Xochitl10

The night Azami and I got home after my father died, we discovered that a squirrel had gotten in through the chimney and, unable to either escape or get water, died. On my side of the bed. I don't remember whether I had a drink, but I should have.

Snider's used to have six-packs of Hook and Ladder. I haven't been looking for it specifically, but I don't recall seeing it recently.

GC charges $2.75 ($3.03 with tax); B&W charges $3.50 (~3.80 with tax). You do get quite a bit more cupcake for that $0.73.

According to Shizuo Tsuji's "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art", the order for a formal banquet is: Appetizer (zensai; literally "front plate"), clear soup (suimono), sashimi, grilled food (yakimono), steamed food (mushimono), simmered food (nimono), fried food (agemono)*, vinegared or dressed salad (sunomono or aemono, respectively); then together at the end, rice (gohan), miso soup, and pickles; followed by green tea and fresh fruit. At Japanese-style inns (ryokan), you often get a kaiseki meal. In our experience (limited to the Tohoku/northeastern region), most of the dishes are waiting for you when you arrive in the dining room, and only the yakimono is brought out after you're seated so that you can have it hot and fresh. *Tsuji says the yakimono, mushimono, nimono, and agemono can be replaced by a one-pot dish (nabemono). I recall getting a kiritampo nabe (specialty of Akita Prefecture, simmered dish of chicken, various vegetables, and kiritampo, a grilled pounded rice cake-like thing) at one ryokan, as well as a couple of the other dishes that could theoretically be replaced by the nabemono. One of them was a perfect chawanmushi (egg custard).

I just started a new job in Georgetown and am in the process of scoping out lunch places. One of my colleagues recommended Cafe Tu-o-Tu Express near the Key Bridge, so I checked it out. It and its sibling, Cafe Tu-o-Tu on the other end of Georgetown, offer delicious sandwiches and some interesting salads (boconccini, strawberry/spinach/goat cheese, Nicoise). I had a panini combo (half panini and one of the daily salads, $8.25) with the chicken caprese melt and the mango salad. The panini was nice and crusty, although I would have liked more and better tomatoes, but I really enjoyed the salad -- baby arugula topped with a generous amount of fresh and dried sliced mango, dried cranberries, shaved Parmesan, and a small disk of goat cheese, served with a side of balsamic vinaigrette. I was definitely pleased with what I got for my eight bucks, and will likely visit again. Website: http://www.cafetuotu.com/

I met a friend here for lunch yesterday, the second outing in my "Woo-hoo! I work in civilization and have actual lunch options!" exploration of Georgetown.* I had a cafe latte and a croque monsieur, both of which were quite delightful. The croque monsieur ($12) was the perfect thing for a chilly, rainy afternoon -- crisply toasted and warm -- and came with a ring of grainy mustard around the plate and a small frisee salad with a few cornichons. I feel a potential addiction coming on. My friend had the beet salad (also $12) and freshly squeezed lemonade with mint, both of which she enjoyed. Service, at least after our initial arrival, was mostly absent. * Sorry, Federal Center. I do not miss your dearth of good non-chain options.

I have now, and I respectfully dissent. I had B&W's strawberry and the chocolate satin (vanilla cake with chocolate icing) earlier this week. They were both good, and I would never turn one down, but I still prefer Georgetown. For one thing, Georgetown's are smaller, which I appreciate. For another, Georgetown's whipped Callebaut icing is far and away my favorite chocolate icing -- it's a big part of what makes their Chocolate Squared the perfect cupcake, in my book. So, I'll be hitting B&W for my lemon bar fix and Georgetown Cupcake for my cupcake fix.

Chicken quesadilla on homemade flour tortillas with co-jack and not nearly enough Mrs. Renfro's jalapeno salsa.

I treated myself to a lemonade and a raspberry-lemon crunch bar after a job interview the other day. The lemonade was delicious -- not too sweet, not too tart, and garnished with a sprig of mint and a lemon slice. I would have liked more and crisper crumble on top of the lemon bar, but the flavor and the crust were everything I want in a lemon bar -- lemony, not-too-sweet curd and buttery crust. My new office is about equidistant from here and Georgetown Cupcake, but I suspect I'll visit here more often when I want a little treat, unless it's one of those occasions when nothing but a cupcake will do (I'm a total Georgetown Cupcake girl).

^ Monavano, those look delicious. Azami made tortilla dough yesterday, so we had breakfast burritos this morning. He had Peyton's chorizo (a guilty homeland pleasure) in his, I just had salsa, cheese, and eggs in mine.

If I recall correctly, it was three or four slices, probably about 2 or 2-1/2" each. The unadon was in one of the larger sections of the bento box, and the amount of eel did not strike me as skimpy.

Had lunch at Momoyama (231 2nd Street NW) yesterday. I was very pleased with my "Eel Box" ($10.95) bento: a bento-sized unadon (grilled eel over unvinegared rice), six pieces of eel roll, seaweed salad, three pieces of tempura, and green salad with sesame dressing. The eel was tasty, if a little oversauced for my liking on both the donburi and the roll. But everything tasted fresh, and the tempura was well cooked and not greasy. Very good, especially for an eleven-dollar bento. And I like saying "eel box."

Hahahaha. In Nahuatl, the "x" is pronounced like an English "sh" and the "tl" is like an aspirated "l". So it's more like "Sochil" than "Hot Shit." And it was Dante Bichette in the early years of the Colorado Rockies franchise.

My fantastic in-laws were visiting recently, which allowed us to have a couple of dinner parties to introduce them to great local friends. Dinner Party 1: Roasted red and yellow peppers, feta, marcona almonds, drizzle of olive oil, s&p Tanqueray Aviations Beef, cherry tomato, zucchini, and red onion kabobs, using the soy sauce/mustard/oil marinade from the White Dog Cafe cookbook (which is one of, like, two recipes out of that cookbook that I've liked) Couscous Atwater baguette Nectarine-raspberry crumble with vanilla ice cream Cheeses: Manchego, Valdeon, and something I can't remember Dinner Party 2: Martini Thyme: Tanqueray and Chartreuse, garnished with thyme sprigs Antipasti: Castelvetrano and Kalamata olives, cornichons, marinated mushrooms Manchego, Valdeon, and two other cheeses I can't remember Chorizo and oregano-marinated chicken on the grill Sauteed kale White beans with garlic and rosemary Atwater baguette Vanilla ice cream with homemade strawberry sauce

A kind of leftovers salad: chopped roast pork and kale tossed with orzo, all from last night, plus a bit of feta

I'm half-Mexican and I like cocktails. One of the stories about how the term "cocktail" came to be claims that the word is derived from the name of an Aztec princess, Xochitl, who served drinks to soldiers. 10 was the number of my favorite baseball player when I was in college.

Mixed olives Cocktail TBD Grilled bone-in Garden Path pork loin roast with rosemary and garlic Orzo Sauteed Tuscan kale Atwater's rosemary Italian bread Buttermilk ice cream with strawberry sauce, both homemade

Multitasking: bringing a pork loin roast up to room temperature to go on the grill while trying to coax my dog to eat.

It was a great post. Azami and I would've gotten about two points of negotiation in before one of us gave up and left the other to his/her own devices.

Sounds like a traditional izakaya to me. Izakaya literally means "drinking place," so the drinks should be the focus. Because the emphasis is on drinking, the small plates are also usual -- not cliched at all.

Tanqueray Ten and tonic Grilled Argentinian chorizo Rice steamed with cumin and oregano Black beans Baguette warmed on the grill

I have mixed feelings about the Hen House off 68 in Frostburg. It's on Route 40 between exits 28 and 29. The food was plentiful and mostly delicious -- Azami called his "foot-long" (it totally was, too) fried haddock sandwich the best fish sandwich he'd ever eaten. The bite of fish I got was moist, flavorful, and flaky, and my bbq chicken thigh/leg was also moist and flavorful (but not flaky, thank goodness). Chicken soup was perfectly chickeny and had homemade noodles, salad was underwhelming (slices of iceberg core, really?), and my sweet potato fries were tasty, but not cooked all the way through. Caveat: The Hen House's menu claims they use "fresh, privately sourced chicken." I know nothing about the farms out there, but there's certainly a lot of farmland visible from that stretch of 68, so I asked where they got their chicken from. Our waitress was like "What? We don't have, like, a farm or anything. We get our stuff from Sysco." Which is pretty much not the right answer (factually correct or not) if your menu declares otherwise.

Organic cannellini beans, steamed organic kale, and Niman Ranch chorizo

I ended up taking an unscheduled, unplanned business trip to Chicago on Tuesday, which left me with no time to plan dining, except for the L ride into downtown from O'Hare. After a slushy slog from the Clark/Lake stop to the Hyatt Regency at 8:00 pm (I'm cheap on my transportation), I wasn't feeling up to another trip out in the snow. Dinner was a bowl of matzo ball soup and a Templeton Rye Manhattan in the Skyway Lounge at the Hyatt. I can't speak knowledgeably to the quality of the matzo ball, having never had one before, but it and the rest of the soup were delicious -- deeply chickeny, with a good serving of noodles. The Manhattan was delicious, if a little drier than I prefer. At $18 (at least $4 more than any of their specialty drinks, and twice as much as my soup), it was also more expensive than I prefer. Given the impending illness I'd felt since leaving DC, I figured the soup and Manhattan would fortify my system for the rest of the trip. Breakfast was a cappuccino and an Oatmeal Latte from Cafe Descartes on Michigan Avenue. The cappuccino tasted a bit burnt and was not at all milky-- underwhelming. The Oatmeal Latte was an interesting concoction -- cooked oatmeal, walnuts, almonds, cinnamon, dried cranberries, and raisins in a cup with a cafe latte poured over. It was a good, fortifying breakfast for a difficult day. Lunch was out of convenience rather than recommendation -- half an uninspiring Margherita pizza from Sopraffina in the pedway of Two Illinois Center. I had to go straight from my meeting back to O'Hare, so dinner was a cochinita pibil torta and a Deal-Breaker Margarita from the Tortas Frontera in the B gates of Terminal 1. Excellent torta -- juicy, flavorful pork and perfectly grilled bread -- and a legitimately good Margarita made X a happy traveler.

When we were living in Japan, a friend introduced us to cubes of cream cheese dipped in soy sauce and wasabi. And I did love the plum-flavored potato chips.