Malawry

I think Ortanique's rum cake, followed by two or three boutique dark chocolates, would make an ideal dessert. Suzanne, you're a cheap date. I ate that stuff all the time at work (more than I should probably admit publicly!) and never felt soused.

I like buttery cakes with buttery chocolate frosting best, and I normally request them on my birthday. Butter is the most important factor in any pastry for me, with the exception of donuts which are fried instead of butter-enriched. I recently have discovered a fervent passion for german chocolate cake among my friends that surprises me. I never much cared for german chocolate cake. Ortanique, where I worked, had a rum cake on their dessert menu that immediately became my favorite dessert there. It was a rich, sour-creamy, buttery sort of a pound cake soaked in rum syrup. Ohmy.

Ortanique may be more expensive than what you want to spend, but they can accommodate 30 (or however many you have) in a semiprivate space. The food is fun and Emilio's mojitos are rightly legendary. I second Mark's recommendation of the Zaytinya communal table. I ate there with a group of 20 or so once and had a great time. They just kept bringing us little plates of stuff and they were patient with our constantly getting up and moving around to talk to different people.

The whole ex-vegetarian-with-a-mostly-vegetarian-spouse thing drives a lot of my ordering decisions. If I am with my partner I am most likely to choose fish dishes, and then order a starter with some sort of meat in it. This way he can have a taste of my entree, but I can have the "treat" of some meat which I don't eat at home. So we usually both order fish dishes and share tastes...sometimes, but not often, we go 50-50. Usually we both prefer the same dish though which can be annoying, I feel an obligation to order something different so I can sample two things on the menu. If I am without my partner I order meat or fowl almost every time. This is because I can't eat it at home and try not to eat a lot of it in front of my sweetie. I rarely order chicken (animal tofu) but will usually select duck, lamb, pork or beef. I have eaten very few steaks since I added meat back into my diet and I have only eaten in a steakhouse once. Price is a secondary factor in my dining choices, mostly because I've already committed to spending the money by the time I am in a seat with a menu before me.

A big butterleaf salad Pita bread with the last of the tzatziki and some hummus Grapefruit juice

I had the leftover pad thai for breakfast (Dinner! last night) with some iced coffee sweetened with coconut syrup, so I wasn't that hungry by lunchtime. I seared off the rest of the pak choy with soy sauce, ginger, sherry, sesame oil and chili oil and a dash of sugar and ate that as a light lunch. I'm currently cooking a big pot of applesauce and making some Joy of Cooking sugar cookies. I was noting how the applesauce sweetness level seems to vary when I check it, it's a lot less sweet after eating some cookie dough yet tasted very sweet when I checked it after eating the pak choy.

I always wash them in the dishwasher and then dunk them in the canner when I get my fruit going for jam. My canner holds 7 jars. If I'm making more than 7 jars of jam (which is common, since I don't bother making jam unless I'm making a huge batch) I just dunk the next 7 jars as soon as the first batch is finished processing. By then I usually want to get out of the kitchen and cool off for 10 mintues anyway. It's a chance to relax with a cocktail before returning for another round.

This is becoming a favorite dinner here... Tofu satays with peanut sauce and cucumber salad Americanized pad thai with vegetables and shrimp Gingery pak choy Pineapple for dessert.

Oh, Erin, but it'd be so entertaining between now and Sunday for us to read that appended to your posts. I've been eyeing Dessert Circus for some time now. It looks like a truly excellent book.

We have discussed local culinary traditions, the old favorite places in particular, in past threads. I for one really enjoyed and learned a lot from this discussion: Giffords and other old favorites. I actually really am interested in what you have to say on the subject, Joe. I object to being browbeaten, put down because I've lived and dined here less than you have, or carped at about how people don't appreciate homemade food any longer. I dine out regularly, I have visited a lot of the old guard DC favorites and I completely understand a lot of the good food that used to exist here has long since been shuttered by the insistence on convenience and low-cost demands. I appreciate homemade food, I make food at home all the time, I make food "nobody" makes any longer like stocks and jams and my own pizza crust from scratch. In this particular thread, we've been discussing Guatemalan fried chicken and whether or not it's worth a detour. I think we've all agreed with you that this is mass-produced fast-food chicken from a foreign chain, and nobody has declared that this is like what you might find on the menu at a place like Colorado Kitchen or Florida Ave Grill who respectively present authentic American and Soul versions of the dish (CK has run it as a special before) or what you might produce at home given the time and inclination to smell up the kitchen. I think your opinions on other subjects are welcome on eGullet, and have relevance well beyond the DC area. I was also interested to read what you had to say about the chicken at Pollo Campero. What I don't understand is your frustration. Why not go rejuvenate the Giffords thread to talk about the old DC haunts, or start something on the General board about why things have changed. (I bet you'd find insights from people like Holly Moore who doesn't live in DC but does have a lot of experience in the shifting tides of cheap eats American restaurants.)

I don't eat fried chicken too often. That being said, I prefer pressure-fried chicken to chicken fried in an open pan. It stays juicier. And this is the best commercial pressure-fried chicken I've tasted so far. But it's still not worth waiting in the lines for and so I recommended going after the novelty has receded somewhat. My age, formerly vegetarian diet, and other prejudicial factors are all over this board, so I'm sure you'll all take what I have to say on this or any other subject with several grains of mass-produced Kosher salt.

(Heather referred to the sauce as "some kind of spicy mayo crack" when she bought the chicken after we had lunch today. This after I opined that pig is made out of crack.)

Rick Bayless for supermarket carts.

The largest apartment building in the District has a collection of grocery carts that tenants use to move their goods in and out of the building. When I lived in the city I shopped mostly at a crappy Safeway (the Soviet Safeway for those of you playing along) and all their carts had a pole sticking up from them that made the carts too tall to push out the door of the store. The Giant in my old, inner DC burb used to prevent people from taking carts off the patio outside the front door of the store by installing a fence. You had to use parcel pick-up if you had too many groceries to carry in a single trip. Then Giant was purchased by a huge multinat corporation which renovated many stores, including the one where I live. Now you can take carts out to the lot and a few parking spaces have been replaced by cart corrals. I wonder if they are suffering more cart theft as a result. What does a shopping cart cost?

Oregano-rubbed salmon topped with Total tzatziki Mushroom and artichoke ragout Plain buttered rice.

Vengroff, the line should die down over the coming weeks and months. There's a location opening in Langley Park next year, just around the corner from my house. I plan to wait until they open and the lines there die down before I eat it again, unless I happen to be near one of the two existing Pollos Camperos with a fried chicken craving and I see there's no line out the door. The food is better than Cheesecake Factory if you order well and it's also cheaper, more interesting and more worth the wait.

Welcome, Mrs-j. Of course we have room for newbies here. You might want to consider posting a bio to our Member Bios forum, to introduce yourself to the board.

Well, some things sucked. Like the rice and the slaw. But the chicken most definitely does not suck.

Okay, it took me until just now to deal with my images. I know ya'll were sitting on your hands waiting for me to post this stuff. I arrived at about 1:50pm at Pollo Campero, Herndon on Sunday. The restaurant is very clean and cheerful. The line was well out the door but clearly not as long as it had been in previous days... They only let in a few people at a time. I felt bad for whoever was in line right after the last people were let in, because it smelled damn good outside. You can see they had set up barricades outside for when the line was outrageously long. BTW everybody in line was very cheerful. I chatted with the Salvadoran couple in line in front of me briefly in my crappy Spanish. They said Pollo Campero is popular in their part of El Salvador and that they really missed the chicken after moving to the US. My Salvadoran friends in line ahead of us said they didn't know the name of the Pollo Campero mascot, although the gentleman suggested jokingly that his name was Pollo. "My name is chicken! Eat me!" The mascot guy seemed cheerful enough about coming outside and entertaining us in line. Hannah cackled over how he got stuck in the doorway. There were some policemen and women around to keep things orderly and one of them had to help push the mascot out the door. Once he was out he hung around for a while playing with the little kids who were waiting in line. They alternated between wanting to be his best friend and needing to hide from his scary self. We waited in line for a full hour before getting inside the front door. The smell was killing me, Hannah and Hannah's charming husband by this point. We chatted up one of the cops standing by the door. She let me take her picture but then asked me not to post it. She gave us useful menu advice and said the chicken was great. BTW, Pollo Campero sells individually-packaged pieces of Edward's pie and little prepackaged cups of flan, which fill the fridge case you can see in this image. Hannah and her husband shared a flan, which was at least as good as Kozy Shack's and came in a much larger portion. Freshly fried chicken is dumped into this holding area. Most of what you see here is the Campero wings and nuggets, which nobody was ordering. The chicken was dished onto plates and sorted into boxes as quickly as it came out of the fryer, so it wasn't sitting out at all and tasted incredibly fresh. I was surprised that the menu boards were almost all in English, even though almost everybody in line clearly spoke Spanish as their first language. (The staff all appear to be flawlessly bilingual.) I ordered a three-piece meal. This included a drumstick, a wing and a breast. A three-piece meal comes with your choice of tortilla or biscuit; I paid a 30 cent supplement to sample both. It also comes with two sides; I chose the Campero beans and the spicy rice. And it includes a large beverage; I paid a 60 cent supplement to have the tamarindo instead of regular soda for my drink. The chicken is clearly the star here. As you can see from this close-up, the coating is thin and very crisp. The chicken appears to be brined and coated in-house before frying; I saw people in the back pulling plain chicken from boxes to prepare them for frying. The brine makes the meat juicy, a little salty and quite flavorful. This chicken easily beats KFC and Popeye's for tastiness, crispness and the minimal requisite greasiness. Very very good. Hannah and her husband ordered almost everything on the menu, so I had the chance to sample most of what Pollo Campero sells. Starting with the other items I tasted from my plate besides chicken: Tortillas: two corn ones, made in-house. Pretty good. Biscuit: Not so hot. Lacking in salt and butter flavor. Fairly tender though. Spicy rice: Absolutely no spice flavor whatsoever. The rice is red, I guess from some sort of tomato product, and has a few tired peas mixed in. Avoid it. Campero beans: Packed with ground meat, pieces of bacon, and small diced vegetables. Really awesome beans, tender and loaded with flavor. A must-order. Tamarindo: The drink of choice. This is a fairly sweet version of this beverage but it goes down almost as well as sweet tea with the fried chicken. Salsas: I liked the roasted chile salsa, which went down well with bits of fried chicken wrapped in tortilla. I'd eat several sandwiches like this in a heartbeat if there were shredded lettuce to top them. Other items sampled: Horchata: a fairly standard version of this almond-milk drink. I don't think it matches the chicken especially well...creamy + fatty fried is not such a great combo. Mashed potatoes: excellent! Piping hot with a meaty gravy on top, creamy and rich and starchy. Coleslaw: tastes like mayo. Not cabbage and mayo, just mayo. Ick. Campero wings: breaded in a chemical-tasting mixture much thicker than that coating the fried chicken, doused with a smoky BBQ sauce. Not so great. I recommend the chicken with tortillas, mashed potatoes and campero beans with the tamarindo and some salsa on the side as the best possible order. I have not sampled the nuggets, the salad with crispy or fried chicken, or the fries. I think I tasted everything else on the menu, though. All so you'd know whether or not to brave the line. I think it's worth hitting Pollo Campero after the lines die down whenever you have a fried chicken craving.

Depending on the date, it's fairly likely I will be +1. I think it's great that so many new people are thinking of joining us.

I started canning by making multiple batches of jam this summer. I am considering asking for a pressure cooker for Hanukkah so I can can (heh) tomatoes and such next season. I haven't been stared at that much even though I live in a big urban area. But then I don't get stared at when I buy 10lbs of Plugra at Trader Joe's or several bricks of tofu at the natural foods co-op either.

A grilled cheese sammich and a carrot or two. My housemate and I are making a fresh fruit tart. She wanted me to show her how to make creme patisserie and pate sucree. There was extra sucree left, so we made cookies and decorated with some colored sugar I had in the cabinet. Fun!

Ahem. It's where everybody of one sex puts their keys in a bowl at the beginning of the party, and at the end of the party each member of the opposite sex pulls a key out. And whoever's keys they pull, they go home with. See Ang Lee's excellent film of early 1970s sexual pathos, entitled The Ice Storm, for a depiction of such an event. Me, I'm hoping he meant to say keg party.

Now there's a frightening thought.

Takoma Park, MD: A bushel of apples for applesauce, assorted varieties, heavy on the Braeburns Apple cider Two dozen eggs Pak choy Butterhead lettuce A jalapeno Broccoli A red bell pepper Garlic