babka

another pie. It's on the table at a different time anyway, and it's beautiful and tasty. the leek tart is good, but I love the butternut squash gallette from her "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone." just add lots of blue cheese and ginger, which isn't in the recipe but makes it into a magical dish.

Food for All Seasons

the fat squallin' oyster po'boy from breadline gets today's nod.

we've got a food-buying co-op in my mt. pleasant/adams morgan/columbia heights neighborhood, with weekly produce and monthly dry good deliveries. since it actually keeps dry goods over for weekly sales and relies on volunteer managers to place the orders, it may not offer quite the flexibility that you'd like, but pm me if you're interested.

is he taking the chicken too?

I had the same question.

I took a friend's elderly, rural, meat&potatoes grandmother to Meskereem once, over her initial objections, and she loved it. We just made sure to order the chicken & egg dish for her, which she recognized, and therefore liked.

Burma in Chinatown has crashed and burned, burned, burned, based on lunch last week. The salads were once delightful plates of ginger and cabbage and oil and vinegar and crunchies and munchies you'd never dream up. Now they are now sad and sour vinegar-drenched goosh. fingers crossed for Mandalay.

wifis can get pissed at Tryst.

the cookies were a hit, but they were nothing compared to the caramels. a day later, she said she could still taste the golden squishy goodness.

oh yeah. edit: date and checkbook allowing, of course.

thanks Varmint!! I have bilrus' unfortunate timing problem, too. If a miracle should suddenly occur, I'll be there...but will otherwise look forward to the pictures and stories.

many thanks for the thoughts so far! yes, I have a freezer bag that can keep stuff cold. I like the Thai idea, especially if I change it to Dukem's Ethiopian. I'm not thinking so much along tourist lines (she used to live here, anyway) as gift lines, e.g., "these are things that are now being created or eaten with love & gusto by people around me." So I would take colorado kitchen biscuits if I could, for example, or naan & beyond's chips if they would travel... New Orleans, btw, is _good_, other than some power problems and the parking lot that's about to become the highway home. Ivan danced away from her at the last minute, so it's Alabama, Florida, and a bit of the LA coast, that need the care and worry.

I'm headed to New Orleans this weekend to visit my best friend in the world and the gift pile still has a bit of space. It's a happy birthday/the hurricane missed!/you bought a house!/and I love you/ sort of celebration....so the current plan is for a box of cookies from Amernick's and a pack of uncooked pupusas. What else?

colorado kitchen?

Tom, could you talk a little bit more about that, please? How do you find your producers/farmers/fisherfolk and how do you get your good goods?

tahini and then marmite on top--I'm the only person I've ever persuaded of the combination, but I'm addicted.

They're both descendents of the same Ollie's Trolley franchise, co-founded by former KY gov John Brown and modeled a bit after KFC (in which he was an early investor) with proprietary spices for the fries and the hamburger sauce. The franchise collapsed years ago, but a few locations survived. Each kept the trademark items and then did whatever an independent fast-food operator wanted to do. I think the two locations in D.C. are separately owned--the 15th & L one is run by a Lebanese family that makes fantastic baba ghanouj and fatoosh, and eunny pointed out, (so fantastic that I've never actually tried either the burger or the fries), while the 12th street branch, if memory serves, doesn't. The burger & fries, though, should be the same at both, since they were both Ollie's. edit to add: "The shoestring potatoes are hot and fresh, and what's better, they are heavily (sometimes too heavily) sprinkled with everything in the spice cabinet: red pepper, caraway seeds, fennel, poppy seeds, cumin, paprika, oregano, etc." --la grande dame de Washington food, 1979.

the subs at eden center are more than worth the drive. (last pic). also, the tofu pudding.

ella's. intended to chug through a 300-page report and drink a beer. instead chugged through beer and caught up with friends I hadn't seen in a month. (apparently you can get married and buy a house in four weeks. who knew?) and the happy hour wasn't bad--forget the free pizza idea and go for $3 pints of sam adams and the occasional nibble gratuis when hot pies come out.

I did my first jaunt down 18th street in eons today-and by eons, I mean I discovered a Saturday art fair that's been in place since March, and I live two blocks away--and you were right! I mean, I think the falafel was wonderful, but I was so happy discovering the cabbage/hummus/raita/salsa/more cabbage with my toasty pita that the crunchy soft stuff got a little bit lost...are the toppings from the netherlands? or is it like that in the middle east as well? I'm accustomed to tahini or, in a strange St. Paul variation, falafel with french fries and tahini.

they're baaaack!! (custard apples, not papayas). first pawpaws at the farmers market today. slurped the ripe one straight away and left the others to ripen on the table. If you've got 'em (and apparently most folks are deprived, judging from the upthread discussion), what do you do with them (besides eat them straight)?

I've riffed off of Deborah Madison's tarts and galettes for 25-person dinners: they look impressive, and they take little last-minute work (besides assembling and throwing in the oven.) My standards are one mushroom, one leek/goatcheese/mustard, and one butternut squash with lots of blue cheese, sage, and other goodies added.

15 people in a 2-bedroom apartment without a coffeepot. A very ugly morning averted when somebody took over the kitchen to make his grandmother's coffee. He boiled water, dumped in ground coffee, and let it sit until the grounds dropped on their own. good? probably not, though it was manna on that and every subsequent day.

I keep potstickers and a hunk of ginger in the freezer for really bad nights, and pasta puttanesca ingredients in the pantry for bad nights with many guests. Zucchini-yogurt salad--I think this was bittman's originally. Cook some grated zucchini until it's mostly dry, then toss with a yogurt/olive oil/green herbs of some sort/salt/pepper/garlic dressing. Stick it in the fridge for 10 minutes or so to bring the temp down. Devilled eggs: They take no time, but they make me happy.