babka

this is sorta off-topic from the minibar, but I'd respectfully disagree. In a very good restaurant, I've often called ahead to ask if its possible to get a good vegetarian dish. If it's not crazy busy (and that's a key caveat), the chef usually accomodates it by pulling together something quite wonderful, not on the menu, using whatever's fresh & cool in the kitchen--and, to be honest, we've frequently been happier with that than with the main-dish meat dishes that others ordered. key is to call ahead and ask if the chef can do it and to make sure the restaurant isn't slammed when you go. that said, one of the reasons I've put the minibar off for as long as I have is that my usual dining companion is a strict vegetarian, and I just didn't see him being happy there at all.

yippee!! Two of us are headed to the Minibar on Tuesday evening, 8 pm. They still have room for that seating, so if anyone else has given up on their beloved impoverished/vegetarian/greasyspoon dining friends, you're welcome to join us.

I've been wanting to do this for months, but all my adventurous friends are all poor, and the non-adventurous ones are... um, dearly beloved. but not people I want to sit next to for two hours while I'm trying to focus on exploding food. any other eGulleters in the same situation and want to share an outing to the minibar with me??

ditto woodford reserve. has become my gift of choice for potentially stressful social gatherings.

it was cold and I was tired and I was not looking forward to getting home to start working and the bus sped right by me, leaving me to face the icy 16th street hill in heels. Then the light changed. Across the street, Local 16 shimmered into view, an oasis promising warmth and a glass of wine with a snickie-snack to take the edge off. Everyone was right. It's beautiful. Warm red walls with elegant mirrors, a stunning hostess in a body-skimming red dress, a shade or two lighter than the walls, and the most beautiful people I've ever seen in D.C. all crowded into one place, murmering languidly over the bar or whispering seductively over tables in the sumptious dining rooms. as I was dressed in my purple marshmallow winter coat with my deadline-and-wool-hat crushed hair pulled into a ponytail, I turned around and looked at the door...and the ice visible behind the door...and pulled a seat at the bar and asked for the bartender's recommendations among the appetizers. and now I know why Sietsema spends so much ink, sometimes, on a restaurant's environment. The oysters looked pretty. Their fat pillowed bodies beneath the crust exploded nicely, even if the taste was slightly, and wierdly, off. I thought coleslaw was, in general, supposed to have some vinegar mixed in with the cabbage, but maybe I'm old-fashioned. And I'm still not sure what the orange dipping sauce was supposed to be. But I think I was better off than my neighbor, who got a salad of iceberg lettuce, winter tomatoes (not sure what that local source was), and an unfortunate looking chicken on top. The wine was very nice, though, as was the surreptitious gawking. But next time I'm in the mood to procrastinate by working in a bar, I'll hike the extra half a block to chi-cha.

national weather service is lying. having just biked home, into the wind, and lost circulation--no freakin' way. though I'll agree with you on not being able to handle the cold--my first winter here in D.C., my roommate, who had been in Minnesota with me previously, came into my room early one December morning. I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes, and she handed me a mug of steaming coffee (god but I miss her!) before silently opening my blinds. I pulled my glasses on to look at the powdered sugar outside in the park--a dusting, really, with green grass that didn't have the sense to know it was dead poking through regularly. "School's cancelled," she said. tho' my favorite washington winter story was when all the farmers were here in 1996 (?) to protest ag policy--they were perched on their tractors along the national mall. Then the snowstorm hit. The city, being under Marion Barry, was somewhat less than prepared with, say, snowplows, or other such goods. The farmers started up their tractors and helped dig the city out.

fascinating book on that, btw: The Frugal Gourmet Keeps the Feast

He's already on staff at the paper on the editorial side and edit has approved his doing work at the request of the advertising/business side? That's so wrong. and it's not an issue of getting one's nose up in the air--that's just fundamentally wrong. You're talking about the same media company. It makes no difference how large or small the company is, or that he covers restaurants instead of local business--ahem. There is, or should be, an iron curtain between the editorial side and the advertising side--that is the ethical basis for journalism, and it just isn't one of those things that's up for being chipped away.

man, I wanna be a journalist in India. here in the U.S., we get stale bread coated with limp iceberg lettuce, a cardboard tomato slice, and a roll of slimy turkey, with little foil packets of chemicals posing as mayonnaise and sugar-choked disks with dark chunks of sugar masquerading as chocolate on the side. oh, and the world's smallest diet coke bottles. Served warm.

no way his regular editor would--or should--approve such a freelancing contract on the side, and there are serious ethical--and employment--ramifications to his trying to slip it by them under a separate name. He covers food and restaurants. Therefore, ethics, press pass credentials (if he has such), and the paper's own policies prevent him from taking money from food and restaurants, even if it's filtered through an ad or PR agency, and doing so now could seriously jeopardize his future aspirations of having a higher profile. edited because I'm a writer who can't spell.

out of curiousity, I went spelunking across the web to in search of a Sandra Lee fan club--wanted to see what people who watched the show said about it. failed to find one. instead went to amazon.com to see what the customers said: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/140...1867149-3461435 interesting reading. and yeah, you can play a lovely, extended game of "spot the publicists" in reading through the customer reviews....but there's also some good material about her demographics. though this was my favorite:

from Tom's chat today: (HOW did people pass the time whilst staying home sick before egullet and online chats???)

I'd underscore that last article, as its the only real attempt I've seen to explain why chuck works as it does--arguing, basically, that it's one of the few cheap american wines that doesn't have sugar added to it. I don't know if that's the _correct_ explanation, but at least it's an explanation. what I find funny about two buck chuck is that, at least in the TJs in my area, there actually are semi-decent wines for the same $3.49 price (that's what two bucks costs you in virginia). The la boca malbec, while not great drinking by any stretch of the imagination, makes a reasonable weeknight table wine.

pasta puttanesca slow-cooked scrambled eggs spicy olives and tamari almonds.

does anyone else run into problems with rancidity with the good stuff? I try to buy small containers b/c, even following all the rules (out of light, tightly closed, etc.), I find that the oil is markedly degraded a couple of weeks after opening, and tilting towards nasty after a month.

I hear you on the dinner ick. made rasam last night, thinking it would miraculously cure this stinkin' cold. tasted it, realized I could give myself a sick stomach with it, and had to settle for jello and crackers instead. next time, maybe try a drained can of diced tomatoes (muir glenn is my emergency stock o' cans) instead of sauce? more tomato, like in the recipe, and fewer extraneous liquids & tastes.

Where do the high schoolers go now?

emergency back-up: after a bad meal, go to KramerBooks' cafe and ask to sit in Kenny's section. a couple years ago, he saved my birthday after a horrendous experience at a nearby 'good' restaurant.

there might be something to that inland theory. Growing up in Iowa, I _hated_ fish. Fish, of course, consisted of my aunt's fishballs, frozen breaded whitefish, or mushymealy fish shipped in. Now you can get (farm-raised but fresh) salmon in the grocery stores there. and I'm living in D.C. and eating it almost every chance I get.

fresh eggs beaten with a bit of cream or milk and some salt, butter in the small cast-iron, when it sizzles, IN go the eggs and OFF goes the pan--I do most of the cooking off the heat, for very, very slow-cooked eggs, just putting it back onto the flame to reheat the iron again. the advantage is that it can cook slowly enough to finish at the same time as my slow-poke boyfriend gets out of the shower. if I'm running short on eggs, I'll toast fine breadcrumbs in the butter first--different, but very, very, very good. of course, I'm only really developing the scrambled eggs expertise because I've become despondant over my omelet disasters. have tried Julia Child's shake-shake-shake DONE method for a year now, to no avail.

it's across the street from my office. and given the 'competition' in the surrounding blocks, cleanliness ain't a bad selling point....

fantastic margaritas and fantastic guac...and with two of us having two margaritas & splitting an order of guac, our bill came to $40, plus tip. pretty place, though.

I've never heard of this place--where is it?? (lest I stumble in accidentally. :).

fantastic description of the grand sushi experiment!! [and yes on Orton] question--what/how do you use the snacks? I know how to use food to bribe folks into a meeting, but within the classroom, where some kids would receive a snackbribe while others don't, it seems like it could be difficult. How exactly does that go down?

you got a reply that contains actual information from USDA??? wow. in shameless shirking of work--has anybody seen a recent number of countries that have temporarily banned US beef in response??? I'm crashing on a deadline and I can't seem to find a number (and forgot my lexis-nexis password at work...)