Get set for iced lattes, tater tots and fried pickles galore!

Anyone remember when I said that I sure wish we had Sonic around these parts?

Well, this from Liz (at What's to Eat Baltimore?), via Twitter:

Just found out that Baltimore County is getting a Sonic in Sept! (a guilty pleasure of mine.)

@BeerInBaltimore on liberty road in randallstown! :)

So no longer do I have to drive up to Amish country or (in lieu of that) down to Georgia for my Sonic Drive-In needs. Yippee!

Why you should always take scary food news with a grain of salt

The new report about soda increasing the risk of pancreatic cancer is getting some good play right now. Perhaps it's true. It suggests that soft drink drinkers have double the risk of developing pancreatic cancer as those who do not drink it. But they need a more rigorous study than this one. Many factors were not considered, in a fourteen year study - including high fat diet, consumption of diet soft drinks or fruit juices, family histories of pancreatic diseases, etc. But the sheer numbers of those who developed pancreatic cancer jumped out at me in particular (H/T Village Voice):

The study, as the Washington Post reports, is not without its weaknesses: The total number of pancreatic cancer diagnoses was only 140 (pancreatic cancer is a very rare type of cancer, but it also has a very low survival rate), and 18 of those diagnoses were made among people who drank two or more sodas per week. Twelve cases were diagnosed among people who drank less than two, while the vast majority -- 110 -- were among people who didn't drink any soda at all.

Do also read the Washington Post article as well. It elaborates further.

Not to mention the fact that I know soda isn't the healthiest thing to drink, and I know that pancreatic cancer is a very sad and tragic disease. But these mitigating factors at least should have been considered. As it stands, I probably won't be scared by this study. But it's still a good thing to cut back anyway.

Excuses, Excuses

I've seen so many of my fellow foodies hunerking and bunkering down in the midst of the SNOWPOCALYPSE OF 2010, baking and cooking furiously. Even my sister has done so, telling me about this luscious pumpkin bread she made the other day (I would've gone to her house but I really can't get down the street).

I myself have not baked anything. It seems like a lame excuse, but I'm not in the comfort of my own place. I'm in my parents' house, wondering when I will ever see the insides of my apartment again. My landlord tells me that my street has not seen a plow at all (we're not even a secondary road - more like a tertiary or even a quaternary one). All my thoughts are on my wok, my bamboo steamer, my bread maker and my pasta maker (which I would've been using profusely by now). I have scary thoughts that the contents of my fridge will start looking like an episode of Life After People. I'd much rather bake in the comfort of my own kitchen. God love 'em, but my parents' kitchen is not the most organized room in the house. This explains where I get it from.

An even worse excuse, however, is that I've been getting used to having cable again, since all I have at home is super-limited basic cable. Among that, re-loading all the data on my recently fixed laptop*, digging out the walk and editing Power Point presentations that wait patiently to be presented to college students (all classes canceled so far, not that I could even make it there anyway), I really haven't gotten around to baking anything. Hopefully I will at some point. At the rate things are going, Maryland will be buried under ten feet of snow so I may be stuck here for a very, very long time.

* And please don't listen to all those consumer advocates who tell people that buying the extended warranty is the biggest mistake you can make. The ones I bought for my laptop and my GPS have helped me immensely. Otherwise I'd have to have put out another $500 for another laptop or $200 for another GPS. They've saved me a lot of aggravation. Also, please don't ever buy a Dell laptop for yourself. They're unreliable. I should know.

Cabin Fever

A few things I've noticed while trapped in my parents' house in the throes of the Snowpocalypse of 2010:

• It's not that difficult to kind of recreate Jell-O 1-2-3, that fabulously foamy Jell-O confection from somewhere in the 80's: take any Jell-O mix and boiling water, blend it in a blender on medium for 30 seconds, then high for a minute. Then add ice water and blend on high for a minute. Refrigerate as normal. It'll solidify into two layers: the regular Jello-O layer and a foamy layer on top. Sure, it's only more of a Jello 1-3, without the middle #2 layer. But it's still different.
  

• My cat will eat peanuts.

• A piece of bacon wrapped around a hot dog - "Tijuana-style" but without the maters and onions - is blissful after 20 minutes in the toaster oven, on the "Broil" setting. Normally it would shrivel up and get all hard after spending that long in the toaster oven, but the bacon prevents that by lubricating it.

• Caught an Ace of Cakes marathon. The Duffster made that Old Bay cake for the 70th anniversary of Old Bay. Wish I had gone to that.

• Which reminds me: I need to get back to Dizzy Izzies at some point.
  

• I have orange chicken and milk sitting in my fridge at home that probably won't be any good by the time I finally get home. And my banana wine needed to be strained on Sunday.

• I would have gone out for a beer but every parking space is snowed in. And we're getting 10 to 20 more inches of snow. Things are looking quite Antarctic right about now.

Any snowpocalypse stories y'all want to share? Please go ahead!

Baltimore Restaurant Week: The Capital Grille

The Capital Grille is one of those restaurants I've never really bothered to visit. It always looked so expensive, so I never went in. And, well, yeah - it is expensive. Even at lunch. So when I called a friend of mine to suggest we do lunch for Restaurant Week, he suggested a place that was normally expensive. That way, we'd be getting a really good bargain. So Scott mentioned The Capital Grille and I figured it was time.

The Capital Grille is a national steakhouse chain - a very posh chain (that is: this ain't Sizzler). This much I knew, though I had few other expectations, except the hopes for a good lunch. Scott has eaten here before and has raved about it. One recommendation: the steak sandwich, which runs $18 - almost as much as the entire Baltimore Restaurant Week lunch menu. Not one for $20 sandwiches, I insisted on the Restaurant Week menu.

Scott and I were led through the rich wood-grained interior, past bright plate glass windows and massive portraits of famous Marylanders (NB: I had not known that famous Civil War figure Clara Barton was a Marylander, but the Massachusetts native spent the last 15 years of her life in Glen Echo). We were brought to a cozy table with a crisp white tablecloth, where we talked about family, friends and finances over freshly baked bread and butter. I ordered an iced tea (about $3) and Scott got a cocktail. I don't drink many cocktails, so I admit the $10 price tag on that one surprised me a bit.

Like most Restaurant Week spots, the Capital Grille offered a soup-or-salad course, an entrée and a dessert. Since we were in such a classy place, I didn't ask to try anything that Scott had.

I really need a new camera.

Scott got the clam chowder, which he seemed to really enjoy. I got the Capital Grille Garden Salad: a mixture of field greens and tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette with chunks of bleu cheese. I have grown tired of bleu cheese, so imagine my delight when I tried this cheese. It was perhaps the best bleu cheese I have eaten in several years: tangy and sharp but not too sharp ("wince-worthy" is the word I'm looking for). This bleu cheese was just mellow and even buttery enough to make me really savor it.


Each of us ordered the 8 oz. filet mignon with mashed potatoes for our main course. I ordered my filet mignon rare, and I got rare. Soft, tender and rare. I couldn't exactly cut it with my fork, but I was able to make a rather permanent dent with it. The filet mignon was beautifully juicy with a flavor that reminded me what quality beef is supposed to taste like. I also found out that day that 8 oz. of meat is a bit too much for me to handle all at once. And if that wasn't enough, Scott railed me about the meat selection at Fogo de Chão, the Brazilian churrascaria restaurant next door. So much meat as much of your meal is served on a skewer. And there is no vegetarian or seafood option. It's all meat. At least they have a wide selection of that. Fogo de Chão ain't cheap neither.

I have to rave about the potatoes. Rarely does a side dish stand up to a main entrée and not make a scene. No prima donna is this bowl of mashed potatoes. These were thick, buttery and moist. No lumps, which I often like a little bit of in my mashed potatoes. If I could just go to The Capital Grille and order the potatoes, I would in fact do that. They were a beautiful accompaniment to the filet mignon but also notable in and of themselves.


I liked my dessert, the chocolate espresso cake. But as good as it was, I can easily say it was not the highlight of my lunch. But something has to take that mantle, and the espresso cake is it. Thick, chocolaty and moist, it was SO dense that I truly had trouble finishing it at all. It was tasty, please don't misunderstand me. But it was the least memorable of my three dishes. This says more about how good the salad was and less about the cake, since I am not a salad person.

So for about $20 for me (before tea, tax and generous tip), I had a remarkably delicious and inexpensive lunch at one of the loveliest "business lunch" places in town - with, I might add, excellent service (kudos to our waiter and the staff). But with the generous amount of meat I got at The Capital Grille, could my system really tolerate a possible trip to Fogo de Chão?

Europe's Alcohol Belts

This comes from Strangemaps via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish at the Atlantic. I love maps, especially food-related ones. To wit:


The "Wine Belt" is in red (burgundy?), the "Beer Belt" is in a sort of golden color, and the "Vodka Belt" is in blue.

Conan. Cheetos. Art.

Now if they only had some Old Bay to go along with it.



From Eclectic Asylum Art.

Owin fixin' ta not gao aout inna snaow

This is not addressed to anyone in particular, but y'all will understand the sentiment:

People, when a major snowstorm hits, why do you go and flood all the supermarkets with your presence? Seriously nobody needs THAT much toilet paper, bread or milk over a three day period.  Honestly, just whisper the word "snowstorm" around these parts and people act like they're hunkering down for Y2K.  It's not the end of the world, people.

Baltimore Restaurant Week: Sascha's 527

My sister and I were lucky enough to just miss the mammoth snow this weekend (forecaster FAIL anyone?) by going out to Sascha's 527 for Restaurant Week on Friday night. It's a restaurant whose samples we enjoyed at the Great Tastes Expo a few years ago, and we had been meaning to get there and sit down for a proper meal. Fortunate enough to find a spot in front of the Walter's, we trekked on over to Sascha's for our 8:30 PM reservation.

Only we didn't have a reservation. I'm not sure if that was a mix-up on the part of Open Table or Sascha's, but it didn't take too long for them to get a table ready for us. This was in spite of the fact that this trendy yet lush, spacious yet cozy restaurant was jammed for the evening.

With its columns, chandelier and massively high ceiling, Sascha's is imposing in terms of space. Its red and brown tones are actually kind of soothing, given the commotion of all the diners - such as the occasionally obnoxious woman laughing as loud as humanly possible (dontcha just love that?).

Sascha's offers an extra perk for Restaurant Week: a complementary glass of house wine. We each ordered the white and anticipated our three-course meal.

For the first course, Cathy got the shrimp and grits.


She loved the flavor. I found the grits nice and mellow, but a wee bit, well, gritty. They were still my favorite part of the dish. I do like shrimp, but be prepared for a very strong shrimp flavor. I mean very strong. Make of that what you will.


My first course was their bison sliders. I loved these moist little burgers. Even more than those, however, I couldn't rave enough about their special Moroccan barbeque sauce they provided with the sliders. It had a nice tamarind flavor. The sauce made the burgers taste even better. It might have also made the house-made chips that came with the burger somewhat more edible. These chips were very inconsistent: some tasted bland, others tasted burnt. It’s definitely not a plus for the meal.


The second course was less satisfying for Cathy. Her free-range chicken with butternut gnocchi had some definite highlights – specifically the gnocchi, perhaps the best thing about either her or my second course. The chicken we found to be dry in some places. Despite its pleasant flavor, my little piece of it was dry enough that it didn’t leave me wanting for more. My seared ahi tuna with saffron noodles was much better. Also medium rare, the tuna was juicy, tender and moist – everything I had hoped the tuna would be, and everything we wish the chicken would have been. The saffron noodles were not life-changing, but still more than satisfied me.


For our final course, we went to old dessert stand-bys. Many restaurants seem to offer some variation of chocolate cake and some variation of crème brulee as part of their Restaurant Week dessert course. I enjoyed the crème brulee – a simple one, unadorned with fruit. It had a mellower flavor than most I have eaten. We couldn’t say the same for the chocolate mousse cake, which was unspeakably rich. I don’t know Cathy finished it. I know I couldn’t have.

We left with an overall above-average experience. I found my dishes to be better than those my sister got. My favorite dish was clearly the bison slider plate with Moroccan barbeque sauce, though again, I could have easily done without those chips.

Pombe Ya N'Dizi - Day 7

Stay tuned for a Restaurant Week post on Sascha's 527, where my sister and I went the other night, as well as another food ethnography post on some Tanzanian banana fritters. But to tide y'all over, here are some photos of the Pombe Ya N'Dizi project, day 7.

I am getting ready to strain the banana wine. I have to put it back into the jar, so I need to strain it first into this iced tea jug at left. It almost filled it twice.

Since I had never before made wine, I was kind of surprised by its really strong fermented scent. I was also wondering if it should be cleared up at all yet.

And here's the strained wine, jug cleaned out and refilled. Since it must be airtight, I sealed the rim of the lid with duct tape (yet another use for this versatile wonder of Home Depot).

Super Bowl Sunday holds little interest for me, since the Ravens didn't make it. So it officially become "Straining Day #3" and Day 14 of the Pombe Ya N'Dizi experiment.