Local Food Locally

Yeesh! It has been too long since my last post. New Month Resolution: Post more! Especially since The Pedant and I, like everyone else in the country, have decided to eat out a bit less. We did so on some very good and mediocre restaurants in the month of February so the month of March will be devoted to making lots of good food at home. So hopefully I'll update more about our adventures (especially dinner tonight - it sounds tasty).

Last night was one of those very good restaurants in the month of February. It happened to be our semi-anniversary and we kind of needed an excuse to go out to a superb restaurant. Founding Farmers was all booked up for restaurant week, so I made a reservation for 9 (the earliest I could get that wasn't 5!). The restaurant focuses on local food and organic foods (the former is more important to us, and this summer we will be sharing information about cooking from our CSA!) and it seemed really interesting. After both of us had a very intense hour at the gym (and burned only about 1/8 of the calories we'd eat later...but...) we headed over the restaurant and had a spectacular meal.

Cocktails:

We were about 25 minutes early and headed over to the bar for a drink. TP had "The Constitution" and I enjoyed "La Paloma" which was tequila, grapefruit soda and agave nectar. It was very tasty and very good. The hint of tequila in the background mixed with the tartness of grapefruit was very interesting and tasty.

Salad:

We each got a salad that was very tasty. The house salad was presented very well: the red onions, tomatos (which TP ate because tomatoes are icky), and croutons were topped on an iceberg lettuce half and the green goddess dressing was divine. Literally, goddess-like. It was made from an avocado cream base and decadent.

Wine:

Since we were celebrating, TP and I shared a glass and a half (such an interesting idea and great for sharing if you don't want a bottle and aren't huge wine drinkers!) of the Horton Viognier from VA. (It was only one of two Virgina wine options, and for a restaurant dealing with local food, that's a bit sad, but fine...). It was a very good viognier: not too clawing or dry. We both agreed not quite as good as Pearmund's.

Main Course:

TP wanted to get Fried Chicken and Waffles which just sounded good so to save him some calories I volunteered to eat his mac & cheese and some of the waffles. I opted for the Roasted Vegetable and Avocado sandwich (sans tomato). Basically, a divine sandwich which came with homemade potato chips. The bread was really wonderful. The veggies were roasted well, but not too overdone. The mac & cheese was just so amazing - a cheese sauce made with high quality cheese. The waffles (I could only eat 1/2 of one in the end!) were light and airy, but crisp and crunchy.

Dessert:

Good decaf coffee went well with their carrot cake. We split an ENORMOUS piece which wasn't too sweet and had the best frosting. It was like a butter cream base that just had a hint of cream cheese so that it wasn't sticky, but light and airy. We then sat around and digested for a good 30 minutes. We definitely weren't going to be able to walk the 4 blocks to the metro we were so full!

Verdict:

Going back soon but for less food. The salad was a meal itself! Plus it wasn't too pricey so it's definitely a keeper.

In my on going quest to lose weight, I recently decided to kick it up a notch (very Elzar) and not only attend Weight Watchers and exercise with The Pedant at the gym, but take classes and work with a personal trainer. She's very nice and we haven't worked out together yet, we had a consultation session (plus I went to 2 pilates-on-crack classes). In our consultation we talked about weight loss and she suggested I eat continuously throughout the day - about every 3 hours. I'm totally fine with that, since, well, I love to eat (which is perhaps the whole reason for this program in the first place). I promise not to make this blog about my weight loss (there are 3/4 of a million out there already) but I will talk about one thing: BARS. Since I work in an environment where I can't eat all the time at my desk, I have decided to eat "hideable" snacks in the AM and PM, mostly bars and such. I went to a local store to stock up and also bought many 1 and 2 point bars at WW itself. Now, these "bars" aren't the delicious granola bars of my youth (that I mostly had to trade my meager pretzels for because my mother saw right through their "nutrients" and saw their true sugary colors) but mostly Luna Bars, Cliff Bar Products, Kashi ones, WW ones and the like. I was looking for something with lots of protein but not 15 grams of fat. Also, so many of these taste like cardboard I had trouble narrowing it down to tasty ones.

Here's the low-down so far.

Weight Watchers 1 Point Bars:

Pure delight. I found the Dark Chocolate Raspberry ones are the best, but I eat them too quickly. The Chocolate Caramel are inferior, but they take a while to eat. Also, I tried the Oatmeal Raisin which aren't bad. A little less desert-y, but good.

Weight Watchers 2 Point Bars:

Not terrible. Just hard to eat 1/2 and therein lies the problem of a small snack. But the chocolate mint are like a candy bar!

Luna Bars:

Always a winner. They have a direct line into my taste buds. Granted, not low in calorie or fat, but chock-full of protein. I love, love, love the Chocolate Peppermint Stick, but decided not to get a whole bunch of them. The lemon zest, which I started with, are very tasty. Sad note: while most are 3 WW points, the nuts ones are 4. Boo. Silly nuts and their good fats.

Cliff Bars for Kids:

So Cliff Bars are for men and therefore have less chcolate flavors and more cardboard taste. Blech. But the kids bars are so far pretty tasty. The Chocolate Brownie is 2 points for the whole thing and not too cardboardy.

I also bought Kashi bars, but no verdict yet.

In the full fat category, TP and I went to a CakeLove Satellite store for desert on Friday (which is full fat, because as their sign says "Cake without fat is just bread") and was amazing. A bit dense for my taste, but the frosting was tasty.

Dr. Pepper Post!

They now have Dr. Pepper-flavored lip gloss.

Also, a blogger vindicates my obsession with putting commercial beverages into food (he calls it an extension of the "found art" movement).

According to a post on the Chicago Moms' Blog, there is a cupcake establishment that makes Dr. Pepper flavored cupcakes. However, that offering is not currently in their flavors of the week.

Finally, Dr. Pepper pork chops. Honestly, any meat cooked in four cups of Dr. Pepper, brown sugar, garlic, onion, cloves, ginger, and pepper will be pretty darned tasty. I think a strong case could be made for chicken breast.

Greek Food, CPK

This weekend, The Pedant and I had 2 very different meals, one much yummier than the other.

(Well, three meals that were tasty, but I won't go into the logistics of the first on Friday night. It was a pot luck dinner and TP and I brought yummy foods. He made a cucumber salad with an "Asian" dressing, again from the Cook's Illustrated Best Vegetable Cookbook, which went pretty fast. Everyone said it was yummy, and I am fussy and don't like cucumbers so I didn't try it. I made a cabbage, orange and fennel salad which was good but not fantastic. I one-and-a-halved the recipe because I was afraid one wouldn't be enough, but I think I added too much cabbage. It was still tasty, but maybe not to be made again.)

Saturday Night:

TP and I were dog sitting for my cousin and decided to take a break from the two cute, but yippy schnauzers and go for Greek food. My cousin recommended a place which was very tasty. It was designed to look like a little Greek village and the food was tasty, tasty.

They started us with a warm, crusty bread with some olive oil dipping that had a hint of lemon. We shared an appetizer - the Imam Baildi, an eggplant baked with tomato's, onions and pine nuts and it was perfectly baked. I had the Vegetarian sample platter, with a tasty triangle of spanikopita, 2 stuffed mushrooms, a stuffed grape leaf and rice and string beans. Well done. We shared the desserts for two: ice cream, a honey walnut cake (tasty!) and baklava, one of my favorite desserts that doesn't include chocolate.

Sunday Night:

For one of our friend's birthdays, at her request, we went to The Cheesecake Factory. I never understand the excitement of the place: yes, the portions are large and the cheesecake is the only consistently tasty option, but the wait is never needed. C'mon people, try tastier places. I got a portobello sandwich, which I usually get, which was fine. The mushroom was too tough, but I can always find fault in something there (the service was slow, too). TP and I shared a "Craig's Crazy Carrot Cake Cheesecake" which was an interesting cake, but needed more cream cheese frosting (as most things in life do).

I should say I do enjoy TCF, but it's never as good as I want it to be. I much prefer big chains like CPK and Bertucci's.

More on Cake

If you're in a dimly lit restaurant and you want to take an adequate picture of your oversized dessert using only a commercial digital camera, have an acquaintance hold up a napkin. If you are pigging out on the giant cake slice yourself, I suggest using this opportunity to chat up a person at a nearby table. Be careful, though - pictures of a birthday cake have "done damage" to the Indiana Republican Party (link courtesy of Blue Indiana).

In other news, Martha Stewart is fascinated by those who make cakes shaped like the Nintendo Wii. I don't get it, in the same way that I'm underwhelmed by all those Food Network Challenge cake contests. I want a really tasty cake that is, secondarily, aesthetically pleasing. Making the cake look like something with cardboard and dowels seems to put the wrong priority first. Can't they do something with spun sugar rods and plates to make it a more appropriate structural material?

Of course, like the author of StupidWeddingCrap.com, I now know what's going on top of my wedding cake: two anthropomorphic bovines, the cow believing that the groom's tractor is sexy. As opposed to the "holsteins making out in roses like some twisted dream sequence from a bovine version of American Beauty" that is also sold.

Cake recipes, for good or for ill

Godiva Chocolate's recipe this month is for a "Scary Monster Cake." Chocolate-syrup soaked sponge layers glued together with chocolate-caramel mousse filling and iced with more chocolate are not scary or monstrous in the least.


Some people allege that replacing Dr. Pepper with mashed banana in a cake recipe yields useful results. I am skeptical; the Sherbs, not so enamored of the banana, surely disagrees. I do have to wonder, though, while all Dr. Pepper cakes seem to be chocolate cakes with Dr. Pepper in them (see also: chocolate cake mix with Dr. Pepper). Wouldn't it be just as tasty to make Dr. Pepper the primary flavor - a cake that makes the world taste better?

I Know How To Party

A new recipe just popped up on About.com: Dr. Pepper Chocolate Cake. Supposedly it's Texan, which makes sense - evidently Dr. Pepper is some sacred beverage of Texas, a fact which Dr. Pepper probably hides these days due to the unpopularity of the President (or lingering hatred for Lyndon Baines Johnson).

Searching the internet, I found the Texas equivalent of a Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte; however, despite the use of Dr. Pepper, the former is far less appetizing due to its combination of yellow cake and JELL-O®. Who makes that more than once?

With all of these Dr. Pepper recipes I'm finding, I could have an entire dinner party consisting solely of Dr. Pepper foods, from Dr. Pepper appetizers to Dr. Pepper soup course to Dr. Pepper dessert. To drink: Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper.

No! Just kidding! That would be overkill (back when I was in law school, I had two twelve-packs of Dr. Pepper in my fridge, and you get kinda weird if you drink too many cans of Dr. Pepper in a short period of time). Water would be good.