Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

Dan’s mom came down from Pennsylvania last weekend for a visit.  We consider it our Texas duty to take visitors (especially those from the north) out for Tex-Mex when they are here.  Chuy’s is one of our all-time favorite Tex-Mex restaurants, and we had a yummy lunch there with E.  I branched out this time and ordered something I’ve never had there before — “Baja” shrimp tacos.  The shrimp was lightly battered, perfectly cooked and served in freshly made tortillas with a bit of red cabbage, some pico de gallo and a dab of jalapeno ranch dressing.  Best shrimp tacos ever.

Dan’s mom has long-ago friends from PA who just happen to live in our area, so we try to get together with them when she’s in town.  We all enjoy Korean food, so they introduced us to their favorite local mom-and-pop Korean place called Jin Mi for dinner.  The above shot is only a portion of our feast that night:  seafood pancake (way better than it sounds) and dumplings, as well as “banchan” which refers to the little dishes of different kinds of kimchi and other condiment-type foods served along with rice and the entrees.  The food was deliciously authentic, and the company was even better.  Seeing old friends catch up without missing a beat is a wonderful thing, as is sharing our home and city with family living far away.  Thanks for braving the heat to come see us, E — we had a great weekend!

There’s a new Whole Foods in town, and it is a really nice one.  It’s also conveniently located near our house, perfect for picking up fresh fish on the way home to grill that evening (lots of beautiful branzini), or pulling together a last-minute meal of pre-prepared, but delicious, food (they even have pre-made duck confit, which we’ve only previously seen in a fancy grocery store in Paris.)  The produce section is also amazing, with tons of in-season and locally-grown fruits and vegetables (more variety of tomatoes than I’ve ever seen in one place), as well as plenty of unusual and exotic (to us anyway) produce.  The seafood, meat and dairy sections are also large and well-stocked.  A cool feature of their beer and wine section is a little bar with counter seating where you can sample some of their featured beers and wine (!) on tap, order a few appetizers or a light lunch and purchase a “growler” (re-usable jug or bottle) of beer or wine to-go.  The jug of Rosé wine we brought with us to our Korean feast was actually quite good, and we’ll be purchasing a refill this weekend.

We make refrigerator pickles throughout the summer because pickling cucumbers are everywhere, and it’s easy to whip up a batch that are ready to eat in just a few days and last for a couple of weeks in the fridge.  We decided to take advantage of the abundance of cucumbers and make a batch of pickles to can and preserve for several months.  It’s an interesting experiment, since you can’t taste them before you seal them (well you could, but they won’t taste like pickles because they haven’t pickled yet!)  We’ll report back in the fall to let you know how they turned out.

Another kitchen experiment this week turned out pretty successful — homemade cinnamon baked doughnuts!  We saw Ina Garten make them on an episode of her show “Barefoot Contessa” and were intrigued that they are baked instead of fried.  We need to work on our doughnut-pan-filling skills (fill the shape too full and you have to cut your own hole out of the finished doughnuts), but they were good and we look forward to trying new flavor combinations.

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

Last Friday night we attended an event at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.  No matter your politics, it’s an interesting place to visit, with lots of artifacts, exhibits and collections to memorialize both the momentous and mundane aspects and events of President Bush’s time in office.  One of the more affecting exhibits is a mangled steel beam from one of the Twin Towers destroyed on 9/11.  Experts believe that the beam is “impact steel,” meaning that it was struck directly by one of the hijacked jets.  It is incredible to see and touch (they encourage visitors to touch it) while remembering the terrible events of that day.  Other interesting exhibits at the Library include a replica of the Oval Office (you can sit at the desk and pretend to push the red button!) and the “Decision Points Theater,” designed to show visitors the decision-making process and policies developed during Bush’s administration.  There is a lot more to see and experience there, and we will definitely go back.

After nearly 8 years of living in our current house, the rooms with carpeting were definitely beginning to show their age, as was our old canister-style vacuum.  We recently upgraded to a Dyson upright vacuum, and boy can we tell a difference.  A disgusting, disgusting difference.  The Dyson sucks up so much stuff that it’s almost as if our carpets and rugs had never previously been vacuumed (but they were, at least every other week, I swear!)  And the vacuum receptacle is conveniently clear, so you can actually see all the gross lint, cat fur, dust, dirt, etc. that you’ve been walking on and living with for who knows how long.  The above photo was taken after I had already vacuumed our bedroom carpet with the old vacuum, again with the new one, and one more time with the new one — and the receptacle still filled up with gunk.  My allergies are wondering why we didn’t upgrade a lot sooner.

Garden Update (yes, it’s been a slow week around here, favorites-wise):  our eggplant plants are still producing, although something seems to be trying to eat the eggplants before we do.  The nibbling appears to just be on the skin and surface of the eggplant though, so hopefully they are okay inside.  We’re also still getting cucumbers, but they are weirdly shaped and turning yellow before they are big enough to pick.  We plan to make a batch of pickles this weekend and will see if they are still good.  Our tomato plants have stopped producing fruit, but are still thriving and just started flowering again, so we should have a nice batch for late summer/early fall.

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed these past two weeks:

For the July 4th holiday this year, we traveled to Ellsworth, Maine to meet up with Dan’s brother J, his wife C and our niece and nephew and spend a few days on the small island on Green Lake that has been in C’s family for generations.  The accommodations are a bit rustic (no electricity and compost toilet system), which only adds to the charm and authenticity of the place.  It was a perfect summer getaway for us — with swims in the lake, fishing (but no actual “catching” for poor Daniel), boat rides, cards by candlelight and lounging with books in chairs overlooking the gorgeous lake.  One of the most relaxing vacations we’ve had in a while.  Most importantly, we got to make fun memories at a very special place with people we love.  Thanks again, guys!

Our sister-in-law C went all out with a beautiful antipasto spread for our early evening “booze cruise” (we had wine) around the lake on the 4th.  Seriously, we should be so lucky to have an appetizer feast like this at a nice restaurant in Dallas, much less on a boat in the middle of a lake in Maine!

On our last night in Maine, we satisfied Dan’s lobster craving (for the time being) at Abel’s Lobster Pound in Somes Sound.  If you’re ever lucky enough to be in the area and you like lobster, we highly recommend this idyllic spot with picnic tables overlooking the marina.  They also have indoor seating (also overlooking the marina) and take reservations (which can be key during the height of summer there, when everyone else is craving lobster too!)  We ended the meal with yet another beautiful sunset, and the best blueberry pie we have ever eaten (possibly the best any kind of pie anyone has ever eaten.)

Back at home, Dan made his first successful batch of “giardiniera” using this recipe.  If you’re not familiar with it (I wasn’t, and I still can’t properly say or spell, it so I just call it “that cauliflower stuff”), it’s basically a hearty relish(ish) kind of condiment made with vegetables pickled in vinegar, oil and spices and eaten with/on everything from salads to sandwiches.  It’s also pretty good on its own.  We had ours with sauteed peppers and onions on hot turkey sausage sandwiches last weekend and it was delicious.  Giardiniera is also a great way empty out your fridge crisper with leftover veggies — we made ours with cauliflower, red bell pepper, celery, carrots and serrano peppers from our garden.  Once pickled, the mixture should keep in the fridge for about a month.

We recently found a great new local Italian restaurant called Battuto (in Italian cooking, “battuto” refers to the flavor base of finely chopped veggies — usually onions, carrots, celery, parsley, garlic — cooked in oil, butter or lard that is the beginning step of many Italian dishes.  Clever name for an Italian restaurant, no?)  The atmosphere is simple yet elegant, as is the menu.  For lunch that day I ordered the ham and cheese panini and Dan had the Italian “bacon & eggs” pizza.  Both dishes were good, and there are many more items on the menu that we look forward to trying (gnocchi, branzino and the veal burger, to name a few.)  But the most impressive aspect of our dining experience was the service.  About halfway through our meal, someone who clearly was in charge (manager? owner? executive chef, or some combination thereof?) came over to check on us and asked Dan if the eggs on his pizza were done to his liking.  Dan truthfully said that the yolks could be a bit more runny, then the guy noticed that the arugula salad on the pizza had not been dressed with lemon vinaigrette, as it was supposed to be.  He apologized profusely, despite Dan’s assurances that the pizza was still good.  About 10 minutes later, our waiter appeared with a second pizza, boxed up to go and explained that it was on the house and that they wanted us to have one that was properly prepared.  And it was indeed — the second pizza was about 100 times more delicious than the first.  We’ll definitely go back.