Like a pig with an apple in its mouth

A rockfish with citrus in its mouth.


I honestly have nothing to add to this. Seen at Wegman's on Sunday.

Louisiana-Bound

I'm heading to New Orleans for a conference this weekend. I will be there for a very short amount of time, and probably won't report back until I get back. But stay tuned next week for a bit of food adventure in the Crescent City.

Snacking State-by-State

Map of North American food traditions, as outlined by Slow Food USA's RAFT (Renewing America's Food Traditions)

For a while, I have been very interested in exploring the different foods that this country has to offer. The major problem is that I can't travel from state to state. I just don't have that kind of time or money. What I can do is get to know some of the recipes and food traditions from across the country right from my own home. It's not quite the same thing, but it's a start.

The challenge: try to prepare a recipe from each state in the USA, plus the District of Columbia. I will also add Puerto Rico to the mix, for an even 52. My desire is not to find the quintessential dish from each state. That's not possible, save for a small handful of states. Most states are in the opposite boat: every state has several key dishes, and many states have the same one. My desire is not to find the quintessential dish from a given state, just a quintessential one. I know I'll be leaving something out, lest I want to go insane.

The timeline and the goal: one state (etcetera) every few weeks. Here's the frightening part. My goal is to complete this in two years - one state every fortnight (er, two weeks). Notethat there is a good chance I will get off track, and will take longer than this. There's also a small chance that I'll get really motivated and finish this much sooner. But if everything goes as planned, this will end around early November 2012.

This is going to be a major, long-term project, but I am trying recipes all the time. This is just one recipe for each state and then some. Other projects will be going on, other travels will take place, and I'm still racing around the Beltway updating that other long-term project. This is more of a culinary social studies project than anything else.

I will be using a few sources.

• Whenever possible, I will use cookbooks, internet resources, travelogues and other sources that specifically address the cuisine of the state in question.
• In doing this project, I will try to also explore a broad cross-section of the US's multicultural landscape in the process.
  
• If I know people from a given state who can give me some advice, I am all ears.
• Note the map at the top of this post. Slow Food USA is championing the restoration of the US's many disappearing food traditions. I know my culinary roadmap will not let me just explore "moose" or "clams" from those areas where those traditions are key, but some will pop up. Except maybe for the moose, if it's too pricey or I can't find any.
• And of course, I will try to spend as little money doing this as I can.

This state-by-state culinary armchair travelogue starts later this month. I'm going in alphabetical order. First stop: Alabama.

Harris Teeter is going to bankrupt me if I'm not careful

Oh, Harris Teeter, that gorgeous, gleaming North Carolina-based supermarket chain, how you entice me with your delicious cheeses and dessert items. Ever since I picked up some extra work in Howard County this semester, I have made it a habit to swing by the Columbia Harris Teeter location after work on Fridays.

I would move into this place if I could.

I know: yes, it is just a supermarket. But there's something about going for the first time into a supermarket chain that you've never entered or seen before. I felt the same way the first time I ever entered a Wegman's (sometime in 2006), a Whole Foods (that would be 2004) or a Trader Joe's (waaaaaay back in '97 after moving to SoCal, back when the East Coast was largely TJ's-free).

This is a massive supermarket, and really, you could just never leave this place if you could get away with it. Just as with Wegman's, which carries a plethora of Northeastern items we can't find too easily in Maryland, Harris Teeter does the same thing for us coming from the other direction: a variety of Southern and specifically Southeastern brands we don't often find here. This includes not only big brands of everything from fry mixes and varieties of cornmeal to the whole Dixie Crystals product line, but also smaller, independent brands. Thanks to my newly-found willingness to try the free samples when offered instead of running in the opposite direction, a new favorite of mine is Augusta's Pimento Cheese. Based out of Charlotte, Augusta's Creations specializes in sinful and delicious pimento cheese (check out their online store). Oh dear! It comes in regular and jalapeño. I like hotter. Guess what is in my fridge right now. Go on.

I also must confess an addiction to their bakery section, not far from their section of cheeses chock full of free samples, and next to their deli which is always streaming with people getting sandwiches (unless they opt for the Asian food bar, which even has dim sum). I have become particularly addicted to Harris Teeter's petit fours (12 for $5). I often get a half dozen and devour them in the car before I even get home. If you let them warm up to room temperature, they are luscious. I have tried petit fours from a few area supermarkets. Supermarkets where I have seen petit fours include the Fresh Market, Wegman's and Harris Teeter, and HT's really are at least a half-cut above. Fresh Market's are tasty also. I can take or leave Wegman's petit fours. Not a big fan. I'll spend my money at Wegman's on their delicious $6 mini white cakes with vanilla buttercream frosting instead.

I was first motivated to go there when I found out that they carried a particular favorite brand of mustard that few others in the area carry. I thought it would be much cheaper to buy Raye's Mustard right off the shelf than mail ordering a jar all the way from Maine (Yes, a proudly Yankee mustard available only in a Tarheel supermarket chain. Go fig). I couldn't find the specific Raye's Mustard that I wanted, but it didn't matter really. I was already hypnotized by all the other stuff they had. By the way, you should see their wall of mustards. It's impressive. I just wish that, among all the boxes of Morton's Salt products and all the containers of kosher salt that they actually carried Morton's Kosher Salt, which was conspicuously absent (perhaps they were just out that day). A negligible criticism for a supermarket I'm liking more and more with each visit.

Exits 1, 2 and 3A-B Revisited

I had serious plans to resume my explorations of the Beltway and its foodie finds. I would revisit places that I originally visited, explore new locations, report on those that have succumbed to the Great Recession, etcetera, etcetera.

That was half a year ago.

Since then, life has happened, and I went on a most restful sabbatical, causing me to put off my return to the Beltway Snacking series. Plus, the first post is always the toughest, since that's the one that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the series.

When I first got the notion to revisit the exits from my first culinary tour around the Baltimore Beltway, I was not quite sure how I would go about it. I thought I might seek out new places I did not even know about the first time, maybe taking note of which places had closed down before. It dawned on me as I was going back into Glen Burnie just how ambitious this project has been and would have to be. Perhaps tackling each exit one at a time takes longer, but it preserves the sanity. Biting off a few at once? Now there's a task. So because I have a desperate need to organize myself (HA!), I'll break down these revisits in a somewhat different way than before.

Restaurants that have shut down - Well this is pretty self-explanatory: places that I visited or wanted to visit, but can't now because they ain't there no more, hons. NB: If something shut down and I missed it, please help me out and let me know what I missed.

Restaurants I didn't get around to the first time - These are the places in my "Places to look up later" section from the first go-round, as well as places that commenters recommended to me that I didn't even think about. These are also places that both I and my commenters just completely missed altogether. As with the first go-round, I will try to avoid places I have blogged about in the past, though I may play hard and fast with this rule if I need to)

Restaurants that have since opened - This one isn't hard, people. Just as the recession has taken out some places, so have others opened up since.

Exits 1, 2 and 3A-B -
Section of the Beltway - the Glen Burnie Section (S. Baltimore City, N. Anne Arundel County)
Towns & neighborhoods along the way - Hawkins Point, Curtis Bay, Pasadena, Brooklyn Park, Glen Burnie
Routes that branch off - MD 173, MD 10, MD 2

Places that have shut down since I last visited

Of the various restaurants I mentioned on the first go round, none have really shut down. One notable location that never made it into the Beltway Snacking series but is now gone speaks volumes about this recession: Krispy Kreme. There used to be a stand-alone Krispy Kreme restaurant right across from the MVA, complete with the ditzy teenage boy who had no idea what "Do you have any hot ones?" meant. Well, young Master Clueless has probably found another job by now, and you have to go to Royal Farms to find any Krispy Kremes around these parts - or the Harris Teeter all the way out in Columbia.

Restaurants that have since opened

In Krispy Kreme's place has opened up Ayubi's Chicken and Kabob (map). This location, which had been open just a few months once I got there, has a mix of foods I hadn't really anticipated: fried chicken (think New York Fried Chicken) and lake trout, ice cream, and a full menu of Afghan and Central Asian kabobs, lawands and pullows (pilafs). Notable is the inclusion of the area-famous kaddo borawni made known to Bawlamorons at the wonderful Helmand restaurant in Mount Vernon. Though I didn't get to try Ayubi's version (I think they were out of pumpkin or something), I did order a typical lamb kabob with an Afghan pullow and bread. Half an hour later I had it at home, and I must say it survived the ride. The kabob was juicy and nicely spiced, while the pullow featured nice bits of raisin , carrot and onion. A nice and memorable addition was the finely chopped cucumber and carrot salad that came with the dinner. All of this came to about $10 before tax and drink, and was quite a change from the donuts that were being served there just twelve months before.

A particularly filling meal from Ayubi's

Restaurants I didn't get around to the first time

When I first hit Exits 1 through 3 (A & B - 4 exits in total), I noted a few restaurants that, for whatever reason, I just did not get around to visiting.

The Olive Tree Italian Restaurant (map) was one that some of my fellow Men's Chorus members suggested to me, and after one performance at a local South Baltimore church, a few of us headed over there. We would've gotten in, too, had it not been for the wait. So the Olive Tree is one that I had to save for another day. Instead, we all met up at Romano's Restaurant (map) for dinner. While others of us got things like spaghetti or crabcakes, I opted for the shish kebab ($15). Extremely filling, and it lasted me a while as a take home dish. Still, I wish I had gotten the crabcake platter instead.

One location that I had passed often but never ventured to try was Martitha's Restaurant (map). This restaurant offers up a combination of Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran offerings that will pleasantly fill you up. One day I ordered some take out, waiting with a major soccer game on the flat panel TV hovering behind the bar, tuned in to Univision. Martitha's is an unassuming, homey little restaurant, with the various flags of Latin America hanging around the counter. Don't let that unassuming atmosphere daunt you. Order away! I ordered a breakfast dish of three bean and scrambled egg tacos ($10 - UPDATE: this is known as a baleada) that came with Salvadoran slaw, lettuce and tomato, and what seemed like enough slices for a quarter of an avocado. I had to order a nice thick pupusa along with it. This was gone before I even got home. I'm a sucker for a good pupusa.

These are not pupusas.

When I first visited Glen Burnie, I got about as far as the intersection of Crain and Ritchie Highways, where you can and must visit the likes of Pho Miss Saigon (which I reviewed the first time around), and Thai Café (which I did not - the sister and I headed there the other day after I helped her find a dress for a big anniversary dinner). Ann's Dari Creme (map) is much further down Ritchie Highway, nestled right in front of Marley Station Mall (looking much better inside, I might add), and across from the Plaza Garibaldi Mexican Restaurant (map) which I still have not ventured to. It had been a while since I first visited Ann's. I'm talking decades here. The place is an area institution, and after listening to a little blurb about it on the Midday with Dan Rodricks show on WYPR (NB: please continue doing that County by County segment) I was reminded of this comment from commenter TW on my original Beltway Snacking post about Exit 3:

You definitely should hit Ann's again. Cheeseburger sub or a footlong or get someone to split with you and get half of each. Banana milkshake to go with.

It was settled. I had to go back. The folks at Ann's are quite efficient. They've been doing this for years, and they know how to get you in and out and get you your food fast. I did order the foot long, but opted merely for the vanilla shake. Hey, I like vanilla. I should have eaten it there while it was still warm, but even 45 minutes later in the comfort of my apartment, the foot long was still pretty good. It would've been excellent had I eaten it right away. As for the milkshake: oh good Lord, I haven't had a milkshake as good since my last visit to In N Out when I last visited California. Thick, very strong of vanilla, very cold. It's a memorable milkshake. All this for about $5.

That's a lotta milkshakes...

So, what did I miss?

Perhaps there will be yet another future installment of the Beltway Snacking series. If so, there will always be places that I fail to get to the first or second time around. I could write a whole series just on the restaurants I have missed. But I'm not doing that. I will just let y'all give me some suggestions. So: what else did I miss in Curtis Bay? Pasadena? Glen Burnie and around Marley Station?

Places I got back to

Ann's Dari Creme (ice cream/hot dogs/fast food) - 7918 Ritchie Hwy, Glen Burnie, MD 21061; Phone: (410) 761-1231

• Would I eat there again? Yes
• Would I go out of my way to eat there again? If I was in the mood
  

Ayubi's Chicken and Kabob (Afghan/lake trout/fast food) - 6604 Ritchie Hwy, Glen Burnie, MD 21061; Phone: (410) 766-9585

• Would I eat there again? Yes
• Would I go out of my way to eat there again? Maybe

Romano's Restaurant (Italian/Greek/American/family-style) - 6905 Ritchie Hwy, Glen Burnie, MD 21061

• Would I eat there again? Yes
• Would I go out of my way to eat there again? Maybe, but only if there is no wait

Martitha's Restaurant (Salvadoran/Guatemalan/Honduran/Mexican) - 602 Crain Hwy N, Glen Burnie, MD 21061; Phone: (410) 424-3974

• Would I eat there again? Yes
• Would I go out of my way to eat there again? Maybe

Thai Café, (formerly Thai Gour Café; Thai) - 7477 Baltimore-Annapolis Blvd #1, Glen Burnie, MD 21061; Phone: (410) 761-8399

• Would I eat there again? Yes
• Would I go out of my way to eat there again? Probably

A few places to look up later

Olive Tree Italian Restaurant (Italian) - 7005 Ritchie Hwy; Glen Burnie, MD 21061; Phone: (410) 761-8237

Plaza Garibaldi Mexican Restaurant (Mexican) - 7917 Ritchie Hwy, Glen Burnie, MD 21061; Phone: (410) 761-2447

Back to the Beltway... for real this time

You probably forgot about this since I first announced I'd be doing this back in May. Look for my first installment of "Back to the Beltway" tomorrow.

I made a pie...

I have not made very many pies in the past. I have made even fewer with my own homemade pie crust. It is, well, kind of a pain the ass to roll out. Plus, you have to do all the chilling in the refrigerator, and it just takes a major chunk out of my very busy day.

But I broke down and made one again. This time, it was with apples! Gorgeous, mouthwatering apples! The apples came from the Towson Farmers' Market, ending until May on the Thursday before Thanksgiving (note that, Towsonites). The folks who hawk apples there are very helpful in recommending apples for a pie. I admit: I know next to nothing about pie apples. I know next to nothing about any apples, to be perfectly frank. I've never eaten many in the past. It's not my favorite fruit. But I'm willing to learn.

The pie crust recipe came from John Shields (double crust pie recipe, Chesapeake Bay Cooking). The filling recipe came from Tyler Florence, courtesy of the Cooking Channel (my new favorite cooking channel, when I am at house that has cable). I just wish the recipe itself had been a little more thorough in how you prepare the filling. It's mentioned as an afterthought at the end. Tyler, what the fudge!? I mean, I figured it out, but what if somebody is not as resourceful?

Anywho, I am quite impressed with my first pie. Though I added a little too much salt to the crust (what you get for eyeballing the salt, dude), the pie is just wonderful, with the tartness of the apples meshing nicely with the cinnamon, nutmeg, brown and white sugars and - gasp - butter that coated it all. I've never been too hot on apple pie, but if I keep making more of these, I'll get hot on it. Oh yes, I will. Especially with some vanilla ice cream from Trader Joe's.

Please. Shop At. Our Store.

Why this strikes me as funny I do not know. From a Rite Aid in Bel Air:

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.

Sabbatical Flashback 6: On "Julie & Julia" and the act of food blogging

My sabbatical is coming to an end, and I after my long break I'm looking forward to getting back into it. It's just felt so weird eating, cooking, baking, or reading about something food-related, and just relying on Twitter to relate my thoughts. It has made me a little more "zen" about having to relay absolutely everything I do and eat - in other words, I don't need to do that - but instead to focus on the things that really impress upon me the most.

To end the sabbatical, I wanted to repost a reflection I had a while back on the very nature of blogging. It's good to back and look again on why you do this in the first place, no?

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿

On "Julie & Julia" and the act of food blogging

(originally posted Friday, August 14, 2009)

I went to see Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia this afternoon during a matinee. As many of you know, the film is adapted from Julie Powell's memoir of the same name and the book My Life in France by Child & Alex Prud'homme. It's a movie that shows the lives of the two women at seminal moments in their lives - Julia in 1949 and the decade after learning how to master the art of French cooking - and translating that for an American audience, Julie over a period of 12 months from 2002 to 2003 learning how to master the art of French cooking - and disseminating that experience in a new online format known as a "blog" (what's a "blog" anyway?).

Mrs. Child, with fish, taken by husband Paul

It's charming and much, much funnier than I expected it to be. It also has a few surprises, such as how utterly Meryl Streep transforms herself into Julia Child, and how Amy Adams only once reminded me of her Disney princess character from Enchanted, and how Powell's husband Eric worked for Archaeology Magazine (the issue blown up in the background in his office? I bought a copy of that issue).

Ms. Powell, with book, from 2005

The movie also made me hungry - not only that, but also made me want to get the damn cookbook and try this myself. I'm not going to do that, of course. It's already been done, and I don't have the time or money to do this anyway. But I will have to get a copy for my own cookbook library. That tattered little copy of The French Chef I found at the Book Thing doesn't stay open by itself anyway. At the very least, I want to make the boeuf bourgignon that partly inspired Powell to love food the way she does (did I interpret that correctly?), and that ended up getting Child's book published by Alfred Knopf in the first place. I might even try to debone a duck!

I don't have a whole lot else to say about the movie at this point. But I did take some time both before and afterwards to read Julie Powell's reflection on the movie itself, in a brief article she wrote for The Atlantic Monthly. She notes that the "Julie Powell" in the movie isn't exactly like the Julie Powell in real life. She's grateful - after all, how many people can say that their first book was made into a movie? All the same, she marvels at the self-awareness of it all. This passage from her article (no I haven't read her book) resonates with me the most:

I like to think I was more self-aware--just as narcissistic, maybe, but at least conscious of my narcissism and able to poke fun at it. In my experience--even if many contemporary bloggers might take issue with this--the blogging was, at least in part, an exercise in self-involvement. Cooking through Mastering changed my life on many levels. It made me a better cook and a more confident person.

I have to agree: I think the very act, er, art of blogging is a narcissistic act in and of itself. Why else would most of us be writing these blogs anyway? Certainly we wouldn't bother unless we just wanted to. Heaven knows there have been times I was just tired of doing this, and other times where I just had no time and literally had to scale back. But I always came back to it because I enjoyed it.

But then Powell turns it back around, and mentions some of the other things it gave her. To avoid quoting the whole piece, I'll specifically mention the "intoxication" she felt from reading her comments (including the deflation at her first-ever commenter being her mother). As she says in her article:

On the one hand, it gave me readers--passionate readers, involved readers, almost insanely devoted readers--who encouraged, cajoled, prodded, and harassed me into both completing the project and developing my voice as a writer.

Some of us have more commenters than others (I might have more if I was better at keeping up on reading more blogs!). But there's the rub: I know I don't just speak for myself, or just paraphrase Julie Powell even, when I say that writing this blog has also been an act of both narcissism and devotion to my readership. When I published my very first post in '06, I certainly didn't think I would have a book deal. Mind you, I still don't expect to, unless I give myself one through one of those self-publishing outfits.

A blog really is the end result of a desire to talk about yourself and what you enjoy. I would not have enjoyed writing about my crazy life - I'm too frazzled there as it is. But writing about food has focused me and given me sort of a place to stand out there and reveal myself. And yet, would I have ever finished that Beltway Snacking series had people not read it? (Still getting comments on that, by the way.) In a big way, I both did it and put so much detail into it for myself, but also for my readers. The comments were more than just gravy; they were the motivation to keep on doing it. To clarify, I don't mean the comments in and of themselves, but the interaction from readers sharing their own perspectives.

Powell also notes how the whole project is indeed a tribute to Julia Child, perhaps one of the main themes of the film (watch this hit home when she visits the Julia Child kitchen exhibit at the Smithsonian at the end of the film). For me, blogging is obviously not a tribute to anyone in particular - I haven't done anything particularly "gimmicky" except for that Beltway Snacking thing. But it's not fair to call it "gimmicky" and that sounds worse than it is. Nothing wrong with a gimmick - it's just a modus operandi.

The poster

Perhaps the fact that this post about Julie & Julia has turned into a post about this blog is the best testament to the fact that blogging is indeed a narcissistic venture. Well, thank you, Julie Powell, for motivating me to reflect on that. I dedicate this post to you.