Pick Pita
I'm totally addicted to
Stacy's Pita Chips. I'm not that into pita generally, but these chips are so crunchy and flavorful, i really eat the whole bag in one sitting! The Texarkana Hot are actually very hot; after eating a handful you realize some guacamole would be nice to cool your mouth down. The Parmesan Garlic & Herb is very tasty, as is the Pesto & Sundried Tomato flavor. I even really like the Simply Naked chips, which are flavored with just sea salt. The only one i haven't tried is the Cinnamon Sugar - apparently they're excellent for dipping/scooping fruit and chocolate. Mmm, crunchy.
If you too mourned the closing of both Veg City Diners, shed no more tears - the owners opened
Curly's Vegetarian Lunch this past May. I haven't been yet, but if it's anything like Veg City Diner, it will serve tons of fake meat, sandwiches, cakes and desserts. I used to love their vegan old skool milkshakes. They were so good you couldn't tell it was soy milk and vegan ice cream!
I know i haven't mentioned the
box in months. Maybe i'm trying to hide the fact we've been failing miserably at our produce reduction. Tonight be threw out the fuzz-covered green beans and the green cauliflower. The cantaloupe on the counter, as the peaches, plums and one grapefruit, is now a mold factory. This humidity is insane, but i swear we have a grosser-than-typical kitchen. Things rot here like they're being paid to. Hard fruit morphs overnight into mushy blobs with mold spots. Our fridge drips water inside and no matter what we do, everything ends up sopping wet and spoiled. If you have a mold-free place, know that i envy you!
Gem Spa Days
When i worked in the East Village in the late '90s, i'd go to Gem Spa on the SW corner of St. Mark's Place and 2nd Ave every day. There i picked up my drinks, smokes and candy, usually on a break from work. I'm not a magazine person but they certainly do stock numerous titles. Many years later, i walked in and two of the people behind the counter went, "Where have you been?!" - i guess i was that good of a customer! I was thinking about Gem Spa because i want to try an
egg cream again. Dude and i tried them when we first moved to New York and both thought they were okay. I want to give it another chance because i have a feeling i'm going to like it; i'm into seltzer and soda these days. For those who don't know, an egg cream is a classic New York drink made with chocolate syrup, cold milk and seltzer. Gem Spa makes it the best -
it's all in the way you stir it.
In case you wanted to try
The Flying Biscuit Cafe's fried green tomatoes recipe,
here it is on FoodTV.
And lastly,
Method is a new company making environmentally friendly cleaning supplies. So far i like the cucumber bathroom cleaner and the grapefruit all-purpose cleaner. It's better than having a house smelling of ammonia and bleach!
Best Eats
In the Yau Ma Tei neighborhood of Kowloon, Hong Kong, there lives a vegetarian Cantonese restaurant so excellent even my mom loves it! We must have eaten there 3 or 4 times over our 5 day stay in 2002. The
Mui Gute Cheung Vegetarian Restaurant is at 31 Ning Po Street, near the big hotels on Nathan Road. The owner is super nice but the decor is pretty sparse. However, as it's the food that matters, i'd have to say Mui Gute Cheung is the best restaurant i've ever eaten at. It's pure Cantonese cuisine with fake meats & fake seafood in some dishes. It's not your typical banquet fancy stuff, but everyday dishes cooked perfectly.
Our first night in Hong Kong was spent wandering around looking for place to eat which would satisfy both my meat-loving parents and the vegetarians (me, my sister and be (but he also eats seafood)). My parents reluctantly agreed to MGC since it was getting late and we were all starving from the plane ride. We ordered 5 simple homestyle dishes and every one of them was amazing - so good that even my father didn't miss the meat. We had a casserole type braised dish that i still think about to this day! MGC has an English menu that the owner always remembered to give us when we didn't arrive with my parents. And to top it all off, the prices were very affordable!
Combine MGC with overflowing street markets and yu ja guei* - that is some ultimate face-stuffing!
*"Yu ja guei" translates to "oil fried devil" but some people refer to it as a "Chinese donut," which is an understatement. Yu ja guei are about a foot long, super fried and utterly delicious. Usually they're eaten dipped in jook (rice porridge), hunched over the bowl with a spoon in one hand and a devil in another. Check out this drool-inducing
picture of deep friedness.
Favorites
As be and i ate quesadillas at
The Enchilada near Union Square, we discussed our favorite cuisines of all time. I like lists, here's mine:
Chinese, Indian, Southern
and be's:
Japanese, Italian, Chinese
Obviously i love Chinese food -
real Chinese food - since that's what i grew up eating. Not that weird stuff at your local corner place, weirder stuff like fermented tofu, black beans and preserved eggs. Filling stuff like rice porridge, sticky rice steamed in lotus leaves and winter melon soup. And tasty morsels like dim sum, sweets and all that crazy fried stuff. You just can't deny your body what it grew up on.
Next i love Indian food. I first had it back in high school at a now-defunct 2nd floor vegetarian restaurant called Madurai in Georgetown, DC. That is where i had first tried samosas, paneer, pickled mango and biryani rice and i've been hooked ever since. I love the various flavors of cumin, cilantro, cardamom, chiles and many other C spices (plus others!). Textures range from soupy to crisp but everything's flavored so well.
I just recently realized how much i truly love Southern/Soul food, too. The vegetarian main dish options aren't numerous, but the sides are just incredible. I love crusty cornbread, greens, flaky biscuits, fried okra, mac n cheese, sweet potato pie and buttery grits. Of all the different regional U.S. cuisines, i think Southern is the most developed and steeped in food lore, just like us Chinese people where food has deep meaning.
Indian and Chinese cuisines have both been affected by a long history of vegetarianism, so vegetarian dishes abound and you really never miss the meat. I'm lucky here in New York; i can think of 10 meatless Indian and Chinese restaurants alone! As for Southern, some places here make the sides vegetarian like
Mama's in the East Village, but generally the main stars are meat dishes. Some people think i love Southern food because i'm from Virginia (the South) but 1) my family never ate out, 2) my mom cooked Chinese food mixed with mainstream American fare like hot dogs and 3) Northern VA doesn't quite seem like "the South" when i visit places like Georgia and North Carolina!
Interesting note: all 3 cuisines liberally use chiles, hot sauces, and hot oils! Can i just also reiterate my love for
Tabasco sauce? We always had a bottle of it growing up, which i'd use on my mom's egg rolls at the tender age of 9. I'd take a bite of egg roll, sprinkle on Tabasco, take another bite and repeat. I go through phases of using it, sometimes abandoning if for other, hotter brands but my heart always belongs to Tabasco.
Fruit n Cheese but no Beef
During our green tomato search at the Farmers' Market on Saturday, we picked up a little basket of sugar plums because neither of us had eaten them before. It's summer fruits season and plums are totally sweet and juicy now. One of the vendors was selling all sorts of medium and tiny plums in colors ranging from bright creamy yellow to almost-pitch black. The sugar plums essentially looked like big red-purple cherries about 1" to 1 1/2" across. Inside, they were a clear orange-red with a seed the size of regular plums. Each one was about 2 bites and very sweet!
We also bought a bag of purple and white striped baby eggplant for $2.10. I actually didn't like eggplant until very recently. As a kid, my mom would pan-fry Italian eggplant slices filled with ground beef and force us to eat it*. It was the grossest, yuckiest thing: soggy floppy oily eggplant slices and tough ground beef in the middle. I hated eggplant from then until be broiled some slices marinated in olive oil and basalmic vinegar a few summers back. Then i saw the light. We both love white eggplant, which has a firmer texture and sweeter, less bitter taste than the big royal purple Italian eggplant. The thinner, light purple Chinese eggplant is less mushy and has a good skin, less tough than the white. I'm not sure how the purple and white will turn out but they sure look attractive. And who doesn't love baby produce?
More grapefruit soda challenge:
IZZE, made with real fruit juices and no added sugar, makes an absolutely delicious and fragrant version. be and i tried it in the little cans after his IZZE pear soda, which really captured the essence of "pear" in a bottle, just like how Jelly Belly's pear jellybean is so pear-like, you can feel the grit and texture of the real thing. I've had so many grapefruit sodas over the past few weeks i think i need a once-and-for-all taste test. Is anyone down to check out the Ting, GuS, Jarritos and IZZE grapefruit sodas with me? I love the smell of grapefruit and the bittersweet taste has really grown on me over the years.
Lastly, be and i hosted a small fondue dinner tonight with two kinds of fondue (traditional Swiss and "Pub" style with cheddar), baby greens salad with homemade croutons and fruit for dessert. Alongside the fondues, we served Parisi Italian bread, rye bread, sauteed button mushrooms, fake cocktail sausages, red potatoes, Granny Smith apples and cornichons. Our friends brought yummy things like ice cream, mini cheesecakes and Persecco. Aside from technical difficulties with one sterno contraption, it went well and was a fun Sunday night!
*I also hated, and still hate bell peppers to this day. My mom would hollow out a green bell pepper, fill it with ground beef, bake it and make us eat it. I remember the strong taste of the bell pepper which permeated everything, the tough ground beef and how it all fell apart when you tried to get into it. I guess i just always hated ground beef-filled things. Otherwise, my mom is a great cook. Just not her beef-filled items.
Flying & Frying
When we had brunch in Philly with K & A, the subject of fried green tomatoes* at
The Flying Biscuit Cafe in Atlanta was a hot topic. We all agreed their version of fried green tomatoes was excellent, amazing, crazy good and totally chub. I had never eaten fried green tomatoes until our trip to Atlanta last year - and i haven't forgotten them since! The Flying Biscuit, known for their 4" high flaky biscuits, serves up fried green tomatoes with a cashew chutney, hot and sweet at the same time.
Today be and i decided we needed to eat fried green tomatoes. Using the Biscuit's recipe published in Rachel Ray's
$40 a Day (
Lake Isle Press) (Thanks P!), we hurried to the Farmers' Market in Union Square during our errands and picked up 4 hardass green tomatoes. Only one vender had green tomatoes at all, but many had corn, fresh herbs and ripe tomatoes. Today's mission was solely for green tomatoes; good thing they had em, or we'd be banging our heads in sadness.
I followed the recipe to a T - even getting celery salt, onion powder and grinding 1 whole T of black pepper. I made the chutney first, which contained: cashews, cilantro, jalepeno, honey and white vinegar. I know this mixture sounds strange but it was absolutely delicious. We don't have a food processor so i chopped and mashed everything together by hand.
Next you prep the green tomatoes, lightly flour them, dunk them in egg & milk, dredge them in a seasoned flour+cornmeal mixture and fry until golden crisp. (Of course you must use a big cast iron skillet or else it wouldn't be right.) Our 4 tomatoes made about 16 slices, which was plenty for dinner for 2. It was really enough for 4 people though!
They tasted great! The sweet and spicy chutney is so flavorful and rich. I don't even like cashews but this chutney kicks ass. The tomatoes had a crisp, cornmealy crust that contrasted well with the softer, slightly acidic green tomato inside. Our batch was almost just like the Biscuit's version (the recipe is on point) but i do recall their tomato slices being thinner than the suggested 1/2". I also just realized i forgot to add the crumbled feta on top! But it was already so tasty i didn't notice anything was missing. Note that although the recipe calls for 4 medium green tomatoes, the recipe makes enough chutney, egg & milk and flour mixtures to be enough for 8 tomatoes. I guess "medium" is subjective, but i sure ended up with a ton of leftover crust materials.
Too bad we didn't have some real sweet tea!
*Fried green tomatoes "...really started getting to be a popular dish during the Depression. People would fry up most anything and pretend it was meat or fish, and actually, as it turned out, a pitcher of sweet iced tea and a plate of fried green tomatoes turned out to be a delightfully tasty and light summer supper..." (Fannie Flagg,
Original Whistle Stop Cafe Cookbook (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 74.)
Refreshments
When is this humidity wave going to end? Today i noticed at work that some envelopes started curling because of the humidity. That's how icky it is in New York.
In order to beat the heat, i tried a bottle of Lori's Lemon Tea from
Honest Tea. It was really good! I love iced tea but i generally abhor the bottled stuff - i can't get past the artificial lemon and super sweetness. But the lemon tea was "just a tad sweet," as they like to say, and brewed just right. I also got a bottle of their Green Dragon Tea, which is iced green tea with lemon and passion fruit. That one was okay. I just like black tea better.
Although i love sugar, i find that i prefer barely sweet drinks. They just don't seem refreshing when they're coating your throat in sugar. Take
Fanta for example: their sodas are so crazy sweet my fillings start hurting upon first sip, plus those commercials make me feel like i have demons in my brain.
GuS makes a whole line of "grown up sodas" which are less sweet. I like their Extra Dry Ginger Ale but i thought the Star Ruby Grapefruit flavor wasn't sweet enough. I'm for
Jarritos grapefruit all the way. That was a perfect balance of grapefruit aroma, sweetness and refreshment.
However, nothing beats the ginger lemonade at
Madras Cafe. be, P, A$, Ish and i had a late dinner there tonight so three of us thoroughly enjoyed drinking it. be even called ahead to make sure they had enough ginger syrup to make it! Ish asked for an extra hot sauce to compliment our meals and the one they brought us was awesome! It was similar in flavor to the Thai garlic chile vinegar that P made, except at Madras it was thicker and creamier. And much hotter than its pale orange color suggested! Totally yums. I love Madras. It's on my Top 5 All Star list.
Meanwhile, be broke into his 100 count Tropical
Fla-vor-ice box. I don't recall all the flavors but i know there's mango and banana. I expect this box to last him about 1.25 weeks.
Impromptu
O, be and i were supposed to eat at
Benny's Burritos* in the East Village tonight. That didn't work out so we decided to try a Salvadorean restaurant we used to frequent in Brooklyn back in the day. We rang up
Ish who was in the area. Upon seating, we realized it had turned into an expensive Dominican restaurant (also serving $15.00 pasta dishes!) so we walked around and ended up a few blocks away at
Calexico. It's a small Mexican-Californian restaurant on 5th Ave near Prospect Street in Park Slope. It's obviously one of the older places on 5th Ave, which now stands next to gourmet establishments and yoga centers.
be and i both ordered the $5.00 cheese flautas (sort of like a rolled up taco), which came with a generous serving of guacamole, sour cream and pinto beans. When our food arrived we were really surprised that a mere $5.00 got us 5 big flautas! They were quite good and very filling. O got the chimichangas and seemed to like them. All of us got
Jarritos drinks and i thoroughly enjoyed my grapefruit one. It looked like it was just imported from Mexico as the nutritional value info was on a slapped-on sticker and the bottle was different than the others. I love grapefruit things in general but the Jarritos soda was a great find. It wasn't too sweet, very crisp and had a nice grapefruit aroma. I liked it more than
Ting and
GuS.
After dropping off O and picking up A$, the four of us shared chocolate fondue at
The Chocolate Room. We requested extra dip materials which cost $2.00 more. We received 4 homemade marshmallows, a bunch of banana slices and good strawberries, some pineapple chunks and pound cake cubes. It was more than enough to satisfy our dessert cravings. The wine recommendation was sweet and light - a good match for the dark chocolate. be's pear soda was delicious but my single espresso (no more doubles for me!) was not as rich as i would've liked. Next time i'm going to try some of their chocolate pieces in the glass case. They had one that looked like a mini dark chocolate Washington Monument, which was filled with a chile and tangerine filling.
It was such a fun impromptu evening! (PS if you love love, it will work out in the end.)
*The last time we were at Benny's, i accidentally offered be a bite of my burrito. Upon chewing, he had the horrible realization there was chopped onion in it and proceeded to gag and suppress extreme vomiting. Sorry be! But be glad i didn't tell anyone about the infamous "burrito hand!"
City of Pretzels, Grits and Mousse
As some of you might know, be and i spent last weekend in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. be was attending the huge
NCLR conference and i was merely tagging along, in search of a nice air conditioned hotel room and a reason to sit and read the new
Harry Potter book all weekend.
The first thing i noticed is the pretzel fever. One could buy all sorts of pretzels: chocolate covered, fresh buttered, plain hard, covered in sprinkles and even cookies shaped like pretzels. The second thing is the cheesesteak rivalry.
Cristin, a native Philadelphian, filled me in on the cheesesteak war:
Jim's Steaks -- a couple of locations in the city, but definitely one on South Street -- this cheese steak purveyor is the fave among actual Philadelphians. The most talked about cheese steak shops are "Pat's" and "Geno's" in South Philly, mostly because they are HUGE and are situated directly across the street from one another, each purporting to be "the best." But most Philadelphians, actually like Jim's the best. I'm not sure what the "vegetarian" steak is, but it's worth a try!
Third, that Bill Cosby was always hankering for hoagies on "
The Cosby Show" back in the 80s. Hoagies are basically submarine sandwiches. I didn't recall Bill's attempts to sneak in a few bites; apparently the family always caught him in the act. This is essential Philly info because Bill's from Philly and hoagies can be found all over. This i learned in a car ride with Kavita & Adam (another native) and be. And lastly, there is a shocking amount of vegetarian options in a city so enamored with cheesesteaks and hoagies!
Our hotel was in Center City, the downtown part right by the convention center. The bus stop, Chinatown and the mall were all within a few-block's walk so we didn't even use public transportation (
SEPTA) at all. Here's a roundup of our food adventures. When we weren't eating, be was at the conference and i was either reading or working on a stupid grant.
Friday:
We bussed in during a heavy rainstorm, and after trudging to the hotel we ended up at Taco Bell. A lot of our options were already closed and we weren't yet familiar with the area. Note the Crunch Wrap was pretty good, and they didn't blink an eye when we asked for beans instead of meat.* We were still hungry later that night so we walked across the street to the 7-Eleven. I was absolutely shocked to see that they stocked numerous vegetarian sandwiches and wraps, salads, pre-cut fruit and cheeses! I picked up a fake chicken sandwich and some sugar: the new Limited Edition Key Lime and Passion Fruit
Almond Joy bars and old skool
Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets. Yum! Just the right fuel to wait in line for HPHBP with a bunch of kids and a lot of adults!
Saturday:
For breakfast we checked out the
Reading Terminal, a large indoor food hall with vendors selling everything from coffee to imported cheeses and cookbooks. We had: danish, Rainier cherries, sliced Italian bread, a bad baguette and fresh roasted coffee. In the Lancaster County Amish section we gorged on: various cheese cubes, a truly hot & spicy cheese, Amish pretzels with honey mustard dip, homemade apple pie (which be though was too sweet but the crust was an awesome balance of flaky and tender), homemade chocolate walnut fudge and loads of old skool candy (Squirrel Nut Zippers, Chick O Sticks, Goetze's chocolate caramels and "Cows"). After my two visits to Reading Terminal, i walked around the "Latino Expo" at the conference which reaped a bag of corporate loot. For dinner we did take-out from the
Cherry Street Chinese Vegetarian Restaurant. I ordered the fake chicken dish they recommended - the fake chicken chunks were ultra battered deep, deep, DEEP fried nuggets, served with steamed broccoli and a hot garlic sauce on the side. It was tasty but not really what i wanted. be ordered dumplings which i thought were too doughy. I'm sure it's a good restaurant but we just ordered the wrong things.
Sunday:
be and i met up with Kavita & Adam for an excellent brunch at the
Geechee Girl Rice Cafe. It's in Germantown so we rode in their car next to the river and through a lush park. At Geechee** Girl we all ordered the sweet mint iced tea and biscuits, be and K got the shrimp n grits, A got the Southern breakfast and i ordered the greens, plain grits and cornbread. Since it's an independent, family-run business the service isn't fast but it's super friendly. But as for the food, it was all super yummy. be was swooning over his shrimp n grits - and he previously claimed he hated grits! I loved my yummy biscuit and flavorful greens but the cornbread was the dense, sweet cakey style that i'm not so fond of. But besides the cornbread everything else was awesome, or as K would say: CHUB. On a not as chub note, we had
Olive Garden for dinner since i wanted those damn breadsticks. I'm saying, they really should just sell them to-go, 4 breadsticks for $2.00.
Monday:
On K & A's recommendation, we had lunch at
Morimoto, the first restaurant venture for famed ex-Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, formerly head chef at Nobu in New York. be was mentally prepared to get the $50.00 sushi and sashimi chef tasting menu but our waitress actually suggested him the $28.00 sushi lunch set. She said the amount of sushi is the same but it's a different set of fish. I ordered the vegetable tempura lunch set so we both got miso soup with buttery soft, creamy fresh tofu chunks and a baby greens salad with fried shallots. My lunch came with wasabi fried rice - a bowl of sticky rice mixed with egg, seaweed bits and having a slight wasabi fragrance. I was surprised at how good the soup, salad and fried rice were since they didn't sound that appetizing on the menu. Maybe i'm just used to mediocre soup and salad at other restaurants. My tempura actually came as a "pancake" of matchsticked vegetables in a light, crisp batter. It was again, surprisingly delicious. When it arrived it didn't look that great but it sure was tasty. Now as for be, he got a plate of different sushi pieces and a spicy tuna roll. He's always hated the tamago (egg omelet), spicy tuna, and gari (pickled ginger) but he actually really enjoyed those things at Morimoto. And he LOVED the sushi selection, which included river salmon, Thai red snapper and fancy tuna. He claimed it was all exceedingly good, and he didn't even order the highest grade stuff! We both wanted to see if their desserts would be up to par, too, so be got the Oolong Tea Poached Pear with ginger ice cream and a sesame snap, while i got the Mango-Shiso Mille Feuille White Chocolate Mousse with diced mango, shiso leaf and black sesame served with coconut tapioca pearls. Both desserts were excellent, hearty portions of greatness. The poached pear contrasted well with the creamy, gingery ice cream and sweet crisp sesame snap. My light mousse was offset well by the fine filo dough strands and fruity sauces. Overall we were both very satisfied with our lunches and would certainly go back just to eat at Morimoto!
We bussed back after lunch - it was much too short a trip! We didn't get a chance to do the touristy stuff, check out more food places and get a real feel for the city. I really wanted to try
Rita's Water Ice, which Cristin says contains chunks of real fresh fruit. I also didn't get a chance to try those "vegetarian cheesesteaks" nor the other numerous vegetarian restaurants in Philly. Good thing it's only a 2.25 hour bus trip! Thanks to C, K, A and O for all their Philly advice!
*be and i were once driving through NJ and decided to pull over at a rest stop. At the Taco Bell, we ordered our usual double-decker and hard shell tacos, requesting beans instead of meat - and ended up getting into numerous verbal arguments with the staff! They insisted it was "against the rules" to substitute beans for the meat. Even after talking to the manager we just gave up in frustration at their ridiculous rules. I've eaten at a lot of Taco Bells all over the country and i've never had any problem with a substitution. I guess it's another sign: i need to give up all fast food forever!
**From their website: Geechee was one name for the enslaved West African peoples who lived on the Sea Islands and coastal areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Northern Florida. Gullah, from the country of Angola, is another name for the language, culture and peoples who inhabited these areas.
Interesting Things
This
tea stick looks great! Like a crow, i'm a sucker for shiny metal gadgets, especially food-related tools and serving pieces. At $20 retail it's pricey, but i'll get one if it's well made and can last a lifetime. I just need to find a way to test it. Thanks
DJ!
And for all you vegan iPod owners, here's a link to download and buy the
PodGourmet Vegan Edition! It's a database of 277 vegan recipes, all uploadable into your 3rd or 4th gen iPod. Unfortunately, mine's too old but you can still download the demo and open the files individually to check out the recipes. Note
EQD also offers a drinks database, PodTender, and the regular PodGourmet with meat and dairy recipes. Thanks
O!
Fancy Foods
I spent most of Tuesday morning/early afternoon at The National Association for the Specialty Food Trade's
Fancy Food Show at the Javits Center! Thanks to my secret connection, i attended this trade-only food-gorge-o-rama and picked up a bag of loot for later!
First off, it was a full two floors of the Javits Center, rows and rows of vendors large and tiny, most passing out free tasting samples and some giving out loot. The top floor was mainly international vendors arranged by country, interspersed with some of the larger U.S. vendors. On the basement floor were smaller U.S. vendors, mostly specialty food products and new companies. I started my 2.5 hour romp tasting each and every sample from the first few rows, then briskly walking through the rest of the main floor and tasting things once in a while. By the time i reached the basement floor, i was in a complete daze and wandering around about to keel over from mishmash-in-my-stomach overload. I visited a few companies and hightailed it back to work, where i called be to tell him: 1) under any circumstances, we both must attend next year, and 2) don't try to see it all in one day.
Imagine countless gourmet food products ready to be sampled or given away. Now imagine a space the size of 10 supermarkets and you can see why one would need 3 full days to see/eat it all. The products ranged from soup to glass bottles, candy to cured meats and jams. A large percentage of the vendors were sampling chocolates, olive oils, loose teas, cheeses and cookies/crackers. I ate everything from pizza and olives to lemonade, countless cheese cubes, peppermint bark (chocolate) and ginger juice. Some noteworthy items consumed: coffee jelly,
carica (a Chilean fruit), lavender scented milk chocolate, a gooseberry,
Spicy Thai potato chips, Medjool dates,
Rao's Arribiatta sauce, 3 kinds of delicious Indian jarred pickles, basalmic vinegar biscuits, the
Bertie Bott's bacon jellybean and
Walker's stem ginger shortbread.
Some of the vendors were ultra nice, giving me extra loot when i expressed my love for their product, like the
Di Camillo Bakery guy who gave me 1 of every biscotti and cookie he had; the
New Tree chocolates woman who gave me 1 of every flavor chocolate bar when i told her the lavender one was awesome; and H's friend at
Vere - a new low-sugar chocolate company that specializes in natural sweeteners and offers some vegan pieces. On the flip side, some vendors weren't as nice and treated everyone like they were stealing - i mean, come on! Their job is to give out food and be nice for potential future sales!
Some of things i picked up and am excited about eating (and sharing with be): the Jelly Belly
Sport Beans in orange, a chocolate macaroon from
Manischewitz, 2 kinds of marzipan from Spain and Germany and all those mini chocolate bars from all over! Yaay for food shows!
Three VA Days and a Serenade
Friday 7/8:
Our drive to VA was fairly quick aside from some major traffic leaving New York. I didn't fall asleep in the car but that was mainly due to a constant sugary intake from too many
Whoppers. (That large 12 oz carton is pictured under "trouble" in the dictionary.) After eating a billion of them, i read on the carton that a serving is actually 18 of them. That is sure a large serving!
Just as we arrived in VA we realized be forgot his suitcase in Queens! A late night trip for emergency undies, socks and whatnot also reaped 4 bottles of the new Limited Edition
Mint Frappuccino from Starbucks. When my sister spied the bottles she asked, "So you're supporting the corporation?" and unfortunately, curiosity and the love of mint won out that time. For the record, the Mint Frappuccinos are really good. Damn you, Starbucks!
Saturday 7/9:
The big event of the weekend was the
Jefferson Wedding of
MK and MY. A wonderfully untraditional ceremony in the DC sun was followed by a vegan reception in VA. For favors, everyone received a 4-piece box of dark chocolates from
Valentino Chocolatier, all vegan and all delicious! Definitely my most favorite wedding favor ever.
Sunday 7/10:
A brunch at
Woodlands with 13 people was fun and yummy. Woodlands is a vegetarian Indian restaurant i've been hearing about for months. It's in Fairfax off Jermantown Road next to the K-Mart. For $8.95 each weekend, the multi-region buffet offered numerous dishes, appetizers, snacks and 2 desserts. I was pleasantly surprised to see so much Southern Indian fare; dosas, rasam, vada, uthappam and idlies were served next to mutar paneer (the paneer cheese was very fresh and creamy), "Manchurian" fried rice and chaats like my favorite: pani puri! The crowd was 97% South Asians besides our table, proving that the rest of NoVA still isn't quite ready for Indian food, although Thai seems to have made inroads in the past year. I loved the pani puri, most of the fried appetizers and the paneer, although i found the chaat too soggy and the lentils too plain. Overall i would definitely go back and i'm happy to know of something like it in VA.
After standing outside Woodlands for a good half hour - much like we did in high school - we broke off and walked to 7-Eleven for Slurpees. I didn't do this, but they offered a split plastic Slurpee cup so you could get 2 flavors and keep them separate. And happy birthday to Slurpees, which turned
40! We'll try to win one of those
Mini Coopers.
be's been really into
Red Bull recently. On the drive to VA it kept him quite awake, so on the way back to NYC he wanted one as well. At the DC gas station Red Bull was nowhere in site but i bought him a $2.00 can of
Pimpjuice, the #1 Hip Hop Energy Drink from Nelly. It was a neon green color and it tasted much better than Red Bull, but since it didn't contain caffeine, be gave it a thumbs down.
Monday 7/11:
I's special lovely event, Serenade, was held at
La Lanterna di Vittorio, where be and i shared a pizza. It was a larger than the plate, hanging over the edges, fluffy looking but with a crisp, thin delicious crust. I loved the pizza; it was good cheese, a nice fresh sauce and and an excellent brick oven crust. At $10.95 it was a little pricey, but very good. They have a fireplace downstairs AND upstairs, so we'll be making our main hideaway there during the winter: espresso, desserts and a toasty fire!
On the way to double dinner at
Dopey Benny's with Shaptowicz for more mini tofu cheesesteaks, we stopped at a candy store and went mega nuts. I got some jellybeans and 2 large Sugar Daddy bars for a gift, while be got 16
PEZ dispensers! He talked the guy down a few bucks, somehow making such a large purchase okay. I'll post a picture when he arranges all of them - now he has the complete Simpsons, Hello Kitty and Sesame Street lines. That's a lot of PEZ to eat!
Only 3.5 More Days!
The Washington Post ran an
article and recipes on Harry Potter last week in celebration of book 6! Thanks Bonesli! From the article:
But you don't need floo powder to get a taste of Harry's world. The dishes that follow -- one adapted from a television show, one adapted from a Web site and one newly created for Harry lovers -- are hereby offered to herald the arrival of the sixth book. Potter fans will recognize pumpkin pasties and butterbeer as adaptations of Harry's favorite snacks. The Disappearing Pretzel Wands, however, are just fun, child-friendly pleasures in the spirit of the book.
Pasties, Butterbeer and Disappearing Pretzel Wands
Pumpkin PastiesMakes approximately 20 pasties
Adapted from a recipe by Britta Peterson, a California Harry fan
2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin
1 can (12 ounces) evaporated milk
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
2 prepared, uncooked pie crusts
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Slightly beat eggs and mix together all filling ingredients in a large casserole dish. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake until knife inserted in center of the filling is clean (approximately 40 minutes). Cool on wire rack, but do not turn off oven. Prepare pie crust or thaw store-bought crust to room temperature. Cut crust into circles about 3 inches in diameter. Put a generous spoonful of the cooled pumpkin mixture on one half of the center of the circle. Fold the crust into a semicircle and firmly pinch the edges closed with a fork; slice three small slits in the top for venting. You'll probably have quite a bit of pumpkin left over -- serve it as pumpkin pudding. (If you want to use all the pumpkin, you will need about three times as much pie crust.) Bake the pasties on a greased cookie sheet at 350 degrees until they are slightly golden (approximately 20 minutes, or slightly longer with certain prepared crusts). Can be served warm or cool.
ButterbeerServes 6
Adapted from The Rosie O'Donnell Show
1 pint of vanilla ice cream, softened
1/2 stick ( 4 tablespoons) butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 bottle (3 cups) sparkling apple cider
Allow ice cream to soften, about 30 minutes, and bring butter to room temperature, about 2 hours. Cream together butter, sugar and spices in large bowl. Add to ice cream and refreeze. Heat sparkling cider in a pot until warm but still carbonated
(at least 3 minutes). Fill each glass with a generous scoop of ice cream mixture and pour warmed cider over ice cream. It will foam like beer; hence the name.
Disappearing Pretzel WandsMakes 10 wands
From article author Erin Hartigan
You can make the wands more creative by adding food coloring to the vanilla or using different varieties of sprinkles. They "disappear" while you eat them!
1/2 cup chocolate fudge frosting
1 dish of candy sprinkles ( 1/2 cup)
10 pretzel rods (such as Snyder's of Hanover)
2 tablespoons vanilla frosting
Transfer chocolate frosting to a microwave-safe glass baking dish. Microwave on high for 10 seconds or until melted; stir until smooth. Roll each pretzel rod in the melted frosting, making sure to coat completely. Dip each stick in candy sprinkles and lay on a piece of foil or baking sheet. Refrigerate to set the frosting (about 40 minutes). Transfer foil to a countertop work surface. Place vanilla frosting in small microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 10 seconds to soften. Dip the tip of each pretzel in the vanilla frosting until coated; return wands to foil. Let stand for 2 hours or until frosting is set.
Recipes tested by Judith M. Havemann and Randy Richter; e-mail questions to food@washpost.com
Aloe & Lavender Week
On Monday the 4th, a bunch of us headed out to
Long Beach via the LIRR. It was a beautiful, breezy, sunny day made even more fun with Giant Pixie Stix,
Razzles (first it's candy, then gum!), pita chips, popcorn, watermelon chunks and homemade limeade. Note if you head out there you should bring provisions if you aren't a fan of pizza, burgers and soda. Because there's no boardwalk you're limited to a handful of food establishments. The french fries we got were sorta nasty, but one place offered different kinds of knishes. Also note i'm now a firm believer in sunscreen - we spent 6 hours in the sun and all got mild to moderate sunburn*!
Back in Manhattan, we had dinner at
Three of Cups on 1st Ave. I set aside my botulism fears and used the garlic-infused olive oil for my bread - so far i haven't died, and that bread sure was delicious! We got two big baskets of it! A quick stop at Panini for coffee and truffles, then we headed off to Queens for the Macy's fireworks show.
I read on
queens.about.com that
Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City is the best place to view the show. Even though we arrived at 9:00PM, there was still room and many unobstructed views of the sky. If we showed up earlier we might have made it onto one of the piers, right in front of the 4 main barges on the East River. I've also seen the Macy's show in Manhattan and Brooklyn; Queens
by far offered the best view, plus it's tourist-free. Firework shapes that impressed me: dandelions, petaled flowers, UFOs, stars, apples and my overall favorite - CUBES. Yes, cubes just like you used to draw in school!
On a different note,
O sent me an email about the:
Chowhound Potato Chip Cola Tasting at TekserveHungry? Then drop by Tekserve (119 W. 23rd b/w 6th 7th in Manhattan) on Saturday, July 9th at 2pm for a free tasting of some amazing and totally obscure potato chips and colas, courtesy of Chowhound, New York City's web haven for those who live to eat. Jim Leff, Chowhound's alpha hound, will be on hand to lead the tasting, answer all your chow-related questions, and sign copies of The Chowhound's Guide to the New York Tristate Area, just published by Penguin, and available at Tekserve for just $15. As an added bonus, Tekserve will also be raffling off three 1GB iPod shuffles to attendees. 200 free tickets will be available at the door for the tasting and raffle. Please don't be late so we can start on time!
Good luck and let me know how the chips & soda were!
*
Bonesli's Sunburn Remedies1) Mix 4 T aloe vera (you can get this bottled or in a tube) with 10 drops of lavender essential oil. Apply generously to skin; the lavender helps heal burns.
2) If your skin is really dry, use 2 T of olive oil instead of aloe vera to 10 drops of lavender.
3) For babies, children and women who are pregnant, only use 5 drops of lavender instead of 10 for both remedies. No one will OD on lavender but since essential oils are so concentrated, using less is always better than more.
4) Lotions might be irritating to skin due to the perfumes and harsh chemicals. Additionally, mineral oil cannot be absorbed by the skin so avoid using it to moisturize.
Mini Cheesesteaks!
Last night be, Doey and i checked out the new
Dopey Benny's* cheesesteak joint on East Houston. It's a small friendly place with stainless steel stools and long tables, with a small open kitchen in the back. At first, i was prepared to wait for Doey while he got his cheesesteak, going to another place with vegetarian-friendly fare afterwards BUT they actually offer tofu as one of the proteins!
You first decide if you want 3 mini cheesesteaks or 1 big one for $6.00. Then you choose either steak, chicken or tofu and your cheeses out of: American white, American yellow, Cheez Wiz, provolone or spicy Monterey jack. Finally, you pick your "flavor" from: Traditional (Cheez Wiz, peppers and onions), Korean (sesame seeds, soy sauce, scallions, peppers and onions), Southern (BBQ sauce, peppers and onions), Mexican (salsa, guacamole, peppers and onions) or Italian (tomato sauce, peppers and onions). If you opt for the minis, note you can mix and match so they all don't have to be the same thing.
My 3 minis came nestled in a styrofoam box with a pickle. The bread is about 3/4 the size of a hot dog bun, toasted just right and with a yummy, chewy-crisp texture. Out of the Korean, Italian and Mexican tofu ones, my favorite was the Mexican. The pepper jack cheese, salsa and guacamole went really well with the lightly-fried tofu strips. The Korean flavorings were a natural with the tofu but i thought it was too juicy for the bun, making it a little soggy and harder to eat. I thought the Italian one with provolone cheese was good but plainer than the other two. Also note they really pile on the peppers and onions, so if you aren't a fan be sure to tell them (right, be?).
be also got cheese fries which came in a little paper tray. The fries were fast-food kind, thin and oily, covered in Cheez Wiz = obviously very tasty! He also got
RC Cola which they have on fountain. I don't recall the other sodas except for
Bosco chocolate soda, which i totally should've tried! duh! Well, it was 3:00AM post-movie at
Sunshine, making it the perfect place for ultra-late-night fare on the LES. (We didn't get any, but i've heard Sunshine actually pops their own real popcorn and offers different seasonings you can sprinkle on!)
*The real "Dopey Benny" was a gangster who dominated New York labor racketeering in the 1910s (from
Wikipedia).
Belly of Jelly
I'm on the
Jelly Belly jellybeans mailing list because i once won a free bag of jellybeans from their website. It was back in the day where you had to log on at a random special time, and be the first 100 people to register - something like that. Nowadays, you can win a free sample bag if you pass a quiz within 30 minutes. I didn't do this, but check their homepage to try it for yourself.
I noticed they now offer "
Sport Beans":
Sport Beans™ by Jelly Belly, a first-of-its-kind jelly bean formulated to energize the body during exercise, is the newest way to keep competitive. Each one-ounce serving contains 25 grams of carbohydrates, 20% of the daily value for Vitamins C and E, and 120mg of electrolytes to boost energy and maintain hydration. The new jelly beans offer portable power for competitive athletes, sports enthusiasts, fitness minded exercisers and anyone looking for a fast, refreshing energy source.
Isn't that really just candy with some salt and vitamins? I guess it's like a refined-sugar "granola bar" for athletes, but can you imagine popping a handful of jellybeans to reenergize yourself? Not that i won't try them, but they sound weird.
Now, on a gross tip, the newest
Bertie Bott's Harry Potter jellybeans flavors are Bacon and Rotten Egg. I hope the Bacon isn't made with natural flavors because i really want to try them! But as for Rotten Egg, that might be worse than Vomit. Or at least induce vomiting. Check out our previous
taste test.
And finally, while browsing their site i found a neat
Guide to Beverage Pairings. That's pretty damn gourmet.
Time to kick back and take a break? Whether it's a work break, afternoon high tea, or a romantic date, Jelly Belly beans have the flavors to make the occasion special. Here are Mr. Jelly Belly's recommendations for pairing flavors of Jelly Belly beans with the beverage of your choice:
Earl Grey Tea + Tangerine
Orange Herbal Tea + Orange Juice and Cinnamon
Green Tea + Lemon
White Tea + Kiwi or Watermelon
Raspberry Iced Tea + Berry Blue
Red Bush Tea + Plum
Hot Cocoa + Toasted Marshmallow
Coffee + Strawberry Cheesecake
Espresso + Chocolate Pudding
Cola + Very Cherry or Lemon Drop
Lemon Lime Soda + Red Apple or Orange Sherbet
Carrot Juice + Crushed Pineapple
Lemonade + Cotton Candy or Margarita
Champagne + French Vanilla and Cappuccino
Hot Brandy + Juicy Pear
