Day of Tripe and Kimchi

I've been eating plenty, that's not the issue. I've yet to tally how many hundreds of dollars I spent during Restaurant Week, but it was more than one. I went to both a ladies and a co-ed dinner party this past weekend, in fact, and have savored boar, rice pudding, and grilled octopus. But I just haven't sat down to write up the glory. But today was different. Today was Asian. It's much easier to write on a theme, so I regret the reverse chronological order. But a girl can't eat tripe and not immediately write it up.

After laying in bed this morning watching funnyordie.com and going to church (the Catholic one down the street and I'll boldly admit that Vatican II rendered one slightly more satisfying than another), I had to get in my car and go somewhere. The Washingtonian's Cheap Eats suggested Pho 75 in Falls Church. It's all business there: you sit at one of perhaps seven long rows of tables and have a waiter at your side after about a minute in your chair.

I got two waters (the waiters were prescient) and a small bowl of pho, a delicious soup that's perfect for winter and for ministering to most variations of a weary soul. It's a robust broth, delicate but meaty and this had a hint of cinnamon. I ordered pho with brisket, some other type of normal beef, then soft tendon and bible tripe. Thankfully, the soft tendon looked like a less-opaque onion slice but the bible tripe had the qualities I like of be-suckered octopus, but had the limp, blanched consistency of... offal from the most interior part of some animal's intestines. Since it looked like a really texturized noodle, I could easily hide it in noodle batches without knowing the difference...sort of..

In case you want to know what type of offal (to remind, that I ate today) includes the words "reticulorumen orifice," "mucosa," and "volatile fatty acids" in its description and what it looks like in profile, see a photo of bible tripe from Wikipedia below.

Anyway, lunch was delicious. I ate all the meat, all the noodles, as many onions as I could grab with my chopsticks and would have devoured the remaining broth, if the spoonful of it I took didn't make me tear up and have to dab my eyes because of the copious Sriracha I put in. I coughed like a smoker the rest of the afternoon.


Eating pho in my eyes should be following up by eating something sweet. Like a mung bean paste dessert, clearly. I'd rather not know what a mung bean is, but I know mung bean cakes are delicious. At weekend dinner party number two last night, I received a recommendation to go to Super H Mart, an Asian grocery store of which there are handful in the city. I love Asian grocery stores. I fell in love with Super Cao Nguyen in Oklahoma City, a huge Vietnamese market (super really means super), that has the energy, colors, and smells of a fair. Sometimes these smells include fish, sometimes fresh, sometimes not, which is often concurrently thrilling and reviling.

This one was pretty awesome, but full of a variety of international customers who each were operating on their home countries' rules of driving, which were almost always at odds with everyone elses. Hands, arms, carts, children, and vegetables were in constant movement. Things improved beyond the produce section, thankfully. But despite the taxing commotion, it was still beautiful.

There were serpentine Chinese eggplants...

Intimidating durians..

And very cheap chicken hearts...

A major highlight was the amount of women actively hawking samples. They competed for attention from other hawking women, distributing free cups of hot curry, rice dumpling balls, fried chicken, a sweet vinegar drink, tofu with gravy, and bulgogi beef. I tried all of those. The fish strip soup was as bad as it looks:

Note the shrink-wrapped fish below. Awesome.

I also found my mung bean paste pastry. It was individually wrapped and made it as far as the parking lot before it was devoured.

Super H has it's fair share of prepared foods, too. I picked up some kimchi, but a different sort than I've had before, with refreshingly crisp cucumbers mixed in. A few bites were enough (seemed to have as much garlic as cabbage), but it was tasty until ceased to be so.

The unidate went well.. the candles and Bordeaux wine were a nice touch. The mini pork buns squarely squirted juice on my shirt and the kimchi, after about five bites, ceased to be appealing. I love myself some Korean food, but if I am going to be involved in its production rather than solely its consumption, I'd rather just aisle shop...

Back

The preceding culinary period has been a long stream of pop tarts, corn dogs, criminally uniform ravioli, and turkey sandwiches. Less turkey sandwiches than I should have eaten, as I forayed too often into the aforementioned realm of over salted/sugared/deep-fried foods, but I finished. I lived to tell the tale. I escaped with my desire for fine foods intact. The terrorists haven't won this round.

So, Christmas, needless to say, has been an equally steady stream of fine items: chevre, well-crafted fishes, aerated wines, (non-fried, non-canned, non-peaked colored, non-limp) vegetables, and good Oklahoma meat products. It's been a delight to taste and then recall memories of good food, past recollections meeting present culinary tastes and aromas, in a cosmic uniting of..really, acceptable, non-offensive foods.

Christmas has also delivered that stark reminder that four months of not writing about food or men makes an already amateur food/men critic more amateur. We'll call this a growing post, to be followed subsequently by wittier culinary/social commentary. I will note, however, trip food highlights included a male dining companion at Pizza Hut. However, critiqueing food in places like that is like criticizing a kindergartner's coloring skills... it's just kinda..mean.

Let us begin by what I missed the most: American food. From the grill out back or from the fancy chef. Eaten in bed or on oddly-shaped modern plates or in a grease-reeked diner or on wobbly checked-tablecloth-decked tables or in plastic baskets. It really hasn't mattered.

Christmas (as the holiday on the 25th of December) sort of went on without me this year. My Christmas lunch was at the Atlanta airport:

It was both some of the worst Chinese I've ever eaten, as well as the Chinese meal I have eaten the most quickly (to keep from missing my flight back to a destination I just came from because of the weather).

Dinner was better, which is saying little. When you know you are going to miss Christmas and have neither car nor cable, you pay $17 for a veggie pizza.

And you eat it in bed.

And act Miss Haversham like, but without the wedding dress. But the same sort of despondency, but with microbrewed beer. Patiently attending you on your nightstand.

Then you snap out of it, your parents thoughtfully buy you a business class seat home when the weather clears so you don't despondently continue eating bad food in bed, and you have Christmas. Hours after you land. Then you start enjoying America's culinary fruits.

One of the top fruits in Oklahoma is Chelino's. We are such dedicated patrons that my father purchased my mother and I Chelino's aprons for Christmas. It's not American food, but it's Tex Mex and thus American by extension. And they very ably make Tex Mex food without slathering everything with cheese; there is a remarkable amount of non-orange/brown color on their plates.

Chelino's coctel de camaron, with avocado, onions, citrus juice (orange?), and shrimp

Chelino's array of chip baths: salsa, queso, relish and their "special salsa" (free, not on the menu, and spicy)

Then we began the process of new-restaurant-sampling. My dad is very good with spotting new restaurants and taking me there when I'm in town. We ventured to Sage, an innovative little cafe in the Deep Deuce area of OKC. The menu is slightly pricey, pretentious enough to attract a crowd that will keep them in business, but with a solidly varied menu to encourage multiple visits. The service was slow and the soup was lukewarm but I got chocolate cake bigger than my head.

Ground turkey noodle soup (with fancy grilled, buttered bread)

My double-entree topped salad with shrimp and portabello mushroom, with chevre and tomatoes over spinach (with balsamic vinaigrette)

It's not just big because it's in the foreground.

After hydrating after airplane flights, I got a flight: of Belgian beers at McNellie's in downtown OKC, which included Chimay, Maredsous, Hoegaarden, Lindeman’s Framboise, Triple Karmeleit. The last two were a bit sweet, but look how beautiful they are in their little glasses.

I also got fish and chips, but if I don't photograph unhealthy food, it's like the calories don't count.

Then, I got my first home-cooked meal: fish from the grill on a bitterly frigid night (from what I heard, I lazily drank my beer inside). My dad talentedly made:

Salmon on a cedar board with carmelized pecans

...and swordfish with lime. And some barbecued shrimps.

Satisfied with our American culinary forays, we ventured to a new Mediterranean restaurant, Camilya's on May Avenue. Camilya needs a website, but that's it. One man ably cooked for us and served us delightful lunches. Tabbouleh is our constant: we judge the quality of a Mediterranean place by the proportions of parsley to bulghar wheat and oil to lemon juice. Tabbouleh construction is indicative of a restaurant's broader ability to make anything.

My dad's perfect, photogenic taboulleh

An inviting cornucopia of kafta meat

...And my lunch, tabbouleh and hashwa (rice cooked with black angus ground beef, pine nuts and almonds, served with cucumber/yogurt sauce)

Mere hours later, we celebrated a New Years vespers dinner (in early anticipation of the new year) at Paseo Grill. Just thinking about dinner has caused me to readjust my typing position to a more serious (combative) posture. I joke about restaurant pretension, but in a restaurant, I'm paying to be served. And, I'm the boss. To myself pretentiously be self-referential, this same experience has happened before. I admire a restaurant's effort to keep on-schedule for timely table turnover. I don't appreciate when a cheeky waitress calmly explains to discerning adults that the new tenants of our table have arrived and we can get our dessert to -go, implying that eating cheesecake from a Styrofoam box in the parking lot will soften the blow of spending $150-plus dollars to be unceremoniously kicked out of your feed trough for the next herd to come in.

I was already a little perturbed that I left my driver's license in my gym jacket. This, in turn, caused me to be a bit humiliated that I had to pull out four types of identification, piecing together analytically that my voter registration card, judging by its date of issuance, suggested I was at least 21 now. I even pointed out I had wrinkles. My mom ordered my cocktail, let me sneak the four sips I got out of it, kindly ordered my chardonnay for me, and played waitress/manager look-out so I could enjoy it without being arrested. I'll demur on criticizing America's liquor laws now, and focus my attention instead squarely on Paseo Grill's unsophisticated and offensive efforts to kick out guests 89 minutes after they are seated, to make room for the next set of fools to move in and blow on the same New Year's noisemakers. I sort of wish I had made a scene; they couldn't have blamed it on the alcohol.

Dinner was tasty though: blackened trout with avocado kiwi salsa, a side of orzo and pine nut pilaf, and a small up of a hearts of palm and artichoke medley salad. It would have been a hell of a lot better if the wine were in front of me instead of by my mother, to be spirited away when no ridiculous wait staff were watching.

My dad had the ribeye...

My mom had the filet...

And I got the last laugh because I get to write nasty things about the Paseo Grill on my blog prolifically read in the Oklahoma restaurant community.

And we got Christmas-lights viewing instead of dessert.

New Year's Day brought football and pastitsio/dolmathes eating. As well as some pretty sweet baconful black-eyed peas, plus a visit from Yiayia.


New Year's resolutions took us to Ron's Hamburgers, home of the $16.95 burger (not inflated DC burger prices because of the ridiculous addition of truffle oil), the "Who's Your Daddy," two patties of beef, seven slices of cheese, with fried and raw onions. My burger was $3, so imagine the beef- to-dollars extrapolation. And check out the fried okra: perfectly crisp and Kermit-green on the inside.

Below, my dad's cheeseburger steak.

After extricating ourselves from the grease-induced euphoria, we took advantage of OKC's Museum of Art. There's no food link here, but the photos are too good. Plus, I went on a date here way back in the last decade, so there's a man link. But he lingered way too long in the modern art wing and I think I had to buy our lunch, so we'll just keep this excursion non-blog-germane. The museum has a great collection of glass from eccentric artist Dale Chihuly.


The glass tower is 55 ft. tall.. it's delicate and majestic and made by a guy (non-pirate) with an eye-patch.

Sans eye patches.

While it's a convenient segueway to call BBQ art, we all agreed pre-blog-writing today that Leo's BBQ's banana cake is art. Call it performance, edible, or 3D art, it's genius.

I got a mangled piece, but liked the linearity of the barbecue sauces ("red is hot, white is not"). But admire this:

And at a coy-ish banana cake angle:

If you've read this far, I thank you. Bon appetit.

Blue Light Special

I did something I never thought I would do as a non-desperate, non-lonesome, non-desperately-seeking-my-own-divorcé single woman: I went to a bar by myself. A real bar, not just a bar on the side of a restaurant or while waiting for friends. I went there to get a drink and leave.

I legitimately have my own local bar around the corner, 440 feet east, 318 feet north. I haven't been because they turned a foodie friend (Tammy) away. Legitimate bars don't say no to Tammy, self-bottler of limoncello and canner of her own fig jams. So, I didn't patronize this bar just on principle.

However, in light of some upcoming travel, I've been acting, culinarily, like I am on death row. Macabre, yes. But this has often been an entertaining consideration of mine, as dreaming about my dream wedding has stopped being as entertaining. So, the mental inquiry becomes: what is the best meal possible or what would I want my last meal to be? I've been thinking those thoughts all week, and treating myself at places that have foods I could miss. Here's last night's decision, pictorially:

Don't judge; the billions and billions served are real people, you know.

I guess sometimes people pay with 100 pennies for dollar menu items.

Yes, those appear to be ice cream bubble geysers. And yes, I'm eating my sundae at home in front of my laptop with an accompanying bag of chopped nuts. But billions and billions aren't dumb enough to eat their food in sketchy McDonald's parking lots.

Last night's go-out-seeking food item was clearly a $1.09 sundae (after I took care of the bubbles). Tonight, I had a lovely dinner with friends at the Boulevard Wood Grill in Clarendon. The food was great: black-pepper crusted yellowfin tuna ponzu (prepared rare) served with a Nishiki rice cake with Asian slaw, miso-sake sauce, and gingered ponzu. This blog entry's magic food term defined is ponzu, citrus-based sauce commonly used in Japanese cuisine, very tart in flavor, with a thin consistency and a light yellow color.

So, anyway, after dinner I wanted some indulgence, but at 9:30, what's open besides McDonald's? I didn't want to comprisethe billions and billions served all by myself. So, I went to PX, some superlatively sexy bar, according to Playboy magazine. And just around the corner.

Friends have recommended this, and I like the Restaurant Eve/Majestic/Eamonn's chain, of which PX is part. So, disappointingly and sort of embarassingly, my heart was pounding as I approached the speakeasy's door at the top of a handful of steps, knocked, and then rang the doorbell, which seemed weird, but I did. I didn't want to deliver a package; I just wanted a drink.

So I eked out to the woman who slid the small speakeasy window open that I wanted a drink. I ascended the stairs lined with votive candles, and was genuinely impressed with the pretentious, yet admirable detail. In the bathroom, because that's where I went first.

Later, I sat down at one of the tall white bar chairs, impressively arrayed all at the same 45 degree angle. My bartender, James, spoke impeccable waiterese, laying open my menu, graciously offering a glass of water, using phrases like "the only cocktail we're not featuring this evening..", and being the most appealing kind of smug I've ever seen.

It was a genuine throwback to another era: detail in all the cocktail accoutrements (long stirrers, crystal-looking cocktails mixers, bitters), a dignified mahogany bar, carefully-chosen antique lighting, and a rotary phone that rang a clear, natural ring. It was all overwhelmingly nostalgic, until the doorbell--the tinny, digital kind that old people with bad hearing use--sounded. But, details.

I ordered a $13 cocktail, Blueberry Eyes. I got a free little bowl of housemade potato chips, though, so I'm not complaining. My drink was: blackberry and blueberry infused absinthe, liquor 43 (actually spelled licor 43, a bright yellow Spanish liquer made with 43 different ingredients, including citrus and fruit juices, vanilla and other aromatic herbs and spices), mint, and vanilla.

It was beautiful and not too sweet, but with a solid fruit flavoring. James answered my questions about what everything was. He had about 10 types of simple syrup, and then basil, mint, lox (what?), bacon salt (that's what's right above my chips), prehistoric salt (I might be mistaking the adjective but it looked like a rock), and some type of vinegar. It was sort of like being in a Harry Potter movie, with the array of bar-looking vials and potion elements.

The clientele was pretentious: lots of talk about Restaurant Eve and no talk about how colleage football season is only days away. But, James let me read my book, sip my drink, eat my chips, look around every once in a while, and savor the ambiance without interrupting me with silly small-talk, over refilling my water, or hovering. There's nothing better than finding one's local bar on the first try.

Curse of the Phantom Boyfriend

I haven't had a boyfriend since 2005. In 2005, I thought a fancy date was when my boyfriend spent more than two dollars on me at my local fast food taco restaurant. In 2005, I thought it was tolerable that more money was spent on my boyfriend's cat food than on gifts for me. It was easy. Sort of idyllic and peaceful. It was Oklahoma. But since then, I haven't been foolish enough to enter into a relationship with someone who doesn't at least hold the metaphorical capacity and willingness to spend those extra few dollars at a taco joint. I'm mostly fine with it and that's the truth.

This dearth of a boyfriend has manifested itself in a variety of ways. Like Tuesday, when I bought a coffee table that came in a 52-pound box. Single girl carried that all the way up the stairs herself. When she got promoted, that fancy dinner came out of her paycheck and she went alone. And when she decided she had a crush on two-plus guys at once, that's ok because she didn't have a boyfriend to care. Bugs get killed, parallel parking gets done, large electronics items get purchased, investments get made, stuff gets fixed and beer gets drunk in this apartment, all sans boyfriend.

So, imagine the egregiousness tonight of a woman who throws a party for herself at her apartment and along with the solo pre-party planning, coffee table solo lugging, and copious vodka drinking (because all she has to do is be sober enough to wish her guests goodbye and stumble to her bed) realizes that she has accidentally acquired a boyfriend since her party began five hours ago. She thankfully is sitting on her couch now, alone, talking about herself in third person and drinking more vodka because she missed so many opportunities before. But she's still perplexed by the odd progression (or nonprogression?) of events.

So this party was great. I had way too much beer and alcohol (I have four unopened wine bottles I bought, acquired two more, bought 60-plus beers and perhaps 10 were drank, and have a ton of alcohol left, unless I finish off that vodka tonight) and copious amounts of food (I sent five people away with leftovers and still have a tableful of food left), and was able to catch up with people prior to my trip.

Please note, this is after the party.

I even have extra basil, post party.

And what I have to try and fit in my beer-stuffed fridge.

Truth be told, I invited some single guys I may or may not have had a crush on. It's my party, I do what I want. So, at the risk of inviting (I think unjustifiable) scrutiny, I'll also admit I invited a guy with whom I may have gone on a few date with. In 2007. 20 months ago. And I thought girls hung on.

Since this is a food and romance blog, I'll admit that tonight the food had an inverse relationship to the romance had. So there's the tie-in to the blog theme, readily admitting that witnessing my written ire at 1 am might be just as justifiably entertaining. The beauty of having a party as a single girl is that you can talk to whoever you want. You can flirt with every single guy, or none. So imagine my surprise that despite my efforts to hostess in my apartment, I had a shadow. A presence that was not-so-subtly trying to publicly illustrate his primacy in the boyfriend front. Without coordination with the alleged girlfriend I'll note. This activity involved: staying forever, cleaning up, occasionally answering comments when directed toward me, and staying forever. I picked this young man up. To help out, and we agreed beforehand that I'd rather not drive him back because I would probably have drunk some and wouldn't feel comfortable. Our arrangement was he would carpool back. With someone else. Who lived near him. No one who came lived close to him and I waited for him to leave, as I understand that taxis run regularly throughout a metropolitan area. I mean, he was wandering around my apartment, reading book titles and even opening some. He was bored.

But he stayed. Silent, but present. And slowly the crushes left. And he remained. And started cleaning. And picked up all the cups. Except for mine. And when the last crush left, leaving me and phantom boyfriend, top crush probably thought that phantom boyfriend was real boyfriend. And that phantom boyfriend would carry coffeetables and kill big spiders and fix broken things. When I just see phantom boyfriend as getting the wrong idea and waiting with a gleam in his eye for me to acquiesece to let him crash on my couch. At least buy me a two dollar taco, PB. It's amazing phantom boyfriend has the presumption to request couch-crashing, when I'd spent the evening trying to flirt with anyone but him.

Thankfully, I had stopped drinking way before, fearing in my heart of boyfriend-less hearts, that he'd pull some nonsense like that. And returning to my car, it occured to me this was likely his plan all along, as his magazine was casually left in the car still.

It was the longest 20 minute car ride ever driving him back. But, thankfully, with his phantom status, we didn't actually have to break up.

Goodbye Harry's

I'm back. Maybe not in my best form, but I'm back. The man's keeping me down at work, I stayed there too late to keep the reservation for the fancy DC Restaurant Week choice I pored over, and my trash can smells like the unwanted food items that got evicted from my fridge (because that is what happened when I cleaned a few days ago). The fabulous life of a single urban dweller I do not lead.

I am, however, lucky enough to enjoy the friendship of Andy and Kerry, intrepid posers for amateur food bloggers' photographic endeavors and adventurous menu orderers. Andy this evening was our benevolent gastronomical benefactor (he footed the bill) and Kerry, a kind and avid reader of the blog, knows more about food and restaurants than I do and indulges me in reading and commenting on my blog. And they were there for my Ray's the Steaks dinner. We go back.

So it was nice: no weird patrons to mock out of the corner of my eyes, no major faux pas by the waiter (and I was only mildly disgusted when he admitted a fork probably wouldn't be too helpful for my sorbet), and we felt welcome to stay way past the busing of our last plate. I didn't have to discuss excise taxes with any of them (as may have happened on a recent dinner outing) and there was more than enough gushing on my end at least about the quality of my food (and more as a reaction to my fellow diner's delicious food choices than my own).

Harry's Tap Room is in Clarendon, on the corner away from the bustle of recently graduated frat boys and barely sober girls in tube dresses wearing too-long fake gold necklaces and stumbling along like dazed toddlers. It's a dignified place. And it's a place that doesn't fear the provision of bread: we had mini cornbread muffins, birdseedy wheat or rye, and half a loaf of white. For my appetizer, I had the Jumbo Lump Chesapeake Blue Crab Cake, with a delightful little salad of roasted corn (officially: sweet corn-poblano pepper relish and red pepper sauce). I have to admit I was just eating. Prefunctorily, quickly, and while talking.

I did the same thing during dinner. And dinner was savorable, but essentially I ate Valenciano street food: paella. Of course, it was unlike any paella I've had.. typically they are drier--still moist, but a bit clumpier--with more bright saffron color. I fear this paella's jaundice was colored by butter; still delicious, just slightful less...saffrony. But it was full of delicious shrimp, mussels, fish, chorizo sausage, and sweet peas. And it filled a tupperware container to the brim for lunch tomorrow. It was called Paella de Harry's so gets a pass on authenticity.

My fabulous friends, who were the ones who chivalrously waited 1.5 hours after our reservation time, made stellar dinner choices. Kerry, twice orderer of shellfish tonight and fearless sipper of high-end cocktails, got the Halibut, which was pan seared and served on a mascarpone-soft polenta with sweet corn sauce and red pepper puree (again, their description, not mine). It was great (and if hers had sticks of butter in it, they were better camoflaged than in my dinner).

Andy got the chicken. And a good candid shot of himself while at it. He ordered the tarragon roasted chicken breast, with summer vegetables and tarragon natural jus. These summer vegetables were the most intriguing part. Kerry knew what they were.. some type of mini zucchini, while I imagined they were gourds. Gourds? Really. I did see pumpkin beer at the liquor store yesterday though, so it's almost in time for gourd season; I don't feel quite as foolish.

And dessert was good, but I was already off the clock by then. Kerry brilliantly got the peach cobbler, Andy the Carnegie Deli cheesecake, and I got the lemon-ginger sorbet with an anomalous pirouette cookie. It was like asking for Parkay when you can have truffle butter. Or bologna when steak if offered. I had 25% melted lemon juice with a chocolate cookie that didn't match in flavor and am still complaining that this still-edible mess took about four bites to consume. But it was a new flavor, so I won't complain. But it was lovely.. sorbet a meal does not define and Harry's and the company of my friends was a fitting beginning of my farewells.

Caboose Cafe

Despite my best efforts, there is no clever theme uniting the two culinarily significant things I did tonight. There are, however, some good (by which I mean temptingly unredeeming) reality shows on tonight, so I'm going to focus on precision tonight. I ate at Caboose Cafe. This, despite not being a reality show, was a largely unredeeming meal generally, but it was different enough to be remarkable. Caboose Cafe is a little place along Mount Vernon Ave. in Del Ray and blends into the charming neighborhood around it in the afternoon, offering sandwiches and salads. At night, however, my new friend Rhoda offers the same fare, plus a selection of Ethiopian dishes, as she is Ethiopian.

I indulgently sat at a table for three, had a beer, and ordered the Caboose vegan Ethiopian sampler, five items set atop spongy ingera.


In the middle is Miser Watt (spicy red lentils), above that is Gomen (chopped collard greens), to the right is Kik Alitcha (yellow split pea stew), below is Harvest Veggie (translation: green beans and carrots), and on the side was a cabbage/potato salad. Only the red lentils and the cabbage were really flavorful, but I used my fingers to eat it all and I'm fairly certain the two little girls in dresses at the neighboring table were jealous I got to play with my food.

And while the food wasn't the most inspired (man, two solid nights), like last night, the surrounding charm would bring me back. Plus, new friend, proprietor Rhoda, upon my affirmation that it was my first time there, gave me a full loaf of ciabatta for free.

Now, what's a girl who's had a bagel, rice, beer, bread, and Ethiopian bread today supposed to do with an entire loaf of her own? After 17 seconds, I realized that tonight was the night to try a made-for-blog gift provided to me by a certain loyal blog reader from Massachusetts.

So, tonight, I made my first Fluffernutter sandwich. To begin, I obtained an entire loaf of bread from my local Ethiopan baker:


Step two: I sliced and toasted that loaf, and pre-assembled the Fluffernutter, one part nutter, one part Fluffer.


Notice the peanut butter slowly hugging the curves of the porous piece on bread on the left. Notice the Marshmallow Fluff slowly warming to the receptive bread. However, to arrange for this love story to happen, I had to go buy peanut butter, as I had none. And there is something creepy and over-prefunctory of having to go to Walgreen's at 9 o'clock at night to buy one item, along with the neighborhood homeless lady who's buying a Coke, the drunk guys wandering the aisles for who knows what (Mike and Ikes?), the guy buying deodorant, the uptight business traveler buying a phone charger, and me, buying peanut butter so I can make a Fluffernutter.

Anyway, it was fabulous... it started off with just hints of marshmallow, then the next bite featured the forgiving crustiness giving way to the malleable center. Then, when I reached the middle of the sandwich, for four perfect bites, I had equal part melty peanut butter and melty marshmallow fluff. Thank you Massachusetts and thank you, Phil, for my first taste of what kids on Massachusetts playgrounds have savored for most of their lives.

And for the final non sequitir food account of the night, my dad's dinner in Taos: he got the mixed grill with buffalo tenderloin, whole baby quail and rattlesnake/rabbit sausage with a wild cherry glaze.