Spring time

You know that Brad Garrett 7UP commercial where he frolics? Well, when I see all the trees blooming, that's exactly what I want to do. Except, usually my feet hurt too much in my wedge espadrilles to bother. But inside. In my heart. I seriously crave the frolic.

MIA

Sorry I've been in MIA. I'll say this though, if you don't actually know me, consider yourself lucky. I've been telling anyone who will listen about how my stomach is so stretched out from the massive amounts of eating that has been going on lately that I am always ravenous. Guys at school are hungry too, but they seem to have been doing a lot of running around in the nice Spring weather. I don't run. I sit and chow down.

The downside when this runs amok, of course, is the incredible feeling of fatness that generally pervades one's waking hours. The other day I tried to think of a healthy-themed menu that I could throw for a little gathering I was hosting. You won't be surprised to learn that I couldn't think of anything.

Lately, however, I've been craving quinoa. Anyone got any suggestions? I've got summer dresses to fit into.

Anticipating Dinner

The sky is gray, and rain drops are clinging to my window. The rumbling of thunderstorms interrupts the stillness of the apartment, and occasionally the world flashes bright with lightning.

A leg of lamb is roasting in the oven. The smell of garlic and rosemary is wafting into the sitting area. I've got chocolate mousse chilling in the fridge and plenty of whipped cream to cut the dessert's bitter notes.

The stemware is out, the tablecloth ironed, and I feel calm. Everything is okay. I am healthy, my family and friends are well. In a little while the kitchen and the apartment will be all hustle and bustle as guests arrive. But there is some time yet. In this moment I am at peace and happy.

Wishing you a lovely Easter,
FID

A Quick Hello

Ah I see we are nearing the end of the Alinea adventure. Isn't the chocolate dessert exciting? I feel so lucky to have been privy to a meal that I will remember for years.

I'm sitting in my room in Costa Rica. Yes! Costa Rica! It's the end of my spring break and soon I must head home to Chicago. I hope the Windy City warms up soon because I loved the feeling of hot sun on my shoulders, not to mention the silhouette of a big floppy hat and a swishing white cotton skirt.

And in Chicago, I can be free with my gastronomic wanderings. One meal off the compound, which I have taken to calling this resort, left me with a stomachache for two days! One day I was stuck in bed all afternoon, which meant a precious day of frying my skin was lost. I guess if that is the change that helps me avoid skin cancer, it is some small solace.

One of the good things about being ill is that one remembers the pleasure of simple foods. Plain white rice can be awfully comforting.

Get ready boys and girls

I just blogged for five hours, covering all 29 dishes that I recently enjoyed at Alinea over seven hours. I'm surprised that blogging time nearly matches dining time. And I'm even more surprised that I haven't eaten for the day yet. Sweet lord this girl is ready to chow down after thinking about some mad delicious food and writing about it all morning.

I'm letting the posts show up over the course of the month, so get ready for a fabulous March!

Map Apologies

I don't know if you've noticed, but the map hasn't been updated in ages. My apologies. Is the map even helpful? Does it make the page load slowly? Should I figure out how to throw it onto a separate tab? How does one even make a separate tab on Blogger?

Can I have a map intern? Can someone who is cash flow negative even get an intern?

These are the questions that assail my life.

Wrap Up

The ten days in New York involved many other small, but memorable eating moments.

A lunch at Ippudo. Two steaming bowls of Akamaru Ramen with dollops of spicy sauce. With my friend. You know her. She was my companion when we ID-ed the only openly-gay Olympiad at the Beijing Olympics as the most likely straight diver. Nonstop chatter about shared trails and travails, aspirations, general gossip.

A last-minute called-in, midday snack at Mad for Chicken. A plate of spicy chicken wings with the Bastard Consultant. Just catching up. And hearing a bit about his career musings. Could it be possible? That one day the Bastard Consultant will just be the Bastard? You know that would crack me up.

A long-anticipated reunion at DBGB. The reunion being me and DBGB. I don't know if DBGB knew that it was a reunion, but I got a Christmas card from them a few days earlier, and I was feeling especially affectionate towards my old neighborhood crush. With my dining companions from both Ippudo and Mad for Chicken, plus a new friend from school who was also in town that day. The blood sausage was as good as ever. And we talked of home. And family. Friendly banter with the waiter. And I remember leaving the restaurant, the snow hugging the edges of the sidewalk. Feeling warm and content. Sated on the luxury of days with old friends and delicious meals. Hugging friends before we each sleepily teetered towards our separate cabs and subway cars.

Potluck!

On my to do list for the next year is to make a better effort to find some culinary simpaticos at school. (That's a complete bastardization of the word is it?) I met a few at an Italian themed potluck with some members of the Epicurean Club.

The evening looked promising with the proffer of a beautiful pomegranate cocktail, courtesy of the hostess.

Followed by an addictive white bean dip.

I couldn't really understand why guests did not clean out this bowl of green beans tossed with slivered sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts and homemade pesto. It was fantastic, and there was a healthy pool of pesto-green olive oil pooling in the bottle that just begged for me to scoop up with the spoon and drizzle over the beans. I had at least three helpings.

Caprese salad with an aged balsamic.

I brought this salad, of which I made way way way too much. It's a shaved fennel salad with Boston lettuce, grapefruit and parmesan in a sherry vinaigrette. It was really an excuse to use my beloved mandoline.

One of two gigantic lasagnas. I love meeting people over food. I learned about people's culinary interests as well as their own personal fascinations, and got opinions about Oprah and the state of education in America. A good meal's ability to bring together relative strangers and generate meaningful conversations is one of the best things about creating a delicious dinner.

Here's something new

En route to Cincinnati, I saw this product near the cash register at a gas station where stopped to fill up. Are you understanding the purpose of this product? It's for the fellows that dip. And it's a nice minty depository for your spit. I know. It's kind of genius. What kind of person buys this? Is it for the ladies? Do the guys care? There's this whole world I don't know about.

Thanksgiving is around the corner

Turkey Day is soon upon us, which gives all warm-blooded Americans, foodie-identifying or not, the Constitutional right to think about all the delicious things they want to eat. Giving thanks is a nice idea too.

I'm headed back to San Francisco to spend Thanksgiving with the folks, so I think my meals are going to take on a decidedly Asian flare. I do not see visions of gravy, roasted brussel sprouts, stuffing, and mashed potatoes in my future. And yes, this is the world's own small tragedy.

Instead, I've put in requests for poached chicken, taro cooked with Peking duck, Chinese broccoli stir-fried with cured pork belly, and homemade wontons. Maybe my brother and I will have time to sneak off to a taqueria and make a pit stop for some curry. A little dim sum with the relatives wouldn't be so bad either.

I'm in trouble. I gained some weight this weekend when the 'rents were visiting in Chicago and we paid visits to Avec and Publican. I bet Old Navy is having a sale. There's got to be a couple of pairs of sweatpants with my name on them.

What's your plan this Thanksgiving? Do tell.

Queens Food Crawl: Ogling Wedding Jewelry

One of the best things about a food crawl is the opportunity to wander the streets while you wait for your stomach to get hungry again. All of the Indian bridal jewelry easily caught my eye.

I'm not a big one for weddings. For once, I'm not attracted to all of the pomp and frippery. Uncharacteristic, yes? It's a good thing I didn't know about about Indian weddings growing up because matching bridesmaid dresses and tiered wedding cakes I may sniff at, but intricately wrought gold jewelry as beautiful as these is something else altogether.

I became enamoured with this piece. I can just imagine some lithe bride waving her henna-tattooed fingers in the air as she dances amidst family and friends. Though at the rate I'm eating, I won't be slipping any gold adornments onto what are likely to be pork sausage fingers anytime soon.

Spices

I started really learning how to cook by preparing for an annual New Year's Party each year. As I got more comfortable entertaining, the menu expanded and became more ambitious. Soon I was preparing fourteen courses, and the broader and more exotic the ingredient list, the more likely I was to include it on the menu. It became frustrating to prepare for New Year's though because I would have to buy so many spices just to be able to complete the menu.

When I moved to New York and started working, I decided that I was about to embark upon life as an adult. As an adult, I felt I should have a full complement of spices. The pile above is my stash of spices I pulled out in order to do a reassessment and replenish depleted reserves.

I like to order my spices from primarily two online stores: The Spice House and Vanilla, Saffron Imports. I'm feeling particularly fond of The Spice House right now because they just sent me a $20 gift card.

Then because I have no memory retention capabilities and am overly fond of charts, I make a master list that serves as a road map. The other day I was infuriated to learn that I did not have any ancho chili powder. How is this possible?

A day when pigs fly

... the following was written at 10:48 p.m. last night ...

I just got back from dinner at Sobakoh where among other things I had both grilled Chilean sea bass and Soba with ikura and uni. This is after a breakfast of soft baked eggs with cream and tomatoes, a mocha, and an orange juice. Prior to that I had a dinner of cheese, charcuterie and wine, this following a day of a multi-stop eating tour in Queens.

Literally feeling slightly queasy and generally not quite right from this summer of amazing meals -- pigs must be flying -- because I believe I am actually looking forward to being a student and poor and without foodie friends in a city's whose culinary credentials I do not yet believe.

I need some blessed respite from my own gluttony.

... This blog has such a backlog of meals to post about though, it'll be weeks before you find out if I really do start eating moderately and healthy anytime soon. I'm sure you are just in a tizzy of anticipation. ....

Wild New York

My best friend who hails from a family who likes to hike once scoffed at colleagues who practically wanted a moment of silence upon encountering some deer, not while trudging through the woods mind you, but from the comfort of their motorized vehicle, well, that best friend may be inclined to similarly sniff at my own sense of wonder, but gosh darn it I'm still amazed and you're going to hear about it.

[Not bad for a spur-of-the-moment run-on sentence eh?]


The other day I was walking through Flatiron when I spied something unusual. A little brown bird (sparrow?) had fluttered down from a nearby rooftop wrestling something large that was struggling in (I'm going to make this sparrow a girl) her beak.

It was a dragonfly at least two-thirds the length of her own-body. I was struggling down the street with shopping bags carrying, among other things, beyond adorable gray kid-leather stiletto ankle booties, and couldn't really figure out how to process the moment. Was this one of those sightings that if I were to affect the persona of a true New Yorker I must continue resolutely along my way, or since it involved a non-human animal, aka nature, was I allowed to pause? After seeing both a gentleman with shopping bags of his own and the male component of a hipster couple whip out their smartphones (iPhone and Blackberry, respectively. Yes, surprising I know.), I decided it was safe to turn around and clumsily extract my own trusty food-blogging camera sidekick.

The sparrow was doing her best to conquer the still fluttering and very much-alive dragonfly, but it also didn't appreciate the three New Yorkers intently stalking her with cameras outstretched. As soon as we got nearly close enough to take a halfway decent picture, she would flit to the next tree to continue her battle for lunch.

After grabbing these shots, I and my fellow photogs finally gave up and let the sparrow tend to her meal in peace. While walking away I marveled at the sparrow's determination: she managed to dodge paparazzi while grappling with big game. It was Waverly Inn and a Kenyan Safari all rolled into one.

Balinese Coffee and Chocolate

The real focus of our visit to this tourist stop was the coffee and cacao. These are coffee beans on the plant. They are ripe when the beans turn red.

Here are normal dried coffee beans, pre-roasting, pulp extracted.

These are super special coffee beans. They came from poo.

Yes, that's right poo. Poo from a civet that likes to eat the coffee beans.

This one's tired from a hard day's work.

They had a lady on site who demonstrated how to roast the coffee beans and bring out the aroma.

After roasting, the beans take on the dark brown tones we all know and love.

Here's a mortar and giant pestle (OMG, I just started to spell giant "jiant." What is wrong with me?) to pound the coffee beans into grounds.

Then we got a complimentary tasting of coffee, ginger coffee, ginger tea, and hot chocolate. Yum. I don't know much about coffee, so I couldn't really gauge whether or not the Balinese coffee was exceptional. We got a packet of ginger coffee for my mom. I started to feel weird after taking sips of the different drinks one after another.

But I did not feel bad enough to stop myself from taking a photo of this cute cinnamon jar that was on the table to flavor our drinks.

Oh, and backtracking a little, these are fruit pods from a cacao tree. The green one isn't ripe yet, but the yellow ones are.

The cacao seeds are used for making chocolate.

But you can take suck on the pulp enveloping the seeds. It's got a mild, sweet flavor with a very subtle almost citrus flavor.

And that's your coffee cocoa lesson for the day!

Balinese Fruits

Mangosteen are my favorite fruit, but somehow, stupidly, I failed to eat even one during my trip to Indonesia. Can we say idiot?

My brother and I did go to this location set up for tourists to learn more about Balinese agriculture. We got to try some of the local fruits including this snake fruit, which I did not dig. It tasted like a slightly dry, slightly sour, too firm pear. No thank you.

The passion fruit was awesome though. It had a milder flavor than I would have suspected, and the little seeds were encased in these translucent jelly sacks that were fun to pop in my mouth. I do find it rather mortifying that I've never had fresh passion fruit before.

This, I don't know what this is. Pretty ain't it?

Guava was more boring than I had hoped. Now I do think I've tried fresh guava on a trip to Thailand, but I don't really remember it, so I'm still just as embarrassed. It sort of had a bland flavor.

Somewhere in the green hills of Bali, Indonesia

The Joy of a Good Snack

I was in Chicago this weekend looking for an apartment, and my friend and I stopped by the zoo, whereupon I filmed this: the shared joy of munching on a good snack on a beautiful summer's day.

Monterey Bay

While in San Francisco I went scuba diving in Monterey Bay with some family friends who like to catch fish with spear guns. We slept on their boat overnight, and I woke up at 7am to survey the neighborhood (Bellowing sea lions, cramped quarters, and a rocking vessel do not make for the best night's sleep.).

I discovered that the neighbors had no trouble catching some wink-eye.

This fellow really couldn't be bothered with a crazy woman snapping pictures.

His flippers look so incredibly soft.

Everybody looked like they had difficulty keeping their eyes open.

It was an all-out slumber part in Monterey Bay.

Some just passed out in the middle of the boardwalk.

Others preferred some company.

And their friends decided to make it a party.

They were generally indiscriminate about location.

And that's how these Californians like to roll on a Sunday morning.

Chinese Medicine

The first thing my mom did when I came back to the Bay Area was whisk me off to see the Chinese doctor.
After feeling for my pulse and muttering about how I can't have any fried food or sea food or any of my favorite foods because I have too much "fire" in my system, he dashed off this prescription.

At which point the attached Chinese pharmacy began to fill it.

I love how the pharmacist still uses an old style balance to weigh the proper amount of various twigs and other flora.

Now he's checking that he filled the prescription properly by rummaging around the pile of twigs and bark to make sure each item on the prescription has been included.

Here's one dose. You boil it for awhile and then extract the bitter brown brew. Yum!