Crocus Explosion: This Week's Garden Report- Mar 2010

The glaciers have finally receded and about 20 metric tons of dog shit has been removed. It’s time to start the spring campaign.

The spring started with a pleasant surprise when the Snow Crocus rose up in an overwhelming hoard and occupied the front lawn for about two weeks. I had given up on the Crocus a couple of years ago. Last year I even started using weed & feed on the front lawn again, figuring the Crocus idea was a bust. I think I must have just pissed the little devils off!

With any good news comes some bad. The gutters, on the north side of the house, were clogged with leaves. I cannot tolerate that! I do not want to be dragging out the extension ladder every time some stupid tree can’t refrain from littering. Sentence has been passed and the execution will be scheduled as soon as all appeals are heard and ignored. Texas style justice!

Getting a jump on the season I have transplanted the two white pines I had growing on the fence between the Mexican border and us. I planted them there two or three years ago just to see how fast they grow. They have passed the test and are now on the side of the house and I hope they will grow into a nice screen between us and or northern neighbors. I’m tired of lookin’ at ‘em.

The annual campaign against creeping Charlie has started. Just today I went chemical on ‘em. This year I’ve developed my own brew. I hope the early start has Charlie on the run before it has a chance to get a foothold. Charlie must die!!

The squirrels have built a nest in the Hawthorn tree in the middle of the back yard. These squirrels are either very stupid or they have no respect for our dogs. I know if Lightning dog was still around, the fuzzy tailed rats would show a little more respect. I am afraid though that they are right in thinking that neither dog is clever enough to catch them.

Being Racist Helps Find the Deliciousness

So the adventure has begun, and I am here lingering at Camp As Saylayiah in Qatar waiting for transport into Bagram, to eventually make my way up to the North of Afghaistan. The next six months will be sans-cooking (not sure how I am going to relieve the stress if I can't knead!). I don't have high expectations for most of the food I will encounter, as it is all mass-produced military food, but perhaps there might be a few interesting posts to squeeze out as it will be GERMAN mass-produced military food, which should at least be different, if not good. And I will have to find a way to sneak into the Norwegian Camp- I bet there is smoked fish there!

Anyway, here on base in Qatar, I am soaking up my last opportunities to eat some awful American food. I hit up the base Chili's on day one, as two of my favorite things about America are fried cheese and free refills. Of course both of those are just behind frequent liberal use of deodorant. Well, maybe not free refills. I can tolerate a lot of stink with an unlimited supply of diet coke. Today I was hunting around for something, and rejected the guaranteed stale awful hamburgers from the fake little restaurants here in R&R-ville (the USO club). But then something struck me on the menu- Chicken Tikka Masala. So much staple on any British menu it is not even seen as ethnic there, Indian food is unusual on a menu in a non-Indian restaurant in the US. And US military bases take whatever international and cultural savvy one would expect in America and dial it back about 50%. Which is not good. So I was surprised to see this. But then I looked at the staff. All Indian. In fact, I think all of Qatar is staffed by Indians and Filipinos. Qatar can't be bothered to develop labor skills internally, as the oil boom that pays for lavish lifestyles is sure to last forever. Right?

Anyway, this drew my attention to an eating strategy I have long adhered to, and never thought much about. If the staff of a place is a certain ethnicity, and there are one-off items on the menu of that ethnicity, I order those things. Chances are, they are there because its something the staff takes particular pride in making, or something they themselves want to eat. This of course involves making some superficial ethnic judgments . I have gone with "Asian men wearing suits in inappropriate circumstances (like cooking in the kitchen of a diner) are likely Chinese" as a reason for ordering Mapo Dofu, one of my favorite real Chinese dishes (I actually hate most real Chinese food- give me General Tso's any day- but mapo dofu is one of the exceptions). This isn't always a great strategy, but usually even if you aren't exactly right, close enough is good. Pakistani cooks make some bad-ass Indian food too. Plus they use more meat. One of the best Butter Chicken's I have ever had comes from a mini-mart/deli in Friendship heights called Friendship Gourmet Market. Strolled in one day, and saw a pan of delicious looking Indian food amidst all the deli staples. Took a look at the staff and decided that this might be a winner. It was. I still dream about that Chicken sometimes.

The result of this strategy is that I often sound like a huge racist. Broad cultural generalizations followed with preachy appreciation of various national dishes makes you sound like a douche. But it also has a high statistical correlation with getting tasty tasty food in an otherwise mediocre establishment. In other words, an ethnic correlation does not automatically translate to the best possible type of a dish, but it does help one find something palatable in a situation where expectations are otherwise low.

The Chicken Tikka? Delicious. Far from the best I have ever had, but waaaay better than anything else on the menu. Thanks third-country nationals for bringing something better than Popeyes to our troops overseas :-) Yea. I'm a douche. But not a hungry one!

This Week's Garden Report- February 2010

Well it’s groundhog day. This being a low budget operation, we don’t have a groundhog. We do however have a ceramic garden turtle that just melted out of a snow bank. All he saw though the melting snow was the devastation caused by a high yield nuclear dogshit bomb that was exploded over the winter. I might have to move.
There is still a foot of snow on the ground so it’s hard to get a reading on the condition of the garden. The fences that were put up to keep the dog out of the bushes proved ineffective. When the snow got 3 feet deep she just walked right over them, dug down to the dirt and started excavating the frozen ground. I don’t know why she is expending all this effort. I think she just wants to secure a ready supply of mud to track into the house as soon as the thaw comes.
Well I couldn’t think of much else to expound upon. This isn’t exactly the busy season in the garden. I went to bed last night figuring that some great thoughts might come to me in my sleep, no such luck. However it did snow about 3 more inches and that takes care of the dogshit problem for a while. Winter sucks, but if you think about it, winter is like Gods gift to procrastinators. You always have an excuse to put stuff off. Too much snow, to cold, too much dogshit. You can always find an excuse in winter.
I’m going back to bed to enjoy the season.

Groupon Etiquette

So I am addicted to Groupons. In case you have somehow escaped my overly aggressive efforts at getting you to eat dinner at an inconveniently located restaurant with food you are not in the mood for, let me share a little bit about Groupons.

Each day, Groupon posts a deal for a local business (most often restaurants or spas, but have included gym memberships, hardware stores, and pet sitting- all the things the young yuppie loves). Living Social has essentially the same thing. I am signed up for both, and can't get enough. $30 for $60 to spend somewhere new and tasty is just too good of a deal to pass up. Unfortunately, I have trouble controlling my enthusiasm. I have bought groupons for just about every spa service offered for 50% off or more. This has resulted in a wide variety of uncoordinated facials with technicians who were utterly confused about what the real deal with my skin was since someone from some other salon just treated me a week ago. I bought one for Mourayo because I thought it sounded like sushi. Turns out its an unremarkable Greek place in Dupont that I can't get anyone to eat at with me. I signed up for Kayak lessons this summer. Too bad I will be in Afghanistan.



The coming of Groupons to the DC social scene has given rise to new etiquette questions. I have posted a few and my thinking below.


Dilemma #1: My friend and I have dinner plans, and we both have Groupons for different places that we want to use. Who wins?

Answer: I am inclined to say the person who's Groupon expires first. If you were clever enough to get one with an expiration a few months out (and are not going to Central Asia for six months in a few weeks as I am), then the person who is most broke and needing to rely on the prepaid groupon wins. However, if someone accepts your Groupon choice after a Groupon duel, you automatically incur an obligation to return the Groupon engagement in the very near future at the other Groupon location.



Dilemma #2: We both have Groupons for the same place, bought independently, and cannot combine them (many groupons are 'one-per-table'). What do we do?

Answer: Go somewhere else. Save your Groupon for another time. Alternatively, make separate reservations and bring two other people with you. Then 'run into' each other accidentally after appetizers are ordered and your Groupon intent is already declared to the waiter, and move together. Of course this is kind of an a-hole thing to do. And weird for the other two people. A move only for the truly desperate.



Dilemma #3: Can I use a Groupon on a date?

Answer: Yes. If your date can't appreciate your thriftiness, how do you think he will react to your many other embarrassing qualities? Mind you, I am typing this while laying around in a red onesie. I have many of those qualities. And I am not even that thrifty.



Dilemma #4: If we are splitting the check, and one of us has a Groupon, how do we divide up costs? Does the person contributing the Groupon get credit for the paid value, and we split the bonus savings, or do they get credit for the entire value of the Groupon?

Answer: This is a hard one. I have had dinner partners that assumed we were sharing, and ones that assumed I got the whole value for myself. Last night, I brought this up while dining at Policy with a friend. His take was that it was all mine. Of course, he is also a Groupon user, and I am sure it will come out even in the end (I now have an obligation to help him out with his Russia House Groupon- see #1). A German friend of mine assumed we were sharing my Groupon for Mie N Yu. Of course she is German. I have had Germans ask for $1.50 off the tab of a group of 30 because they didn't get a soda. I thus am less inclined to use her standard. So the answer? With Germans, you share, figuring out everyone's relative contribution down to the penny. With everyone else, its all yours, but make a good effort to return the consideration the next meal.



Dilemma #5: Why aren't there more Sushi Groupons?

Answer: As it is, I have trouble using groupons because every time I get myself together to go out and use a groupon, I wind up thinking that I would just rather have sushi. The sushi industry does not need Groupon's help- I am keeping it afloat in these hard times. If there were sushi groupons, I would need a speedy mercury poisoning antidote pretty quickly. Perhaps its for the best.

Worst. Blogger. Ever.

I haven't cooked in two months. I mean, I have reheated some things, but I haven't made something in months. I just got a new job, and have found myself professionally inspired for the first time in years. Which has somehow dramatically reduced my need to be personally inspired. Since my primary creative outlet all these years has been food- well, there has been alot of pizza and sushi recently.

Of course thats the reflective artist explanation. The other, more common reasoning (and the one I think most people resort to, but I kinda think is bullshit) is that I haven't had time. Working a ton to get ready for a China visit, and then traveling, leaves little space for shopping and cooking. Why is this bullshit? Because I have made cookies at 2am when I have been busier. Its no different that people who (quite mind-blowingly from my perspective) claim working out helps them burn off stress, get a grip on life, etc., and looking judgingly at the rest of us who prefer root-canals to long runs through the park in Dec.

I think I, like many people, have a bad tendency to claim that I don't have time to do things, when what I really mean is that I don't have enough passion to do them. Now I don't think this means I should suck it up and do them anyway. I just think it means that we as a society are pretty crappy at knowing how busy we really are, and, even more dangerous, knowing how we really feel about the things we undertake.

Well, I am currently waiting out the snow, hoping to get back to DC. Once there, I sure hope the passion comes back. Till then.......

Hooray Poor Impulse Control- Dark Chocolate Thin Mint Cheesecake

You know something's good when you are checking to see if it's done every five minutes just so you can lick the knife. Especially when there is a consuming craving it's answering.

Yea, I crave. Its a big part of the reason I am good at whatever it is I am good at. I am usually not the most emotional person in the world (or so say legions of my ex-boyfriends), but I can derive a tremendous amount of passion from craving. Much of the skill I have in life is traceable directly to a lack of patience and some sort of slightly demented superman complex. The thought process is something like: 'I can't stand waiting, and why should I have to, I can do this better and quicker myself. I want x now, badly.'

This has unsurprisingly led me down a road littered with a variety of potentially poor/hazardous/certifiable decisions. The funny thing is, despite every public service announcement and self-help book out there telling me that this will get me nowhere, that I just need to work hard and love myself and keep slugging, somehow it is the violent, passionate, often irrational acts of an impatient soul craving something (sex, money, Kröllebölle, experience, Sushi, love, a trip to Indonesia, to name a few) that have led to the best experiences of my life. A big part of that is enjoyment of even the failures, and appreciation of the idea that the more colossal and passionate the failure, the more interesting it makes me. Who knows. Maybe I am just a lazy spoiled girl who has been cut a few breaks. Who cares. I am happy!

Today, after the return of my boyfriend from a few weeks abroad answered one craving, my mind was clear and poised for another. The boyfriend was trying to describe some delicious chocolate dessert he had in Copenhagen last week, and was at a loss for the name. Like any good children of the internet, we immediately began google image searching 'chocolate dessert'. Well, for a hungry girl looking for a craving, this ended predictably. Three pages of delicious looking things later, I 'needed' chocolate cheesecake. Not the fancy, delicate, complicated gourmet kind, but a giant, sour, huge slice of real New-York Cheesecake.

A brief search of my own records reminded me that I didn't have a 'go-to' recipe. I had some that were good, but nothing that was really 'it'. Years of living in Asia and being served fruit-ganache-cream covered glorified egg tarts masquerading as cheesecake left me with fairly low standards, and I had previous just settled for anything happily not durian flavored. Determined to do better this time, I went hunting.



I found this Emeril recipe on food network (yea, I know, I hate the celebrity chef thing too, but if there is anything that a dude who cooks for the psydo-pretentious masses might get right, cheesecake could be it). It provided a good amount of guidance as to proportions, but I wanted something a little more. Mint. Most recipes out there that add mint to the mix do so through creme-de-menthe; however, the alcohol changes the texture and rising of the cheesecake. I am not a fan. I don't even use vanilla extract in cheesecake for the same reason. I did, however, remember the second box of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies sitting in my freezer. Having had some fantastic success at making ice cream out of them, I thought, why not work up a whole line of deliciousness based off of these bestest cookies ever, and break up a bunch and use them like Oreos in the cheesecake? Easy!

I wanted to give the cheesecake itself a little hint of mint as well, however, and was at a loss for how to go about that. Until I saw a York Peppermint Pattie at the supermarket checkout. Perfect! Melted into the chocolate, the Peppermint Pattie was just the right hint of mint.

------Aside- they do give you a weird look when you checkout with only two pounds of cream cheese and a Peppermint Pattie. Like that's more strange that the dude with six boxes of Tampons and a bottle of cherries that was in front of me in line. Whatever. Maybe the checkout lady thought we were together. I shudder.



Cheesecakes are super easy, although they need to refrigerate a few hours before serving, so plan accordingly! Much of below is adopted from the original, with a few significant changes.

Ingrediants:
6 Graham Crackers
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
1 stick butter
2 1/2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese
Seeds from 1 vanilla bean (scraped from inside of pod)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup sour cream
8 ounces melted semisweet chocolate, cooled slightly
1 full-size York Peppermint Pattie, melted into the chocolate
3 eggs
1 tube of Thin Mints (12 or so, to taste)


Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (if using a silver springform pan, or 325 degrees F if using a dark nonstick springform pan).


Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a 9-inch spring-form pan. In a food processer, combine the graham cracker crumbs, 3 tablespoons of the sugar, and the butter until well mixed and shapable (sticks together). Press onto the bottom of springform pan and set aside. You can use chocolate graham crackers, or any other dry cookie here too.


In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, combine cream cheese, remaining cup of sugar, and vanilla bean seeds and beat until light and creamy. Add the flour to the cream cheese mixture and beat until smooth. Add the melted chocolate and peppermint pattie and sour cream and mix well. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition until just blended. Finally, hand-crush the thin mints, leaving some large pieces, and mix into the batter. Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour 15 min, until the center is almost set. You will likely need about an hour and a half, but stat checking at 1:15. Dry cheesecakes suck.

Run a sharp knife around the rim of the pan and allow cake to cool on a wire rack before removing rim of pan. Refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight before serving. Cheesecake may be made up to 2 days in advance before serving and will keep for up to 1 week in the refrigerator.




Seriously, this is one of the best desserts I have ever made. Damn. There's the craving. Time for another piece. Why isn't running or learning Japanese craveable? Arugh.

Oh, I so WANTED to love you- A Review of Georgetown Bagelry

Wanting to love people, and wasting time and money and precious energy trying to make it happen has long been a weakness of mine. Something, somewhere, tells me I should love them, because they are kind or attractive or patient or any number of things that are, in reality, never enough on their own.

Although I have happily, after much heartbreak (not the least of which was my own), largely given up on that habit in my personal life, it nevertheless seems to have been pushed off to the little (well maybe not so little) part of my brain that is devoted to food.

Months of perky, chipper little tweets from Mary Beall Adler from Georgetown Bagelry have made me want to try the place for ages. After an unsuccessful attempt a few weeks ago (where I discovered, that it is NOT, in fact, in Georgetown, but rather Bethesda), I went traveling for a bit, and hadn't made another attempt.

Today, in an attempt to actually get some non-food writing done (which you can see I have succeeded wildly at), I finally made the drive up there. Anywhere outside the diamond or across the river is a big deal for me. I had a mini-meltdown when I discovered that my boyfriend lived one block over the dividing line, and in fact paid taxes in Maryland! Gasp! Nevertheless, I have, largely on account of his inspiration (he knows the cities he has lived in more comprehensively than most local police, and I admire his getting out of his own bubble), begun exploring the no-man's land that comprise the DC suburbs. He would take issue with me even calling Bethesda, or Alexandria for that matter, suburbs, but baby steps, right?. I have been recently on a rather unsuccessful attempt to be very productive in coffee shops all over town.

Georgetown Bagelry should have been a great place to love. The tweets are always full of deals, they offer great discounts on already super-reasonable prices, it was busy enough to seem alive without being loud or distracting, there was free wi-fi, and a booth to call my own. A wide variety of bagel options rounded out the deal. Nevertheless, I left feeling 'eh'. The bagels were good, the cream cheese good, but neither blew me away. I still prefer Bagels and Baguettes on the Hill. I wanted to love them, but well, I just couldn't feign enough passion. It didn't help that the first time I ordered, I received a sesame instead of onion with my scallion cream cheese. Still tasty, but not quite what I wanted. The ordering process was itself was pretty painful. The staff was distracted, and not overwhelmingly good with communication- they seemed to have a hard time understanding customers. The second time I ordered a blueberry with strawberry cream cheese, and somehow got a tub of strawberry cream cheese and a milk? When I pointed this out, the server just gave me back the price of the milk, without the extra tax, and seemed mostly annoyed.



That said, its cheap, well-designed, and tasty. I was everything a good bagel shop should be. But like all the 'everything a good boyfriend should be' men I have had to painfully give up over the years, for some reason, there just wasn't the spark I needed.

Alas.

Give it a try. Who knows, maybe its the bagel shop YOU were meant to be with.