. Ijamsville, MD

I was there a few months ago and they had a table near the entrance with a wide variety of sauces to choose from.

I really enjoyed the whole hot pot concept - it was a fun meal, with the option to keep it relatively healthy. With the Mala broth as our base, we tried the wine marinated beef, flounder, broccoli, sprouts, enoki mushrooms, and a few other items I've forgotten. The zhong dumplings were very good. The space has nice feel to it, not too crowded or noisy. Come to think of it, it's about time for another visit.

Good to know, especially since I have a $25 Mala Tang voucher that I need to use up. Thanks!

Yup, looks to be the same. Well, good to know if I'm stuck in Hagerstown for some reason. Somehoe I doubt Chubby's serves hot sauce and margarine fried wings, however.

Thanks Scottee! That's exactly the information that I was looking for. A friend of mine said something similar, though she mentioned that she also supplements with some farmer's market items for more variety. She also said that the flower shares were gorgeous last year.

I'll keep my fingers crossed that they have an opening for the pick up location near my new home!

And of course, the opposite is true - from Chubby's, it isn't that far to Frederick. I wonder if the Chubby's owner has considered a downtown Frederick outpost? Maybe just highlights from the menu, a takeout/counter service place? Frederick is downright bustling.

The point I'm making is that there are 1000 reasons to go to Frederick and maybe also stop for some BBQ. There isn't much reason to head Chubby's way, except of course Chubby's. So while Chubby's isn't that far away, if the goal is to spend the day shopping for antiques, going to a baseball game or doing other things in Frederick, Chubby's doesn't really fit in. Black Hog, OTOH, is right there.

Side note - If I owned the place, maybe I'd evolve my name to BH's BBQ or something like that. That, or keep asking for a Panda sandwich to go at Panda Express.

I'm not familiar with Chubby's. Is it the one that Google maps tells me to be 25 miles from Black Hog?

It's nice enough. Friendly service, nice atmosphere, and freshly prepared food. The food is tasty enough and it's definitely one of the better places in the area. Though I might be biased because they serve fried margarine-and-hot sauce wings, which can be difficult to find nowadays.

I went once and overall enjoyed my experience here. Good front of house staff, fresh ingredients and good portions. But they had way too few dipping sauce options. Bob's Shabu Shabu had a big dipping sauce bar with tons of options. Mala Tang had very few sauces and they were brought to the table in small portions, so I ran out of sauce half way through and it took a while to flag our waitress down for more.

I tried and failed with cucumber for the past two years, beetle borne wilt completely destroys them before they yield the first proper crop. However, they were grown in an established community garden colonized by every sort of disease and insect. I had good luck in the past growing them in a home garden where the disease and insect pressure was less intense.

I'm not aware of special Korean cucumber varieties, but you might try http://www.evergreenseeds.com or http://rareseeds.com/vegetablesa-c/cucumber.html or http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/

Anyone here subscribe to Potomac Vegetable Farms' CSA? I've heard good things about these folks overall and my upcoming move will get me close to a pickup points. I'm debating between the regular and the "robust" shares. The description of the robust share make it sound like too much food for two non-vegetarian adults, but I'm always tempted by these spend 30% more to get twice as much food deals and the regular share doesn't look very big.

recent visits anyone?

Went for RW lunch and added a couple extras. Most of the food was competently executed (with the exception of a sawdust texture sous vide chicken breast entree) and the bread service is quite nice. Pretty high price point but still compares favorably to our Bistro Bis experience during the same week.