Archive for January, 2007

Feeling crunchy

January 21, 2007 | Filed under: La Madre

*This post inspired by the always effervescent and witty Alice Bradley

“The belly rules the mind” – Spanish Proverb

One Sunday morning, you will follow the usual routine of reading the New York Times and drinking café au lait with splenda. This just after a Saturday morning full of Wait, Wait…don’t tell me. You realize that you are the epitome of a pretentious North East liberal. You shrug and continue perusing until you happen upon an article about making your own granola, which you are far too lazy to do given your propensity to scour the Trader Joe’s frozen food aisle because cooking is something you do not have time for. So you go back to contemplating the meaning of life and the title of ‘President’ before the name Biden.

A few days later you will be cruising around Google Reader and notice that the lovely and talented Alice Bradley, has read the same NYT article and then decided to delve into the world of creative granola making. Much to your chagrin she details her experience and then speaks of her homemade granola with such enthusiasm that you feel as if you’ve missed something. You go back and re-read and then think back to your recent issues of Vegetarian Times and Food & Wine and briefly recall your personal resolution to cook more items that do not come straight out of a box (cough Trader Joe’s Mac & Cheese cough).

To wit you spend the remainder of the week thinking that if there were five ingredients you would put into granola, besides rolled oats, what would they be? Then your mouth begins to drool thinking of all the granola you could possibly make and all the possibilities of granola to be made. So with list in hand you march over to Trader Joe’s half drooling and admire the cashews and almonds and debate between dried cranberries or dried pineapple or perhaps some banana chips.

You go home with almond slices, dried cranberries, and soy nuts but you purchase the soy nuts with trepidation given their already roasted and salted status. The above is then mixed with some leftover dried coconut, walnuts and some delicious Lake Champlain honey. All will be cooked while you are decked out in your Christmas pajamas. While cooking, you deliberately clean up the kitchen and empty the dishwasher then load the dishwasher and organize the Tupperware in order to show your roommate how one properly cleans a kitchen after usage. There may or may not be heavy sighing and shuffling abound.

Then the lovely mixture is removed from the oven, toasted to perfection and your panna cotta and fresh pesto making roommate may or may not drool a little and say ‘yummy’. You will proceed to eat the fresh granola and char the inside of your mouth but oh my hell, you are a genius of epic proportions. Because you’re feeling good about your awesome domesticity you begin to slice avocado for lunch the next day and think good thoughts about Drew Brees and Peyton Manning.

It’s finally time to taste your granola and it confirms your previous suspicions that you are a culinary master whose talent has been hidden for far too long. You contemplate telling your tale to the Internet, because you’re just so freaking proud of yourself that you want to shout of from the rooftops. You don’t care if people will think you a granola eating, special interest pandering, vegetarian, pinko, commie, liberal, because holy hell that granola might be the best damn thing you’ve ever tasted. You will inevitably spend the remainder of the day periodically diving into a vat of granola. You are brilliant.

I can see clearly now

January 17, 2007 | Filed under: Bordeaux

“It isn’t the mountains ahead that wear you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe” - Anonymous

To say that I’ve been in an absolutely horrible mood for the past six months would be an understatement. Something about sleeping on a mattress on my bedroom floor every night since August, probably is what put me in such a sour disposition. But over the past week the clouds have parted and I feel less inclined to be menacing and threatening. Literally almost every night for the past six months – save the moments when I’ve been away and/or sleeping at Kris’ – I’ve had to sleep on my fucking floor. There is nothing worse than going home to sleep on the fucking floor with the fucking laptop that only works when the spirit moves it to do so. A laptop that turns into a desktop attached to a 14 year old monitor that again, only works when you pray over it. Even then I’m pretty sure that the whole thing makes the baby Jesus and I cry.

And now I sleep on an actual bed with a fully functional laptop that makes me want to go home and write and be productive rather than dread writing. You might suspect hyperbole but every second that I spent in my bedroom with the shitty mattress on the floor and the computer that I needed, nay, wanted to write with, but couldn’t, made me a very unhappy person. Given my predisposition to being a bitch, try multiplying that by 114. All of this with a recently cleaned carpet – hell yeah I got that sucker cleaned – with a cute new floor lamp and wall clock and storage thingies that are useless since I just dump shit in there anyway, but at least they match my new area rug.

And I shall dwell in the house of Ikea forever and ever. Amen.

2007 is going to be a good year all because I now sleep on an actual bed like and don’t want to put my fist through the damn computer.

A Confession

January 16, 2007 | Filed under: La Madre

“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being particular about the friendships I cultivate is a manifestation of having zero friends and/or friends that used me and generally fucked me over for a number of years. To say that the junior high years were ‘tumultuous’ would be putting things mildly. Of course there’s still a little bit of that in me when I attempt to be nice and complimentary of people who disregard me and find me a nuisance and who are frankly rude and pretentious little shits who feel that the world should cater to them, but they are not obligated to behave the same back. While it irks me entirely, I’ve learned to shrug and behave as if they do not exist and instead be terribly cautious when choosing who I want to be friends with and who I would like to punch in the nose.

I have few extremely close friends, and hordes of ‘friends’ or ‘acquaintances’ that I see for Happy Hours and parties and events. Those are the people that I can give a hug and quick side kiss to while balancing a drink in my other hand as we exchange pleasantries and a few notes of gossip. Then there are my honest to God friends who know that there are nights I’d much rather spend with a very cute blonde and catching up on Tivo than trying to figure out how many glasses of wine I can consume before puking all over U Street. These are the friends that know how much I need and value my alone time and can tell me that I’m considerably more pleasant when “getting ass” than I am 90% of the time. I can appreciate that they can appreciate my generally quirky behavior and why I do the same thing every single Saturday like a little old woman.

Over the past year, I’ve gotten better about who I let in and to what degree of trust I will afford them, which roughly correlates to the number of times that I will freely Instant Message such a person about the inane details of my life. I think I’ve gotten incredibly lucky with Kris, because with her I can do just the latter. And she knows me to a ‘T’. I say all of the above, because the truth is that while I love that woman wholeheartedly, I love it even more when she goes away because then, I get her apartment to myself for an entire weekend or on those really awesome circumstances, an entire week. And nothing says “I heart you, HB” like giving me the keys to your apartment and letting me have at it. Alone. Alllll alone. Misanthropy, my friends, is a lovely thing.

Priceless

January 14, 2007 | Filed under: Bordeaux

“We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs” - Gloria Steinem

Being able to turn on my computer without wanting to cry and/or toss it out of the window and/or wanting to put my fist through the monitor is really quite priceless.

Welcome, little guy.

It doesn’t have a name yet so suggestions would be helpful.

(Also, that bed that it’s on is brand new too. As is the mattress. Am now officially broke and donations to the ‘Heather B. will need to eat at some point this week’, fund are being accepted now. They’re also tax detuctible.)

Fahrenheit

January 11, 2007 | Filed under: Food-ay

” We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink…” ~Epicurus

Kimber is the type of person you’d want to be friends with in the event of untimely serious issues or when you really want to drink and smoke inside of a bar (the horror! And no longer, because it’s illegal!) but not alone because when you drink alone, people consider you an alcoholic. She’s been my best friend for going on four years and knows things about me that I would never readily admit to anyone, including that when I lived alone I only did dishes when I finally ran out of cups and even then, I only did the cups and we’ve had more than one serious conversation about the state of the Middle East with her on the potty and the door open.

Since graduating, the time I used to spend with any friends of mine which once thrice daily culminating with wine at a Georgetown bar, has since been reduced to the occasional get together that needs to be planned weeks in advance because suddenly we’re all very busy; very busy with my Netflix queue and blogging of course. Even when planned well in advance, someone always ends up canceling because of this whole necessity to have Dental Insurance and a 401K. Financial stability is all the rage and at times trumps friendship.

This means that I haven’t seen Kimber since my birthday, in October. And since Kimber enjoys Movado and Coach bags that could fit a small child, she’d also enjoy a meal out that isn’t quesadillas and especially at the Ritz Carlton with the bathroom attendant and heat lamps under the taxi stand and warm towels with which to dry ones French manicured hands. Now that it’s January there really is no better time to meet up with people that you haven’t seen since 1978 for it is Restaurant Week, don’t you know and nothing screams, I will shed these unwanted pounds like a Mushroom tart that involves a flaky buttery crust and melted smoked gouda courtesy of Terrence Feury at Fahrenheit.

I’ve gone on ad nauseum about how I love Jeff Tunks and Geoff Tracy, because I feel comfortable in their restaurants and of course there is trepidation with eating at the Ritz, because do they allow people with roughly $8 to their name at the Ritz? I doubt it. But I do it for Kimber and also because I saw the aforementioned Mushroom tart on the menu. I’m a sucker for flaky crust of any sort especially when it melts in your mouth and I am also obsessed with mushrooms. My hat goes off to anyone who can sear scallops – mine usually come out in the rubbery form that forces me to question any chance I have at becoming a good housewife who can make scallops. The scallops were tender and set in a bed of some sort of tomato salsa concoction which was spicy yet sweet with a hint of pepper and gave the scallops this delicious tangy flavor despite not being deep fried. There were also potato sticks involved and if I hadn’t been in the Ritz, I would have licked the plate.

Shockingly enough, I ran my fingers over my dessert plate while Kimber went to the little girl’s room and then of course snuck a bite out of her key lime pie. I contemplated the Panna Cotta but instead opted for the chocolate tart. Chocolate crust with apool of dark molten chocolate in the middle that spilled over the sides when it’s chocolate dam broke. Right into hazelnut and butterscotch gelato. It was a chocolate butterscotch river and never have I prayed so fervently for a canoe to tip over in such a mixture, because I would gladly swim around and enjoy.

My thing about eating out is not only the food, but also the service and the atmosphere, because what else are you paying for?? Upon Kimber’s arrival she found me sitting in the lobby with a glass of Spanish Tempranillo and the man who would be our server was smiling ardently and we were already the best of friends and he’s now invited to my wedding. I’m a cranky person who is also impatient and so I like to be taken care of immediately and if I have a glass of wine before my ass warms the seat, then damn, I’m happy. Given that I couldn’t even remember one of the restaurants I went to for Restaurant Week the last time, I would say that writing about the melt in your mouth crust at Fahrenheit and it’s impeccable service, makes this Restaurant Week a success.

*Don’t forget, still delurking week. So delurk or risk eternal whore-dom.

*I should mention that people always ask me, because apparently I know these things, when RW is. I do not have some super insider information. I just actively stalk DC Foodies.