Toast

I figured I would treat myself to breakfast out this morning so I went to Harry's Main Street Grille, Westminster Md. The original intent of this blog was egg breakfasts but the smell of toast brought back a wave of nostalgia. My favorite breakfast growing up was toast and milky tea. In part because I had and still have a delicate stomach, but also because I was a picky eater. I did not like pancakes but loved waffles. That still holds true. I gagged on any kind of egg and hit the yolks of hard boiled eggs around the house. The solidified white was fine but the yolk. Ugh. I went so far as to pick the yolks out of potato salad, macaroni salad and my mom's tuna salad. Yes, I would surely die if I ate an egg yolk. Hence toast. My mom attempted to make homemade bread at times but a lack of patience for proofing yeast and kneading resulted in dense, yeasty bricks of bread. Rye and Pumpernickle were usually in the pantry along with the great American classic, white sandwich bread. Town Talk to be exact. My mom did then and still has a love- hate relationship with toaster dials. Therefore the toast usually burned. My mom would take a knife and scape the char off the bread and put it on my plate and say. "Eat it. It will make your hair curly.". One could only hope since those damnable chemical Tonettes were the only sure fire way to make my stick straight hair curl. My mom was and still is a stickler for cleanliness and safe food storage practices. This burnt shingle of toast could be adorned with a choice of near frozen butter, ice cold jam or refrigerated peanut butter. None of that could even think of soaking into whatever crevice the burnt offering had. And soa it went. Morning after morning in that little bungalow on 4th Ave. Saturdays meant play outside day. All day. So the morning started with a walk up the street after breakfast to my best friend Sharon's house. Inside this two story shingle house was a life totally opposite of mine. Sharon's mom did not get up early on Saturday. Nor did she iron, make a bed, clean the house. Nothing. With her long red hair knotted up in a chignon she padded around the house til 1 or 2 in the afternoon in a bathrobe and slippers with a long cigarette dangling from her ruby lips and a cup of coffee attached to her other hand. But. This woman could make toast. Only white sandwich bread, Town Talk, of course, was eaten in this household and lots of it. Ruth had no issue with the toaster dial. Nor did she really give a care about perfect food storage practices. The butter was pulled from the cupboard in a butter dish, room temperature depending on the season. In the summer the milk solids separated from the clarified butter bordering on rancid. Jams and peanut butter were pulled from the pantry. The toast, golden to perfection absorbed the buttery goodness and whatever other topping sunk generously into the pours of the bread. Yum. I still eat toast for breakfast and like my mom, i have issues with the dial on the toaster. Bagels, miche, challah, 7 grain, rye and wheat breads fill my refrigerator. No white sandwich bread in sight. I no longer use butter but the peanut butter and jam are kept in the refrigerator and as I smell the burnt toast and stuggle to get the peqnut butter to spead I think of the hope of curly hair and mornings of my youth. Next time. Eggs on Main

Funky food find in Federal Hill

Installing an art exhibit can have interesting side bars. One of the artists for Sizzlin' Hot had van issues so in the pouring rain I headed to Federal Hill i asked Pam to go along for company and knew she would enjoy seeing the studio. After 1.5 hours spent choosing art and taling about art, we hit the streets in the rain to find a place open for lunch. So Bo was closed, as were many of the choices since they close at 2 and reopen for dinner. We walked in and out of the open staurants perusing menus and making sure the air consitioning was not on freezing. One restaurant had an interesting menu so wewalked inside. To my dismay country music was blaring. I guess if the place had been full of people the music would not have been songrating but I looked at Pam and said "5 minutes in here and I will be throwing beer bottles". Back into the rain and heading down the street we seemed to come to the end of the line. Nichiban, a sushi bar, was open and not freezing. We sat ate the bar and the man behind it said, I am the only one here today so you can order small appetizers and the lunch sushi. ". We looked over the menu and settled on eggplant tempura , shrimp tempura and the soft crab roll. He immeduately said , "No eggplant today.". My mind immediately flashed back to a Jamaican restaurant on the shore experience. That is a story for another time.
We were able to substitute veggie tempura.

The verdict. The veggie selection was interesting. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, celery, green peppers, broccoli and green beans. A bit oily but tasty. I could have done without the potato. Battered and fried potato seems a bit over the top. Te celery would have been beter with no strings attached. The shrimp, to my liking, were a bit undercooked so I knocked off the batter. The soft crab roo, was very good. Since Pam does not like avocado, he substituted cucumber and drizzled the top with wasabi mayo. I like a little bit of sushi with a lot of wasabi. We got a small blob of wasabi and some sliced ginger. The roll was excellent. Three plates, two beverages- $24 and change. $12 and change each. The chef told us Nichiban was the oldest sushi bar in Federal Hill and he had been there for 20 years.

A funky food find on a very wet day

Funky food find in Federal Hill

Installing an art exhibit can have interesting side bars. One of the artists for Sizzlin' Hot had van issues so in the pouring rain I headed to Federal Hill i asked Pam to go along for company and knew she would enjoy seeing the studio. After 1.5 hours spent choosing art and taling about art, we hit the streets in the rain to find a place open for lunch. So Bo was closed, as were many of the choices since they close at 2 and reopen for dinner. We walked in and out of the open staurants perusing menus and making sure the air consitioning was not on freezing. One restaurant had an interesting menu so wewalked inside. To my dismay country music was blaring. I guess if the place had been full of people the music would not have been songrating but I looked at Pam and said "5 minutes in here and I will be throwing beer bottles". Back into the rain and heading down the street we seemed to come to the end of the line. Nichiban, a sushi bar, was open and not freezing. We sat ate the bar and the man behind it said, I am the only one here today so you can order small appetizers and the lunch sushi. ". We looked over the menu and settled on eggplant tempura , shrimp tempura and the soft crab roll. He immeduately said , "No eggplant today.". My mind immediately flashed back to a Jamaican restaurant on the shore experience. That is a story for another time.
We were able to substitute veggie tempura.

The verdict. The veggie selection was interesting. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, celery, green peppers, broccoli and green beans. A bit oily but tasty. I could have done without the potato. Battered and fried potato seems a bit over the top. Te celery would have been beter with no strings attached. The shrimp, to my liking, were a bit undercooked so I knocked off the batter. The soft crab roo, was very good. Since Pam does not like avocado, he substituted cucumber and drizzled the top with wasabi mayo. I like a little bit of sushi with a lot of wasabi. We got a small blob of wasabi and some sliced ginger. The roll was excellent. Three plates, two beverages- $24 and change. $12 and change each. The chef told us Nichiban was the oldest sushi bar in Federal Hill and he had been there for 20 years.

A funky food find on a very wet day

Pho & Grille. Olney MD

Pam and I headed to DC to pick up artwork at Quest Skinner's Art loft. Quest is full of life a zest and I hope everyone will come to the Art Center this week to see "Sizzlin Hot".

Hunger set in on the way home so we stopped at Starbucks for a quick snack and a perusal of food options in the area. In the past I loved to eat at Sabang, an Indonesian restaurant in Wheaton. Much to my dismay it is now closed. So we poured over the options : Thai, Indian, Mexican etc. Assessing miles from the corner of University Blvd and New Hamshire Ave, we decided to drive up New Hampshire Ave, drive the gps nuts and see what we could find along the way. Nothing seemed to pique our interest and if it did, it was on the wrong side of the road or blew by too quickly. At 8:30 we knew we had to make a decision or there would be no food. The gos directed us to Olney - Sandy Spring Road toward Georgia Ave. Familiar territory for me. At the intersection of the roads we popped into a strip mall to check the options. Pho & Grille caught my eye. I like Vietnamese food and am particulary fond of the food at Mekong Delta in Baltimore
We drove around checked menus and ended at the Pho. My obaervation has been that when a particular ethnicity supports its ethnic restaurant then it must be good. So in we went. The place was fairly full. We perused the menu. I got the seafood soup and Pam got the shrimp grille. We split an order of summer rolls. The summer rools were light and tasty with leaf lettuce, rice noodles and succulent shrimp rolled in a delicate rice wrapper. Not a fan of peanut sauce I dipped mine in siracha. Pam said the peanut sauce was yummy.

Our main courses came. I cannot speak to the shrimp grill but the soup was superb. A delicate fish broth with shrimp, steamed fish cake, steamed fish quenelles and shrimp and yellow vermicelli noodles. I quickly squeezed the lime into it and added the lettuce, cilantro, sliced jalapenos and mint. (In Mekong Delta in Baltimore this soup is made with shrimp, scallops amd crab meat, clear rice noodles served with mung bean sprouts , lime, jalapenos and extra cilantro.) What the heck. I added the mint. All of the flavors mellowed together with a mild back flavor of the fish sauce.

I had a coconut water and Pam had a freshly squeezed limeade. All this for under $30. Not bad.

Mekong Delta is a family run restaurant. Pho & Grille is a chain. My tastebuds prefer Mekong but if I ever get a hankering for some Vietnamese food while on the road I will certainly stop.

Why blog another blog about food?

Like most kids, i was a picky eater so I won't dwell on that. That being said, what I relish the most now about my childhood is that it was full of eating adventures and, in retrospect, mighty fine cooks.

I can probably count on one hand the number of times we went to a restaurant. Rites of passage celebrations were catered by the loving hands of my aunts and my mom. There culinary expertise was firmly rooted in Eastern European and Italian kitchens. Trays of lasagna, noodles and sauce and often cheeses were diplayed proudly next to pans of galumpki or halupki depending on how the spellings were bastardized, pieroghi, yellow wax bean soup, potato latkes and on and on. Oh, the real treat for me, pickled pigs feet, noe politely referred to in culinary circles as "trotters.". These women were culinary giants and as I watch Wolfgang Puck turn out a creamed cabbage quenelle or Michael Symon prepare a dish with trotters, I confidently realize I am the product of iron chef kitchens. The prize, whose dish received the most compliments. And oh the litter boxes came out. Helen's cabbage rolls were to salty, Margaret's were the best. Catherine's nut roll split but had the best blend of honey to nuts. And, of course, the pieroghis. My Aunt Margaret made the best.

So, why another blog about food? All of us have an archeological dig of food memories. Some good, some not. But the ingredients are there. Life takes us on unexpected journeys and places but we need to nourish our bodies. I will take the reader around my town and beyond and maybe entice them to take their own culinary adventure.

In another blog I will write about ingredients and cooking and turning out chemical free ( as free as humanly possible) energizing dishes for our bodies and souls.

As i write this i am all to aware that there are people in our own country and arounf the world who are malnourished and dying from dehydration and starvation. If the reader is so inclined, support local food banks and reputable world food relief organizations. No one should go to bed hungry but there are those that do