Foodyear

October 12

The Fourth Part of This Blog

Today begins Part 4: Autumn.

Today

Ethiopian food.

October 11

My legs were tired and I needed comfort food. I needed a mozzarella wrap.

October 10

It was the first cool autumn day in downtown Chicago, after a weekend of feeling like summer since we arrived for a short visit a few days before. A downtown restaurant called Gino’s, a sort of haute British pub, makes a burger out of mushrooms. The menu calls them “woodland” mushrooms, but how that distinguishes them at all is unclear. The taste of them was comforting and indeed wild.

The Chicago Art Institute has the best carrot cake cupcake I’ve ever tried. Or, indeed, it may be the best carrot cake I can remember. Wisely, the dominant taste is in the frosting, accented with a body that’s a made with a sprinkling of carrots and a lot of sugar.

October 9

It was only after running a marathon that I really wanted something like pasta. Pizzano’s has Chicago’s traditional deep dish pizza, and I must now be a true resident of the East Coast because I found it to be a puzzling construction that’s more or less a baked slice of cheese. The “thin” crust version, really a moderately think crust, was much better, I thought, and it was easier to taste the sauce and the vegetables.

The brownie was invented at the Palmer House hotel by its matron, Bertha Palmer, as a special ladies’ treat for the Chicago world’s fair. The hotel now serves brownies with walnuts on top (her original recipe, according to them), with ice cream topping and  chocolate sauce.

October 8

Vietnamese food in Chicago’s Chinatown, with very, very good bun noodles. They tasted fresh and something close to liquid, without melting.

October 7

A neighborhood restaurant on the north side of Chicago, called Home Bistro, where the chef is from Pennsylvania and cooks suspicious items like scrapple, which at this point is more exotic to most Americans than food from Ghana or Laos. I was surprised to see tomatoes all over the menu and even snobbishly asked if they were still in season, and it turned out they were down to the last of their supplies. So there we have it: The end of summer in a warming Midwest. The standout dish was escargot mixed into a kind of hot Italian salad, with garlic cloves and cherry tomatoes.

October 6

The security line is very fast at Washington National Airport, so I noticed frequent business travelers eating at restaurants with a view of the metal detectors before they went in. I will remember that next time, after I found out that the best restaurant after security is Fuddruckers.

October 5

Breaded chicken drumsticks.

October 4

I found an affordable restaurant near my office, which is cause for celebration. They make baked potatoes their specialty and their gimmick, but I went for the Jamaican beef patties.

October 3

And they have pulled pork sandwiches on wonderbread.

October 2

Butternut squash risotto, using the last of my boxed wine.

October 1

We had people over for dinner and made cauliflower soup, pumpkin salad, and lamb with tomatoes and red peppers. Plums, like peppers, are foods I have never enjoyed eating uncooked. Happily, I found simple Joy of Cooking instructions for boiling them in a simple syrup, drawing out the sweet taste and yielding an instant appetizer or a dessert.

September 30

For the last time this year, I had dinner the night before a marathon training run. Viet has taken to making me pasta with tomato sauce and meatballs, but tonight it was pasta with slices of beef.

September 29

According to the three-year-old son of one of our friends, the word for broccoli is “trees.” Our dinner was stir-fried chicken with trees.

September 28

Ground pork wrapped in rice paper.

September 27

Sausages and roasted tomato soup.

September 26

I tried the duck in red curry at Rice, a quirky Thai restaurant. Better than that were the brussels sprouts with ginger and vinegar.

September 25

The Wall Street Journal culture pages, appropriately for the newspaper, hearken back to tradition. So this week, they had several recipes for savory pies. To make a savory pumpkin and apple pie, you roll out the dough, cook a pie pumpkin and scoop out the filling. You put apples on the stove with a little cinnamon, not much, and mix the apples with the pumpkin as well as, oddly enough, Idaho potatoes. Sweet potatoes would have made more sense; a sweet potato and pumpkin pie is the most natural thing in the world. Pull it out of the oven and you have something like a Chicago deep dish pizza, with a lot more fruit in place of the cheese, and you end up with enough food for several days. Sadly, the rest of my household did not take a liking, so it will not be a tradition for me.

September 24

Fish with carrots at an Ethiopian restaurant.

September 23

Pasta and sausages.

September 22

Lamb kabob at an Afghan takeout place. Fragrant spices and good flavor.

September 21

Shrimp and tomato soup. Bread. Green salad and a dressing made with shallots.

September 20

Chicken with eggplant, and a tomato puree made with fish sauce.

September 19

Bun with pork, mint, and the last of the cucumbers.

September 18

Today

Every year, in early fall I make lamb patties with ratatouille.

September 17

A Thai restaurant attached to a hotel; the sauces, taken alone, were more inspired than any prepared dish. And Ethiopian food, with late-night Ethiopian dancing.

September 16

We treated ourselves out at Cedar restaurant after a terrible week of work. Pork tenderloin over grits in a sauce that used dried cherries, and an oyster soup as an appetizer. A general feeling of early America.

Walking down the street, I stopped at one of those slightly high-end grocery markets that sell cupcakes and tiramisu and the like. Mostly, you expect to buy food at these places without thinking too much about how it tastes. But I bought an apple tart, and it was the real thing: a substantial crust, apples baked well yet not overcooked, and a good balance of flavors and spices.

September 15

Ate pizza while into my 24th hour of doing work.

September 14

Leftovers.

September 13

Food ordered from the office.

September 12

Vietnamese beef stew. In the best tradition of Vietnamese dishes, it was like its French counterpart with slow-cooked beef chuck and carrots, but with a broth flavored with fish sauce.

September 11

My version of succotash: Fresh corn with lime, red pepper and chile pepper. For today, I was using the best of fall harvest produce: I used mustard greens, which I can’t usually find, to make a pesto for linguine. And I baked eggplant stuffed with tomatoes and peppers. 

September 10

At a Vietnamese restaurant, glass vermicelli (I don’t know quite what that is, but it does look transparent) with lump crab meat that colored and flavored the noodles, and garnished with spring onions. A perfect union of Southeast Asia and the Mid-Atlantic.

September 9

Spaghetti and meatballs. 

September 8

At a friend’s house, who cooked us chicken with onions, and couscous.

September 7

Chocolate chip cookies. On the inside they had the texture of very fine grains of sand, instead of the classic American version that’s crumbly with periodic accents of chocolate. It may have been the confectioner’s sugar; I’m not sure.

September 6

Today

Chicken marinated in lemon sauce and fried with rice.

September 5

Jambalaya, but without the jamon; a basic rice pan cooked with shrimp, tomatoes and red pepper. I found the finished product much improved with a lot of old bay, even if the mixing of regional traditions is a little wild. In the future, I can see jambalaya with crab.

September 4

The reason to have fish is that it absorbs and takes on the flavor of whatever sauce you are making. (Exceptions would be the exceedingly fresh fish you eat out of the water, but we don’t have much of those around here, apart from the crab.) I had fresh corn on the cob, which I shucked and flavored with lime, then cooked in butter and then cream, and poured over sea scallops which had been brined and carmelized in olive oil.

September 3

We went to Philadelphia to visit Viet’s new niece, with whom we ate Vietnamese takeout food.

September 2

Steak flavored with sirancha; with rice.

September 1

Commercial veggie burgers with tomatoes.

August 31

We spent a long time deciding whether to go to Lost Dog Cafe or Stray Cat Cafe upon our arrival at the strip mall. It was confusing to me that Stray Cat seems to have a smaller beer selection and omits pizza from the menu, but adds nothing new you can’t find at Lost Dog; nonetheless, Stray Cat is where we ended up. I had a Catfish Head ale.

August 30

Working and ordering pizza.

August 29

I didn’t have much expectation of making a good peach cobbler, but then I surprised myself. The recipe told me to make a very sweet biscuit dough, much like strawberry shortcake, and then spoon it on top of the peaches, not in an even layer but in the form of large rolls. It emerged from the oven with a very thick and rich crust, sweetened and melted at the bottom by infusion with the peaches. I might have eaten the entire thing that evening, and probably should have. For the next day (alas, today’s blog entry will impart tragedy as well as triumph), the biscuit nearly melted when I tried to heat it in the microwave. It is only good right out of the oven, so in the future I will bake it for a large group of people or bring it to a potluck. A book could be written (and probably has been) about the influence of potlucks and church bake sales on the history of American cooking.

August 28

Today

First, you make a salad. Add cucumbers and make a dressing with basil and tomatillos.

Then prepare a cold plate with beef sausage, cucumbers and cheese.

Then, cook a few pancakes. Make them thin and unleavened, more like blinis. On the stove, cook tomato sauce with a little sugar, and combine the tomatoes with bechaml sauce. Layer the pancakes in an oven dish with the tomato and bechamel sauce in between each, plus some basil and parmesan. Bake. Mixing the tomatoes with a milk sauce was worth a try, but it didn’t do much for either.

August 27

For the hurricane, the challenge I set for myself was to cook something appropriate for huddling inside, while recognizing that it is summer and not the same thing as a snowstorm. I made bruschetta using heirloom tomatoes and garlic, and prepared chicken thighs with a pan sauce of shallots and red wine. Then I made an eggplant salad, which turned into something more like a tomato salad after I overcooked the eggplant. The prominent flavors in the dressing were lemon juice and cumin; and I’d be interested in sampling tomatoes in combination with one different flavor after another: tomatoes and fish sauce, tomatoes and cumin.

August 26

Ethiopian food. 

August 25

Today

Wheat thins.

August 24

A Vietnamese take on bolognese sauce. Ground pork, tomatoes. fish sauce and cilantro, producing a unique taste.

August 23

Bolgogi meat cooked on our new electric griddle, right on the kitchen table! There was too much smoke, but the beef was hot and ready to eat. In rice paper with kimchi.

August 22

Did work at home with a good German Riesling.

August 21

Today

Mole poblano sauce with chicken. While cooking, it reminded me of a pumpkin sauce, even though squash seeds (included, I believe, in some recipes) were nowhere to be seen; it is a good dish to match the sadness and fortitude of autumn. My end product did not measure up to this dish’s esteemed reputation; I made it too watery and almost bland, and the recipe had called for stewing the chicken so much that it was overcooked, making it less of a sauce than some kind of central American soup.

August 20

Fish and salsa verde in tortillas; I will not presume to call them “fish tacos.” The flavorless tilapia I bought from the Asian market was unimproved by any seasoning. The grouper fared better; it tasted fatty, after being cooked in a lot of oil.

August 19

Roasted potatoes and tuna casserole.

August 18

Lemon-marinated chicken.

August 17

Irish pub food.

August 14

Today

Pasta with tomato, basil and pepper sauce. A prosciutto and basil salad. This is what I can make with ingredients on hand.

A blackberry tart, made with a filling of equal parts yogurt and cream cheese. You need that cream mixture to give this dessert the necessary taste of candy; blackberries are rather subdued, as berries go, and work in savory dishes just as well.

August 13

We visited friends who are not from Iowa, but made us a dinner worthy of it. Pork slices and a green salad.

August 12

Ethiopian food.

August 11

Irish pub food.

July 24

The Third Part of This Blog

Today begins Part 3: Summer.

No time to update this for a month means that sadly, I have to abandon the goal of recording the entire year. In the spirit of disappointed idealism, onward.

Today

Colorful scrambled eggs with tomatoes and chili peppers. French toast.

July 23

For the heat wave, experiments in cold food. A tomato sorbet made by freezing reduced and pureed tomatoes combined with lemon zest and a simple syrup. To assemble, you make garlic squares (mix flour, butter, garlic and thyme, shape like chocolate chip cookies and bake for 10 minutes. Subsequently, you “frost” the squares with a cold sauce made from tomatoes and balsamic vinegar, and top them with a spoonful of the sorbet a peeled cherry tomato. My recipe made the sorbet too sweet, so it truly became a desert; less sugar would have made it more of a tomato.

For the real dessert, a cream of blueberry soup. Reduce white wine, more lemon zest and the blueberries, then combine with a sugar and vanilla bean syrup and a custard made with cream and egg whites. Good with raspberry sorbet.  

July 22

Used a coupon at Annie’s Steakhouse, one of those rare places where the clientele is still almost exclusively gays. It is interesting, the way things change.

July 21

Hamburgers and Belgian-style beer.

July 20

Veggie burgers with carrots and celery.

July 19

We used a coupon at Sushi Ko. The sushi was ordinary, at best, but they did have an interesting salmon ceviche.

Sushi Ko was the first sushi restaurant in DC. Before 1976, there was a metro area of several million people and not a single sushi restaurant. That is an idea very hard for me to grasp.

July 18

Barbecue chicken from Whole Foods.

July 17

At a restaurant in Charleston, S.C., raw mussels over ice and flounder ceviche.

July 16

We went to a happy wedding along a river on a plantation, where we enjoyed Carolina barbecue and home-brewed beer.

July 15

We went to a dinner at a good Southern restaurant in Charleston. In an old mansion with porch swings, the ingredient sources listed on chalkboards; that sort of thing. There was a heirloom tomato salad placed in what amounted to a syrup of tomato juice; and duck slices on a big plate of corn.

July 14

Arriving in Charleston late in the evening, we found ourselves in one of the seafood restaurants downtown that caters to tourists. The menu looked like something out of a family restaurant, but they told me to just order the shrimp and grits, which I did. A new kind of taste for me: fresh, wholesome and very filling.

July 9

The first weekend at home when I could buy the summer combination of fresh tomatoes, zucchini (I prefer the Commonwealth word “courgette”), and eggplant. I made ratatouille, soaking up the flavor of the tomato juice and accentuating with a lot of parmesan. 

July 4

My parents were here for the holiday, which is also my dad’s birthday. Appropriately, we went to Liberty Tavern. Monday is buttermilk fried chicken night there, and they gave me a very generous helping that was well-seasoned. This is what American food could be and should be. They are proud of their bread, and they also have a buttermilk cheesecake.

July 3

With my parents we went to St. Michaels by the bay. The crab cake I had was more or less a pile of crab meat, and I mean that in the best possible way.

July 2

We were at the beach in Chincoteague, VA, where all of the restaurants seem like family diners with similar options: Fresh seafood, broiled or fried, along with sides like macaroni and coleslaw. The soft-shell crab I had perhaps wasn’t their speciality, but seemed a little overcooked with too much flour.  

July 1

At a similar restaurant, I had steamed flounder; but the baked apples were something to really get excited about.

June 28

Today

Over the past couple weeks, the organization where I work has mysteriously decided to transform itself into a startup, and cooking at home is a distant memory. Sausage pizza at the local bar, with Virginia lamb and a little spice. A cask beer from Oliver’s in Baltimore. It was bitter.

June 27

A plate of pasta at Vapiano’s.

June 26

We woke up in a New England town where we had attended a wedding, and went to the diner for breakfast. My instinct told me to order the blueberry pancakes. I was rewarded. The cakes were soft to the touch, and the berries were everything.

Lunch at a lobster restaurant on the outskirts of Boston, where I tried the Cape Cod scallops, but I was really the most excited about the basket of cornbread.

June 25

A wedding in Claremont, New Hampshire, which looks like the only place in the world when you go to the top of a mountain and see only the church towers, old mills, the Wal-Mart, the high school track field surrounded by the hills. Pulled pork was a highlight of the buffet dinner.

June 24

Daily Catch restaurant in Boston, where there are no reservations and no restrooms. The owner helpfully appeared out of a movie and told us in his impeccable New England accent that he was one of the seven sons of the original founder, and a family picture was on the wall. I had calimari and clams over pasta, with a red sauce that had just a little bit of a kick, and it was so much food that I wished I had decided to run a marathon the next day. But then there was the monkfish in a white wine sauce, which somehow acquired a taste I had never even thought about before. You never think of fish as taking on a lot of flavor, exactly, but this was enough to bring on compulsive behavior.

June 23

Improvised tacos, consisting of ground beef and tomatoes in rice paper. It didn’t really work.

June 22

Fish and chips and cider at an Irish pub.

June 21

A hamburger at the local pizza bar, where the key ingredient was a pickled onion. Beer from Breckenridge, Colorado that was a pleasant of Flat Tire.

June 20

Took a frozen pizza and added fresh tomato slices and basil. A nutritious, locally sourced dinner, cooked in ten minutes. There are possibilities here. Buy the prepared starches, add vegetables and spices on your own.

June 19

Bún, this time with new cucumbers. I made a salad with tomatoes that have started to appear that the farmers market, adding basil and vinegar, but the tomato doesn’t taste like enough yet. I don’t know why.

June 18

Today

The humidity and the hovering threat of rain made the whole day uncomfortable, and I was only in the mood for a salad. Hank’s Oyster Bar has reliably tasty oyster platters, and seafood plates with colorful vegetable garnishes, but their salad didn’t enjoy much attention from the cook. There were peach slices arranged as sides on the corners of the plate, rather than integrated with the lettuce. To say more about the peaches, they tasted fine — like peaches, to be exact — but they didn’t have those intense, juicy flavors that you get from peaches at their seasonal peak. They would have blended well with the champagne vinaigrette, but you could barely taste it, and the goat cheese didn’t blend with anything. I worry about any restaurant that doesn’t take care of its vegetables.

June 17

A big bowl of tortellini and plenty of Smoking Loon wine. The only thing I wanted after a day like that.

June 16

Korean beef, or at least advertised as such, at Teaism. If it is Korean I at least expect a bracing sauce and a lot of sour cabbage on the side, but what they had was basic cuts of meat, with little seasoning. Palatable, even if it was almost bland.

June 15

I came home all ready to prepare an elaborate curry from a recipe, then couldn’t move away from the couch and ended up with leftover chicken on toast. We try so much to think about what we cook and eat and prepare what is creative, interesting, new; but so often we are tired and hungry and reach for whatever is there. It would be good to think about how much national cuisines have evolved from what is easiest and cheapest to make with the things on hand; the lowest common gastronomic denominators.

June 14

Roasted chicken legs.

June 13

A Bento box as I finished up at work.

The long heat was unkind to my balcony herbs, and the rosemary has died. So have the lettuce and cilantro and sage. The mint and thyme are doing well, and the basil bounced back when temperatures returned to a more temperate range.

June 12

Today

Cucumbers, tasty as crackers, with a mixture of cilantro and Greek yogurt. Then I tried to make a version of pesto, using mostly lemon instead of olive oil, to put over shrimp and linguine, but my blender isn’t up to much. It ended up as basil and shrimp.

June 11

Lentil and celery salad, and several kinds of cheese.

June 10

Ethiopian food.

June 9

A big bowl of spaghetti.

June 8

At a new neighborhood sports bar, a lobster roll that tasted far too close to a warm chicken salad.

June 7

Falafels from a package, with mixed vegetables and pot stickers.

June 6

A cheese platter at the bar Poste.

June 5

Pizza in a box, on a bus ride home.

June 4

The menu at Aburiya Kinnosuke, a restaurant on East 45th Street in Manhattan, was close to incomprehensible, so we handed all the decisions over to the restaurant and told them how much we wanted to pay. (The atmosphere was something like how a sports bar or a Denny’s would be if it were loud enough and dark enough for you to ignore everyone else around you.) Our waiter, a quiet man from Okinawa who claimed to finish two bottles of sake a week, brought us a crab salad, in which the crab effectively served as the dressing. A cold duck plate was next, and then a stuffed crab claw (which, I maintain, with its taste like a combination of seafood and cream, is possibly the most exciting food that exists).

There was an eggplant, peeled, with a pale appearance that made it resemble a fish; and there was a real fish, with a name that I can’t recall, soaked in a Japanese vinegar. We tried horumon meat (intestine, probably; from postwar Japan via Korea), and then small cuts of beef cooked on a hot brick of salt on the table.

They had a green tea tiramisu for dessert; certainly a worthy idea, but it tasted more like a curiosity, reminding me of cold seaweed. The sake was Kokuryu Ryu.

June 3

I arrived in New York late at night and found a sushi restaurant across the street, and my luck was good, or maybe I had just found the right city. It was a basic meal, but the fish was fresh; and where I live that is often too much to expect. The kids looked tired staying up while their parents ran the restaurant, and they sat at a table and stared at model airplanes.

June 2

A cabernet from Virginia, at Harry’s Tap Room. I didn’t know they could do it, but it’s a Virginia wine that tastes like wine.

June 1

An almond croissant.

May 31

Today

Marinated beef in fish sauce and sugar and soy sauce, but cooking it was too much when you consider the premature heat. Over bún, this time without enough salad; and I think noodles should be covered with an overabundance of lettuce and green onions and cilantro, and especially mint.

May 30

Biked all around Washington today, which is perhaps the subliminal reason I was motivated to cook tapas. Or, at least, “small” plates. Boiled potatoes and seasoned with thyme and oregano (and I don’t know if you’re supposed to do that, but I didn’t have sage), and mixed with a couple of scrambled eggs. Pasta with olive oil and proscuitto and pepper. Salad with honey mustard. 

May 29

We had a coupon to The Melting Pot, a very silly dining adventure and fun if you go in with the right expectations. As a couple, you are presented with complicated “if … then” decisions to make, including whether you order individual entrees or a package deal for two (“the big night out”). The freedom is limited by their restriction that there is only one fondue pot per couple, and so you must agree on an order of sauces to share between the two of you. Then you are presented with a main course as an assortment of fish, meats and/or chicken, each with specified cooking times, and the limitation that you can only cook them one at a time on the end of a fondue stick when you could have easily used, say, a kabob. And of course, since it is a fondue restaurant, you have to order dessert, guaranteeing a tidy profit for the restaurant when they conclude with a chocolate fondue that is impossible for any chef to mess up.

I had a basket of strawberries to get rid of and baked a kind of coffee cake around midnight, melting the butter instead of mixing to avoid waking people up, but the middle of the night is the only time to turn the oven on in weather like this. A lot of sugar in the batter, mixed with slow-cooked berries on top, served the end product well.

May 28

Soft-shell crab! Summer is early, however unwelcome, and it feels like the beach; or, at least, it is best to think of it that way. Zucchini! It has arrived at local farmers markets, the beginning of more substantial vegetables that come after lettuce, peas and onions. Eggplant cannot be far behind.

May 27

Once you get used to the idea of wine as the main course and the food itself as a side dish, you will enjoy an experience at the bar called Cork with ease. I let them choose a rosé for me that was cold enough for the summer, but deep and fulfilling as any classical red wine. After avocado on toast I sampled a turbot with crème fraiche, but the most substantial part of dinner was french fries with homemade catsup.

May 26

Today

Tacos is what they would have been, until I realized there was mold on the tortillas, so I turned them into ground beef, cooked in thai chile paste, wrapped in rice paper with cilantro and salad greens, and dipped in nước chấm prepared with a dash of habanero sauce. We were south of a border, but I’m not sure which one. Korean tacos have nothing on Mexican gỏi cuốn.

May 25

Smoked lamb over a salad, with boiled eggs.

May 24

I have been experimenting with different ways to marinade; often, I worry that I don’t have many ideas. Beef cubes, marinated in hoisin sauce, then broiled and served with bún noodles and spring vegetables. There was still not quite enough flavor to the beef, or perhaps it was too much of one flavor.

May 23

Morels over pasta with prosciutto and spring onions. The pork and onions gave it too much zing and zest; with good mushrooms, all I want is earth.

May 22

Against our better judgement, we spent a lot of money to attend the “Taste of Arlington” festival in which we were crowded into a narrow section of the street and interacted with rude persons as we waited for it to rain. I was able to sign up and provide my email address for the chance to win a lot of contests, which is something. My best dish was from the restaurant Willow, which was serving chili; perhaps an odd choice for warm weather, but the toasted squash seeds made it stand out.

I did my best with Southern cooking for dinner, and fried up bluefish in cornmeal to serve with polenta. This is Virginia’s brief season of bluefish, before they swim to New England. Or so I am told.

All that excitement got the better of me when I couldn’t sleep at night. Around three in the morning, I made myself a green salad with a lot of honey thrown on top of it.

May 21

Ethiopian food and Caribbean cocktails.

May 20

Apple gingerbread.

The herbs on my balcony are doing well, with perhaps more luck accorded to the drought plants like thyme and rosemary, and less to those that seem to need more water. When I need to use the basic Vietnamese flavors, it is delightfully handy to have supplies of fresh mint, or cilantro; and the farmers markets have enormous bundles of spring onions these days. But I am not sure how the cilnatro will ever grow back.

May 19

Ginger scones.

The strawberries on our office balcony never came up.

May 18

Today

Great northern bean soup with prosciutto.

May 17

Red beans with falafel.

May 16

Today

Pork tenderloin and basil.

May 15

We had brunch in a place near Chapel Hill, N.C., where I tried fried green tomatoes on eggs benedict, with grits and a salad. Dinner at a bar in Durham where the waitress was as indifferent and world-weary as the Chapel Hill waitress was happy, and I had a duck breast, with asparagus chopped like green beans.

May 14

We were visitors in a house in the woods of North Carolina; blueberry bushes and giant cabbage leaves grew on the lawn. Pizza made on the grill and lots of green vegetables. I cannot quite recall the different kinds of beer we were served, but in the long run, that is fine. 

May 13

Starr Hill beer from Charlottesville that tasted very Central European: light with a hint of bananas.

May 12

Ethopian food.

May 11

Curry chicken in corn tortillas.

May 10

Rice flavored like ochazuke.

May 9

Ethiopian food.

May 8

I probably worked in an office for many hours to earn what I spent at H-Mart, but we were out of rice noodles and frozen shumai. I bought enough spices to fill a cupboard and a couple fresh jars of kimchi. For dinner, bun noodles with pork and fresh cilantro from the balcony.

May 7

We found a neighborhood Italian restaurant called Dino’s: finally, a place that makes the kind of food I like to cook myself, only better. Simple preparations using what is fresh, without acting silly by throwing ten or twelve unrelated accompaniments into one dish. We had come from a Southern-themed party where there was bourbon and mint brownies, so I wasn’t terribly hungry and ordered the asparagus over pasta noodles. That was enough.

May 6

Salmon with lemon.

May 5

A bagel with garden vegetable cream cheese. An inoffensive lunch.