rvanrens

[ <ears perk up> good chorizo?? hand-made tortillas?? please tell me they are corn, and not flour. ←

Don't forget The Italian Store on Lee Highway over by Spout Run Parkway - it's in the same shopping center as the Geriatric Giant. And there's La Union Mercado on Old Lee Highway near Arrowine and Pastries By Randolph...really really awesome picante chorizos... Rob who used to live up the hill from Ballston

I think it would also be helpful to publish an annual "resource guide" to the area's food. Not a restaurant guide, or another useless reader's poll, but a guide to where you can find a nice piece of meat, or fish; where to find a good baguette, or chocolate. Along these lines, I would not mind an occasional section on where to find various ingredients on-line. ←

Mazeltov, stretch. I've still got a couple of month, but She Who Must Be Obeyed says that if Jelly Bean is that large, she wants the good drugs, and lots of 'em. Rob

Count me in for 2, please Rob

Thanks, Fero. You guys did it right on Thursday, and thanks to Cynthia for finding us a table at the VERY last minute. Rob

Count me in for two.

Ate at Cordroy on Thanksgiving...took the Mrs for the first time, and it was, once again, superb. Turkey was great, and the root vegetable puree was remarkable. I think it may actually be more difficult to do a basic, traditional dinner like turkey/mashed potates/gravy/green beans/mashed root veggies really, really well. It was everything I expected, given what I have had there for previous meals. Kudos to Chef Power, Fero Style, and the great FOH staff. Rob

Who's got time for nice girls? Good girls go to heaven...bad girls go everywhere. Rob

Well, I don't know 'bout nobuddy else, but Dec 12 is fine for me...Sundays are generally REEEL good, seein's how I don't work Mondays. Rob

I second the motion put forward by Al_Dente for a Burmese Mandalay egullet outing. ← So moved, the motion passes by acclaim. When?

My, oh, my, what a fine dinner. Believe it or not, I'm trying hard not to be a gusher... Many, many thanks to Mike for organizing, and to Chef Powersfor amazing food, and to Fero Style for excellent service (and those absolutley perfect little pastries...was the name "hurma"? I fear I don't remember clearly...) This was the first eGullet outing I've attended. It will certainly NOT be the last. Good food, good drink, and good company. After a long and trying day, I literally could not have asked for a better time. Thanks again, guys. Rob

This is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. I own a small business (not a restaurant). If I were to sell that business, it certainly wouldn't be out of any desire to deprive my employees of thier livelyhood. Is it not better to sell the business, and give the employees a chance to work for a new ownerr, than to close the doors, liquidate the stock, and lay off the employees outright? Hest, often a business is sold for overriding reasons - financial insolvency, disability on the part of the current owner, etc. I would like to think that I am EXTREMELY loyal to my employees - everything from providing a paid internship for credit to a college students, to showing up for parole hearings for a couple of warehouse guys. But if I was to say, suffer a heart attack, and had to sell the business to pay medical bills, etc, then would that be disloyal? Or would you rather I simply filed Chaper 7 and liquidated the assets to get cash for my interest in the corporation. Now, admittedly, my employees have not one friggin' clue what it is to run a small business. They will be the first to admit that I work harder than any of them, but how much harder is something that eludes all but a couple. They might perceive that sale as disloyalty to them; I see it as an absolute neccessity, and I would try to ease the transition as much as possible. My employees are not ENTITLED to a livelyhood here. They work here, and get paid according to how they work and what they do. They don't work well, or steal from me, or fail to show up on a regular basis, or sass customers, or whatever, well, no matter how loyal they are to me personally, they can look for work elsewhere.

Can we get the updated list of who is attending? Rob

Never give up the crack and hookers, eunny...never never never. You CAN have it all. Rob

And Rob, in Brunswick, I'm sorry. That truly sucks; you were just trying to make yummy pancakes for some little guys. Those shitty health hazard stores should go to hell. I certainly hope you pay less rent than us. Why do you think I live out here? I've got a two-bedroom house, 2 1/2 acres, etc etc for what half what I was paying for a microscopic one-bedroom apartment in Arlington for five years. And I was getting a deal most Ballston yuppies would have KILLED for without a second thought. Of course, I also operate a largish pottery studio, and doing that inside the beltway is EXPENSIVE and the regulatory issues would make Ming the Merciless quail...out here in bucolic Fredneck county, it's a snap. There are a couple of saving graces, like Hemp's Meats. It's a small butcher shop in Jefferson, MD...really first-rate meats, cut however you'd like them. You can also buy bulk, or have your own livestock custom-butchered. Their country-style bacon is to die for... Seasonal produce is cheap, and readily availible, but nothing exotic, and the growing season is a little shorter (we ahd our first frost last night), so lots of stuff is a little later than in Virginny and points south. Rob

I'm sick of y'all complaining about the big supermarkets down DC-way; I'm up in the un-quaint little rural slum of Brunswick, MD - about 15 miles west of Frederick, and hard up against the West-By-God-Virginia border. There've been times I ahven't even been able to get CARROTS, for cripes sake. Not to mention such exotics as shallots, or bok choy, or non-button mushrooms. The meant's not too bad - country folk like their flesh, but the seafood dept. should be shut down as a public health hazard. Many days you can actually smell decaying fish through the whole store. Two weeks ago, I stopped in early on a Saturday morning to get a pint of buttermilk, to make pancakes for my three-year-old nephew. They only had quarts. Fine, I'll make biscuits alter in the week, or use it up somehow. No dice - got it home, and the whole thing had congealed to the consistency of fresh mozzarella. And the smell...ugh. Still, there was four days to go on the "best by" tag...a return trip revelaed that ALL the buttermilk was bad. THe manager expalined that nobidy buys it anymore, and they wind up throwing out most of every shipment. Scary stuff... Rob

Jayt90 responds "I would call this the American Disease " MUST...IGNORE...TROLL...MUST...NOT...SUCCUMB...TO...TEMPTATION... Sorry. Too late. Already got my dander up, so to speak. Tell me, JayT, who peed in your cornflakes? You seem to take positive delight in insulting and provoking people. I didn't see anyone mocking Canada prior to this. If you dont WANT to read a thread about chips/crisps/other junk foods, then DON'T. Pretty simple, huh? This isn't the first time I've taken exception (admittedly on someone else's behalf) to your sniping. eGullet is about FOOD. That includes junk food. Now take your juvenile attitude and play insomeone else's sandbox.

I'm told that this is a genetic thing; for some people, cilantro DOES taste like dish soap. I'm one of them.

The only beers I found were Aase, which I beleive to be Norwegian, and Carlsberg, which was invariably old and tasted badly of the cans it was packed in. I would suppose the situation to be very differnt in someplace like Oslo or Bergen. On the OTHER hand, I had several types of homerew that were...interesting, to say the least. The homebrewed beer was not bad, but the local moonshine, well, that was root-tootin' good stuff. The flavorings were usually juniper (makes it a kind of gin, I guess) or dill...and it was bar none the strongest thing I have ever consumed. I was in college at the time, and working at a microbrewery; I thought I had a pretty high tolerance. Man, a couple shots of that stuff blew the top of my head clean off. Tasty, too, not real medicinal like many homemade distilled liquors can be. Rob

And they're so polite about it, too...nothing like the Dover sole, which is rude, crude, and quite tasty... <sigh> Yep, it really is God's Country up there...just not the God you might think. I also remember form the trip braised raindeer in a mushroom sauce, roast hare, ptarmigan ( a kind of sea bird), fish about 87 different ways, all excellent, and coffee black, strong, and plentiful. And I didn't eat in a restaurant, either. Well, we did go out for waffles one morning, but this was otherwise Norwegian farmhouse cooking, and boy oh boy was it good. Out in the islands, they don't see many Ami's; one of my hosts was an Ami expat, and we stayed with her inlaws mostly. The nicest people I met while travelling Europe - even though most of them (out in the boonies) learn lots of English from movies, and hence have an unusual idiom when expressing themselves in that language. I LOVED Norway, and I'd move there in a split second, if I could afford it - the highest taxes in Europe. OTOH, first-rate universal; cradle-to-grave health care, pretty good roads, excellent rail system, nice place for a country with the population of the New York Metro area. Only one drawback I encountered - the local beer was, well, mediocre at best. Rob

sounds like a keeper to me What is "microwave"? How midgets say goodbye? Me man. Me cook big tasty. Me woman, she burn water. She no cook. She DISHWASHER. No, seriously, I'm a better than average cook, but my wife would starve to death in a pantry full of ingredients.

Hhhmmmm...I remember eating whale several times while travelling in Lofoten (the northern fjord district in Norway). Out on the islands it's pretty common. It wasn't bad. It was definitely mammalian (red) meat, but it tasted like it had been marinated in fish sauce for a long, long time. The hardest part was getting past the expectation that it would taste like beef - it definitely didn't. The texture was like Argentinian beef, free range and not dry-aged. We had it cooked several ways, most often stewed and braised. It seemed to need slow, moist cooking - the sauteed strips I had were pretty chewy. Maybe one could dry-age it a little. The best way was braised in beer with leeks and cabbage - the smell as it cooked was, well, not that great. The finished dish, though, was pretty good. Rob