hannnah

It's getting a little better, especially on weekdays, but weekends are still a zoo. I can't imagine how anyone could have considered Saturday "empty" - the Ben-Hur signature shopping cart with the spiky wheels would still have been a great help.

As an aside, in my experience with the Post's chat software, one spends at least half the allotted time of the chat trying to get it to do what it's supposed to - it's abnormally twitchy, and one wrong keystroke can kick you out of the chat altogether. I'm happy that I only have to deal with it once a year as geek behind the curtain. I can't imagine having to do it 50 or so weeks a year as Answer Person.

Welcome to the Washington Post food section digest for March 17, 2004. Before we get to the good stuff, congratulations to James Beard Journalism Award nominees Tom Sietsema (Newspaper Restaurant Review or Critique) and Walter Nicholls (Newspaper Feature Writing with Recipes, for "The All-American Pan," published Apr. 2, 2003). Today's highlights: Seeing Green: Robert Wolke discusses how to get your vegetables to stay green when cooked, in honor of St. Patrick's Day. He concludes with a small rant on how microwaves do not destroy the nutrients in food, despite what you may have heard. Mix and Mash: Behold the humble mashed potato in all its glory. Here are some suggestions for additions to dress up your mash and give it some extra zing. It's a Guy Thing: Apparently the way to a woman's heart is through her stomach. Candy Sagon reviews a new how-to guide for guys who want to woo women with their culinary skills. The Chocolate Fountain: Welcome to Washington's latest cocktail-party craze: the chocolate fondue fountain. Local fountain vendors are highlighted in the sidebar. To Do: Wine dinners galore, including the Vernal Equinox dinner at (where else?) Equinox; Passover and Easter dessert clinics by Ann Amernick, plus many other events. We Just Happened to Overhear... an amusing conversation at a Falls Church chicken emporium. Dinner in 20 Minutes: Peanut Butter Pasta. A Spicy Combination: Readers love Penzey's Balti Seasoning. Today's Tip: How to make blue or pink applesauce for kids without that nasty tasting blue food coloring. Things Are Just Nuts Around Here: Various varieties of nut butters reviewed. The Other Montalcino: Brunello di Montalcino is expensive and can be hard to find - why not try Rosso di Montalcino instead? Tidy Spices: Storage suggestions for scattered spices. The Weekly Dish: Congratulations to the local Beard Award nominated restaurants and chefs. Four of the five chefs nominated for the Best Chef Mid-Atlantic region--which also includes Philadelphia--come from Washington, DC. Also, a new Mexican restaurant opens on the site of an old one in Georgetown. Edit to add link to Tom Sietsema's weekly chat.

Flavorwise, it's somewhere in between Heinz 57 and A1. Oh, and there are plenty who do "slather" stuff in English mustard. We go through a jar of Colman's about every 2 weeks.

Thanks for that link, Emily. My husband (born in London, but both parents are Irish) has a yearly rant around this time about corned beef and the fact that almost no one in Ireland would even consider eating corned beef and cabbage. Nice to know someone went to the trouble to find out why!

better late than never... Gourmet Digest - March 2004 The New York Issue This month's Gourmet covers all things foodish in New York, from Ruth Reichl's favorite stops to where to stay and where to buy spiffy place settings. There are way too many restaurants listed to mention them all in the Digest, but almost all are covered in some level of detail on the New York forum. The Way We Were: Ritz Man's Stew - the original Ritz Carlton Hotel's recipe for Irish stew, thickened with a vegetable puree instead of flour. Letters: Benriners are good, but buy cut-resistant gloves lest you lose a finger. Two recipes: collard green olive pesto and chicken curry. You Asked for It: Rosa Mexicano's Boca Negra Chocolate Chipotle Cakes accompanied by sweet tomatillo and vanilla custard sauces. New York A to Z: Arrivals; Beer gardens; "Classic New York" (including Peter Luger, Patsy's, and Barney Greengrass); hot dogs (Gray's Papaya; the Union Square Greenmarket, Harlem (including Amy Ruth's); Indian food (including eGullet's own Suvir Saran's Amma); joie de vivre (this photo of Daniel Boulud, Eric Ripert and Alain Ducasse at Gray's Papaya); Kitchen Reads (a list of cookbook stores); the Lower East Side (featuring Katz's, Sammy's Roumanian, and Yonah Schimmel Knishery, Laboratorio del Gelato, Teany, Doughnut Plant and Guss' Pickles); the Meatpacking District; "Not for Tourists;" Outdoors; Pedestrians; the QM2 (coming in April); Rolling Cuisine (outdoor food carts including Hallo Berlin, Moshe's Falafel, and the Mudtruck); Studies (cooking courses around the city); Taxis; Up the River (the Hudson River Park); Vino (wine bars); Williamsburg, Brooklyn; X Marks the Spot (unexpected or overlooked icons of art, science and history all around the city); Your Password, Please (unlisted or impossible to find bars); and Zillion Dollar Views (the River Cafe, the Mandarin Oriental, Ritz Carlton Battery Park, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.) State of the Onion: Cipolline in agrodolce, molasses-baked onions, fried onion rings, negimaki, pletzel (Jewish onion bread), and Alsatian onion tart. Ruth's Roll Call: Alain Ducasse; Babbo; Caviar Russe; 'Cesca; Craft; Daniel; E.A.T.; Eleven Madison Park; Elio's; Esca; The Four Seasons; Fried Dumpling; Gotham Bar and Grill; Grand Central Oyster Bar; Grand Sichuan International Midtown; Great New York Noodletown; Hatsuhana; Honmura An; Jean-Georges; Le Bernardin; L'Impero; Lupa; Nobu; Pearl Oyster Bar; Peter Luger; The Prime Burger; Tabla; and the Time Warner Center. Here Come the Hotel Police: The rooms, service, and public spaces at New York's most glamourous hotels. Only in New York: Shopping for tableware - 35 shops, large and small. Eat Art: An artistic menu. Toast of the Town: A menu inspired by an Irish manor house. My Leningrad on the Hudson: Russian neighborhoods around New York - from Rego Park, Queens to Brighton Beach. A Mexico of the Mind: Mexican neighborhood life in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Gold Mountain: An insider's guide to Chinatown. Gourmet Every Day: Ethnic dishes: bulgogi, coconut rice, sweet lassi, mashed plantains with bacon and onions, buckwheat pancakes with smoked salmon, chicken in almond sauce, roasted feta with olives and red peppers, squid in vinegar sauce, rice studded meatballs, and spicy okra. Five Ingredients: New York pretzels Dinner for One: Manhattan clam chowder, garlic bread, romaine with parmesan dressing, and ice cream with chocolate caramel sauce. Kitchen Notebook: Twirling the perfect pretzel; the veal world; cipolline, Marcona almonds, and Irish bacon. The Last Touch: Four things you can do with leftover Chinese delivery rice: coconut rice pudding, parmesan and rice spoon bread, rice pancakes, and savory rice cakes.

It's scary how much your ferrets remind me of my cats. They all have that boneless sprawl thing going on.

I spent a week on a work project at Fort Dix a few years back, and we ended up eating at Mastoris every night simply because it was the only place other than fast food anywhere close. They have absolutely the largest menu I've ever seen - it was perfect, because no matter what you wanted you could get something that would satisfy. The soups and the bread were excellent, and I remember their sauteed soft-shell crabs being particularly good. I was also amused that every night we went, we ended up being seated in a different wing of the building - it's that big! Didn't realize that the original diner part was in there someplace, though.

As far as the line goes, there really isn't much of one at the Herndon location on weeknights anymore, if you just want to try the chicken. The last couple of times I've gone in for takeout after work (7pm-ish), the only wait has been for more chicken to come out of the fryer, which is totally acceptable.

We stopped by shortly after our lunch at Otto, and it was a nice place. Personable staff, interesting selections (picked up a couple of the Bastianich whites), and it smells great! (They'd just finished a cooking demo.) They were also playing Willie Nelson when we came in, which scores them further bonus points. Also, I loved their wine-fetching mechanism - it's a 4-bottle wood box connected to a garage door opener mounted on the wall. The box drops down through a hole in the floor into the cellar, bottles go in, box comes back up. Sure, you could spend $X thousand on a custom-built conveyer system, but why bother when a $200 garage door opener works just as well?

The cardinal rule of grits is "they taste like whatever you put in them." My experience has been that you have to overseason/overflavor them to have them turn out right on the first go-round (at least by comparison to rice/couscous/similar starches). They do tend to pick up more taste after they've sat for a while - the problem with that being that you have to do some significant rehydrating at that point or you end up with buttery cement.

We finally managed to get to Willard's last week, and it's worth a visit. Their NC pulled pork and KC burnt ends were both tasty - maybe could have used a wee bit more mustard and/or vinegar in the NC sauce, but that's strictly a personal preference. I'd get either of them again. Sides were good across the board - we got slaw, dirty rice, mashed potatoes, and a black-eyed pea/corn mix. If you like sweet cole slaw, you won't like theirs, but it was definitely fresh. Didn't make it to the desserts, but they had a good-looking selection. And, wonder of wonders, they have properly brewed sweet tea!

I really like my over-the-fridge cupboards, but we did make sure to get the kind that are the same depth as the fridge so we can reach the doors! The fridge is next to a deep pantry cabinet, so matching the depth wasn't a problem, although I can see how it would be in Anna's layout. I keep my big stockpot up there, as well as other things like the blender and some serving pieces that don't need to be out full time but need to be reachable.

I was one of those fortunate enough to receive an HLSR fellowship for graduate school - it was very much appreciated, and I'm pleased to see that so much good bbq is being committed in furtherance of funding more of them!

Swung by on the way in this evening to check out the bits we didn't get to see yesterday and pick up a pizza for dinner. The pizza's very good - nice crisp crust, tasty sauce, right amount of toppings. Plenty of samples available today as well - the cheese counter was doing parmigiano reggiano, the deli area had Wensleydale and cranberries on fresh bread. I also got to take a good close look at the dry-aged steaks and Sunnyside Kobe - might have to pick up a couple of steaks later in the week. Next runthrough, I suspect we'll try the "wokery." Unsurprisingly, things were much less crazy today - plenty of parking, in and out in 25 minutes, 20 of which was cooking time on the pizza.

We got there at 9, and it took 2 hours to get all the way through the store. It's a complete zoo today, but it's worth it. The breads and pastries are mostly excellent (and they were in full sampling swing by 9), although the bagels are pretty much round bread product rather than true bagels - too soft, and they hadn't been boiled. The deli area is well stocked and ruthlessly efficient. The meats counter was the best I've seen in a U.S. supermarket - they had more than one nice fresh non-shrink-wrapped leg of lamb! We didn't even have a chance to pummel our way down to the beef end, but from the glimpses I could catch I'm looking forward to a return trip. The cheeses...aaahh. Great selection, treated properly rather than put in airtight saran and forgotten about. We skipped over most of the wine section, but they had a nice variety of Virginia wines. Then we got to the produce - wow. Really nice fruit, including some funky looking but good heirloom tangerines; nice varied range of vegetables; a bin of black truffles (under lock and key). Even the regular grocery sections are good - how many times do you see 4 different brands of molasses? Safeway and Giant are generally doing well if they have 1. Their "international" section even has British food, and a reasonably good selection of it. Mushy peas, HP sauce, salad cream - nice range of staples that are twice or three times the price at the dedicated specialty stores. There are plenty of areas we didn't really get to because of the crowds - their prepared food/cafe area looked and smelled good from a distance, and we didn't really need anything from the pharmacy. I look forward to going back in a week or so once the craziness has died down, for a nice leisurely trip up and down the aisles. Overall, I think the other supermarkets in the area should be worried - especially once the Fairfax branch opens. Wegman's really is as good as its press.

We're going early as well (9ish), and have left room in the fridge for our weekly shop.

I can see that, but it's pretty depressing from a breeder standpoint to see people paying ridiculous amounts of money for the dwarf animals we've been selecting against for 100 years or more.

Bah, humbug. They're as bad as miniature dogs, and much harder to clean up after.

Absolutely. It just depends on the beer. Your basic cold wet beers (Foster's, various iterations of Miller, Shiner Bock) should be cold, even to the point of having the wee slushies at the top. (Insert Homer voice: "mmm...beer slurpee.") Your cask ales and Guinnesses, on the other hand, should never see the cold side of 45 degrees. Unfortunately, there aren't that many places that make the distinction between the two types. There's nothing worse than a too-cold Boddington's or a too-warm Shiner Bock.

We had octopus? I thought we got calamari. Oh well, whichever cephalopod it was, it was good.

I've got two good ones. One time we went to one of the many franchised Pizzeria Uno's around DC. When my pizza came out, there was a corkscrewed metal shaving melted into the cheese on my pizza! We called the manager over, who all but accused me of planting the shaving and refused to comp anything or bring me a new pizza. Like I carry around my own pizza oven to melt things into the cheese. Right. We've never been back. The second one, we were in Wong Kei, a Chinese restaurant in London famous for its discourteous service. I was about halfway through my chicken and sweetcorn soup when I dredged up a nicely tenderized silverfish. We pointed this out to our waiter, who promptly brought me another bowl of soup. Now, my husband pointed out later that the soup they brought was undoubtedly from the same pot as the silverfishy bowl, but it didn't have any silverfish directly in it, so I didn't mind so much.

We were there last week; although we didn't do the bite menu, everything we tried was excellent - particularly the gravlax and the pickled sardines. And the infused aquavits go down very smoothly - the pear, vanilla, and black pepper one was the highlight, although the horseradish one went very well with the gravlax.

I end up taking this one to parties a lot, and it goes well with veggies as well as breads -- Emeril's jalapeno crab dip. Depending on how heat-sensitive the audience is, I usually halve the amount of jalapenos - you could probably use 1/4 the amount and still have it turn out ok. Also, I tend to put in more cheese than it calls for, just because I love cheese. Always turns out well though.

Probably not, because nursing sows are violent and have notoriously horrible tempers. I'm sure someone tried at some point, and undoubtedly lost some fingers in the process.