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scenes from a rock show

I don’t go to a lot of concerts.  I dislike other bodies touching mine, I hate it when people mosh into me, I hate having to wait through an inevitably crappy opening act, I usually get hot and feel faint, and I find the standing rather exhausting. (Yes, I realize I sound like a real pale and wan pain in the ass right about now.)  But, and I realize this will spoil some of my indie cred, one of my favorite bands in the whole wide world is Third Eye Blind and they played in my town last night and I just had to go.  Even though it was in a venue (the Music Farm) I swore I’d never go back to because it was way oversold the time I saw Band of Horses (oh hey, there’s my cred back) and actually had to leave before the end because I thought I’d pass out from the heat and the stench of the sweat coming off the horde of shirtless goth dudes dryhumping all around me (no lie).  I’ve liked 3eb since their first album came out way back in like 1996, discovering them just as I realized there was newer music beyond my dad’s classic rock (though I still have a soft spot for that stuff).  I have all of their albums and even an EP, and it’s all still in rotation on my iPod.  So yeah, I had to go.

So my husband and I took our old fogey asses to a rock show last night.  And I loved it.  Here are some brief scenes.

  • We arrived before the opening act to score some prime real estate on the floor in front of the stage.  This meant 30 minutes of exposure to annoying undergrads (I can ID them because they didn’t have over-21 bracelets on) going on about how they’ve loved 3eb since their first album came out.  Oh really? Back when you were like, eight?
  • We inevitably stand next to the one person at the show that you don’t want to be standing next to.  With Band of Horses it was a group of shirtless goths who seemed to have gotten lost on the way to the gay club next door and took the opportunity of an indie rock show to dry hump each other for an hour.  This show, it was the Hippie Girl.  The type who says things like, “I just want to express myself with my body” and writhes around to some other beat in her mind, swaying and slithering.  Jon said, “I think she thought this was Widespread Panic or something.”  We spent the show trying not to let her dance ON us.  I should have asked her if she wanted to model for art classes.  I’m sure she’d have been down.
  • The opening act. Oh God.  Someone did not love Joshua James enough as a child.  His music is apparently the soundtrack to wrist slitting.  He literally said, “This song is about a little boy from Lincoln, Nebraska, who was kidnapped from his home and later found raped and murdered.”  As you can imagine, it was a really happy track.  We couldn’t understand a word he said, but I imagined they were about puppies being kicked and women being eaten by bears.  I will say that later, he came out to sing a 3eb song, and it sounded pretty good, if angsty.  So the guy has a decent voice, but might need to find some different inspiration for his songwriting.
  • But then, after a seemingly interminable setup and sound check, the main event arrived on the stage, and the sold out house went nuts.  The band rocked out, the crowd went crazy dancing and singing (parts of the show were basically a big sing-along), and by the end of the 4-song encore, my ears were ringing and my throat was sore.
  • Based on my observations of crowd behavior, I’ve now trademarked The Dick Move ™.  It’s that “oh, I see my buddy over there, can I squeeze through here?” thing people do to get closer to the stage.  Two guys and a girl pulled that on me and then stopped, right in front of me.  “We good?” the guy said to his girl.  I decided this situation called for me to be a bitch.  “UM NO, WE’RE NOT. I could see, and now I can’t.” The girl moved sheepishly to the side, and I thought to myself, damn straight, you better move, that was NOT cool.
  • I’ve also gotta hand it to 3eb, they’re not one of those bands that now hates and refuses to play the song that made them famous. We got to hear both “Semi Charmed Kind of Life” and “Jumper,” and they played both with the same enthusiasm that they gave to songs off their newest album.  They also seem to know they’re not as famous as they used to be, and seemed genuinely thankful that we were such an awesome crowd, which is probably why they gave us a 4-song encore.

So, I’m a happy fan today.  Not sure when I’ll feel up to another show, but I’m glad I went to this one.

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America loves the little guy?

So apparently there was some big basketball thing on the teevee machine last night.  Like the Olympics of college basketball or somesuch.  You can tell I’m a huge sports fan.

Being that I only marginally care about college sports, and even then, pretty much only barely follow Arkansas Razorback football, I didn’t really have a dog in the big NCAA championship fight.  I thought the Butler bulldog was a pretty cute pooch, and I remember participating in some nerdy Talent Identification Program with Duke that had me take the ACT test in Jr. High, so I really could have gone either way on last night’s game.

And then I hopped on Twitter and noticed that apparently the only correct team to root for was Butler.  Because “America loves the little guy,” and “everyone loves an underdog.”  Seriously, Internet, it’s apparently un-American to like Duke.  This morning the Twitters were filled with tweets lamenting that big bad Duke had won and made America cry.  I had no idea.  In fact, I had no idea that America really loves a little guy.

Take for example major league baseball.  99% of the people you meet are Red Sox or Yankees or Cubs fans.  Sure, the Cubs seem to have a knack for losing sometimes, but all of those teams are huge organizations with mondo payrolls.  I should know, I’m married to a Denver native who loves his Rockies and has been known to deliver a monologue or twelve on the subject of big teams who “buy their pennants.”  If you ask him, and really, if you look at baseball, you have to wonder if America really does love an underdog.

I think the rooting for the little guy, the favoring of David over Goliath, is just a nice story we tell ourselves, even as we shop at big corporations who drive little guys out of business every day.  It’s a nice story we tell ourselves even as we want our nation to be the sole world superpower, dominating global affairs.  If America really loved the little guy, WalMart would go out of business.

“America loves the little guy” is just a nice piece of national mythology we use to make ourselves feel good, like we still believe anyone could make it, even as we turn a blind eye to systematic practices which keep little guys down each and every day.

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kitchen catch-all

eating in

  • image via Real Simple

    I’ve mentioned before that we try to go vegetarian a few nights per week, because we’re concerned about the way conventional meat is raised and slaughtered, because we’re concerned about the impact of meat consumption on the environment, and because we’re concerned about the impact of meat consumption on global hunger.  One of the easiest veggie meals is some form of beans and rice.  This week I made Cuban style black beans and served them with coconut rice.  Coconut rice is seriously one of my favorite things, so if you’ve never had it, try it!  This meal is especially delicious with a Cuba Libre (aka a rum and coke).

  • Saturday night I made one of our favorite meals.  It’s the almond tilapia from this recipe and this minty chickpea salad, which I made with bulgur instead of cous cous and added some lemon juice to make it even more like tabouli.  If you try it, the method to use bulgur is to add 3 cups boiling water to one cup bulgur in a large bowl, cover, and leave for 45 minutes.  When the time was up, I still had some water that hadn’t been absorbed by the bulgur, so I strained it and proceeded as usual for the rest of the recipe.  We actually eat a LOT of cous cous, so using the bulgur wheat was a nice change up.
  • Two words: Margarita. Cookies. You know you wanna try.  Here’s the recipe over at Smitten Kitchen.  I made mine mostly following the recipe, though I didn’t have an orange, so I just added in some triple sec (half a teaspoon). I’m sure it says something about me that I had triple sec but not an orange, but there you go.  A friend who had tried the recipe before recommended adding a little extra lime, so I doubled the amount of lime zest and added the juice of one lime.  I STILL think that wasn’t enough lime. I’m now wondering if you can get lime extract, as I really like the idea of these cookies, especially the hint of salt.
  • I also made my own hummus this week.  I followed this recipe from The Kitchn, but added in a whole can of drained artichoke hearts in water for a bit of a flavor boost.  The artichoke made for especially creamy hummus, and I’m very pleased with the results.  The hardest thing about making hummus is getting my hands on tahini, but Harris Teeter stocks it in the international food aisle.  Even though tahini is a little pricey, it makes several batches worth of hummus and is still a lot more cost effective than paying $5 per tub of pre-made hummus.  If you’ve got a food processor, you should check it out.

eating out

  • I was true to my word and went back to McCrady’s with Jon this week so he too could experience the wonder of a pre-prohibition cocktail for 25 cents.  We got a booth in the bar area, and when the waitress asked us what she could get us, we said “donkey.” She smiled and said she’d have those drinks right out for us.  This week’s cocktail was a Ward 8, and featured whiskey, orange bitters, and grenadine.  We sipped our cocktails while snacking on crispy duck rillettes with cranberry ketchup and fried housemade bread and butter pickles with ramp buttermilk dressing.  Even without the super cheap drink special, McCrady’s is fast becoming one of my favorite places to have a drink in Charleston.  It’s exactly dark and cozy enough that you could almost pretend you really are in a Speakeasy.
  • I’d been itching to check out Ted’s Butcherblock ever since I started searching for sustainable meat sources after seeing Food Inc.  In addition to being a great butcher/wine/cheese shop, Ted’s has lots of sandwiches and salads and other food items.  On Friday nights, they serve a $12 supper, so we decided to see what kind of food we could get for such a great price.  This Friday’s supper was lemon pepper shrimp skewers with grilled eggplant and Israeli couscous with radishes and cucumbers, with an almond custard for dessert.  The food was fabulous and filling.  I’m going to be searching for an almond custard recipe so I can try to recreate it soon– such a rich flavor and served with this amazing honey-nut crispy thing that I can’t even describe. In addition to the super cheap dinner, Ted’s also has $5 wine tastings on Friday night.  $5 got us four samples (about one glass in total) of two whites and two reds.  I especially liked an Oregon Pinot Gris. We also had some fun people watching as there were two very elderly couples in the shop, cutting each others’ eggplant, snagging each others’ dessert, and holding hands, and there was another couple with a particularly adorable and chubby baby who was wearing a very cute hat and drooling all over the place.  You should definitely check out Ted’s on a Friday night. I’m convinced there isn’t a better deal in town.
  • The Farmer’s Market is back! While we’re blessed with a crazy-long growing season, the time without the Farmer’s Market in Marion Square always seems like an eternity.  Saturday was opening day, and we headed down town excitedly, with plenty of room for crepes from our favorite food stand.  I went for smoked sausage, egg, and swiss with peppers and onions, and Jon got the egg veggie which features mozzarella, spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms.  The crepe stand’s line was three times as long as any other vendor, but they’re always worth the wait.  Bring a blanket and sit under a shade tree and enjoy the people and puppy watching while you devour your crepes.
    the crepe menu.
    just a taste of the puppy-watching

    I loved these vibrant flowers.

food for thought

  • Got a lot of leftover Easter candy? Try this method for Peeps Brulee.
  • If you try the hummus recipe above and want to use up some of the rest of your tahini in a soup with a similar flavor profile, try hummus soup (I’m gonna try it soon!).
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he is risen

Jon went to a sunrise service on the beach this morning, while I, not a morning person, and unlike his medical resident self, unused to waking before the sun, slept in.  He brought me back some gorgeous photos, though, so I thought I’d share.  If you’re looking for a good Easter message, check out this video, Resurrection, by Rob Bell.

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bumper to bumper

So, Sarah Palin’s latest thing is telling her fans to approach people with Obama stickers on their Subarus and ask them, “How’s that hopey changey thing workin’ out for ya?” You don’t need me to break that down for you, but let me just say that if I manage to avoid approaching people who STILL have Bush ’04 stickers on their cars to thank them for helping destroy our country for 8 long and horrible years, and if I can avoid sticking my tongue out and hollering “Ha ha, you LOST!” at people who have McCain/Palin stickers on their cars, then maybe Palin fans could avoid bugging me about my Obama car magnet.  Not to mention, some guy already ran a father and his daughter off the road for having an Obama sticker on their car, BEFORE Palin made that statement, so she’s basically inciting violence (again).

But then, today, I saw some bumper stickers on a Subaru that made me want to flag the drivers down and ask them if they wanted to be BFFS.  I saw this on my way home:

Because that’s a crappy phone picture I took all stalker style (I blurred out the license plate so as not to be too stalkeriffic), I’ll tell you what some of the stickers say: “Pro-child, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice” “Vaginas” “Uppity Women Unite” and “My kid has more chromosomes than yours.” SC, I probably don’t need to tell you, is quite a red state. So seeing a bunch of feminist and disability activist stickers on a car is rare and rather heartwarming for this bleeding heart liberal.  I wish I could have pulled up alongside and waved and told the driver, “Hi, your stickers rule!”  But the traffic didn’t allow.  I sure hope that Subaru driver doesn’t get accosted by Sarah Palin fans, but if they do, I have a feeling they can handle it.

Just in case any of you get accosted by a Sarah Palin fan who wants to know how that “hopey changey thing is workin out for ya,” you can check out this handy list of awesome hopey changey things Obama has done in the past year or so in office.  Then you can say, “Well, it’s workin’ out pretty darn well, actually!”  And then you can feel like another sticker I saw in a parking deck today– like a Righteous Babe (or Dude):

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to the viewer goes the spoils

Image: Spoiler_Alert, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from alexlane's photostream

SPOILER ALERT!

Just kidding, but really, this post is about spoilers and in it I might spoil a years old movie or book or two (particularly Harry Potter, so, don’t come crying to me if you don’t know how the series ends already). (Though I promise I’m not spoiling LOST in this post.)

SPOILER ALERT!

You may have seen that phrase on the internet, or even have heard it in conversation.  You may have yelled it after someone ruined the ending to something for you.  I admit, I’ve been one to use it.  I’ve had a few things spoiled for me.  Like “The Sixth Sense.” Before I ever got a chance to see it, some friend blurted, “Ohmygod, can you beLIEVE that Bruce Willis was freaking DEAD the WHOLE TIME?” Me, somewhat crestfallen, “Um, what? I haven’t seen ‘The Sixth Sense Yet.'”  And then there was the time I was reading one of the Harry Potter books while working as a camp counselor and one of my campers was all, “Can you beLIEVE Dumbledore DIES??” Me, “WHAT!!! You’re lucky I can’t strangle a camper because otherwise you’d be dead right now!!”

And to some extent, it makes sense not to spoil books, as they’re something one reads on one’s own, or movies, as long as they’re still in the theatre.  But what about television? Continue reading “to the viewer goes the spoils”

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kitchen catch-all

eating in

  • Clafouti. It sounds like an instrument you’d play in a band that also features a flugelhorn. It turns out, however, that a clafouti is a tasty dessert, one that Julia Child had a recipe for (Bon Appetit!), which I found, by way of Honest Fare (you can go there and read for yourself what Gabi’s husband thought clafouti sounds like, and also snag the recipe).  When I read that it was like a cross between a custard, a cake, and a pancake, I knew I had to try it.  I love custard AND cake.  I made mine with fresh raspberries and blackberries and some frozen cherries.  After we finished eating our first slices, Jon said, “I like clafouti.” Me too, man, me too.  To paraphrase Schlotzsky’s Deli: funny name, seriously tasty dessert.   You should try making one– way easy, way good.  Tip: to make the homemade whipped cream extra yummy, add a little vanilla to it.

    my beautiful clafouti (yeah. it sounds funny.)
    • But don't you want to try it, funny name and all?
  • Image via Real Simple.

    We’re still trying to eat all the food I froze during the last CSA season, so I didn’t do a whole lot of cooking this week.  One recipe I did try was a hit, though.  It was Real Simple’s roast salmon and peppers with caper vinaigrette.  We really liked this, and I pretty much followed the recipe– the only change I made was adding some lemon juice to the vinaigrette, because I thought it needed a little bite of citrus.  I’ll definitely be adding this recipe to my binder full of keepers.

eating (or should I say drinking?) out

McCrady’s is probably the most talked about restaurant in this town full of excellent restaurants.  The chef, Sean Brock, was nominated for a James Beard Best Chef Southeast Award this year, and in a recent Oxford American Food Poll, many of the chefs and food writers surveyed listed Brock as a favorite and an inspiration.  McCrady’s is also rather expensive– we ate dinner there because of one of my husband’s work events, but would otherwise only go there for a special occasion.  But the expense of the dinners isn’t a reason to miss out on the McCrady’s experience– just head to the bar!

McCrady’s is known for its pre-Prohibition Era cocktails, which are priced reasonably, on par with most other cocktails in town.  And to add even further incentives to check out their spirited offerings, they’ve been running a Prohibition style promotion on Facebook and Twitter, releasing a password to their followers and fans each week that will get them a pre-Prohibition Era cocktail for just 25-cents!  Friday night, a friend and I settled ourselves at the bar, and whispered “Burma” to Ben the bartender.  He smiled and whipped us up two Pegu Cocktails, a combination of Gordon’s London Dry Gin, Cointreau, Stirring’s Orange Bitters, and lime.  They were delicious, and I’m not usually a gin drinker!  We also checked out the menu of bar snacks.  I ordered the Crispy Pork Rillettes with Cranberry Ketchup, and my friend chose Fried Green Tomatoes with Green Goddess Dressing.  We loved both!

Since our first cocktails were only 25 cents, we had plenty of money left over to try another of the cocktails.  My friend, who had studied abroad in England, went for a classic Pimm’s cup, and I, being a whiskey fan and a sucker for a cool name, went for one called the Blood and Sand.  I mean, doesn’t that drink just sound badass??  It featured Dewar’s Scotch Whisky, Sweet Vermouth, Brandied Cherry Juice, and Blood Orange, and I enjoyed it very much.  While McCrady’s might be out of my price range for regular dinner dining, the cocktails and bar snacks are very much my speed and friendly to my budget.  I’ll have to take Jon back to try other things very soon!

food for thought

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the truth about high fructose corn syrup

New research confirms that consumption of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) promotes considerably more weight gain than consumption of the same amount of calories in regular sugar (glucose).  Though the study was done on rats, there’s reason to believe they’d get similar results on human beings.  Jon happens to be on an endocrinology rotation right now and got the lowdown on why this is from an endocrinologist (they’re the ones who are experts on diabetes and stuff, so they know all about the body and sugar). I thought I’d try to explain it as simply as my simple mind understands.

Basically, when your body breaks down glucose (normal sugar) to make energy, there’s a special mechanism that tells the body to stop processing the glucose once the body has enough energy, and rather than break down the rest of the glucose, the excess just passes out of the body through urine.  However, with fructose (found in HFCS), there is no such mechanism to shut it off once you have broken it down into all the energy you need.  So the body just keeps breaking down fructose, and the excess gets converted to fat.

Our bodies just weren’t designed for consumption of high fructose corn syrup, and this research (and understanding why they got the results they got) confirms my decision to avoid high fructose corn syrup as much as possible.  HFCS is in almost every processed food, probably even in the bread you buy, so start looking at those ingredient labels!  If you’re a big soda fan (I like some soda with my whiskey or rum), see if Jones Pure Cane Cola is available in your area.  It’s the cola I use at home, and I can find it at my local Harris Teeter.  Pepsi and Dr. Pepper are also sometimes available in “throwback” form, and if you can find ’em, they’re sweetened with cane sugar.  Right now you might also be able to find “kosher for Passover” Coke, which is also sweetened with real sugar.

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a breakup

As the sun sets on our time in Charleston, I'm realizing how much I'm going to miss it.

Three years ago, I crazily agreed to move to Charleston, SC, sight unseen, for Jon to do a residency in pediatrics.  I hadn’t even laid eyes on the place until a marathon weekend when we came to buy a house (our first house!).  While the first year was so so so very hard, being my first year post-college, my second year of marriage, Jon’s super-hellish intern year, and the farthest we’d ever lived from all our nearest and dearest, we eventually realized it wasn’t so bad here.  After working a crappy real estate job for a year and a half, I got laid off due to the recession and found a much better (though lower-paying) job at a college with coworkers I enjoy and the opportunity to take some graduate English classes and realize that English lit really is my passion.  And it seems that now, just as I’ve hit my stride, we’ve begun the slow process of saying goodbye.

In some ways, I feel like we’re still living with a girlfriend we’ve already broken up with.  We’ve already got one foot out the door.  And even though our house is up for sale, and I’ve already taken to browsing cute houses in the neighborhood we’re hoping to live in in Little Rock (where Jon is now going to be doing a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine), it’s like Charleston is making a last-ditch effort to win our hearts and keep us from walking away.  She’s decking herself out in golden sunshine and gorgeous flowers- camellias and pear trees and azaleas– hoping to catch our eye with her beauty.  She’s warming up and whispering in our ears about lazy afternoons spent sitting on the beach.  She’s even started sweet talking us– my boss can’t stop lamenting my leaving and telling me what wonderful things I’ve done for the department.  And she’s trying to make us jealous, flirting with a new crop of medical residents and suggesting that maybe she’ll be just fine without us.

The truth is, I didn’t expect it, but I fell for Charleston.  I love the narrow streets and hundreds-of-years-old houses of downtown, with jasmine covered fences and gnarled live-oaks dripping with Spanish moss.  I love that there are 80+ amazing restaurants to visit and enjoy.  I love the weather.  I love being able to go to the beach every single weekend.  I love my neighborhood and my cute old house.  So while I’m ecstatic to be moving back home to Little Rock, closer to friends and family, and while I’m already scoping out the perfect Hillcrest bungalow, I’m also a little bit heartbroken to be giving up this unexpected love I found for an old Southern belle.  And as she keeps turning on her charms, it’s getting harder and harder to face the fact that we’re leaving at the end of June, no matter how excited I am to go back home.

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kitchen catch-all

eating in

  • For St. Patrick’s Day, I made Tartelette’s Chocolate Whiskey Pots de Creme.  Tartelette is also a Charleston resident, and her site is full of gorgeous photography and delicious baked goods, and definitely worth checking out.  She features a lot of gluten free recipes, so especially check her out if you’re looking for gluten free food.  This Pots de Creme recipe combines a couple of my favorite things: whiskey and chocolate.  The recipe is really similar to the Hominy Grill Chocolate Pudding recipe I’ve written about previously, except this recipe is sweetened with honey instead of sugar and obviously, involves whiskey.  Despite the whole baking-in-a-waterbath thing, the recipe is pretty quick to put together, and the result is DELICIOUS.  Thick, richly chocolatey, not sickeningly sweet, with a warm hint of whiskey. If you, like me, are a big chocolate pudding fan and/or big whiskey fan, check this recipe out.
  • Saturday morning I decided to be fancy and make the Sticky Lemon Rolls that had caught my eye on The Kitchn this week.  First and foremost, let me say this: if you want to have these rolls on a Saturday morning, start them on Friday night. They need two separate one-hour rises, plus 30 minutes of bake-time, so the time to start them is not 9 am on Saturday if you want to have them for breakfast. Despite the long prep time, these rolls are DELICIOUS.  I didn’t have the called-for cream cheese to make the cream cheese frosting, so I made a simple glaze with powdered sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest.  They weren’t as sweet or pretty as they would have been with the cream cheese frosting, but they were still a unique and tasty treat.  I even took some pictures for y’all:
  • I’m not too proud to admit that I make an occasional Rachael Ray recipe. I cooked a lot of her recipes when I was first starting out as a cook, and many of them remain favorites.  On rainy Sunday evening, I made her Sweet Onion Mac and Cheese, which is basically an extra cheesy French onion soup meets pasta. It was delicious.

eating out

  • Wednesday we went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday with dinner at Wild Olive, an Italian restaurant on John’s Island.  Wild Olive is a newer venture from the people who brought us the Fat Hen, a French restaurant very similar to downtown’s Rue de Jean, another favorite, where the owner of Fat Hen and Wild Olive was once a chef.  One of my favorite things about Wild Olive is the $25 carafes of house wine.  I also love that, much like Rue and Fat Hen, they have a delicious mussels appetizer– Wednesday I tried the white wine, fennel, and sundried tomato variety, and, as expected, they were delicious, with a yummy, buttery sauce that we ate up by soaking bread with it.  The beef carpaccio was also quite good.  For an entree, I decided to try something new and went with ricotta gnocchi with wild boar ragu.  It was delicious!  Any readers who visit Charleston would do well to remember that all the good restaurants aren’t just down town, and both Wild Olive and Fat Hen are worth checking out.
  • Saturday we checked out a place in Mount Pleasant called Crave Kitchen and Cocktails that I had never heard of until friends asked if we wanted to go.  While I’m not sure it ranks in my top 10 or even 20 Charleston restaurants, and it had a fairly generic atmosphere, Crave’s food was prepared well and presented beautifully.  I’m a huge fan of mussels, and we tried both varieties of the mussel appetizer, one in a coconut red curry broth similar to one I’ve had at Atlanticville, the other a more traditional white wine broth like I’ve had at Rue de Jean and the Fat Hen.  Both were large portions that would be a bargain at the regular price of $10, even more amazing at a half-price special they were running.  I had a cedar-planked salmon entree which was served ON the plank with a Greek spinach salad featuring artichokes and olives and feta.  It was pretty good, though the fish was a little dry and could perhaps have used a marinade or sauce of some sort. Jon had a burger, which he said was very good, and our dining companions had sea bass, which was very impressively plated, and butter-poached seafood, which featured some really tasty lobster claws.  Just goes to show that even a Charleston restaurant that fails to blow me away still provides a darn good dining experience. I’ve yet to have a bad meal in this town.

food for thought

  • I started a new tab up top, Charleston Eats, to track all the places I’ve tried and have yet to try in this town.  It’s full of links and mini-reviews, so if you haven’t already, check it out.
  • I’m not much of a vodka drinker, and I confess I’ve never had limoncello.  Having read the Manhattan Food Project’s post about making homemade grapefruit limoncello, though, I might have to remedy this.  Anyone else ever made their own limoncello?
  • Apartment Therapy featured a peek inside the Maker’s Mark distillery kitchen.  It’s 1950’s retro, it’s full of my favorite color, red, and I LOVE it!  I already have a kitchen full of red, featuring a black and white checkered floor, so maybe now I’ll be inspired to try some robin’s egg blue accents.
  • New York’s schools are having a battle over bake sales.  If you ask me, officials are looking in the wrong direction if their concern is childhood obesity.  An occasional baked-good is essential to a healthy life, I personally believe.  Not to mention, most homemade items contain real ingredients instead of corn syrup and preservatives, and beat out most processed foods.  If we are really concerned about what kids are eating, we need to focus on reforming the school lunch program.  Right now, students are fed sub-par food and a minimal amount of fruits and vegetables. Most of their food is pre-packaged and re-heated, not fresh.  Getting fresh produce into schools and getting processed foods and vending machines out would go a long way toward making our students healthier.  So would ensuring that they have an hour of physical activity per day.