NATIONAL HARBOR BITCHES

OK, Liana is making me post again, and she's taken pictures to make it even easier for me.

SO. We are in National Harbor, MD to market our ABA Program. Yeah, in case you haven't been following my life, I graduated from collage (holla!) and am now working for an online education program in Florida, and am here with my coworker and dear dear friend Liana (http://lianakangas.blogspot.com/) for the Council for Exceptional Children conference. The trip so far has been... an experience. I never would have guessed, when I first poked my head into Liana's office 9 months ago to shyly tell her I liked her Darth Vader Mr. Potato Head, that I would one day spend Easter Sunday holding her hand in the ER in Maryland. Life, man.

We have had tons of awesome meals, which means Liana is going to have to fill out lots of paperwork for reimbursement, so I am blogging about it.

First of all, I am really into fruit for breakfast. Today and yesterday Liana and I had a cup of fruit salad and a cup of tea for breakfast. So refreshing and invigorating. And, like, 15 bucks at this hotel. Thanks, Gaylord National. You suck. (I have mixed feelings about this hotel. The room is nice and the service is great, our room service has always come punctually and the service people have been so friendly and pleasant. But when we ordered a car to come and get us from THE HOSPITAL it took 2 hours to get us. What? No.)

Second of all, Rosa Mexicana? Delicious. I feel like I'm betraying Ricardo and Viridiana of http://www.mexicanmariachigrill.com/ any time I get Mexican food anyplace else, but I really enjoyed this meal.

I've been to Rosa Mexicana once before- my friend and I went in 11th grade for a Spanish extra credit project to the one in NYC. It was so funny watching her try to order the pomegranate margarita so matter-of-factly, even though she didn't look even close to 21. I was also too young to enjoy the guacamole. The guacamole is AMAZING. They made it at our table, just mashed up an avocado, some tomatoes, onions, salt, pepper, and CILANTRO <3. They served it with little freshly-made tortillas, that tasted like the authentic Mexican ones Ricardo and Viridiana introduced me to, and two types of salsa- tomatillo, and some smooth, heavenly, dark-maroon colored one that sadly I have forgotten the name for. We also got vegetarian enchiladas (I ate a burger the other day and felt like shit for the first time in a long time, so I think I'm going to go mostly vegetarian. I'll still eat meat... but rarely.) which were tasty and beautiful, and some wonderful black refried beans, and yellow rice with corn. It was a lovely lovely meal.

Today, we went to Capital Teas and OH MY GOD. I have a Harney and Sons addiction, many of you may be aware, but today I was introduced to the wonderful world of loose leaf teas. Harney's has loose tea too but their satchets are so lovely I was never motivated to try anything else. (Paris tea? Heaven.) Capital Teas, however, had out a sample of their Royal Wedding Tea (I guess some royal people are getting married? I live in a cave.) and... man. It was subtle, it was complex, it was smooth. Slightly sweet. Heavenly. And only loose leaf! So I bought a tin and a product called a tea infuser (http://www.teaforte.com/store/tea-accessories/other/luci-loose-tea-infuser/) and now I can't wait to delve into the world of loose leaf tea. And being poor.

So this was a fun return to blogging. Maybe I won't just do food and will update this Friday when I get my KITTEN. That's right bitches. Rachel is a cat person now.

Oh Shit This Thing is Advertised?

I just noticed Liana linked to this blog in her wonderful Singles Dance Party Podcast... crap. My last post? Meh.

I don't know how I feel about the idea of a food blog these days, is my problem... Shouldn't I be contributing to society in some way? I don't know, man.

I guess practicing my writing is a good excuse.

Lent is coming up again, I'm thinking about giving up meat (GASP!), so maybe I will chronicle that experience in here...

I made this tasty vegetarian treat for dinner last night: http://www.amateurgourmet.com/community/2011/01/vegetarian-portobello-wellingtons.html

Definitely delicious. If I made it again I think I would try using phyllo dough instead of puff pastry though- the spinach and pine nuts reminded me of spanakopita, so maybe I'll make it more spanakopita-y.

Maybe the quality of my posts will improve if I decide to jump back on the horse...

T-Gives

I guess I should start updating this bad boy again.

Let's talk about Thanksgiving. Because, I mean... come on. It's a holiday all about food. Who can hate Thanksgiving?

Who else hates when Thanksgiving is totally overlooked for Christmas? Because let me tell you, I look forward to Thanksgiving every year WAY more than I look forward to Christmas. The only holiday I look forward to more is my birthday, which is conveniently either on or a few days around Thanksgiving. Clearly November is the month of the Gods. Anyway, I'm so excited for next week! My mom is an excellent cook, and this year I feel competent enough to actually contribute to the meal. I'll post about what I make!

Last Thanksgiving, I went to upstate New York and celebrated with Mandy and her family, and it was absolutely wonderful. Jurgen's smoked turkey was quite possibly the most delicious thing I have ever tasted, and drinking way too much warm spiced wine was just delightful. The entire extended family was there and I felt nothing but welcomed and happy. That is what Thanksgiving is all about. I think it is way better than Christmas, where there is so much pressure to find the right presents and get the decorations looking classy yet festive... I'd much rather share a tasty meal with people I love.

And then take a long nap. Heck yes.

Atmosphere

Warmth in a restaurant is a delicate thing. There’s a fine line between being friendly with customers and being so overbearing you chase them off. For instance, for my last few months at TCNJ I refused to eat at the Parkside Diner because one of the waitresses there would frequently sit at our table and talk to us with absolutely no indication on our part that we would like such a thing. And I’m sure you’ve all been to that restaurant where the waiter is too chatty, and annoyingly comments on everything you order (Ah, good choice, this is my favorite. Oh, I don’t care for that, but it’s because I don’t like cilantro.). It’s just something about that type of friendliness- where the individual wants you to like them, as a person, rather than their establishment- that makes me, as a diner, uncomfortable.

But in other instances the place can be too cold- like stuffy steakhouses that make you feel like you don’t deserve to be there. The night before my graduation my parents and I went to Acacia in Lawrenceville, and my goodness was it wonderful! The fish was the most tender thing I’ve ever tasted, my mom’s duck tasted like steak, and the mocha cake my dad got for dessert was a little piece of heaven. However, the gorgeous young woman who served us couldn’t seem to give a damn what we thought of our meal- she spoke to us without any inflection whatsoever. And I can’t blame her; I’m sure she gets hit on plenty at work, and since she didn’t personally prepare the food it probably didn’t matter to her what we thought about it. But it just takes away from the experience to be waited on by someone who seems to feel that you have no business interacting with them. (And I’ll admit, I was guilty of this at my job at GameStop- I had a hostile attitude towards all of my customers, and I regret this. My job was to serve them, and I did it begrudgingly.)

If, however, you can find that magical place where the owners really understand what a restaurant is all about, it’s just wonderful. There were several places in Ewing that understood that concept- Villa Rosa, of course, and this wonderful Mexican restaurant called Mariachi on Parkway (which, I will admit, is run by my old landlords). When you go to Mariachi, which you totally should, Viridiana, Eugenia, and Ricardo are happy to serve you- they want you to enjoy yourself. I’ve seen this in their interactions with other customers as well, so I know it’s not just because they know me personally- they are proud of the food that they make, and they are happy to have people enjoying it. The same is the case with a bar and restaurant near campus called Erini. I’ve never been there for food, but when I went there for a couple of informal senior nights, it was great. The owner was out there with everyone and he genuinely wanted people to have a good time. That is what an eating out experience should be like- if you run an establishment meant for pleasing people, then you should take pleasure in having your customers enjoy themselves. I feel like this is lost on a lot of places, and it’s really a shame, because there is no greater joy than being around people who are happy to have you in their establishment.

Clusters and Hops, Tallahassee

So, I guess I should start updating this thing again- I can’t believe the chef at Villa Rosa liked it! I mean, I did gush about the food there, but that is only because it’s wonderful- I’m so honored that someone of importance actually looked at my silly project.

Tonight, then, I’ll write about another truffle mac ‘n cheese I had- at Clusters and Hops here in Tallahassee. (Side note: I’ve moved to Tallahassee, FL. It’s really sad, I desperately miss NJ, but I’m trying to make do.)

First of all, I’ll admit I wasn’t impressed with the place. (I should also point out it's very hard to find- it's a small little place attached to a sleep center on Monroe, with no visible sign. Keep an eye out!) The establishment itself was pretty cute- there’s a nice little gourmet shop at the entrance with fine cheeses and truffle oil and imported chocolate, and I thought that was pretty awesome. And it was a nice dining location- beautiful bar, nice lighting, all that good stuff. But I just felt a little out of place there- the wait staff didn’t seem to take as much pleasure in making their customers happy as in other restaurants; they seemed to take more pleasure in their own prestige. I'll admit I'm pretty sensitive, so maybe it was in my head, but I went to this place wanting to like it. Our waiter was very nice, but when I ordered their 9-cheese macaroni and cheese with truffle oil, he asked, “are you sure? This dish has a very strong truffle flavor, sometimes people who haven’t had truffles before don’t like it.” I don’t know, it just rubbed me the wrong way that he assumed I wasn’t familiar with gourmet food. I suppose given my youth it is a fair assumption, but I don't think anyone ever likes it when a waiter indicates that they have made any sort of judgement about them.

He was right though, it did have a very strong truffle flavor. That's not to say it wasn't delicious- the cheese sauce was wonderful and the pasta just the right texture, and there was some sort of herb mixed in but I’m not sure what it was. But the truffle almost overpowered the cheese sauce, which is a shame with something as complex as a sauce made of nine cheeses. I’m not saying the dish was bad- it was lovely- but I would personally prefer the truffle be toned down a bit. I also got a root beer float with my meal, and my gosh if it wasn’t the best root beer float I’ve ever had in my life. The vanilla ice cream was noticeably of a very high quality, and the root beer was just divine.

Moral of the story: I plan to go back to sample some of the other things on their menu- and to get that wonderful float again- but I don’t know if it’s friendly enough for me to become a regular. It’s worth going at least once, the food is lovely and I found the prices to be reasonable.

What I'm Doing Right Now

I really need to get a camera because what I'm doing right now requires documentation.

Tomorrow in my Spanish class I'm giving a presentation on Mexican food, so I decided to bring in a tres leches cake to share with the class and butter up my teacher. (Anne, I still remember that paella you sent me to class with in high school.) I'm using the Pioneer Woman's recipe again, the one that I recommended you guys make and no one did. I'm recommending it again. This cake is so good. Here is how good it is:

Instead of making one big cake to take in to class and share, I have instead divided the batter between a medium-sized pan and a small one, so that I can have my own personal cake to eat right now, once the milk mixture is done setting. Everyone else in class is going to get a skimpy disappointing piece of pastel de tres leches, all because I couldn't wait until tomorrow to eat some of this bad boy.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/09/tres-leches-cake/

Shhh, just make it. Comment here and let me know how it turns out!

(Fun fact: In my presentation I'm also talking about Sor Juana de la Cruz and her writings on the "magic" of food- she was extremely educated which of course drew the attention of the Spanish Inquisition, and when questioned about witchcraft she reported that the only magic she was familiar with was the amazing transformative abilities of eggs. They really are magical, for this cake you divide the egg whites from the yolks, then beat the yolks with sugar and mix it with the flour, and then you beat the whites and essentially make a merengue. Then you fold that in with the batter and that's how you make a sponge cake. It's amazing how different this cake turns out than if you had just cracked the eggs right into the batter. Eggs are rad.)

I'm back! Let's talk about burgers!

I am a devoted carnivore. For most of my life I’ve eaten nothing but animal products, and red meat and cheese are my favorite food groups. Only this year did I add broccoli to my diet. What I’m saying is, I don’t eat vegetables. Especially not onions, oh hell no. Hell. No. Onions are disgusting. They’re squishy and crunchy at the same time- almost slimey- and they have that weird flavor that's savory and strangely biting. It's like an assault on the taste buds. I get shivers just thinking about it.

Except… caramelized onions.

It turns out I like those.

This weekend my friends and I went into NYC, and we found this place called 1 2 3. They serve sliders for a dollar, shots for two, and beers for three. Being a bunch of poor college kids, we were pretty thrilled, but we were certainly not expecting the burgers to be any good. We were standing in the bar sipping our beers (I’ve recently discovered a beverage called “Shock Top,” which is a light beer with an orange flavor… lovely), and they brought our burgers out on one big platter and handed them to us. I was horrified to see that they were covered in caramelized onions, but I was standing in the middle of a crowded bar with the burger in one hand, my beer in the other, and no table in sight. I was starving. I had no choice but to eat it without picking the onions off. So I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and took a bite… and a chorus of angels started to sing. That burger was GOOD. I know I tend to be hyperbolic when talking about food, but I honestly can’t recall ever eating a more delicious burger. How could this be? How could I be consuming- not just a vegetable, but the most vile and horrible of all vegetables- and be enjoying myself? This couldn’t be possible.

I decided to conduct a test. Maybe it was just all the alcohol I consumed that made me think I liked the burgers. Maybe it was something about those specific onions that made them special. Ina had a recipe for burgers with caramelized onions in Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics that I set out to test. If I made my own onions, I could see if I really and truly did like caramelized onions. I also decided to make my own hamburgers rather than buying the frozen kind, and I'm glad I did. I got bison meat, because I’ve always loved buffalo burgers, and I was real happy with the results, and I invited Gavin over to help me make them, mostly because I didn’t want to touch the gross raw meat with my delicate lady hands. So I had him mix together the buffalo meat, about 1tbs of Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper. He formed them into patties and grilled them to perfection, and they finished just after the caramelized onions, which I couldn’t believe I was making.

You put 2tbs butter and 2tbs olive oil in a pan, apparently this cuts down on the smoke. Cut up an onion into half-rings, and put those on LOW HEAT for about 20 mins. I put them on medium heat and made a delicious batch of charcoal, and got really grumpy and upset and I’m surprised Gavin put up with me. I chucked those and started again on low heat, and after about 20 minutes they looked beautiful. I mean, for onions. Ina recommends you splash them with… I forget how much, but just splash them with sherry vinegar, or in my case white wine vinegar, and sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and cook ‘em for about 2 more minutes.

Everything was all ready. My Kaiser rolls were toasted, I put a little bit of spicey mayonnaise on them (at the Pioneer Woman’s recommendation, it’s just mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce), and I piled some blue cheese on my still cooking buffalo patty. I transferred that to the bun, covered it in the onions, and took the first bite. It was delicious! Oh my goodness!

I like onions!

This is truly a glorious day for me. All sorts of doors have opened up. Today I ate French onion soup and actually ate it, instead of just dipping in the bread so as to avoid consuming onions. Goodness me, hallelujah, I like onions!

I highly recommend you cook your own burgers sometime, it’s incredibly satisfying and you can freeze the patties and cook them again whenever. Fabulous. Gavin said he enjoyed the burgers but if he could do it again he'd leave the mustard out, but I thought it added a nice flavor to the meat. To each his own.