The power is back!

I’d sketched out a series of posts, to write about what happened after brunch at Belga Café, but last week’s storms threw a wrench into those plans. I left the hot humid city last Friday night for Matt’s house, in order to meet his sister-in-law T and my mother the next day for some shopping adventures, so I wasn’t in the district when the 70+ mph winds whipped through. It knocked out power in a lot of areas, and my neighborhood didn’t get power back until sometime on Tuesday night. I came home Wednesday afternoon to a musty apartment and a stinky refrigerator.

While we were still out shopping in Delaware on Saturday afternoon, T got the unfortunate news from her husband (Matt’s brother) D that they also lost power at their house in Baltimore. Matt’s community was one of few residential neighborhoods in the Columbia area that didn’t lose power! Matt and D packed up a few things from Baltimore, and were waiting at Matt’s when T and I returned. We had a packed house last weekend! Four 30-something adults, and one adorable Bichon Frise.

I kept an eye on my neighborhood through our community listserv and through Twitter. There was a lot of good information, scattered with a bunch of complaints and one or two conspiracy theories. I’ve not lived in DC long enough to understand certain things, like this terrible horrible hatred of Pepco, and I am lucky enough to not deal with them myself (utilities are included in my rent).

D & T stopped home on Sunday morning to check on the house, and to bring down some of their defrosting food. One box in their freezer contained the top tier of their wedding cake, which they’d planned to thaw and eat on their first anniversary. Oh man, this was the best wedding cake ever, a moist and delicious chocolate mint with buttercream and chocolate ganache. There was an upside to all the power outages: eating leftover cake!

Luckily I had my work laptop with me, and I was able to work remotely from Matt’s house on Monday and Tuesday, instead of trying to deal with the commute into DC again. News reports told of downed trees, downed power lines, detoured Metro buses, and packed Metro trains. The power came back on in D & T’s house early Monday afternoon, but mine didn’t come back until sometime on Tuesday night.

Matt brought me back into the city late Wednesday afternoon, and I took the time to clean my fridge before hitting the grocery store to replace some essential items, like milk, butter, and yogurt. I’ve got an amazing A/C window unit, and it didn’t take long for the place to cool down. With this weekend’s temperatures expected to top 100° F, I really hope we don’t have an outage like this again anytime soon.

Belga Café

When I moved into the city, I had the idea that every once in a while, I would explore a new DC neighborhood. One Saturday earlier this month, Matt met me to wander around Capitol Hill and the Eastern Market area. I knew I wanted brunch, because I love brunch, but I heard that so does everyone else in that area. I scoured Urbanspoon and Open Table, looking for a place with open reservations and good reviews. I settled on Belga Café.

We arrived slightly early for our reservation, but the place was not packed and we sat down right away. I was a little overwhelmed by the menu; unless I’m at a vegetarian- or vegan-friendly restaurant, I’m used to zoning in on the one or three menu items that I would eat. There were quite a few here! I don’t remember them all, but our server was very helpful in letting me know which items were full of meat and which were not.

My body wanted something savory that day, and I picked gepocheerde Hoeve Eieren met truffel. Our server assured me it was vegetarian, and explained that it was the first day on the menu; she was going to order it herself as soon as she had the chance. Matt and I decided not to get any appetizers, but he ordered a mimosa and I got a bottle of San Pellegrino.

My dish had creamy polenta topped with slow-poached eggs, sprinkled with bread crumbs and shaved truffles, and garnished with two baked Parmesan cheese pieces. Matt’s dish was all a blur to me (something with pork sausages) because I was so focused on my meal. I think my eyes rolled back in my head after my first bite, because Matt giggled at my expression, asking me how good it was. I could taste each component of the dish. Everything complemented each other in a perfect way. The egg yolk drizzled over the polenta, and it was such a tasty treat. The size of the truffle shavings enhanced the flavor, and never overpowered it. Each bite was better than the last. I finished every bite. I—no joke—resisted the urge to lick my plate.

There are so many restaurants in DC, and many very good ones much closer to my apartment, but I can’t wait to get back to Belga Café and see what else their menu has to offer. Perhaps I’ll bring my parents when they come into town for a visit; my mother loves mussels, and if they are half as good as my brunch eggs, she’ll be in love.

Max’s Best Ice Cream

I’d passed by Max’s Best Ice Cream many times, wondering about the truthfulness in the shop’s name. There seemed to be a good number of quality reviews, but, as often is the case, I had neither the time nor the money. Max’s is a cash-only business, and I rarely ever carry cash on me; this is the main hindrance to me testing the validity of “best ice cream” for so long.

One Sunday last month, I was able to stop in after having a lovely dinner with Matt. Luckily, Matt had some cash on him, and while we weren’t exactly planning on hitting Max’s after dinner, he was kind enough to treat me to some anyway. Score!

I was a little overwhelmed by the ice cream menu, which boasted several delicious sounding flavors, but for my first visit, I went with something simple: a strawberry waffle cone. Strawberry is my favorite ice cream, and if a place has a good strawberry, I know they are mint. This strawberry was wonderfully fruity and creamy, without being overly sweet like some strawberry ice creams can be. The chunks were plentiful, and a nice size for biting. Nothing can be worse than a huge hunk of strawberry that’s too big to chew! The waffle cone was crisp, and the flavor didn’t take anything away from the ice cream.

I can’t wait to go back sometime I have cash on hand, and eat my way through the menu. They appear to have a variety of flavors that change, including seasonal flavors, so if I spot something tasty, I may just have to suck it up and use the ATM inside.

From city to suburbs to city again

Almost a year ago, I moved from my hometown of Philadelphia to the suburban wilds of Columbia, Maryland. However, suburban living got the best of me, and I have now moved again! This time, the new space in inside the city again, specifically, Washington, DC.

At first, I was super excited about the move, but the 2+ hour one-way commute was really bringing me down. My one-way commute now? 15 minutes. How sweet is that?

So, while the domain here will remain the same, I’ve slightly changed the title of the blog to 100 (+50) Miles South, and will soon be posting some recent adventures around my new town. Adventures! I now have time for explorations, and can’t wait to share those with you.

And who am I kidding? It’s still mostly going to be food photos. Stay tuned!

My crazy commute

About a week ago, I received a text message from Mint.com, alerting me that there was unusually high spending in my accounts for Public Transit. Sitting at my desk at work, I literally LOLed.

Over the past month of working in DC (hey! It’s been a month!) I’ve spent just over $331 on public transit costs, which includes credit on my SmarTrip card for parking, Metrorail, and Metrobus. This is up from my Philadelphia transit budget of a mere $46.50 per month, and, since I didn’t take the bus every day, I almost always had tokens left over at the end of the month. This left me buying fewer tokens the following month, therefore saving many dollars.

I’m not complaining, too much. Even though I am now paying out the wazoo for transit, it’s really not that bad, considering that I have to drive to Greenbelt, take two Metro trains, then transfer to a bus. After 8 hours, I get to leave work and do it backwards.

My commuting time has also greatly increased. I used to walk to work (or take the bus, if it was too hot or too rainy) and home again, which only took about 35 minutes. Now, I leave my house just past 8am and get into the office just before 10am. The worst part, really, is waking up. I don’t get much time to relax in the morning, to do things like make lunch or eat breakfast, as it’s difficult get be out of bed early enough due to circadian rhythm disorder.

Regardless, I really do like my job, which makes the commute seem not as long. I also have been marathon knitting a sweater each for my mother and father, which wouldn’t have been possible had I not had such a long ride for doing nothing but.

I get my yarn fix

I knit. I love to knit. The idea of taking some yarn and a couple needles and in a few days having a piece of art is amazing. While I’m knitting at home, I watch a lot of Netflix. This wasn’t really an issue when I lived in Philadelphia, had a half-hour commute, went to work at noon, and stayed up well after all my friends had already gone to sleep.

Now I get home around 8pm, not that much earlier than before, but now I need to be snuzzled in bed around 11pm. (This is extremely hard for me for a number of reasons, the most important being my circadian rhythm disorder. That’s for another story.) This doesn’t afford me the luxury of watching 2-3 movies a night anymore.

I’ve also lost my knitters. While I still run a blog and podcast with several of them—one long overdue for an update, I know—I miss the interaction of weekly visits to one of our favorite coffee shops for hours of “social knitworking”, and the occasional bottle of wine.

Enter Looped Yarn Works.

Last Thursday, I trekked over to the cozy store just north of Dupont Circle; I needed a few knitting notions that I’d not yet unpacked or simply couldn’t find. Besides grabbing some stitch markers and a new tape measure, I discovered that I’d just coincidentally stopped in on their regular open knit night.

I tend to be shy when meeting new people, and especially in groups larger than half a dozen, but so far I’ve been content to sit, knit, and listen in on the conversation. I’m slow to remember names, but the group is friendly and funny. In addition to a lovely, well laid-out store with friendly and knowledgeable staff, I’ve found a little place I can hang out and get a regular fix.

I’ve been told of other yarn shops in the DC area, but this one will most likely be my go-to shop. It’s not too far off my route home from work, and I’m happy to fork over money to people who seem genuinely interested in my current projects and willing to help me if they can. Indeed, last night I purchased 9 skeins of Malabrigo worsted for a sweater for my father, and was asked to show it off when it’s finished.

Red Robin

About a month back, before I’d even started packing up my old apartment to move down here, I spent the weekend at Matt’s house while his parents were visiting. The drive from their house is about an hour and a half, and they had come up early to install a new screen door to the main entrance of the house. We spent dinner in Baltimore on Saturday night with Matt’s parents, brother and his girlfriend (dinner which will be discussed in another post!) but Sunday was just for us.

I woke up early that day because I wanted to get breakfast at IKEA, but we missed it by about a minute; a restaurant employee was just roping off the line as we walked up. Instead, we got lunch, walked around the store for a good long time, and picked up a few things for my bedroom. (I’ll discuss this, with photos, when I’m completely done unpacking.)

After a busy day of running errands and assembling furniture, we hit Red Robin for dinner, mostly because it was one place that was still open. We ordered the fried zucchini appetizer—so good!—and both Matt and I ended up choosing the same entree with minor differences: the Whiskey River BBQ Burger. His came with a gourmet beef patty and steak fries, mine with a Garden Burger and sweet potato fries.

(Side note: I’d ordered a Boca vegan burger at Red Robin in the past, and remembered not liking it, although I’ve bought and cooked my own Boca Burgers at home. I’m not sure what the difference is.)

This thing is delicious and wonderfully messy. The sauce is sweet and tangy, and fits terribly well with the crunchy onion strings and cheddar cheese. My only complaint is that it’s stacked so high with toppings that I have trouble getting it into my mouth—an interesting side effect of my wisdom teeth removal two years ago.

The servers at Red Robin are great about answering questions on food ingredients; if they don’t know, finding that information is no hassle. I don’t remember who out our server was that night, but she was fabulous about bring me more freckled lemonade when my glass was nearing empty.

I cannot comment on any of the meat-oriented dinners, but the veggie burgers are definitely acceptable. Easy to customize, tasty ingredients, bottomless fries… It’s a decent place to hit when you’re hungry and in the mood for a sit-down restaurant-type burger (as opposed to a place like Fatburger or Five Guys).

An overdue break

I am exhausted. I spent every weekend since Fourth of July doing something around my old apartment, even if it was just packing up a couple boxes. The past three consecutive weekends were filled with packing, moving, and more packing and moving. It’s amazing what you can fit into a studio apartment.

A lot of things went to Goodwill. I had so many things just sitting around that I no longer needed, or boxes left to me by my ex when he moved to Arizona that I never did get around to giving away until now. I’m also a master of using available space, and there were hidden hooks and storage all over my apartment. (When we took apart my bed to take to Jo’s house, I discovered an entire laundry basket full of tee shirts. I gave Jo two of them.)

This weekend will mostly be spent knitting and watching television, because I just don’t want to do a damn thing. Of course, there is much to get done—just about every room of the house is currently stacked full with boxes—but I think after the past month, a little weekend break will be the best thing ever.

I’m looking forward to being a bit more settled in, because I really want to explore more of the area. So far, I know how to get to and from work, and where the nearest Target, Trader Joe’s, IKEA, and Wawa can be found. Important things, you know.

The indoor potluck cookout

Today is the last day of my first week of work down here in Washington DC. So far, things have been going well, both for living in Maryland and working in DC. I haven’t done much actual work yet—being my first week, I’m still really just setting things up and getting the proper access—but my team is great.

I’ve spent much of my time commuting, trying to find the perfect way of getting into work. Tuesday found me taking a route that involved one Metro train and two Metro buses, which got me into the office a mere three hours after I left my house. Three whole hours. I’ve decided to stick with the Metro train, but added a DC Circulator; this brings my commute to under two hours.

Even two hours seems long, as my old commute from home to work was barely forty minutes, and that’s if I walked. I blame Georgetown for not having any Metro train station here. It’s all buses, and if I miss a transfer, it could be over half an hour to the next one.

But let’s focus on the good part of this week: food.

My first week ended with what should have been an outdoor cookout and picnic, but moved into the conference room once we learned the temperatures would soar to 105°F today. (It’s curently 100°F as I write this post.) Since several people were already signed up to bring desserts, I broke out of my usual baking comfort zone to create a delicious and easy cold pasta salad. Last night, I only had to boil water for the pasta, so it was great to make for summer.

Our lovely hodge-podge included not only my pasta salad, but also couscous, tofu salad, potato salad, vegetable plate with pita and hummus, watermelon, strawberries, tomato and spinach pizza, vegetable dumplings, brownies, strawberry-rhubarb pie, and pound cake with roasted stone fruit. There were also a few buckets of fried chicken for the meat-eaters.

It’s easy—and I mean super-easy—to make this salad, but if you’re the kind to like a recipe, here you go. I’d say it’s more of a guideline; add different vegetables, use a different dressing, Take away the olives. Omit the cheese to make it vegan. Whatever. It’s tasty.

Italian seasonings cold pasta salad

Ingredients

• 12 oz box tricolor rotini pasta
• 8 oz yellow sweet corn (about half-bag, frozen), cooked & drained according to instructions
• 14.5 oz can petite diced tomatoes with basil, garlic and oregano
• 6 oz can small pitted black olives, drained
• 15 oz can chick peas (garbanzo beans), drained
• 16 oz bottle Italian-style salad dressing
• grated parmesan & romano cheese blend

Directions

1. Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the box. I often add a bit of olive oil and seasoned salt to the water while boiling.
2. Drain the pasta, and transfer to a large mixing bowl. While the pasta is still warm, add the corn, tomatoes, olives, and chick peas. Stir to mix thoroughly.
3. Add about a third of the bottle of salad dressing to the pasta. Mix through the salad, and add more dressing as needed. I end up using about half the bottle.
4. Transfer the salad to a serving dish, and sprinkle a bit of the grated cheese on top. Cool completely before serving.

If I’d had more time, I would have used more vegetables, like diced cucumbers. I also normally get a bunch of cherry or grape tomatoes to cut in half for the salad instead of the diced tomatoes, but these work well in a pinch, in addition to being already seasoned.

Vegetarians, take note: some Italian-style dressings are not suitable for vegetarians, as they may contain anchovies or worchestershire sauce. If you’re making the salad vegan, be on the lookout for dressing that may contain hidden cheese.

Frisco Tap House and Brewery

A few weeks ago, I had an interview for a job in Washington, DC. Not just any job, but the one I wanted. The one I really wanted. The Job. While this in itself was nerve-wracking—as job interviews usually are—it had deeper implications: if offered the job, I would be moving from Philadelphia, PA (where I’ve spent most of my 32 years) to Columbia, MD, sharing a house with my partner, Matt. We’ve been dating two years, and the 100-mile commute was starting to get the better of us.

When I saw the opening for The Job in Washington, DC, I sent in my resume, fully thinking that I would never hear from these people, because a job that perfect is, more often than not, just a dream. To my surprise, not only did I share many an email, but also a phone interview; after that, I was called down for a full afternoon of meeting the team on-site.

Matt offered to buy me dinner that night; it was either going to be a celebration or a consolidation. I knew I didn’t want any of the local chain places, but didn’t feel like exploring too much, so I chose Frisco Tap House. We’d been there before, both at the old and new locations, and I wasn’t worried about trying to find something to eat with my vegetarian diet.

We started off with the empanadas, savory little triangles of fried dough filled with black beans and Monterrey cheese. I could eat about 20 of these myself, but we ordered just one dish and each had half. These are definitely fried, and fried good, but not so much that they are tough. The dough is crispy, flaky, and not greasy in the slightest.

For my dinner, I asked for a beans and rice burrito, with tofu and guacamole. When it came out, I admit I was a little disappointed in the presentation; the thing looked so plain and lonely on the plate, with its little side of greens and salsa. I was also expecting the guacamole to be on the side, like the salsa, and flagged my waiter before he could walk away. He explained that they always put the guac inside the burritos unless specifically requested to have it on the side. Ah. That makes sense.

The thing is huge. Not quite “size of my head” huge, but the burritos are deceptively large. That tortilla is stuffed full of beans, rice, cheese, and sauce. The tofu… oh man, the tofu. I figured there’d be tiny cubes of it peppered through the burrito, but the tofu is amazingly seasoned, savory with a bite that’s not fire hot but surprising. I could eat a plate of that tofu alone.

Since I knew I’d be driving back to Philadelphia that night, I opted for a root beer instead of one of the many many beers on tap. After that burrito, I also wasn’t hungry for any dessert right then, so we left without ordering anything off their menu. (We did end up at Tutti Frutti later that night, which is a nice way to end the night.)

Oh, and I did get The Job in DC, and will be starting in a couple weeks, and you may have figured out my the name of the blog. I’m looking forward to eating my way through most of Howard County, plus parts of DC and Baltimore.

And Wegmans. Please oh please I hope that Wegmans opens up as soon as possible. And, if it’s not asking too much, for it to be open 24 hours. kthxbai.