Friends are best paired with food and dance

To celebrate our friend who was leaving the U.S. for 2 years to work in Beijing, we ate.

The venue was Smoke n Barrel, and it turned out to be a good bet, even as a dark horse candidate.

While there was this meat-stravaganza below to go into raptures over (as Jess did, with her high-powered camera flash), what got me was the dessert (duh): Bacon. Maple. Creme Brulee.

No photo evidence exists of this marvel because it was scarfed down so rapidly, but it was divine- salty + sweet, but also a mild creaminess contributing from both sides. Happy marriage, indeed.

A few days later, still celebrating the creme brulee, we blew the roof off of Saint-Ex, a great place for tasty cocktails, mediocre service, and a pretty good mix of tunes.

We found out that Whitney Houston had just died, but the DJ made no move of having heard the news. We danced on, unfazed. This was the last night, it had better be good!

My cast made its final appearance- here! photo evidence!- as we danced our tootsies off. Funnily enough, I came across a guy who had a mini-version of my cast on his wrist. We cast-bumped. Actually I just hope I didn't clock anybody accidentally.

We shimmied as fast as we could through the falling snow to this place, the amazing gas-station-cum-late-night-diner that Jess recommended, and boy, was she right. Fast Gourmet is its name, and way-above-average late night (read: bad for you) snack food is its game. I had the beer-battered eggplant. Yes, really. Check out the Chivito; word on the street is it rocks.

All in all, an amazing evening with great peeps.

Happy trails, Girl!

Tartan Spirit

By a generous move from friends, I was invited to the Annual Tartan Ball here in Washington, DC.

They correctly assumed that in my current craze for Scottishness, I would be so pleased at all the pageantry and traditions on display that I would fill up my personal Happiness Tank for several days following.

It was held at the Mayflower, that iconic Warshington landmark. Recent political hijinks aside, it is a beautiful space. I had never been inside, so experiencing the cavernous depths of its entryway was pretty impressive. Even the carpets were exciting! There were a lot of people, and they fit pretty well in the area with the silent auction, and of course everyone got a seat for dinner (pictured above).

It was a prefect time to try a new whiskey. With the Ardbeg under my belt (but not conquered by any means), I calmly and rationally analyzed the dram of Lagavulin gifted to the table, hosted by my friends. It was suuuper-fragrant, as in, I could smell it without trying to. But it was surprisingly ... tolerable.

Here was my brilliant idea for a Scottish-themed yet fancy dress outfit: see arisaid for inspiration. I took a strapless black dress for the fancy part, then took a large shawl as a modern arisaid, letting it go from shoulder to belted waist to back of the calf-length dress. And I used a brooch that I have from back in my lilt days (Clan Logan) to secure it and give me some extra strapless confidence! Haha. That's always a bit nerve-wracking.

A lovely party.

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We take a break from our regularly scheduled (Food, Travel, Nature) programming to present you with Unmitigated Youthful Joyful Goofiness.

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Osmotic Pressure and Metaphorical Me

"Osmosis is the movement of solvent molecules through a selectively permeable membrane into a region of higher solute concentration, aiming to equalize the solute concentrations on the two sides."

Often I speak in metaphors which may seem out of place in the current conversation. My brain likes to dig up particularly esoteric or far-fetched descriptions for me to use when I am trying to better convey a certain feeling or state of affairs. This happens frequently at work, and while I register the lack of comprehension, I'm somewhat at a loss to replace my outlandish metaphors with more down-to-earth descriptions. Heave forbid I come off prosaic.

So here is my metaphor from today. I could feel the osmotic pressure of my Within and my Without this morning- the tug and swirl of the happiness experienced through self-discovery and creative effort over the weekend (Inside), contending with the lack of challenge and inability to focus on a long-term goal of the mundane Monday (Outside).

I just sort of floated along with it, letting myself be happy with the former rather than obsess over the latter, and you know what? About 2/3 of the way through the day, my brain started engaging and firing on different pistons, enabling some more cogent contributions to be made to work conversations. Good. Keeping the mind nimble and adaptable. Although- I am thinking maybe the forever-going-around-from-hobby-to-hobby to keep my interest in and mood up is disguising something deeper... but let that go for the moment.

What has been captivating me for the past week or two? All the old hobbies, come back in glorious technicolor: runs on Sundays and yoga on Tuesdays and writing for the novel and baking for friends and cooking for myself. Plus, a new dance course! A style called sean nos, which seems less glamorous but more accessible maybe than step dancing. We'll see. Two classes and I'm already enjoying the improv parts!

And here's a fun video that shows some of the inheritors of sean nos in the Carolinas...

Now as far as the more usual theme for this blog (FOOD), I'll leave you readers with some encouragement. "If you make it, they will come" turned out to be true for me this week:

red wine chocolate cake --- afternoon tea on Saturday with Jess
grilled corn salsa (salad) --- Sunday luncheon with Kim and Juan
and tomato-shallot Tarte Tatin
lemon rosemary zucchini bread --- brown bag lunch with coworkers (I hope- that'll be tomorrow!)

So now I'm off to grate my zucchini with my only pertinent instrument- a microplane!- to make it easier to bake tomorrow morning! :-)

And let me know: do you want more Scotland or more food? I've got both at the ready...

This Week Recap(tured)

Hey All!

So I've had some downs in the past few weeks, feeling those ol' blues again. And they had a different feeling, a kind of 'I know this isn't based on anything specific, so I have to just try to wait it out" feeling, which doesn't do much when you are feeling powerless in general. I also started binge-eating, a new and not-good symptom. (Since when do I buy Hershey bars? That chocolate is half plastic!) Symptom of what? I'm trying to figure it out.
The icky feelings have mostly receded this week though (O Happy Day), thanks to a sick day on Friday.
Here was my attempt at getting out of the hole I'd dug on Wednesday evening:

It was a super simple recipe, which I'd settled on by searching lemon + pasta on supercook, a good website for inspiration, if not for the exact recipe you use. You plug in ingredients and it gives you possible recipes you can make from a number of cooking sites it searches for you- perfect! Just buyer, beware, it doesn't quality-test some of the search results...
I took this MS recipe (I don't like giving her name any more currency) as a base, and did what I wanted with it: no whole wheat spaghetti, but semolina linguine should work; parsley on the windowsill (first cut!) but not 1/4 c- oh well. It was kind of exciting to use parsley cuttings from the windowsill kit I got from Mom. :-) The parsley and chives seem to be acclimating, but sadly not the basil. It might be a little cold around here, even in a plastic greenhouse.

Fast forward to Saturday morning: I'd had the Friday to myself, I'd gotten a haircut (a real one!), and I was feeling better, more committed to getting back on track. I had Pink Lady apples wrinkling in the crisper, so I decided to make a fruit compote for breakfast, throwing in some chopped prunes (a la francaise), brown sugar, butter, 5-spice powder, cinnamon, and fennel seeds (My own improvisation, no recipe). You may deduce from the fact there is no picture that it went fast. But don't worry, it was enjoyed thoughtfully in two servings.

Next adventure: biscuits yesterday. I amassed a few potential recipes for something to bring to Book Club on Sunday, but reading through found that one of my frontrunners, Irish-American Sodabread Scones, should be made day-of because they get very dense and rock-ish after that. But I wanted to BAKE Saturday morning. So I made these Buttermilk Cheddar Jack Biscuits from the DC blog Cherry Tea Cakes.

Buttermilk Parmesan Biscuits

There they are, resting on our Book for February (we were a little late getting together on a date to meet), Arthur and George. Pretty good. I am looking forward to the discussion.
As always, I adapted: substituted 1/3 whole wheat flour, exchanged cheddar jack for parmesan (apparently the only cheese that does not go bad, and therefore I have 4 varieties of it still on my fridge shelf). I had one and a half of these before a dance class in the afternoon (which was great fun and had a great instructor), which is why for dinner you see one and a half below. Not a mouse. Just me.

The biscuits were joined on the plate by various leftovers cleverly (if I do say so myself) combined with others: spaghetti squash and beans (from the cinnamon-spiced red-and-black beans from the party, and I hope leftovers that last like that don't gross anyone out, ahem, Eileen) and the last lettuce leaves of a greenleaf head mixed with some bagged herb salad from TJs, tossed with homemade vinaigrette. It felt like the perfect proportions for what I needed.
Here's to recapturing more of what I need in the weeks ahead!

More on what I eat, really?

Ok, no pictures yet, since I took a couple hours to upload all my France pics to Facebook. Go look there.
But as for what I eat, some victories today: Eggs, Slowly Scrambled, from Laura Calder, and Buttermilk Banana Bread (unadulterated!) from Mollie Katzen. TODAY!
Both worth the work, which actually makes it taste better (that's a good culinary secret to share).
I was feeling oh-so-vapid, but then decided to start the soundtrack for the day, which was:
Johnny Bertram and the Golden Bicycles, Sing Your Song (very sing-able)
Benni Masuch, Streetswing Orchestra
MJB (very dance-able)
Alicia Keys
Black-Eyed Peas
and next up is Bobby Darin!

Catching up with photos and videos!

Hmm... So I used to have a handle on the uploading and displaying of photos, but they seem to have gotten away from me. And the way iTunes picks out the videos and creates a different folder for them on the day you uploaded them instead of the day you recorded them means that I left some behind! So I'll stick one in here, if I may, from the St Patrick's Day performance I saw at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage (free!).