A few recommendations...

Those of you who write blogs know that it can at times be, well, time-consuming. Especially for such a focused blog like this one. As such, there are too many restaurants and too many meals, too many funny videos and too many other things I do that I just don't get to mention. So here they are: a few things I haven't mentioned lately that don't really merit a whole post (unlike my recent trip to Green Spring Station - I'll post on that soon).

• If y'all read about my excursion off Exit 17 to Woodlawn, you'll remember that the Shaheen Indian-Pakistani Restaurant was recommended to me. Well I went - twice. Pretty good stuff. 100% halal for the observant Muslim diner. Their goat is some of the best and least bony I have eaten in a while. $5.99 per lb. to take out their lunch buffet (the first I've seen do it by the pound), plus a section of desserts. Good stuff.
• Plus, did you know my post about that very subject is the first one that comes up when you Google "shaheen security square mall"?
  
• Speaking of which: just this past week I stopped by a place off Rossville and Bel Air Road, the recently opened Mount Everest (for which I can find no links whatsoever), which serves Nepalese and Indian food, as well as Italian, Greek and American. It's the "pizza-subs-and-curry" place turned into a festive-looking Nepalese restaurant. Their chicken tikka masala is a bit dry, despite floating in all that tikka masala sauce. Their saag paneer (Indian cheese in spinach) is quite good. $8.99 per box.
• I stopped by Pepe's Pizza on Falls Road. For $3.45 after tax I got enough Hawaiian pizza to last me two meals. Good and filling pizza. BTW: my recent Exit 23A post is the second hit when you Google "pepe's pizza mount washington".
  
• My sister treated me to dinner tonight at Damon's Grill (she's so nice). There is a smattering of locations in Maryland, but it's mostly based in Pennsylvania and Ohio. We got some great burgers for $7.95 plus 50 cents per topping. Get too much (fried mushrooms, fried onions, guac and Provolone cheese) and it'll all slip and slide off. Her mudslide was also tasty. The apple cobbler that we split was okay. I've had better, but it was decent.
• Oh, Cloverfield rocked.
  
• Whole Foods' rice milk really isn't all that bad when compared to the real thing, at least in hot chocolate and in cereal. Just avoid rice drink - it's not the same.
• And I made one more recipe from a book I bought in California and have had on my shelf for a while, Paulette Mitchell's 15-Minute Single Gourmet: 100 Deliciously Simple Recipes for One (1996: Macmillan, New York, NY). It was her basil pesto. It didn't turn out the way it should have - either I had too little basil or else I used walnuts instead of pine nuts. It's more like a chunky basil paste. it's still edible, just not what I had had in mind.
• And I'm still waiting to take advantage of the smokelessness of the local bars. They did this too in California when I lived there. Even though I am a militant non-smoker, at first I thought it was silly. I mean, it's a bar for God's sake. But it didn't hit California businesses bad at all - most of them just installed outdoor patios if they didn't already have them, and they worked just fine. Put up a few outdoor heaters and Maryland's bars will be just fine too.