I have recurring dreams. One of the most vivid is of a department store. It's an artist's dream. Each time it changes a little. The shelves might be full of colored pens, paints, make-up or perfume in glinting glass bottles. But whatever is on the shelves makes me want to play, to create, just like a giant crayon box or a new tray of water colors did as a child. The most remarkable thing about this dream besides the sights and feelings is that everything is mine for the taking. It's free or it's so cheap that a few shiny pennies do the trick. There is possibility here, there is freedom, there is creation in its very beginning stages. I always like this dream.
One day recently I heard some news in our local paper. Trader Joe's was coming. I felt a vague sense of being kind of happy about it. Tostagielli's brother and sister-in-law really like Trader Joe's in Maryland and they have brought Trader Joe's snacks and hand cream when they visited. I remembered the lemon chili pistachios and the chili mango slices the most. So in hearing they were opening a store in my very own Chapel Hill and Carrboro, I felt the renewed sense that this town truly does have it all. It is a food lover's mecca. From Weaver Street, to Whole Foods, to small mom and pop Mexican, Middle Eastern and Asian groceries, to the Carrboro Farmer's Market, to Cliff's meat market, to Tom Robinson's seafood shop, we have everything we need without venturing into an expensive Harris Teeter or depressing Food Lion. I've even heard we are getting a Fresh Market this year.
Now with all of these choices, I recall thinking that there's too much competition and that something was going to have to go away, like the recently shut down Earth Fare. But I do think the problem with Earth Fare is that it was basically a more expensive Whole Foods that I had to drive an extra mile to get to. I just never had a compelling reason to go there.
Trader Joe's selected that same location to open. And open they did. To throngs. People everywhere. I went on day three of their opening and I took only a basket with me because I knew that the lines were long and the aisles were packed. Normally in places like this, with crowds like this, I just get mad. No good reason, but everyone is just in my way. But do you know what I saw? Smiles. People were happy. They were discovering and uncovering dinner for tonight and a snack for later and "oh, this cheese will make the greatest addition to the omelette I'm going to make tomorrow morning." It was bliss.
A couple weeks later when my parents were visiting, I took my mom there because she's the one that started this food obsession of mine. It was less crowded when we chose to go, so I could take my time. From the moment I walked in, it was like I was living my recurring dream, except that I wasn't seeing paints or make-up, but food. Colorful containers neatly squared on shelves promised creative meals.
I have certain things I look for in a new store to test out the prices, things that vary wildly in quality like honey, olive oil, maple syrup. These are the guilty pleasures that I always spend too much on and they are the items that I can't do without in daily cooking. I also look at Clif Bars and nuts and tofu and soymilk. The thing I found is that it was all cheaper or equal in price and the selections were even greater.
I also had an epiphany in Trader Joe's. Walking down the aisle with the pasta, I saw a yellow package on the bottom shelf that caught my eye. It was Italian made 2 foot long pasta. As I was pondering the pot size and realizing I'd have to break the pasta in two which would mean I should just save the time and buy the regular size, I looked down even further and saw a familiar looking shrink wrapped package. GNOCCHI! On my knees, I grabbed the package, I lifted it like a doctor would a baby toward its mother for the first time. "Do you see this? This would cost $4 at Harris Teeter. It would cost $2.50 at the Weaver Street, but it's $1.39." There were actual tears. I grabbed what I could and then saw the nuts.
My mother likes nuts. She's a baker. She always has a lot of selections in her cupboards at home. Everything is fully stocked and I've often gone through the cabinets when visiting just to get ideas for myself. I like nuts, too. It's exciting to me to be baking something and to think, "you know some slivered almonds would go better than the slices" and then to realize that I have three selections of almonds in the freezer waiting to make my day.
So when we saw the nuts, pounds of them for $3, for $4, for $5, for $6 at their most expensive, I just couldn't stop. I gathered. My mom gathered and soon our cart was brimming.
On the flip side, I will say that Trader Joe's will never be the only store I go to because I don't enjoy their produce or meat sections. I prefer Whole Foods, the Farmer's Market or Weaver Street for that. I will continue to buy some items at Harris Teeter because the hours are longer and I can't always guarantee that I want to do my shopping between 9-9.
There is so much more to write about Trader Joe's, but my day beckons and my stomach growls. And this is when I realize that just like my dreams of paints and nail polish, Trader Joe's will be a recurring experience.
January 25, 2008
January 21, 2008
The Chill at Milltown
Yesterday was cold. It never made it above 30 degrees. For us that is very cold. The coating of snow that fell the day before was still on the ground. I knew I wasn't going to run and T joked about cycling, but it was not the day for either. Instead, it was a hiking day. We set out after a very late breakfast with the familiar goal of having a late lunch someplace in Carrboro. T expressed a desire for pancakes. Yesterday being Sunday meant that as long as it was before 3 pm, we'd be able to find brunch with something sweet for him and something savory for me.
We wrapped ourselves in what we would later realize was too many layers (it wasn't the tundra after all), and we made our way to the area in our neighborhood where the trails start. The really cool thing about Chapel Hill is that there are rural buffers all through town, through most all neighborhoods, areas where building is not permitted, but hiking is. Typically you follow streams and storm and sewer drains and traipse along behind large houses with fascinating architecture, looking to see who still has Christmas trees, or who has built tree houses at the borders of properties. You also see deer and garbage, but fortunately for cars and and the town's image you don't see too much of either. But with both, when you do, you are surprised.
We came out on Smith Level Road, took a shortcut through Roberson Place and ended up after about 40 minutes from start to finish, in the center of Carrboro. From there, we decided to see if Milltown was open for Sunday brunch. We thought not, but were happy to see they were indeed open. We checked out the menu. No pancakes, but waffles. Not just any waffles, but waffles with fresh fruit, creme fraiche and brown butter. Brown butter! That would do.
T doesn't even look at the menu. I do. I decide on carnitas on a baguette with a side salad and slaw. Mexican, southern and a little upscale. It sounded perfect to me.
We have high hopes when the food arrives. T gets his first and when they place my brimming plate on the table, I do not see it. I see only his waffle. Now, there are times I suffer what can only be called food envy. I wish desperately to be the one readying myself to dive into whatever the other person has and never fully taste my own food because my mouth is watering for some unattainable goal across the table. If only. If only. If only. Indeed.
Not the case here. What I was actually looking at was the burgeoning of "what the hell is this?" on T's face and my own utter and complete devastation that someone decided that fresh fruit equalled grapes and canned mandarin oranges, that creme fraiche was this sour cream looking goo scooped into a plastic container, and that brown butter was in fact a squarely cut off quarter stick of cold yellow butter, also in a plastic container. Oh, and the waffle was the size equivalent of two toaster waffles. If only I did have two toaster waffles glistening with some brown butter, some caramelized bananas and pineapples or some fresh strawberries, blueberries. I think you get the point. The point is, what the hell was this? And how could anyone in their right mind think the tinny taste of mandarin oranges counts as fresh fruit?
I can see the moment of truth. T is getting ready to comment. I know what he is going to say. I chime in, "SEND IT BACK." I do not believe in bad food unless you set out to have bad food. I do this sometimes. It's why I am known on occasion to actually make a conscious decision to eat Chicken Mcnuggets. But when I come to a restaurant that is promising brown butter on waffles, dammit, you better deliver. And if you're out of fresh fruit, come back and tell me or disguise it by taking something frozen, putting it in a pan with the brown butter and some sugar and deliver something with flames leaping off it. Wouldn't be what was on the menu, but I'd be too impressed to care.
The server comes back and T says "these look an awful lot like canned oranges." She looks disturbed. Now, normally, a good server would say, "actually you're right, that doesn't look like what was on the menu, and look they even forgot the brown butter." But she just kind of looked at him like perhaps she had been the one to segment the elusive fresh mandarin, peel away the membrane and then add tiny slivers of aluminum to complete the effect. Trying to get back to the point, I say, "I think he just wants to see the menu again." She gets the menu, leaves the plate and walks away.
T settles on a chicken sandwich with blue cheese and pears. Sounds delicious. We've both had it before and it is quite delicious. He asked for the mayo on the side. Don't get me wrong here, I understand the desire restaurants have to keep people from making huge substitutions, but mayo doesn't count. And if it does count, then I'm inviting the server to come over and doctor me when I'm recovering from food poisoning brought on by my ingestion of too often carelessly stored restaurant mayo. But I digress. No mayo. Got it?
So the sandwich comes less than 10 minutes later and is placed ever so not nicely on the table. The right thing to do would have been to say, "I hope this works out better for you. Can I get you more water for your tea, another beer?" As T is getting ready to take a bite, he sees something. I see it too. What could it be? What is that gelatinous white smoodge goozing out the sides of the sandwich? What indeed. Apparently, in its fermenting state, the mayo developed the beginnings of a brain stem, uprighted itself and spread itself all over the bread, possibly even laughing as it went about its evil deed. This is not good. This is not good for anyone. The waitress walks by. We flag her down. She's definitely avoiding us and I'm not sure why. None of this is her fault and this kind of screw-up happens all the time in restaurants. Even in life, bad stuff happens, right? You just face up to it and deal with it with grace and tact.
She comes over, T says "I asked for no mayo." Waitress says, "Oh, sorry." There is a moment of tentative silence as we wait for her to do her job - scoop the plate, rush it to the kitchen and make it right. Instead, she waits for us to make the suggestion. She's annoyed. Again. T, sensing her disgust, says it sucks and while he's not trying to make it personal, she needs to see to it that the order is right and that basically he's hungry, I got my food 20 minutes before and he just wants the food to be there. She walks off, attitude and plate in hand.
While we are waiting, again, I decide to get back to MY food. My food is quite fine. Nice dense baguette overflowing with velvety pork, studded with effectively warm jalapeno slices and topped with cheddar. The salad was falling off my plate and the balsamic dressing was fantastic. Even the lowly coleslaw was refreshing and made richer by the inclusion of thin slices of red onion.
But you have to remember that I'm eating this on edge. There is a landmine in our playground and it's waiting to blow.
The sandwich comes back, sans mayo, but I'm surprised the sandwich didn't get hurled like a frisbee to us. She didn't quite set it down as much as throw it down and run off. Now, again, in case I need to tell anyone the right way to handle this...You bring the third plate to the table and you say, "I'm so sorry, we've been busy today and I think I was so focused on where we went wrong with the waffle that I forgot the no mayo request. Can you take a look real quick and let me know if your sandwich is OK now?" Nope. Nothing remotely close to that happened and for the rest of the time we sat there, we watched her avoid us. No offer of a refill on drinks, no coming back to see if everything was right this time. Nothing.
Time for the check. I'm not one to confuse bad food with bad service. I say this because I would never not leave a tip if the food was bad, but the service good. I will always give a server the benefit of the doubt if - now understand this - IF they make just a very few attempts at actually caring about my negative experience with the food.
She brought the check. T asked for the manager. She said there wasn't one. Oh. Got it. Time again for me to explain the right thing to do. "I'm really sorry, the manager isn't here today, I can either leave you his name and number or take yours and maybe you can talk tomorrow." I can assure you that if she said anything remotely close to this, the conversation with the manager would have gone like this, "Manager, we had a bad experience with your food, but the server was really great and attentive and tried to make it right. But you know when you put fresh fruit and brown butter on the menu, your customers might actually be expecting that." Seems simple, right? No, she just walked away. She failed at every simple basic fundamental element that makes a decent server. Don't give attitude, don't avoid, don't take it personally, just make it right.
I couldn't leave a tip. I couldn't. It went against everything I have in me not to leave a tip. But I decided that the best tip I could give was a note on the credit card receipt on what not to do in the future. I am very sure we are seen as asses. I am very sure that at some party in town that night when she's sitting back, with chilly attitude and her friends, we are the ones who were anal, we were the ones with the problem, we were the customers waitstaff hate. But I just don't think we were wrong here.
Walking out and walking home, we fumed. We defined good service, bad service and how it really is a simple matter of understanding that shit does happen. No one cares. The only thing people care about is how you handle it. Do you light it on fire and leap around showing everyone, making it worse, or do you flush it with tact and grace?
We wrapped ourselves in what we would later realize was too many layers (it wasn't the tundra after all), and we made our way to the area in our neighborhood where the trails start. The really cool thing about Chapel Hill is that there are rural buffers all through town, through most all neighborhoods, areas where building is not permitted, but hiking is. Typically you follow streams and storm and sewer drains and traipse along behind large houses with fascinating architecture, looking to see who still has Christmas trees, or who has built tree houses at the borders of properties. You also see deer and garbage, but fortunately for cars and and the town's image you don't see too much of either. But with both, when you do, you are surprised.
We came out on Smith Level Road, took a shortcut through Roberson Place and ended up after about 40 minutes from start to finish, in the center of Carrboro. From there, we decided to see if Milltown was open for Sunday brunch. We thought not, but were happy to see they were indeed open. We checked out the menu. No pancakes, but waffles. Not just any waffles, but waffles with fresh fruit, creme fraiche and brown butter. Brown butter! That would do.
T doesn't even look at the menu. I do. I decide on carnitas on a baguette with a side salad and slaw. Mexican, southern and a little upscale. It sounded perfect to me.
We have high hopes when the food arrives. T gets his first and when they place my brimming plate on the table, I do not see it. I see only his waffle. Now, there are times I suffer what can only be called food envy. I wish desperately to be the one readying myself to dive into whatever the other person has and never fully taste my own food because my mouth is watering for some unattainable goal across the table. If only. If only. If only. Indeed.
Not the case here. What I was actually looking at was the burgeoning of "what the hell is this?" on T's face and my own utter and complete devastation that someone decided that fresh fruit equalled grapes and canned mandarin oranges, that creme fraiche was this sour cream looking goo scooped into a plastic container, and that brown butter was in fact a squarely cut off quarter stick of cold yellow butter, also in a plastic container. Oh, and the waffle was the size equivalent of two toaster waffles. If only I did have two toaster waffles glistening with some brown butter, some caramelized bananas and pineapples or some fresh strawberries, blueberries. I think you get the point. The point is, what the hell was this? And how could anyone in their right mind think the tinny taste of mandarin oranges counts as fresh fruit?
I can see the moment of truth. T is getting ready to comment. I know what he is going to say. I chime in, "SEND IT BACK." I do not believe in bad food unless you set out to have bad food. I do this sometimes. It's why I am known on occasion to actually make a conscious decision to eat Chicken Mcnuggets. But when I come to a restaurant that is promising brown butter on waffles, dammit, you better deliver. And if you're out of fresh fruit, come back and tell me or disguise it by taking something frozen, putting it in a pan with the brown butter and some sugar and deliver something with flames leaping off it. Wouldn't be what was on the menu, but I'd be too impressed to care.
The server comes back and T says "these look an awful lot like canned oranges." She looks disturbed. Now, normally, a good server would say, "actually you're right, that doesn't look like what was on the menu, and look they even forgot the brown butter." But she just kind of looked at him like perhaps she had been the one to segment the elusive fresh mandarin, peel away the membrane and then add tiny slivers of aluminum to complete the effect. Trying to get back to the point, I say, "I think he just wants to see the menu again." She gets the menu, leaves the plate and walks away.
T settles on a chicken sandwich with blue cheese and pears. Sounds delicious. We've both had it before and it is quite delicious. He asked for the mayo on the side. Don't get me wrong here, I understand the desire restaurants have to keep people from making huge substitutions, but mayo doesn't count. And if it does count, then I'm inviting the server to come over and doctor me when I'm recovering from food poisoning brought on by my ingestion of too often carelessly stored restaurant mayo. But I digress. No mayo. Got it?
So the sandwich comes less than 10 minutes later and is placed ever so not nicely on the table. The right thing to do would have been to say, "I hope this works out better for you. Can I get you more water for your tea, another beer?" As T is getting ready to take a bite, he sees something. I see it too. What could it be? What is that gelatinous white smoodge goozing out the sides of the sandwich? What indeed. Apparently, in its fermenting state, the mayo developed the beginnings of a brain stem, uprighted itself and spread itself all over the bread, possibly even laughing as it went about its evil deed. This is not good. This is not good for anyone. The waitress walks by. We flag her down. She's definitely avoiding us and I'm not sure why. None of this is her fault and this kind of screw-up happens all the time in restaurants. Even in life, bad stuff happens, right? You just face up to it and deal with it with grace and tact.
She comes over, T says "I asked for no mayo." Waitress says, "Oh, sorry." There is a moment of tentative silence as we wait for her to do her job - scoop the plate, rush it to the kitchen and make it right. Instead, she waits for us to make the suggestion. She's annoyed. Again. T, sensing her disgust, says it sucks and while he's not trying to make it personal, she needs to see to it that the order is right and that basically he's hungry, I got my food 20 minutes before and he just wants the food to be there. She walks off, attitude and plate in hand.
While we are waiting, again, I decide to get back to MY food. My food is quite fine. Nice dense baguette overflowing with velvety pork, studded with effectively warm jalapeno slices and topped with cheddar. The salad was falling off my plate and the balsamic dressing was fantastic. Even the lowly coleslaw was refreshing and made richer by the inclusion of thin slices of red onion.
But you have to remember that I'm eating this on edge. There is a landmine in our playground and it's waiting to blow.
The sandwich comes back, sans mayo, but I'm surprised the sandwich didn't get hurled like a frisbee to us. She didn't quite set it down as much as throw it down and run off. Now, again, in case I need to tell anyone the right way to handle this...You bring the third plate to the table and you say, "I'm so sorry, we've been busy today and I think I was so focused on where we went wrong with the waffle that I forgot the no mayo request. Can you take a look real quick and let me know if your sandwich is OK now?" Nope. Nothing remotely close to that happened and for the rest of the time we sat there, we watched her avoid us. No offer of a refill on drinks, no coming back to see if everything was right this time. Nothing.
Time for the check. I'm not one to confuse bad food with bad service. I say this because I would never not leave a tip if the food was bad, but the service good. I will always give a server the benefit of the doubt if - now understand this - IF they make just a very few attempts at actually caring about my negative experience with the food.
She brought the check. T asked for the manager. She said there wasn't one. Oh. Got it. Time again for me to explain the right thing to do. "I'm really sorry, the manager isn't here today, I can either leave you his name and number or take yours and maybe you can talk tomorrow." I can assure you that if she said anything remotely close to this, the conversation with the manager would have gone like this, "Manager, we had a bad experience with your food, but the server was really great and attentive and tried to make it right. But you know when you put fresh fruit and brown butter on the menu, your customers might actually be expecting that." Seems simple, right? No, she just walked away. She failed at every simple basic fundamental element that makes a decent server. Don't give attitude, don't avoid, don't take it personally, just make it right.
I couldn't leave a tip. I couldn't. It went against everything I have in me not to leave a tip. But I decided that the best tip I could give was a note on the credit card receipt on what not to do in the future. I am very sure we are seen as asses. I am very sure that at some party in town that night when she's sitting back, with chilly attitude and her friends, we are the ones who were anal, we were the ones with the problem, we were the customers waitstaff hate. But I just don't think we were wrong here.
Walking out and walking home, we fumed. We defined good service, bad service and how it really is a simple matter of understanding that shit does happen. No one cares. The only thing people care about is how you handle it. Do you light it on fire and leap around showing everyone, making it worse, or do you flush it with tact and grace?
January 20, 2008
Citrus In The Snow
Yesterday was supposed to be a snow day. We waited all morning, but nothing came of it except gray skies. We waited through the noon hour and again nothing but gray skies. At 1:30, my man (we shall call him Tostagielli or T for short) wanted to know what we should do about lunch. We decided on another of our favorite things to do - walk about 20 minutes to Southern Village, a mixed use neighborhood with upscale homes, townhouses, condos, a Weaver Street Food Market/Coop, the Lumina movie theater and decent restaurants. It's the closest place for a walk when you'd like food to be involved.
As we set out, the rains came. Not snow, but gray skies and rain. And a cold rain it was. But we were bundled up in yellow rain gear, underneath of which I wore this really great brown wool sweater my friend Storchy gave me the night before - no need to be totally uncool in the rain. A nice sweater made me feel cozy and T did say it "became" me. Of course wool is not the best rain wear since after a while it does actually start to smell like a wet dog or an old lady, but that is for a blog on another subject.
Now, when we walk to Southern Village, we don't actually go the way that takes 20 minutes since I have a way of trying to shave off time between when I start thinking about food and actually wanting to eat. And we like adventure. So, we head up the street, cross the road and enter the parking lot of the Gray Culbreth Middle school. As we head around the back of the school to the woods where at least 4 trails have been worn into the expanse of trees and rocks and today what was a lot of mud, trails no doubt left by excited middle-schoolers on their way to another exciting day of puberty, we locate the steepest of trails and descend, in the rain, to lunch.
Walking through the hilly neighborhood that has grown on me over the years, we talked about many things, as we always do on our walks. And then after only 10 minutes or so of walking and talking, we were at Citrus, a really attractive breakfast/brunch/lunch establishment that looks just like one of the houses surrounding it. You know it's a restaurant because there is a newspaper dispenser by the door. Now Citrus is one of those places I always think about when I say, "now why don't we come here more often?" It really is nice. However in the year or so it's been open I've been there only three times. Once with family, once with a friend instead of going to a yoga class and once with T. The other restaurants in Southern Village have seen me at least a half dozen times, even the ones I don't like all that much. I suspect it's because when I really think of going out to eat, it's later in the evening and Citrus is only open until 3pm, something that makes me very sad because I'd love to go there at night, have some wine and enjoy the surroundings.
Citrus. Colorful decor, lots of windows to watch the rain, a tasteful bar and a creative menu. Even the plates are colorful, the color of oranges, limes and lemons. Imagine that. Makes your mouth water before you even see the food. The place was really full of people, too, which I always think is a great sign when it's 2 in the afternoon and raining.
I got an Asian salad with beef and crispy noodles, radishes, cucumbers and a tangy Asian slaw style dressing and Tostagielli got a Salmon hasher, which was smoked salmon, fresh salmon, potatoes, onions and peppers and a couple eggs. The waiter asked if he wanted an "English muffin or something" to go with it and while we both thought that was really nice, he did forget to bring it. But he was nice and the fact that we almost forgot to pay before leaving made everything even out. The food was definitely good, although I thought the dressing on my salad could have packed a bigger punch to balance with the beef and T remarked his was a little salty, but when you're getting smoked salmon and capers in large quantities, the salt is a little hard to avoid.
So we're sitting there watching the rain and it starts to get heavier. We talked about family, about old journal entries from middle school years, and had tea and wine. We talked about the amazing speech I heard on Martin Luther King, Jr. by Dr. Julianne Malveaux, the President of Bennett College for Women. We sat there in comfort for more than an hour and slowly, definitely very slowly, the rain turned to a sticky, heavy snow. At that moment, nothing could have been more perfect.
As we set out, the rains came. Not snow, but gray skies and rain. And a cold rain it was. But we were bundled up in yellow rain gear, underneath of which I wore this really great brown wool sweater my friend Storchy gave me the night before - no need to be totally uncool in the rain. A nice sweater made me feel cozy and T did say it "became" me. Of course wool is not the best rain wear since after a while it does actually start to smell like a wet dog or an old lady, but that is for a blog on another subject.
Now, when we walk to Southern Village, we don't actually go the way that takes 20 minutes since I have a way of trying to shave off time between when I start thinking about food and actually wanting to eat. And we like adventure. So, we head up the street, cross the road and enter the parking lot of the Gray Culbreth Middle school. As we head around the back of the school to the woods where at least 4 trails have been worn into the expanse of trees and rocks and today what was a lot of mud, trails no doubt left by excited middle-schoolers on their way to another exciting day of puberty, we locate the steepest of trails and descend, in the rain, to lunch.
Walking through the hilly neighborhood that has grown on me over the years, we talked about many things, as we always do on our walks. And then after only 10 minutes or so of walking and talking, we were at Citrus, a really attractive breakfast/brunch/lunch establishment that looks just like one of the houses surrounding it. You know it's a restaurant because there is a newspaper dispenser by the door. Now Citrus is one of those places I always think about when I say, "now why don't we come here more often?" It really is nice. However in the year or so it's been open I've been there only three times. Once with family, once with a friend instead of going to a yoga class and once with T. The other restaurants in Southern Village have seen me at least a half dozen times, even the ones I don't like all that much. I suspect it's because when I really think of going out to eat, it's later in the evening and Citrus is only open until 3pm, something that makes me very sad because I'd love to go there at night, have some wine and enjoy the surroundings.
Citrus. Colorful decor, lots of windows to watch the rain, a tasteful bar and a creative menu. Even the plates are colorful, the color of oranges, limes and lemons. Imagine that. Makes your mouth water before you even see the food. The place was really full of people, too, which I always think is a great sign when it's 2 in the afternoon and raining.
I got an Asian salad with beef and crispy noodles, radishes, cucumbers and a tangy Asian slaw style dressing and Tostagielli got a Salmon hasher, which was smoked salmon, fresh salmon, potatoes, onions and peppers and a couple eggs. The waiter asked if he wanted an "English muffin or something" to go with it and while we both thought that was really nice, he did forget to bring it. But he was nice and the fact that we almost forgot to pay before leaving made everything even out. The food was definitely good, although I thought the dressing on my salad could have packed a bigger punch to balance with the beef and T remarked his was a little salty, but when you're getting smoked salmon and capers in large quantities, the salt is a little hard to avoid.
So we're sitting there watching the rain and it starts to get heavier. We talked about family, about old journal entries from middle school years, and had tea and wine. We talked about the amazing speech I heard on Martin Luther King, Jr. by Dr. Julianne Malveaux, the President of Bennett College for Women. We sat there in comfort for more than an hour and slowly, definitely very slowly, the rain turned to a sticky, heavy snow. At that moment, nothing could have been more perfect.
January 19, 2008
My First Entry - An Introduction
I've been thinking about a blog for quite a while, although I am a Luddite. But, I also want to be a chef, although you'd have to get rid of fussy people and staff for me to be truly happy doing it, so I suppose I don't really want to be a chef. I do love to cook food, I love to buy food, I love grocery stores and restaurants and food on TV. I love to talk about food and think about food and come up with creative mixtures of ingredients that I lavish on anyone who enters our home. I love to have a decently stocked kitchen, no recipes and just play for an hour until I have something that looks great on a plate and tastes even better. And when it doesn't work out, and there are times it doesn't work out, I imagine being at the final moment on a cooking show and just being honest, "well, I just showed you how to make this...um...crap. Let's try again tomorrow."
I also love to critique (and criticize mercilessly) food I eat, as well as the whole restaurant experience. I suppose I also love to find other people who love food as much as I do. People who can make a night of it. My man and I have developed a way to have the most decadent evening. We pick a spot in our wonderful towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro (sometimes Durham, but rarely Raleigh), and walk from one restaurant to another stopping only at the bar for a drink and an appetizer or two. After 2 or 3 stops, we've have tastes ranging all over the globe and a slight buzz that always gets me thrilled at how wonderful it is to live here where we have choices beyond any where I came from (South Jersey to be exact).
So my blog is an outlet for my desire to be a chef or restaurant critic without actually dealing with people. It's my way to feel like I'm making something out of my passions without quitting my job to make a go of a whole new life that I really don't want anyway. I hope to be entertaining, but if not, let's try again tomorrow.
I also love to critique (and criticize mercilessly) food I eat, as well as the whole restaurant experience. I suppose I also love to find other people who love food as much as I do. People who can make a night of it. My man and I have developed a way to have the most decadent evening. We pick a spot in our wonderful towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro (sometimes Durham, but rarely Raleigh), and walk from one restaurant to another stopping only at the bar for a drink and an appetizer or two. After 2 or 3 stops, we've have tastes ranging all over the globe and a slight buzz that always gets me thrilled at how wonderful it is to live here where we have choices beyond any where I came from (South Jersey to be exact).
So my blog is an outlet for my desire to be a chef or restaurant critic without actually dealing with people. It's my way to feel like I'm making something out of my passions without quitting my job to make a go of a whole new life that I really don't want anyway. I hope to be entertaining, but if not, let's try again tomorrow.
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