What I Eat, Apparently

Eating My Way Through Richmond, VA

ptocheia — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:11:43 +0000

OK, this is less a full coverage of the possibilities of dining in Richmond and more “Hey! I was in Richmond recently and happened to take pictures of these things that I ate! Yay!” (emphasis on the “yay”). I mean, I’ve got my staples that I like to hit in Richmond because I can’t find them anywhere else.

The big one is the mock sesame chicken at Panda Garden.

So I’ve been gorging on Panda Garden ever since I lived half a block away from it back in college. It’s been through a bit of history as well – the original location burnt down and they reopened a new all-vegetarian restaurant called Panda Veg across the street after that. And, just recently it seems, they started serving meat again and reverted back to the name “Panda Garden.” I love meat as much as the next omnivore, but pretty much the only thing I ever eat from there is the mock sesame chicken because it’s so incredibly amazing. I think of it less as “fake chicken” and more “delicious moist balls of joy and happiness in my mouth.” So amazing. Have yet to find anything like it anywhere else.

So, this next one is totally not related to Richmond at all. Go just an hour east of Richmond and you’ll find in the town of Williamsburg, AKA Land of Breeches, Poofy Dresses, and Outlet Malls. And, of course, amazing barbecue.

I’m sorry that the above picture is so grainy – I was lightheaded from lack of meat at the time, which greatly affected my photo-taking skills. Anyhow, Pierce’s BBQ is freaking amazing. It’s all sweet and smoky and delightful. There’s a bottle of Pierce’s BBQ sauce sitting in my fridge right now, to help me cope with the fact that the real thing is 1,500 miles away. The fries are, well, fries. Tasty, but nothing to write home (or write on a blog) about. Pierce’s sweet potato fries are apparently amazing, according to people who are into that sort of thing. But sweet potatoes and I are still in the early part of a friendship – we brush up against each other in hallways then give each other funny looks – so I cannot truly speak to the alleged deliciousness of the fries.

So while I was in Richmond, I heard rumors of a gingerbread stout, made locally by Hardywood Park Craft Brewery. It became a mini-obsession while I was there. I had to figure out a place where I could drink it to make my life complete. I got to hang out with my friend Scott on Christmas Eve, and he became my partner in crime in finding a bar that served this stout. This soon turned into just trying to find a bar that was open, period (did I mention it was Christmas Eve?). Just when we were about to give up, we happened to pass by The Camel on Broad St. And, lo and behold, not only were they open, but they carried the gingerbread stout.

The stout was…OK. I wanted it to taste more like gingerbread and less like stout. But this is my complaint about all beers that supposedly have flavor. The beer is mostly interesting due to the story surrounding it. Seems that Christmas Eve is a rather strange time to go to a bar. We’re sitting there up at the bar, just drinking our beer and talking, when some dude in a Pikachu hat wanders in off the street and gets a water. I compliment him on his sweet hat, whereupon he sits down and starts talking to us. Have you ever talked to someone while they were on acid? Imagine someone who has done so much acid that this is simply how they talk all the time now, due to what I’m sure are a crapload of neurons in their head being fried together. Imagine a New Age guru who learned everything he knows from Pokemon and Avatar The Last Airbender. That was this kid. To be honest, it was pretty fascinating – my luck usually gets me the creepy-crazy types, so this was a refreshing change. Kid had no place to stay that night, so Scott lent Pikachu (the name he went by, incidentally) his couch for the night.

And, in summary, Richmond is renowned for it’s delightful cuisine and bizarre homeless people.

Romance and Cheesesteaks and Eating Richmond!

Banana Bread for Great Justice!

ptocheia — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:06:49 +0000

So it doesn’t really feel like it to me for some reason, but I nonetheless recently realized that I might make banana bread more than any other baked goods. And it’s not necessarily that I’m incredibly fond of banana bread (though it is tasty), it’s more than I’m not very talented at eating all of my bananas before they get brown and ucky. There’s really two factors at play here. The first is that whole “sold in bunches” thing. It’s just me here, and am I really going to eat 6 bananas before they go bad? Of course, I’m totally that person that’ll rip a bunch down to a more manageable size, but at $.55/lb or thereabouts, I’m generally OK with getting a few more bananas that I might realistically be able to consume.

The second factor is that bananas drastically change flavor over the course of their shelf life. You buy them slightly green, when they’re tangy, and they gradually shift to yellow and sweet, then spotty and ubersweet, then brown and pastelike (mmm…paste?). I’m picky about when I eat my bananas. You see, I like my bananas like I like my men – tangy and not covered in spots. I’ll eat a banana when it’s fully yellow, but for me an ideal banana still has that hint of green at the edges. When the brown spots come in, the bananas start giving me funny looks, and I start avoiding them until it’s too late. And, As I am physically incapable of throwing away food unless eating it might send me to the hospital, “too late” generally translates into, “It’s smoothies or bread for you, sucka!”

I’m gonna be honest here – I have no clue what recipe I used for this. I don’t have a go-to banana bread recipe. You do an allrecipes.com search for “banana bread” and you pull up approximately 28947234234 variations of banana bread, all delicious. Of course, this makes this post significantly less useful for people who might actually wish to *make* the above banana bread. This is more of an “ooh lookie, I made a thing!” post. But, let’s be honest here: who does food blogs who *isn’t* making “ooh lookie, I made a thing!” posts?

So, instead of a recipe, here’s some practical advice: I don’t care how long the recipe says it has to bake for, don’t start baking your banana bread and then go take a shower. Seriously, what was intended as a 15 minute session became more like 30 somehow (it’s like the laws of spacetime alter when you’re naked in a bathroom), and by the time I got out, the timer had gone off. Bread was still good, I just kinda had to trim off the edges to get rid off that “well done” feeling. Oops!

Oh hey, here’s another piece of advice. Do this. It’s awesome:

Many things I eat are the result of “What ingredients are readily available at work?” experiments. So, I had banana bread. A coworker brought in fudge and blackberries. I combined them into a delightfully sugary pile. I ate, I was cracked out for the next 30 minutes, and had the resulting sugar coma for a few hours after. Totally worth it!

Getting my drunk on (and appetizer on) at Linger in LoHi

ptocheia — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:56:42 +0000

So I recently got an opportunity to get nice and knackered with some coworkers at a place I’d never been to before, a bar called Linger in LoHi here in Denver. First off, “LoHi” is such a weird term for me. I know it means “Lower Highlands”, but from a taxonomy/linguistic standpoint, couldn’t you just say “Midlands?” And, what’s to distinguish it from “Higher Lowlands?” And then, why isn’t there a “Higher Highlands?” separate from that? I mean, I’m pretty sure the higher area is just called “Highlands”, but then if we look at this from a set theory perspective, would “Lower Highlands” be a subset of “Highlands” or in it’s own class? Naming schemas are important, people!

Moving on to content people might actually want to read, did you know that Linger used to be a mortuary? Pretty crazy! They’ve got that fact incorporated into their interior design. Well, if you imagine a disco morgue or something. But no, it’s really cool! The menus look like toe tags and the bar upstairs is constructed with Light Bright pieces. And there a pile of pool balls in the stairwell, along with a gorgeous sweeping view of downtown Denver. Hmm, so much for my disco morgue theory.

Anyhow, the food! The menu is total frou frou, what with it’s fennel and deconstructed regular food and whatnot. Kinda intimidating at first, so it might be a good idea to point and choose at random, or consult with a conveniently placed waitron. Or just get a beer first (they have Left Hand Milk Stout on tap, w00t!) and let the alcohol decide later on. In any case, we started off with the “organic waffle sweet potato fries.”

Tasty! They came with chipotle-tomato ketchup, which is just like regular ketchup, except kinda weird! I’m still trying to warm to the idea that I can a.) eat sweet potatoes and that b.) it is possible for them to taste good. I seriously didn’t like them at all growing up, but I’ve had a few good experiences so I’m growing here. Anyhow, if I’m gonna learn to like sweet potatoes, a great method is to deep fry the bastards, which certainly worked for these fries.

By this point, my camera had had a wee bit too much to drink, as you can tell by the poor quality of that photograph above. Anyhow, these guys were poppers. Or rather, deconstructed poppers. “Popper breakdown”, as the menu called them. Someone was all like, “If Heidegger wanted him some awesome poppers, what kind of poppers would he eat?” and thus this menu item was born. Peppers sitting separate from some breaded and deep-fried cheese curds. Actually, I could totally overlook the pretentiousness of this menu item due to those amazing cheese curds. As I’m not too good at spice, I just ignored the peppers completely and stuck to the cheese. Holy cow, deep fried cheese curds! Genius!

So I have mixed feelings about mussels as bar food. They’re slimy and get all over your fingers and are apt to go flying at any moment. However, as this is the same argument I have against eating wings (which, much to my chagrin, is a very accepted form of bar food), I’m thinking I have no real footing on this one. Anyhow, I got over my aversion to the gooey and chomped down on several of these. They were in a flavorful sauce and tasted better than the majority of such shellfish I’ve eaten over the course of my life. So yeah, would totally recommend.

And then at some point, these tiny burgers showed up! It’s like at some point I stopped having any input into what menu items actually got ordered, and all of the sudden there were tiny burgers staring me in the face. With bacon! This might have been a better “early on in the drinking” item to get, actually, when the hour is closer to the dinner hour and one’s stomach is not so saturated with beer. But, still pretty good. Came with more of that chipotle ketchup – and it’s not that there was anything wrong with the ketchup, but I think I would have preferred a straight up barbecue sauce instead. This of course did not prevent me from downing a tiny burger (or slider, or whatever the heck the kids call them these days), and then later using my ninja stealth skills to eat all of the bacon off of a second one. Actually, this is the danger in getting such a dish later on in the drinky part of the evening. My Id takes over and is all like “Hmm…why eat the entire thing when I could just fill up on BACON!” Actually, wait, why is this a bad thing?

Anyhow, I’d totally go back to Linger. Place gets kinda packed on a weekday night (a good or bad thing, depending on your feelings on such things). But, pretentious menu aside, the food and ambiance are both pretty awesome.

No related posts.

Whereupon I crack out on Mexican food at Blue Bonnet

ptocheia — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:33:33 +0000

So I’m still not sure who decided Blue Bonnet was a good name for a Mexican restaurant. I mean, you’d think they’d at least call it Capo Azul or something? Anyhow, I ended up going to Blue Bonnet over on Broadway in South Denver with a few friends not too long ago, and it was magic and delight all up in ma belly.

They have an extensive margarita menu, and the one above is the frozen sauza swirl. Alcoholic strawberry blend in my mouth!

As we were pregaming for a party here, I decided to *try* going light on the food, and got a vegetarian burrito. This baby is what showed up to greet me!

SO MUCH CHEESE. Really, cheese is very important to me. And this sucker was coated with the stuff. This is the sort of burrito where I’d like to fill a bathtub with a bunch of them and just roll around in that pile for awhile. Melty in my mouth! Stuffed with rice and beans and pure unadulterated Joy. And totally the sort of burrito where you suddenly realize that you only have 3 bites left and your stomach is attempting to annex other parts of your body due to it’s overflowing status. I was actually pretty good about that this time around – I started from one end and managed to cut myself off at just over half done, leaving the rest for the next day. Well, except for the part where I totally left the leftovers in my friend’s car. Oops! I swear, more restaurants need to rent out carrier pigeons to forgetful fools like me. I’d get home later and there’d be a pigeon waiting for me with burrito deliciousness. Crap, I’m not really sure what you’d tip a pigeon though (cause you know they wouldn’t work for free). Not even sure they’d accept US currency. Shoot dang!

Practicing the Fundamentals: California Rolls

ptocheia — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 21:31:19 +0000

So when it comes to sushi, I’m a total plate presentation whore. Well, I guess if someone paid me for sushi I could call myself a plate presentation whore. But since I’m generally giving it out for free, I’d be that other thing. You know, um, generous? Yeah. Anyhow, usually when I have the opportunity/urge to make sushi, I try to figure out at least one thing I’ve either not done before or am still struggling with. Lately, it’s been wrapping the outside of rolls with thinly sliced fish and avocado, as well as color combination experimentation and interesting bonus ingredients (can we say “mango?” Yum!). However, I recently just made a big ole pile of California rolls for me, myself, and I, and it was a good reminder that sometimes you just gotta work on the sushi-making fundamentals.

I’m pretty pleased that grocery stores now sell mini-packs of fake crab (or “krab with a K” as I call it). Four tubes of krab is the perfect amount to build out a nice serving a California rolls. I also used half a cucumber and a varying amount of avocado.

On a related note, the state of avocados in our grocery stores is tragic. I mean, $1 an avocado is considered a sale? For realz? Not to even go into how much those poor suckers that buy organic are paying. I mean, you go to any major Latino market out here and they’re 3 for a buck. Unfortunately for me, there is no Latino market in walking distance of me, and parking around here is way too hellish for me to justify driving to a market and back just for avocados. So, my solution is to complain about it on here instead. Yay!

Anyhow, I rolled out these awesome tubes.

One thing I’ve figured out from making sushi is that, in a multi-ingredient roll, it’s important to balance out the hardness and softness of your ingredients. Too many hard ingredients and the roll might not get as tight as you’d like it, which can result in pieces of filling threatening to fall out after you slice up the rolls. One way to help with this is to slice harder ingredients (i.e. cucumber, carrots) super thin. Too many soft ingredients and you’ll risk your roll oozing all over the place when you cut it (this has happened to me more than once when my spicy crab involved a little too much “spicy” and not quite enough “crab”. California rolls are a great balance though – hard cucumber, medium firmness krab, plus soft avocado.

OK, so I threw in some fish roe for good measure. I’ve got a little container I just keep in the freezer all the time and pull out for sushi-making purposes. Great for adding a bit of salty zing, as well as a really nice orange color, whether inside the roll or outside. Tim Tebow approves of fish roe!