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.

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

The Great Kitchen De-Clutter 2013 continued this week while Dan was away in Asia.  In addition to the pantry, I cleaned out and organized several of our kitchen cabinets, including the upper cabinets next to the stove that hold our spices, oils, vinegars, etc.  It was a much-needed (if disgusting — did you know that soy sauce apparently can expire, and that it congeals when it does?) task that will make cooking a lot more efficient and enjoyable.

While Dan was gone, FaceTime was our favorite means of communication.  We were able to talk and see each other on our computer screens, which made the distance seem a little less far.  Technology is truly amazing.

 DAN IS HOME!

We generally don’t talk politics here on the blog (we’re polite like that), but we think the Supreme Court got it right this week when they overturned the federal Defense of Marriage Act.  And we wholeheartedly agree with President Obama and others who used social media to send out the message #LoveIsLove in support of the decision.  It’s that simple.  And that important.

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

Last Friday night we enjoyed a fun night out at the track.  It was a work-related event for summer interns and everyone had a great time with good food, drinks, conversation, and of course, betting on the horses.  We don’t play the ponies that often (lucky for our bank account), but when we do we always have a ball and vow to go more often.  We didn’t win a lot (I really expected more from the horse that I bet on solely due to his/her awesome name:  “Caberneigh”), but we won enough to justify the expense of an entertaining evening.  You gotta pay to play, right?

With tomato season in full swing in our garden, we came up with a new way to use up a bunch of them at once — roasting them to make salsa.  We used this recipe for roasting the tomatoes (but left out the herbs) and my mom’s recipe for the salsa.  It turned out to be one of our best batches of salsa yet, and if our tomato plants continue to yield many more than we know what to do with, it certainly won’t be our last batch of homemade, home-grown salsa of the summer.

Some exciting travel going on this week — Dan traveled to Asia for work!  It was too expensive for me to tag along and he has client meetings the whole time, but he’s had a successful trip so far.  It’s not easy to get there for sure (about 24 hours total from here to Taipei, via layover in Seoul), and the time difference (13 hours) has been interesting in terms of communicating, but he’s enjoying the adventure.  I enjoyed electronically following his flight from here to there, watching the little plane inch across the screen between continents, very very slowly.

In preparation for his trip, Dan and I watched the Taipei episode of Anthony Bourdain’s show “The Layover” (as well as the Seoul episode of his show “No Reservations”.)  After watching Bourdain go crazy for the soup dumplings in Taipei, we knew that eating those would be one of the must-do items on Dan’s itinerary.  Dan’s colleague took him to the world-famous dumpling place called Din Tai Fung.  They had to wait about 45 minutes to get their food, but would have waited even longer, the dumplings were so good.  Dan says the dumplings are impossible to describe with any justice.  The thin outer skin is very delicate and expertly shaped and folded into the dumpling, which contains a really flavorful broth and filling (usually pork.)  The way to eat the dumplings is to carefully place each dumpling on a big spoon, take a tiny bite from the corner of the dumpling, then scoop the whole thing into your mouth as the broth begins to flow out of the dumpling.  Bourdain (aptly) referred to the experience as “dumpling porn.”

Whenever Dan travels, I like to do projects around the house to keep busy.  We have a running joke that if he’s gone long enough, I will paint stuff (walls, furniture, etc.), rearrange rooms and redecorate so much that the house will be completely unrecognizable by the time he gets home.  One of my projects this week was to clean out and organize our pantry.  We are blessed with a wonderful walk-in pantry, which provides enough storage to enable us to over-purchase lots of food and kitchen-related things just because we have a place to store them.  That place most often ends up being the floor of our pantry, once all the shelves and bins are filled up.  We still have too much stuff, but three big trash bags of recycling and two bags of trash later, the pantry floor is visible and the shelves and bins contain things we actually use and consume.  And somewhere in our house, there is a coat of paint drying as I type this.  Better come home soon, Daniel!

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

Doesn’t BBQ chicken on the grill just scream “SUMMER”??  We grilled a whole chicken last weekend, specifically so we would have leftovers to make this chicken salad for lunch during the week.  We used a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated that called for coating the chicken with a dry rub (brown sugar, salt, onion and garlic powders, paprika and cayenne) and refrigerating it for 6 to 24 hours, then grilling it and basting with homemade BBQ sauce (ketchup, molasses, cider vinegar, Worcestershire, Dijon, pepper, vegetable oil, grated onion, minced garlic, chili powder and cayenne) about halfway through the grilling time.  The chicken was fantastic, and we reserved some of the homemade sauce to use in the BBQ chicken salad, which also turned out great.

Speaking of grilling, I came across the new edition of one of our all-time favorite grilling cookbooks at Home Depot the other day.  We’ve had the original edition ever since Dan first owned a grill, and we still use it all the time.  We look forward to trying recipes from the new one (bistro-style pork chops with creamy shallot sauce? crispy chicken thighs with basil and prosciutto butter? dijon and garlic swordfish kabobs with lemon vinaigrette?  Yes, yes and yes, with a side of yes!) and reading all the handy “Grill Skills” tips and tricks throughout the book.

This week brought our first homegrown pickling cucumbers of the season.  Since we only have two so far and we already had a half-empty jar of refrigerator pickles on hand, we cut the cukes into rounds and added them to the jar in the fridge.  The cucumber plants in our garden seem to be doing very well (so much so that there are probably a few more harvestable cukes in there that we haven’t found because the vines are so dense) and hopefully will keep us well-stocked with pickles all summer!

We put three over-ripe bananas to good use by making these banana-blueberry muffins.  They were really good, and with whole-wheat flour, a mix of regular and brown sugar, low-fat milk and wheat germ, they’re slightly more healthy than traditional muffins tend to be.  The only changes we made to the recipe were to use three bananas instead of two, add a bit of lemon zest and bake at a slightly lower temperature (per reviewers’ comments about the recipe.)

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

Last Saturday, our good friends treated us to dinner at Whiskey Cake, one of our new favorite restaurants.  All of our entrees were outstanding (especially the lamb dip sandwich, WOW), but one came with props and a story:  the “3 little pigs” sliders have an element to represent each of the pigs’ houses from the nursery rhyme — they are served on a brick, with crispy onion strings for the “straw” and oversized toothpicks holding the sliders together for the “wood.”  And of course, smoky pulled pork to represent the little pigs.  Fun presentation, delicious sandwiches and even better company.  Thanks Paula & Matt!

It’s officially summer at our house, now that the pool is warm enough to swim.  And by “swim,” I mean float around on rafts while sipping frosty beverages.

It’s officially breakfast at our house if we put a fried egg on it.  On Saturday morning we re-heated leftover pizza and topped it with a fried egg for breakfast, and Sunday’s fare was leftover kimchi fried rice, also topped with a fried egg.  Breakfasts of champions.

We celebrated 8 years of marriage this week with, what else — a picnic at the Arboretum and an outdoor concert by an Eagles tribute band.  The food was delicious (a cheese plate and our version of the best sandwich in Paris:  a good baguette spread with French butter and layered with prosciutto), the band was about what we expected, the surroundings were beautifully in bloom and the marriage is better than ever.

We celebrated the bounty of eggplant from our garden by making eggplant parmesan, using a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated’s book, “The Best Light Recipe.”  It turned out great, and we like that this lighter version calls for baking the breaded eggplant in the oven instead of frying it, before layering it with sauce and cheese and putting it back in the oven.  We’ll make this one again.  (We’ll have to if we want to post about it, since I forgot to take photos of it about halfway through the cooking process.  Oops.)

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

Last weekend we went to Brooklyn to visit Dan’s brother and family, including our toddler nephew T and newest nephew A.  Despite a bit of chilly and rainy weather, we had a wonderful time.  One of our rainy day activities was to visit the New York Transit Museum, where T had a blast walking through (and climbing around) the Museum’s vintage collection of actual subway and train cars set on the track system on the lower level.  The weather cleared up on Sunday and we had a lovely stroll along the Brooklyn Bridge Park to the “flea food market” known as Smorgasburg.  If you happen to be anywhere near the Brooklyn area this summer, we highly recommend this dining event.  So many delicious vendors, such little stomach space to try them all!  Many thanks to our Brooklyn family for a great weekend!

One of Dan’s newest happy places is Paisanos Meat Market in Brooklyn.  They have a crazy good selection of all different kinds and cuts of meats, as well as imported cheeses, olives and other antipasto items, and oils and vinegars.  Even though we had gorged ourselves earlier in the day at Smorgasburg, the pre-marinated lamb chops we picked up at Paisanos and grilled that night were so good that we all could have eaten twice as many more.

Our garden is bursting at the seams!  In particular, our eggplants have exploded with fruit and one of our tomato plants is already producing more than we can eat.  Growing our own vegetables is one of our favorite things about summer.

And how about growing our own olives!  I bought this mini olive tree (sort of like a bonsai version) at the grocery store last year on a whim.  It has done well in its little pot, with lots of new foliage.  I never actually expected it to produce olives, but if you look closely, there they are — a bunch of tiny green olives about the size of a pinkie fingernail so far.  It will be interesting to see if they eventually mature enough for us to pick and cure.

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

Obviously, the tragedy in Moore, Oklahoma this week is not a “favorite,” and our hearts and hope go out to any and all affected by the massive tornado.   Our money goes out to them too — donating is the least we can do for people who have lost so much.  We appreciate all that the Red Cross accomplishes with donated funds, and we found a couple of ways to give money even more directly to people in Oklahoma in specific ways:  through the Oklahoma food bank, as well as a fund created to benefit OU faculty, staff and students who lost homes and personal property, and via the work being done by an Oklahoma pet clinic with respect to animals displaced during the storm.  We like to think that every little effort makes a difference.

Last weekend we had a “sleepover” with our friends’ son & daughter (and our pretend nephew and niece, who we’ve known since the day each of them was born), while their parents celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary.  We had an awesome time, complete with homemade pasta for dinner (as requested by T), an apres-dinner swim, lots of Wii games, some excellent drawings by A, a visit to the local playground (with an epic kite-flying-adventure FAIL:  one only became “airborne” with me holding it up while running behind A, and the other got eaten by a tree about 15 seconds after T took hold of the string) and a highly successful trip to the video game / child entertainment mecca otherwise known as Dave & Busters.  The kids were great and a good time was had by all!

When luck and planets align every few years, my parents travel to Europe in the off-season, which usually means March or October.  It’s a happy coincidence for me when they go in March, since my birthday is in May (and you’re never too old to hope that your parents bring back something [other than a stupid T-shirt] for you when they travel.)  This year, they brought me a package of calla lily bulbs, with Dan and my wedding anniversary in mind (we were married in June and callas were our wedding flowers.)  I planted the bulbs a few weeks ago, and they have begun to bloom!  The leaves are a pretty bright green, some with cute white speckles, and so far the blooms are a lovely pale pink and yellow combo.  Thanks Mom & Dad!  (And thank you for all the awesome European gifts over the years, none of which has ever been a stupid T-shirt.)

Recently, a friend diplomatically (for him) pointed out that we were remiss in our lavash pizza post because we didn’t mention Cane Rosso among our favorite places for pizza.  Since we had never previously been to Cane Rosso, we apparently didn’t know what we were missing.  Dan and that friend had lunch there the other day (apparently I was busy and unable join them), and Dan reports that their pizza is indeed among the best he has had.  I can’t wait to try it!

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

In the mood for a casual place with upscale bar food and appetizers last Friday, we found Savour Kitchen & Cocktail Room to be exactly what we wanted — decidedly un-stuffy, with a large and varied selection of small plates.  The food was good (we’ll be back for the lamb sliders alone), but the best part may have been the live music.  Just a guy with a microphone and some sort of computer-operated music system, enthusiastically singing whatever seemed to move him at the moment (occasionally influenced by some of the more rowdy patrons in the bar area) was the perfect entertainment for a Friday night.

We took full advantage of the opportunity to feed our neighbors at the neighborhood block party by filling up our smoker with a variety of meat.  And Dan took the opportunity to try a few new techniques:  wrapping a brisket in bacon while it smokes, and wrapping another brisket and a tri-tip in parchment paper (after the meat reached 150 degrees in order to keep it moist and help to create a nice bark (the blackened exterior.)  We were quite pleased with the results, and given how few leftovers we had at the end of the night, our neighbors were too!

Your eyes do not deceive you — one of our favorites this week is a garden hose.  A hose featured in one of those annoying infomercials no less.  While it didn’t come with a free set of Ginzu steak knives (I bought it at Home Depot), it really does work!  The “pocket hose” is very lightweight and perfect for attaching to the end of our regular hose (or it can be attached directly to the spigot), then pulling across the backyard to hand-water plants with ease.

Speaking of plants, we planted milkweed this year (it’s the one with the spikey leaves on the left above), in hopes of attracting monarch butterflies to our backyard, on their way to Mexico.  The female monarchs lay their eggs on the milkweed, which the caterpillars eat until they cocoon.  We were inspired by (and thoroughly enjoyed) the documentary “Flight of the Butterflies,” which we saw at an IMAX theater with our niece and nephew when we met them in D.C. last month.  Even if we don’t get any monarchs, the plants are a nice reminder of a wonderful time we had with family we adore.

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

Many thanks to everyone who made me feel special and loved on my birthday last weekend!  I had a very happy day and am a lucky girl indeed to have so much love, friendship and thoughtfulness in my life.  Plus, a husband who makes me burnt sugar ice cream with a candle for my birthday wish, since I don’t really like cake.

We went to a fun local art festival last Saturday and came home with a few new treasures.  The piece above is titled “Conversation with Myself,” and is a sculpture that we coveted since last year’s festival, where we first saw the 12 foot tall version.  Being able to meet and chat with the artist, Lorri Acott, makes owning a piece of her work even more meaningful.  We also bought a few pieces from Ethan Jantzer, who explains his unique photography-without-a-camera method way better than we ever could.

We have a new sushi obsession — spicy tuna on top of crispy rice cakes.  We first tried it at our favorite movie theater (yup, sushi at the movies!) and loved the combination of silky tuna with the airy crunch of the rice cake.  We had a similarly delicious version at one of our favorite special-occasion restaurants, Shinsei.  And speaking of Shinsei, we finally tried their “Thai fried rice” side dish, despite having over-ordered too much food to begin with (which is why we tend to only go there on special occasions), and will order it again each and every time we go back.  It’s hands-down the best fried rice we’ve ever had, and the leftovers topped with a fried egg make for a perfect weekend breakfast.

Another “best ever” food item we recently tried is the Thai mussels appetizer from Meddlesome Moth.  All hyperbole intended (this is “Friday Favorites” after all, not “Friday Just Okays”), these mussels cooked in a coconut milk and red curry broth with Thai aromatics are life-changing.  When we asked our waiter about them and he called them “transformative” and said that they’re the only mussels on the menu he eats, he wasn’t kidding.  The only thing we didn’t like about them is that we aren’t sure how to recreate them at home.  Yet.

Tomorrow is our second-annual neighborhood potluck block party, which calls for thawing all the bought-on-sale giant slabs of meat from our freezer and prepping the smoker for overnight duty.  We’ll be bringing pulled pork, beef brisket and tri-tip.  Hope our neighbors bring their appetites!