Charity Never Faileth ... But Sometimes it Goes Awry

Tuesday night I stood in my kitchen, a newborn happily swaddled and sitting in her bouncy seat on the counter (shhh! don't tell the child safety police), and toddler standing next to me on a dining room chair, peppering with questions like "whas dat?" and "chocat chip?" every 30 seconds. I was attempting to make pumpkin bars for a funeral.

Wait ... first week back at work, second day in, sleep-deprived, infant with acid reflux, toddler who developed "selective hearing" on her second birthday ... BAKING? For a funeral?! Are you insane?

Probably.

But I decided that I need to do more to help others out - because I've been on the receiving end a lot of late, and as much as I'd love to claim that I'm a big-hearted saint of a woman, it's really more half-truth than truth (half-truth because I aspire to be that, but I'm not so much). Besides, how hard is it to bake a batch of pumpkin bars for the funeral of the sister of a woman from church I'm assigned to visit?

Rather complicated, as it turns out.

So the baking went fairly well, but I had to frost them before I went to bed, so I could deliver them the following evening to another woman from church, as they wanted the deserts to be dropped off at 8 a.m. on Thursday - the morning of the funeral - and I'm lucky to get us all out of the house fully clothed and fed by 8:30 these days.

Anyway, the bars hadn't quite cooled, so the cream cheese frosting melted a little into the cake-like bars, but still ... not so bad. Except, remember the toddler, who was still helping - which means that the bars defintely tasted much better than they looked. And the newborn who had given up on peaceful slumber and was wailing that she might starve to death in the next 30 seconds if I didn't drop everything and feed her rightthisverysecond. Instant gratification starts early!

Fast forward to last night (Wednesday). I remember suddenly that they'd asked that we bring the "individual serving desserts" (ie cookies, cupcakes, bars) on something that was disposable, so the family wouldn't have to return the dish. Complication. It appears that in all my stocking-up, paper plates are not to be found anywhere in my house. And since there is no such thing as a "quick trip to the store" when it involves a newborn and a toddler, well ... never mind, I thought, I had to drop the bars off at someone else's house that evening and maybe she would have something suitable.

Meanwhile, it turns out Woodstock can reach way back on top of the chest freezer. Turns out she can reach a lot of things these days I didn't know about (like my vitamins - thank heavens it was just the Vitamin D!) Turns out toddler finger prints make a really big mess in cream cheese frosting. I smoothed it out the best I could - at least her fingers were clean.

I called the neighbor to see if she was home and I could drop off the bars. Pebbles picked that moment to need to eat rightthisverysecond (Murphys Law says that if the baby is crying, the phone will ring, and if you pick up the phone, the baby will start to cry just to spite you). Above the wailing, I heard the answering machine picked up. No worries, the evening was still youngish ... another couple of hours until my eyes would be so bleary I'd have to head to bed, whether or not I had accomplished anything.

Bedtime came and went, two middle-of-the-night feedings came and went (payback for falling asleep early and not waking up to feed Pebbles at 10:30 p.m. - curses!), the alarm clock came ... and went. (Twice this week I've slept through the annoying little artificial birdies that are supposed to wake me). This was the day - the pumpkin bars needed to be on something disposable and delivered to the relatives of the deceased by 8 a.m.

Wasn't going to happen.

I ran through various scenarios in my mind as I seared short ribs in my pjs in hopes that the crock pot would magically turn them into dinner by the time I got home. I could just not drop them off...except that invalidated the whole purpose to begin with and really who needs to be stuck with a sheet pan full of bars frosted with cream cheese, butter and sugar? I could try and see if anyone else in the neighborhood was dropping theirs off - and could they drop mine off too? But that required too much time.

And what to do about the #$%#$%^#%& disposable plate problem? In a flash of MacGuyver-like inspiration, I cut the flap off of a diaper box (of which we have plenty) and covered it in tinfoil. Voila! Disposable pumpkin bar transporter.

I slogged through the morning, barely able to keep my eyelids open. Of course, because I needed to leave the house early, everything (and everybody) moved in slow motion. We left the house at 8:40 a.m. - and gone were both my chances of making it to work or delivering the goodies reasonably close to on time.

I drove up to the home of the family to whom the bars needed to be delivered. Good sign - all vehicles were still present and accounted for. I rang the bell. For a moment I felt sheepish about ringing someone's doorbell at 8:40 a.m. - then realized of course they'd be up - today was a funeral after all.

The man of the house answered the door in his pjs. Odd.

He looked at me quizzically when I said, "These are for you," so I added, "For the funeral." He thanked me, still puzzled. I drove to work, slightly amazed at how much work it took to produce 24 pumpkin bars for a fumerarl, and put it out of my mind.

Until I checked my voice mail on my cell phone this morning.

"Sara, this is Sister X. I wanted to let you know we got the date of the funeral wrong. It is FRIDAY. Not Thursday. So you can drop them off at 8 a.m. Friday."

Odd. I don't remember missing any calls on Tuesday or Wednesday. I looked back through all of my calls ... not a single one that indicated it was missed. I simply just had a voice mail show up.

Creepy.

And aggravating! No wonder the man of the house appeared baffled and in his pjs. No wonder the woman I'd arranged to take my goodies early wasn't home the night before the funeral.

Do you think pumpkin bars - cut and placed on tinfoil-covered cardboard - will last until mid-day tomorrow and still taste okay?

I give up. Maybe I am insane.

The Corruption of Woodstock

Last night Himself took me to an Indian place he's been raving about for weeks on the other side of The Frontier. He found it his first day of work at The Store (making me ponder the sanity of applying to work at $9/hour when it takes $9 in gas just to get there and back!).

It was divine.

It was free samosa night - and they were huge and puffy and full of wonderful things like potatoes, peas and garam masala - one of my favorite spices ever.

I had brought leftover ratatouille for Woodstock to eat, in case she didn't like Indian food. She scarfed down the ratatouille, some tasty little crackers and then reached for the rest of my samosa and popped it in her mouth.

She then signed "more."

As it turns out, Woodstock likes Indian food almost as much as I do. It isn't just indiscriminate "I'll eat anything," because while Woodstock loves food, there are some things she will not eat. For instance, shse will not eat green beans - not in a pot, not in homemade chicken noodle soup, not in a box, not with mixed veggies, not with a fox, not pureed ... she will not eat green beans.

She loved the shahi paneer (of course - the kid inherited my love of all things cheese). She loved the nan. We already knew she preferred basmati rice to regular rice. She loved the vegetable curry (minus the green beans). Mostly, she loved the rice pudding. (She did not, however, like the carrot pudding - pulling so many faces that the table next to us broke out in laughter).

Of course, she delighted them by blowing them kisses and saying "ba ba" (bye-bye) as we left. I dread life in 13 years when loving to be the center of attention is full of drama instead of baby cuteness.

On the way out, I told Himself, "We just fed our kid eggplant and peppers and squash and an assortment of Indian food for dinner and that she liked it? We cannot afford this."

Himself drew the connection that she's had more different kinds of food at 11 months than Grover has had in almost 12 years.

We're in trouble.

Why did I have to go and decide against feeding Woodstock jarred baby food?

Favorite Restaurants

Himself and I were talking this weekend a lot about DC - as mentioned before, I was homesick, and he was suffering a myriad of emotions over who was and wasn't coming to the weekend's celebration.

Since my mind was on food all weekend - what to buy, what to fix and serve for Baby Girl's blessing luncheon, and since Heidi and Dave spent their anniversary in DC revisiting favorite restaurants (and texting me about it), I thought a lot about MY favorite restaurants in DC.

In no particular order:

Bilbo Baggins, Alexandria: I discovered this when training interns while I was working in Maryland. We were going to take them to Gatsby's Tavern (a fabulous place for a colonial lunch), as was tradition, but it was closed for a wake. The maitre d' suggested we walk down Queen Street to the bright yellow townhouse that was home to Bilbo Baggins. I immediately fell in love. Himself discovered it a year or so later. We both declared to each other, "There is this great restaurant ...!" and then burst out laughing when we realized we had suggested the same one.

Tachibana, McLean: I love sushi. Love it so much I could eat it every single day of the week and not tire of it. While flying one Christmas from the right coast to the left coast to visit Himself's family, we read a review about the restaurant in an in-flight magazine. I tore the article out (yes, I know, bad plane etiquette) and saved it. When we moved back to the DC area, we tried it out. If you discount the mismatched 1970s decor, the food is amazing. The sushi is spectacular - large, succulent pieces of fish over tangy rice. And nowhere else makes spicy scallop rolls quite like Tachibana. In fact, the last truly sushi meal I had there (a sushi meal without raw fish isn't sushi), was the day before I found out about Baby Girl's pending arrival.

Pho 2000, Herndon: Comfort food extraordinare. There are dozens of Vietnamese soup houses in the metro area, but having tried at least half dozen of them, Pho 2000 takes the cake (or soup). They have the richest broth, the best chicken and the best additional menu items (like spicy chicken with bamboo and coconut in a clay pot). Plus, Himself and I could eat there for $17 - including appetizer, tax and tip - a bargain in DC. And it was right down the street from our house.

Taste of Saigon, Tysons Corner/Rockville: Introduced to this restaurant during my first sojourn in DC, it remained one of my favorites. Black pepper chicken, in all it's caramely, peppery goodness, remains one of my all-time favorite foods. Owned and operated by a Vietnamese family who emigrated to the US during the fall of Saigon, every meal tastes homemade. It's a good thing that by the time my office moved to the building next door, I was only there for another week - otherwise my paychecks would have begun subsidizing all the black pepper and gyoza goodness that was Taste of Saigon.

Hee Been, Annandale: (See a theme? Asian food as a general cuisine is my favorite - it surpassed even Italian years ago). Recommended by Tom Sietsma, the restaurant critic for The Washington Post and a VP with whom I worked, Himself and I tried Hee Been for the first time about seven months before we moved. It quickly became a favorite - especially when we could take advantage of their much less expensive lunch offerings. Savory bulgogi and kalbi, spicy kimchi and the best Korean mashed potatoes in town. Mmmmm. It was worth the horrendous drive to get there.

There are more. DC was the birthplace of my love affair with all things food. There is Cafe Deluxe and its wonderful fire roasted tomato soup; Sweetwater Tavern and its great rootbeer, mashed potatoes, fried dough and house salad with goat cheese; Vidalia and its salmon croquettes; Jaleo and its cod fritters and paella; Taste of Saigon and its chile lime rockfish (served with the head - not for the squeamish) and dozens more.

All that thinking about food makes me hungry. I guess chocolate milk isn't enough to count as breakfast.

Service Included

I love food.

This does not mean I necessarily love eating. I have to be in the right mood to eat, a problem given my current milking status. But I love food in all of its incantations.

I love cooking.
I love selecting produce (and meats) - though I hate grocery shopping.
I love farmer's markets.
I love cookbooks.
I love the Food Network (especially anything with Alton Brown).
I love trying new food (not the same as eating).
I love festivals with food.
I love talking about food with anyone who also likes it - one of the reasons Himself and I get along so well - we sit and dissect the potential ingredients of anything new we eat and play amateur critic at every new restaurant we visit.

Most of all, I love reading about food.

Because food is a growing obsession, there are more and more books out about food - especially narrative nonfictions - one of my favorite genres to read. Favorites include: Julie & Julia a dialogue about a woman who sets out to cook and eat every recipe in Julia Child's The Joy of French Cooking in her tiny New York apartment, Garlic & Sapphires - the delightful tale of Ruth Reichl's misadventures and split personalities she creates as the New York Times restaurant critic, and Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain's behind-the-scenes look at the underbelly of the culinary world.

This weekend, I gleefully picked up a new narrative - Service Included from the library - the very first patron to check it out. I read the entire thing on the drive to and from visiting Himself's family in The Great Frozen North. It was, as Anthony Bourdain would have referred to it (and as the author commented on), "Food Porn." I was in absolute drooling heaven as I read the author's narrative about her 18-month stint as a captain at Per Se, the NYC offspring of Napa Valley's The French Laundry.

More than my love of reading about a 4-star restaurant from the waitstaff's point of view, was my vibrant memories of my one (and probably only) dining experience at a similar restaurant - Maestro at the Tysons Corner Ritz Carlton. As she described the food, the philosophies, the adventures, the setting, I replaced it all in my mind with my own 4-star experience. Chef Keller became Chef Trabocchi. Laura, the manager, became Emile. NYC became Tysons Corner. The food - American with a French influence became regional Italian with an American influence.

Last Halloween, Himself and I took advantage of a complimentary dinner at Maestro as guests of the chef and manager. I had hired the entire back-of-house restaurant staff for an event earlier in the month and was rewarded with the most exquisite dining experience of my entire life.

We, as guests of the chef, were given no menu - instead we were asked if the chef could cook for us (of course!) and how many courses we would prefer (Himself, starving, answered that the suggested 7 courses was fine). What we didn't realize is that, as guests of the chef, we would also get several extra courses - resulting in an 11-course, 3.5-hour dinner that stuffed us so full we didn't eat for another 24 hours. It was absolutely divine.

For 3.5 hours we were the only people in the universe, it felt. A cast of waitstaff swirled around us, anticipating our every need before we even knew we needed it. We sat, entranced, watching our food prepared in the open kitchen - like watching a silent ballet. We enjoyed the 50+ bite-sized dishes (tasting again - my favorite way to eat). We tried not to look like a couple of "wanna bes" and tried to limit our amazement and drooling to after everything was said and done.

Had we paid for the meal, we would have been out $400+, not including tax and tip. It cost us the extra $40 I put toward the 20% gratuity the house picked up for us (a startling revelation - I never expected the house to also comp our tip!). We left, feeling uncomfortably full and completely satiated, vowing to never forget the experience.

It made reading Service Included even better because I had lived, even if only for a few hours, a 4-star life, and I could easily picture everything she described - the sites, the sounds, the indescribable flavor of black and white truffles, the feeling of being the only people in the room - the most important people in that split second.

It made the red curry we had for dinner last night very dull indeed.

Culinary Adventures 2, 3 and 4

It's been awhile since I posted about food - probably because, for only the second time in my pregnancy, I've actually wanted to eat food, which means I've spent more time cooking and eating than blogging about it.

We've managed to find enough time and money to venture out to a few venerable eating establishments in The Frontier, with mostly pleasant (and definitely surprising) results.

One of my reasons in dragging my feet in the move to The Frontier was the extreme lack of culinary offerings to be found the last time I inhabited the state. I, thus far, have been pleasantly surprised that there have apparently been some drastic changes on the food landscape.

Our first foray together into The Frontier's exotic food offering was E Jo, a Korean restaurant not far from our house that announced $6.99 lunch specials. Since Korean food is one of Son's favorites (okay, the meat is - he doesn't actually eat any of the rest of it), we treated him when he was out here. I am happy to report that it was not only good, but the bean paste and bulgogi (thinly sliced, grilled beef) are the best I've had. And there are a lot of Korean places in DC. Though they haven't yet served the slightly sweet Korean-style mashed potatoes I love to eat with the bulgogi, their kimchi is fantastic. I think we schocked the apparently all-Asian waitstaff in the amount of kimchi Himself and I can consume in one sitting. Strangely enough, Baby Girl LIKES kimchi - it is the one slightly-spicy food that doesn't give me heartburn, for reasons yet undiscovered. And, at this point, what she will let me tolerate is what I eat - so on our second trip there I had multiple helpings.

We want to go back and try their sushi menu, as they have Spicy Scallop rolls, a favorite among both Himself and I at our favorite sushi haunt in McLean. Unfortunately, they are stricken from the "approved pregnancy foods list," so we'll have to patiently wait for that. We did try the eel however, and it was excellent, as well as being well-sized for the price.

The second experience, at Lemongrass Thai downtown, was a lesson in extraordinary patience or complete stupidity - not sure which. They are, apparently, ill-equiped to manage large crowds. We dined with friends (from Virginia - are there any other kinds?), failing to realize that The Frontier's largest convention was going on that evening. The host seemed only to be able to deal with one person at time, meaning there was no list to put our names on. We simply stood in line for a very long time, waiting to be seated at one of the many empty tables.

The tables were filled eventually, which meant that the waitstaff was overtaxed. They ran out of glasses, so they served Himself's drink in a paper cup - a common practice among New England seafood shacks, but not one I've run into elsewhere. We waited for ages for our order, our bill, refills, etc., turning the whole escapade into a 2 1/2-hour affair that involved only about 30 minutes where food was on a plate in front of us.

Fortunately, all that was not completely wasted. The food, in large part, was excellent. Himself's duck curry was amazing - the best either of us have had. My sweet and sour (a deviation from my standard Pad Thai) was excellent as well, though it's remarkably hard to kill Thai sweet and sour, as it's a pretty basic dish. The calamari itself was melt-in-your-mouth-good, but the breading wasn't so great - it definitely merited more of a tempura batter. Something lighter that didn't clash with the squid itself. The soup ordered by friends was good, though not the best (I secretly thought my Tom Yum was better). The major problem were the portion sizes - they were outrageously large. Not sure if it's common in The Frontier or what, but we've noticed that - the portion sizes wherever we go seem to say, "We've supsersized for you!" which is not the most endearing thing to me.

Still, we'd go back. We would only order one entree, possibly with an appetizer, and split it all, we definitely won't go on a night that it's busy, and we'll make reservations, but the food was good, and since Thai food is one of my favorites, it's high on the list of "Must visits" for that reason alone.

This past Friday, we joined Heidi and family at Harvest, one of the restaurants at Thanksgiving Point. She promised a good meal, so we went with high hopes. We were not disappointed. In fact, we were surprised at how good everything was - the pepper steak Heidi & company so graciously shared bites of, the rock shrimp quesadilla and Himself's lamb. In fact, Himself raved about the lamb all weekend, which is good because he is extraordinarily picky when it comes to lamb. The bread tasted like my mom's homemade bread. The basil and tomato soup was divine as well (Himself will tell you that when tomato soup of any sort is on the menu it is incredibly hard for me to resist it - and I'm just as picky about it as Himself is about his lamb).

The atmosphere was wonderful as well, though again the portion sizes were beyond ridiculous. We were glad for the heads-up that we might want to share, or just get an appetizer ( I still ended up taking half of if home).

All-in-all, not a bad start to our food discoveries in The Frontier. To make it even better, I found an Asian market that, while not terribly convenient, seems to stock everything I need to continue to make Thai curries, Udon noodle salad, Chinese chicken noodle soup, Pad Thai, etc.

I still miss my beloved Wegmans, but I'm forced to admit The Frontier might not be the end of the culinary world after all.

Culinary Adventure #1

Today, I ate out at a sit-down restaurant for the first time in SLC. Best yet, I didn't have to pay for it, since a vendor took me to lunch. We went to a Japanese place just down the street from The Factory.

I sat down and my vendor colleague asked, "So, do you like Japanese food?" Clearly he wasn't prepared for the magnitude of that understatement. Sushi is my absolute favorite food on earth. He then said, "Well, you're in for a treat." I was immediately skeptical. I have had sushi in many of the great cities of the US - San Diego, LA, NY, San Francisco, Chicago, DC ... I've had bad sushi, good sushi and absolutely delectable sushi. I kept my mouth shut, but I wasn't certain I would find anything remarkable at a Japanese restaurant in a landlocked state in the western frontier owned by a local restaurant conglomerate.

Because I have been queasy a lot lately (darn hormones!) and because of Baby Girl, I not only forwent the raw sushi but also anything more exotic than a California Roll, much to my mouth's disappointment. I did, however, order a Bento box - teriyaki salmon, tempura, California Roll, miso and house salad. We also ordered appetizers - Tosh's prawns, a house specialty, and edamame - which is the world's hardest food to screw up and my second favorite salty snack next to popcorn.

The edamame, of course, was delicious. Tosh's prawns were INCREDIBLE. Melt-in-your-mouth shrimp with an Asian citrus aioli (a curious aside - not a big mayo fan, but I love aioli!). We ended up with two orders. They weren't cheap, which means if I introduce them to Himself, the wallet is going to suffer big time.

The teriyaki salmon was delicious, but it was disappointingly Americanized. The teriyaki sauce was the thick, caramely sauce, not the thinner, more balanced-tasting Asian variety that incorporates the salty, sweet and tangy. Still, it was tasty. The tempura was wonderful as well. The California Roll was disappointing. No cucumber, and instead of chunked fake crab it had ground fake crab. One of my favorite things about sushi is the contrasting and blending of flavors and textures, which, in my humble opinion, requires small chunks of ingredients, not ground ingredients.

The other disappointing realization was the lack of creativity in the sushi rolls offered on the menu. While all of them looked wonderful, there seemed to be an overwhelming assortment of common rolls - available anywhere - and a paltry offering of anything that showcased the chef's originality and flair. Still, I reserve total judgement until I can actually eat any of them.

One curious thing - sushi is more expensive here in the frontier than anywhere else I've ever had it - I'm attributing it to the cost of importing the fish and having it arrive as still sushi-grade, "fresh" and edible ...?

I give it two stars. It is good, and it will definitely satisfy my longing for Japanese food and sushi, but it won't inspire any displays of mouthwatering passion.