He's BAAAAAAAAAAACK...

The sabbatical is over! It's going to be strangely difficult to get the juices flowing again. So why not just start with a few random, food-related observations that I have had over the last two months:

1) One actually hits oneself in the head when one goes on sabbatical just before the Baltimore City Paper informs one of one's blog's "Best of Baltimore" status. But one still feels very groovy.

2) When you spend four years writing a food blog and then suddenly stop, you start feeling the need to just start writing about your recipes and restaurant visits, only to remember that you're not writing it right now.

3) Drinking more water before you drink soda (which is not something you ought to be drinking anyway) really does cut down your overall desire to drink the caffeinated stuff. I'm drinking less soda now, which is always good.

4) Dad spent a weekend a few months ago in St. Joseph's Medical Center. They don't have many patients (I guess they all went next door to GBMC). In fact, they don't have many of anyone - doctors, nurses, patients or visitors. It's like one of those abandoned hospitals in the Silent Hill game series, only without the monsters and gore on the walls.

4a) I mention St. Joseph's because they do something I've never seen a hospital do: room service for visitors! Yes, you too can order stuff off the menu to eat right alongside dear old Dad, Uncle Bob or Mee-Maw, anything at all for just $5. Even more surprising: it's actually not half-bad. For hospital food, it's quite good. For hospital food.

4b) You do not, however, want to eat the food at your local hospice care facility. Nasty as sin. They want these people to actually eat, right?

5) Graul's Market actually sells bags of pre-baked Maryland Beaten Biscuits! Maybe it's just my bag, but they taste a wee bit freezer-burnt. Must make my own.

6) Over the last few months, my sister tried to put my niece, who has autism, on a gluten-free diet. It didn't work very well, but one plus came out of it: my notoriously picky eater of a niece actually started eating new and different foods. Note that she did not finish all of them. I picked up some gluten-free cupcakes from the Sweet Sin Bakery. Their cupcakes are lovely. I like them a lot and plan to get more for myself. None for my niece, however. You should have seen the face she made when she bit into her gluten-free chocolate cupcake: anticipatory, then immediately plummeting into equal parts confused and none-too-pleased. I felt bad. Oh well. More for me.

7) Marie Louise Bistro has been getting better every time I visit. But remember: if you order their crème brûlée, just keep in mind that it isn't actual crème brûlée.

8) Look what I just made!


Plus, I made a lobster roll for the first time, from a lobster I steamed just a little while before. I was tempted to use my wasabi mayonnaise, but I wanted to do my first one "authentically", the way they do up in New England.

9) My gardening has gotten more adventurous, and next year I am planning to take up a second plot! Some of my successes this year: lettuce galore, lots of Roma tomatoes (grown from seed - so proud of that), chilies out the wazoo, potatoes, kale greens, herbs (basil, rue, sage, rosemary, cilantro that bolted, and more oregano and mint than I will ever be able to use). Failures: garlic, strawberries (a total of four edible berries, and right over an ant nest too), and cauliflower. Don't ask me about it.

10) My friend Eric has fallen in love with the New York Times recipe section. Loved a lamb in parchment recipe he made for a few of us recently. But I will still needle him for not reading ahead to where it said the lamb must stay in the oven for 2 1/2 hours. (Not going to discuss that one time that I did the same thing...)

11) The next time you go to see a friend in a play, make sure you reserve tickets ahead of time.

12) Recent food finds that have become an even more important part of my culinary landscape: the nut-free brownies at Graul's; home-strained, Greekified yogurt; the English Rose and Key Lime flavored cupcakes from Iced Gems Baking; just about anything at the Haute Dog Carte; and at least one beer from each brewery that came to the Wine Source for Baltimore Beer Week 2010.

That is it for now. Over the next week or so I am rolling out my return to the Beltway Snacking series. And stay tuned for a brand new long-term project.

Dizzy Issie's

Well I did manage to get out tonight for Dining Out Baltimore after all. It was either that (consume calories for a good cause) or work out (get into better shape, but miss out on donating to a good cause). I chose the food.

Several posters have mentioned Dizzy Issie's in the past, specifically as the way to find Chef Duff's Charm City Cakes (which I did find; I think I saw Mary Alice parking in a hurry). And had I not brought my GPS I would never have found it in this somewhat unfamiliar part of town, due to all the detours. When I finally came upon it, I found more or less what I expected to find: a bar with a restaurant area. It was a pretty small place, too, and quite packed (is it usually this full at 7:30 on a Thursday night?). So no seating except at the bar.

It hit me like the smoke: I am not used to eating in a smoky environment. But hey, it's a bar, so I expected it, even if I wasn't ready for it. Of course, that's changing soon enough.

Well they were pretty busy as I said, so it took a little while to tell the bartender what I wanted; and then she gave me the menu. Lots of items caught my eye, many quickly written in cursive: this is real pub food, ain't it? I was especially surprised, in a good way, to see the burgers only got up to about $5.95. So I got one of those, medium rare, with some gravy fries. Maybe I should have ordered a piece of cake - they had enough of them in the back, in a case not far from the bathrooms. This was probably the cleanest bathroom I have ever seen in a bar.

About half an hour later, still sipping on my Guinness (how could I not order it), I'm chatting with a nice couple about Bill Clinton helping kids lose weight on the Rachael Ray show, and the presidential prospects of John Edwards (I'm not endorsing anyone or saying whom I would endorse; he just came up is all. Ain't his hair purty, though?).

Then my food came out. The burger was more on the rare side of medium rare - very pink and soft, but not red. It fell apart a little, but I've had far more fragile, soggy burgers for more money (to wit: City Café? Zodiac?). It was a filling burger. It was supposed to have had some kind of Caribbean rub on it. This burger was technically a Cancún Bacon Cheddar Burger, but it did not taste very Cancún-y. I'm not complaining; it was still good, just didn't really match the name. The fries with beef gravy were standard fries, but it was nice to not have to deal with dried-out, gummy fries. They were all pretty soft, which is how I like them. And there were too many to finish. Mind you, though, I fill up pretty easily, but there were still a lot.

Might I also mention that the fries were technically not needed? Okay, it's mentioned. That's because there was a ton of potato chips on my plate, and a spear of pickle. Didn't get into the chips on account of the fries, but the pickle was tasty.

The best part was the price. At about $13 this had to be one of the cheapest dinners out I have had in a while. And I really can't afford to spend so much, which is why I don't eat out a whole lot (it just seems like it). I left a $2 tip and headed back outside to breathe. And get one last photo of Charm City Cakes on my camera phone.

I didn't say it was a good photo. Man, those people work late!