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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.

Bocas Plural

It's been a while. I'm not sure I still have it. I subsist on various iterations of pasta, enjoye flavorless oatmeal in the morning, and participate in team breakfasts (I used to eschew breakfasts with the common colleague). I even bake brownies from mixes now and don't feel guilty. I've capitulated in some regards, sometimes enjoying (the horror) the company at restaurants more than the food, keeping more preoccupied with the beer than the dinner, and other times, just refraining from pulling out my camera while eating (although I have very little shame in portraiting food anymore). Tonight, however, was a departure. An intervention, of sorts, with two women who had no idea they were to be involved in such a significant event in the life of an amateur food critic (but really, I now view eating popovers as a life-changing event; I haven't written about that yet, but I will).

Tonight was the inaugural event of the Alexandria Ladies Dining Club. I call it that when really I think the informal title was the eating club (no caps). Two married ladies and a single girl met up tonight at what has become one of my new favorite local eateries (mostly because of aesthetics), Columbia Firehouse. The nice thing about a dining club with married ladies (ladies because of their charm, not age) is that we can discuss things unrelated to my self-deprecating love life. I love myself some self-indulgent commiserating (this isn't to malign the single girl exploits I listen to from my friends, because they are much more interesting than my own). But at a dining club meeting, the focus was food. Foreign food, Alexandria food, dive bar food, hangover food, romantic dinner food (my mouth was closed during that one), cheap food, pricey food, tourist food, patio food. It didn't occur to me until after dinner that I attended a real food club meeting because the conversation so naturally centered on all things gastronomical.

However, I realized that being an amateur food critic, I need to start holding my own. No one really buys my "amateur" self-designation (to their detriment) and questions have more recently been posed in my direction implying that I am some authority on food. This is becoming dangerous. Two questions I could not answer tonight: what is Indonesian food like and what is a financier (on the dessert menu, not one eying me from the bar). To redress my educational shortcomings, when I feel so inclined to overachieve, I will do more than talk about men and eating food here. So, for one sentence of non-drivel: a financier is a light sponge cake that usually contains an almond derivative (almond flour, flavoring, or crushed almonds).

I didn't get a financier, though, and opted for a longer polysyllabic foreign word at the outset, an Ommegang Witte from New York (this is a beer). It tasted like lemon juice sieved though a thrice-used cheese cloth. The bar was rife with old people (I'm not ageist, but these were the types that negotiate divorce settlements, not the ones who make financiers for their enfants). So while the oldies were leering, I was able to secure a seat at a stool at a bar counter that backed the true bar and watch the customers come in. It was very single-girl friendly and a good way to wait for the arrival of club members.

Fellow club members joined and we sat in a lovely atrium-style dining room. I've eaten at this restaurant before when it was Bookbinders, but as the new place, it's less stuffy and buoyant with the natural light. We started with blue crab hushpuppies with sweet pepper mustard. And they were great. There was something refreshingly disorderly about hush puppies not shaped like large gumballs: think free range antithesis-of-Captain D's hushpuppies. You could taste the crab and corn (and see traces of both!) and they weren't too greasy. The bread (with chive butter) was also fresh, crusty on the outside, and meanderingly holey on the inside.

For dinner, Laura and I both had the meatloaf sandwich. My mom knows this, so I'm not spilling some family jewel secret, but I never really liked meatloaf (it was an age thing, and a preternatural fear of gristle). I just couldn't put enough ketchup on top to hide the taste of the meat and would reward my toil by eating the little pieces of bacon my mom put on top for last. For some reason, tonight a meatloaf sandwich sounded better than steak or scallops (guess I'm subconsciously preparing for my Texas trip). But, I might be able to find elementary schools that do it better. It wasn't really that bad, but there was nothing remarkable about the meat's preparation: it had carrots inside and was set atop sundried tomatoes.. it was also situated on a focaccia-consistency roll, with undulating little bread peaks. But, it was out of proportion, with way too much bread to meat (a quick-developing food pet peeve if the proportions are going the wrong way). But the sandwich was accessorized with mache (I think, and if not, it at least elicited nostalgic memories of greens-eating in France) and French fries (good, but not remarkable, but with sea salt). I tried club member and new friend Nikki's hanger steak, which was delicious and had a beautiful presentation.

Dinner was good, not amazing, but had potential. But the prices were good, the atmosphere was stellar, and there were more windows (both curvey transparent ones and sophisticated stained glass ones) than divorce lawyers there, which is a proportion going the right way. And to be part of a club, an order, even..perhaps even a society of food lovers equally invested in exploring the visscitudes of gastronomy and unwittingly and undemocratically having me as their secretary...that's reason enough to start writing again for.

Oklahoma Part One: Avgokopsi and Culinary Car Tour

Oklahoma makes me hungry. A state is a good state if you can be hungry even when its 100-plus degree heat in other places would normally dull that sensation. And Oklahomans and their restaurants can accommodate: increased temperatures mean cheaper Sonic drinks, increased threats of tornadoes are met with more outdoor grilling, and the the condensation that more rapidly forms out the outside of beer cans makes their contents more appealing. After a delayed then canceled flight out of DC yesterday, multiple phone conversations with United associates in India, research into prices for cross-country bus and rail travel (thankfully financially prohibitive enough I didn't act out of desperation), eventual flight re-routing, a Dallas airport bad-Taco-Bell-meal, I arrived in Oklahoma, a surprisingly lucractive locale for culinary adventures for an amateur food critic.

My Yiayia yesterday had me, my visiting brother, and my parents over for one of the finest homemade meals I've had probably since the last time I was home. She prepared makaronia me bouturo, which still stands as one of my top meals. But, in making what may be my new favorite Yiayia-cooked meal, we also made a startling discovery, critical to both mine and my mother's understanding of food taxonomy and nomenclature: real dolmathes are actually cabbage, not grape leaves.

This may sound like silly quibbling for adeherents to the foodie, Greek, or pretentious-food-blogging subcultures, but it's a critical differentiation to a food purist who thought cabbage rolls were the bastard child to the dignified grape leaf, whose sheath was reverentially taken from the same vine as the nectar of the gods.

So, I stood corrected and saw the creation of an avgolemono sauce for the dolmathes and by extension, witnessed the culinary act of "avgokopsi"-ing.

A cabbage roll contains rice and seasoned meat, all lovingly wrapped in a cabbage roll that is tender but has enough fortitude to keep its shape while being steamed and avgokopsied. To create the avgolemono sauce (from αυγό for egg and λεμόνι for lemon), Yiayia stiffened egg whites, later added the yolks and lemon juice, and slowly added at the end the sauce left over from the cooked grape leaves. My mom poured the sauce over the grape leaves and my Yiayia made kissing noises. This is a critical part of the avgokopsi process for unknown reasons, but almost certainly has something to do with evil spirits, evil eyes, or potential bad luck to offspring and their ability to avgokopsi.

Yiayia with the avgokopsied dolmathes.

And it was a thing of beauty, as makaronia, cabbage leaves, tabbouleh, hummus, and Kalamata olives were served on fine china; what a homecoming.

Lunch today was sedate. Tonight we're headed to a fancy steakhouse that has a neon red-colored bar and where I will find the Oklahoma oil baron who will underwrite my blog, or whatever enterprising amateur venture capitalists would do to financially support amateur food bloggers. We went to the Prairie Thunder Baking Company, a cute local bakery and sandwichery that unfortunately is staffed by women who seek to cast themselves as nouveau pin-up girls (deliberately messy hair with flowers in it). Sort of unfortunate when all you want is to order a roast beef sandwich. It was tasty, though: sandwiches on airy foccacia bread that wasn't too greasy and had about one needle of Rosemary every two square inches.

Unfortunately, the bread to meat ratio was way off, just as typically pin up girls have more eye makeup than eye surface area. But it was tasty, the view of downtown OKC was great, and the sweets were satisfyingly pretty to just admire. I

Afterwards, we drove around and I ogled at all my favorite restaurant signs that were also satisfyingly pretty to just admire. This might be a very boring series of pictures (like the equivalent of how interesting pictures of birds would be to people who collect stamps) but it's a selective snapshot of OKC's culinary ethos.

The famous Braum's milk bottle: Braum's is a local creamery and only recently put their logo on the bottle. The structure was built in 1930 and has been added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

Taco Bueno: proprietor of the finest tripartite chips' dip plate, MexiDips and Chips. I can't believe one, that that menu item is copyrighted, and two, that the phrase MexiDips and Chips appears twice on the pages of an aspirationally pretentious food blog.

Braum's: the best place in Oklahoma to get crinkle fries, peppermint ice cream, cheesy poofs, and a hamburger in shiny pink and silver foil, all in one spot.

And, finally, Sonic: hallowed temple of fountain drinks, with a legitimately-good-priced happy hour.

And because we're piously good customers, a glimpse inside the sacred edifice: