Friday, December 27, 2013

Sweet Potato Gnocchi from Scratch

Ben and I made gnocchi one time when we lived in Santa Clarita, so at least ten years ago, and it was such a fiasco it has never occurred to me to attempt them again. You can get a shelf-stable package for $2.79! Why would you bother with homemade?

But then: in Isa Does It, there's a recipe for sweet potato gnocchi with brussels sprouts and tarragon cream sauce, and I thought, "oh, I'm a much better cook now. It won't be that bad." Hey, guess what: it sucked. Huge waste of time for no payoff. I mean, they were good, but not any better than what I can get at Harris Teeter. I will not be making gnocchi from scratch again.

What I will be making again is this vegan cream sauce, which was spectacular: cashew cream, white wine, garlic, onion, and tarragon. That's it. I didn't even use fresh tarragon because I forgot to buy any. It way exceeded my expectations. 


The dish as a whole was great - we both loved eating it - but I did not love making it. Good to know! Homemade gnocchi are off the table.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Trip Report! Thanksgiving in Savannah

Last year for Thanksgiving we went to Charleston and had such a nice time we immediately decided to plan on Savannah this year. After our whirlwind tour of southern Spain I was especially looking forward to staying in one place for more than 2 nights.

We stayed at the Catherine Ward House, a B&B right off Forsyth Park, which is the big park in the middle of the historic area.


It was beautiful, and true to our experiences in every B&B, the owners were so nice and friendly and helpful. The breakfasts each morning were also huge and delicious.

Our room was on the "garden level" (basement) but it did look out to the garden. My only complaint about this place is that it was a bit noisy. It felt kind of companionable and homey during the day to hear people wandering around and chatting upstairs, but on our last night there, the people next door were kind of noisy and that was annoying.



Look, though. This made up for the noise. FREE DIET COKE. They replenished it each morning.


Fresh flowers, too!


We ate Thanksgiving dinner at The Olde Pink House, one of Savannah's most famous historic restaurants. It was an absolute madhouse when we walked in - the entry was packed with people and we had to wait about 20 minutes past our reservation time. All was forgiven, though, when we actually sat down because everything about the restaurant was amazing. The food, decor and ambience, and especially the service was just perfect. On this trip I relented from embarrassing Benjamin and did not take pictures of our food.  But at The Olde Pink House I took a picture of the menu, at least. I got that BLT salad and I can vouch for it being as good as it sounds.


And someone took a picture of us! Well, sort of. When we got back to the B&B I was checking Instagram for other pictures posted of that location and someone had posted one while we were there! 


Too bad that giant vase is in the way.

On Friday we spent the day doing a couple of walking tours that were in a guidebook I had procured at the library. It was a great way to catch the highlights of the historic district without paying for someone to tell us about it. We did consider doing a guided tour on this trip but couldn't pull the trigger. We just are not joiners.

This fountain is in Forsyth Park and is "the most photographed fountain in the South." I don't know how they know that, but it was pretty.


Savannah is full of gorgeous, tree-filled squares and historic houses. Essentially those are the two things we spent the day looking at. 


This is the only picture of both of us from the trip. As you can see, I look a bit dazed. 


We went on a tour of the Owens Thomas House, which was really interesting. It was built in 1819 and was one of the first homes in the United States to have indoor plumbing. We have really gotten into this type of architectural tour in the last few years. Does this mean we're old now?


This was our favorite house. We are fans of the federal style.


The oldest house in Georgia, built in 1734. In general we were surprised at how much older Charleston felt than Savannah. They really aren't so far apart, but South Carolina was settled long before people moved into Georgia.


This is a gun that was used in the Revolutionary War.


For lunch we ate cheap Thai food. I figured it was fine to take a picture since our food cost $7 each. This is one thing I miss so much about Southern California - I cannot understand why Raleigh doesn't have cheap Thai food. 



One of the many squares we walked through.


This is the Mercer-Williams house, made famous by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (which I barely remember). They do tours, but you aren't allowed to ask about anything that happened related to the book, which seems a little pointless.


Ben wasn't really mad. 


This is across the street from the B&B - we were just on the edge of the Victorian District.


We had dinner at 700 Drayton that night, right on Forsyth Park a few blocks down from our B&B. Once again, the food was great. After dinner we walked around the park for a little exercise. This building is an emergency animal hospital.


The next day we spent mostly shopping. It was fun going into all the little stores with antiques and art and local treasures - that is not something we normally do, but I had some Christmas shopping to work on and we had seen a lot of interesting little places the day before.

In the afternoon we went to Leopold's for ice cream.


On the way back to the B&B we stopped in to look at this church, the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. It looked pretty standard from the outside but was really unique and beautiful inside.




For dinner our last night we ate at Noble Fare, which was my absolute favorite of the trip. I am still dreaming of my grouper with lobster & corn risotto. 


Savannah is beautiful! We had such a nice, relaxing trip filled with great food. The drive home back up I-95 was a bit harrowing, and I don't think I will be doing any major interstate travel on the Sunday after Thanksgiving for a while, but we made it home safe & sound.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Recent Things

Cheeseburgers are fine and good, but being able to eat real sushi again is maybe the most exciting thing about omnivorosity. There's a good place right near our house that we hadn't been to in years, but we stopped in Friday night and stuffed our faces.


Saturday we went to see a Porsche exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art. I'm always proud of us when we have a cultural outing in lieu of sitting in the house watching six episodes of some Netflixed TV show in a row. It was pretty interesting, even though I am not into fast cars.




We usually get Christmas ornaments when we go on vacation as a souvenir from the trip, but maybe Spain isn't as big on Christmas trees as we are here in the US of A because we couldn't find any! Instead we got a print at the Granada Cathedral and managed to successfully get it home without destroying it. I picked it up from the framing shop yesterday and I think it looks great! The framing cost approximately twenty-five times the price of the print, but whatever.


And finally, since my dad died of melanoma three years ago, I started going to the dermatologist for regular skin checks. He wanted to remove this tiny spot on my leg even though it was only 3mm, so I did that, and it was precancerous!!


Go to the doctor, everybody!

Monday, November 18, 2013

Out and About

Last weekend we tried a new restaurant that opened near our house, Latin Quarters. The theme is South American specialties, which as far as I know is a unique idea for Raleigh, and I've been anxious to try it out. It's been there a few months and is apparently working really hard to drum up business because they were very, very excited to see us and everyone came over to talk and offer us free cocktail samples and take a picture of us for their facebook page. Which reminds me to go check and see if they ever posted it.

Oh, good.


Well, anyway, you can see our food there - Benjamin got chorizo arepas and I got the mofongo with shrimp and crispy pork. Here is a better picture of my entree in case you care.


It was delicious! The desserts were especially amazing, but I did not take a picture. I really hope this restaurant makes it, because it's a unique concept for this area, plus we can walk there from our house.

The next day we met my friend Erin and her family for brunch at the Remedy, one of our downtown standbys. Erin is my oldest friend in the world - I have clear memories of playing Mastermind with her during game time in the third grade - but she is in Chicago now and we had never even met her kids before! Gus is the oldest, at age four, and he LOVED Benjamin. Kids always love Benjamin.


It was awesome to see Erin and makes me wish we all still lived in the same place. Too bad the only place we have in common is St. Joe, because who wants to live there?



Saturday, November 16, 2013

Mango Fried Rice & Coconut Curry

I haven't been blogging much but I'm continuing to cook from Isa Does It pretty much every night and so far there have been zero duds. It's super fun!

Here is a thing I made a couple weeks ago - mango fried rice. She says to put toasted cashews in it but I didn't feel like dealing with that, so I put some tofu in for  protein instead.


I also made this freaking amazing coconut chickpea curry with kale.


I always think I will be bored with curry but I'm usually not, and this one was especially good with the full-fat coconut milk base.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Harira Take 2

I made a harira recipe from Bean by Bean last year and really loved it. This one from Isa Does It is totally different, and a quick scan of internet recipes shows it is probably more authentic compared to the standard (lamb-containing) recipe.


It looks just like a boring noodle soup but it was really hearty and spicy and flavorful, full of chickpeas & lentils & eggplant. I used ramen noodles because I had some to use up (which is funny, since the previous blog entry reveals I used Japanese noodles the last time I made harira, too), but noodles all taste the same so it's fine.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Updates

I have had intermittent back pain since we lived in Santa Clarita over ten years ago, but for the past six months or so it's been more or less constant, some days worse than others. My doctor told me essentially that my discs are a mess and there's nothing he (or anyone else) can do to make it go away. Awesome! 

And then we went to Spain, where spending every day on my feet and every night sleeping on rock hard beds made me feel like a normal person for the first time in ages. It didn't hurt at all! A week after we got back, though, it was back to being terrible again. We decided our old pillowtop mattress had to go. Last weekend we went mattress shopping and ended up with a Tempur-Pedic, which was undeniably the best of all the ones we tried. It kind of annoys me somehow when the most expensive option turns out to be actually worth the money. 

Unfortunately, our old box springs barely fit up our stairs when we moved in and we knew we would never get them back out of there. Benjamin got to spend Thursday night sawing them apart. The cats were VERY interested in the entire process and played in the remnants all night long.



A lot of people told me it takes time to get used to a Tempur-Pedic but we both love it already. I start looking forward to bedtime at around 7:00 pm! 

I have also started walking religiously every day and the difference it makes in my back is incredible. Even a 45 minute walk can mean the difference between a terrible day and one in which I hardly notice it. So I guess I have to keep that up now - I'm going to try getting up before work this week because I think it will make my workdays, sitting in an office chair for nine hours, a lot more pleasant.

And here is my inheritance from Grandma Betty! Since she was trying to make her rural Missourian grandchildren eat weird stirfry back in the 1980s, I think she would appreciate my weekly menu of vegan dinners being held up by her magnet.



Saturday, November 2, 2013

Burger Fi Awesomeness

Hey, let's take a little break from vegan food to talk about cheeseburgers. If you guys have a Burger Fi you should go there. It seems overpriced, but then you eat the burger and it is amazing. They have a vegetarian quinoa burger, which is what I've always gotten before, but today we got the meat. Ben said today it reminds him of Fatburger, a California chain he always insisted was better than In & Out.

Plus, look: they brand their buns!


And check out this onion ring! I actually think the picture makes it look smaller than in reality. They were all about 2 inches wide.


AND FINALLY! They have one of those soda machines with a million choices to which you can add a variety of flavors. Burger Fi rules!

Sticky Orange Stir-Fry

I have made four things from Isa Does It this week but failed to take pictures of two. Here is our dinner from Tuesday, though, which was super great:


The sauce is mostly orange juice with some soy sauce and mirin. She calls for seitan but I used soy curls, mainly because Ben hates seitan. I also  used a yellow pepper from our friend's garden! It was good.

Monday, October 28, 2013

New England Glam Chowder

I made my first recipe last night from Isa Does It! It's a clam chowder type thing but with shiitakes subbing for the clams. You're supposed to also add chopped up nori (seaweed) to give it a fishy flavor but I have no interest in fish-flavored soups, so I left it out.


It was excellent. I'm really really glad I have this cookbook to refocus my attention on new healthy recipes. I have been sort of off the rails lately. Here is a video of Isa making this chowder!

The only bummer is that I made her olive oil bread to go with and it tasted like absolutely nothing.  I only ate a few bites and thought, "why was there no salt in this recipe??" and then I reviewed the book and there WAS salt in the recipe. I just forgot to add it. SIGH. Ben likes tasteless bread, apparently, because he seemed perfectly pleased with it, so at least it won't go to waste.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Bida Manda Birthday Dinner

I've been wanting to go to Bida Manda, a Laotian restaurant downtown, for quite a while but Ben felt their whole marketing strategy was pretentious and annoying. Well, yesterday was my birthday, so I get to make him do what I want. We ended up having a fantastic experience - the food was great and the service was even better, genuinely friendly and extremely prompt.

We ordered some crispy ground pork egg rolls to start. They were excellent, far better than the standard type of egg roll I expected.


For my entree I ordered the shrimp & bacon saffron crepe, which was huge! Fortunately I was able to finish it with no problems because it was also great.


Ben ordered the caramelized ginger pork ribs with grilled asparagus and sticky rice. I have to admit I was pretty jealous when this showed up at the table, because it looked amazing.


And then they brought us a free birthday dessert!


These items are mango sorbet, tamarind cobbler, and coconut custard. It was the perfect end to a great meal! Happy birthday to me!