Sweet Corn ... a couple ways

In pasta

With a little Parmesan and Olive Oil

On pizza

Also yellow bell peppers, cilantro and Frank's Hot Sauce = a little Mexican flavor for my pizza. This is something I would definitely repeat.

Grilled

A little olive oil salt and pepper to start, butter and old bay to finish. This was absolutely MOUtHWATERINGLY GOOD!

Happy National Farmer's Market Week!

August 1 - August 8 as declared by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. You still have some time to visit your local Farmer's Market. I know there are still two in Frederick this weekend. Baughman's Lane and the Fairgrounds farmer's markets are on Saturdays. You can find more information here.

All of this was purchased at the East St. Farmer's Market in Frederick. There's kale, an onion, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, peaches, potatoes and some Amish butter rolls. (I don't know if the Amish makes the rolls any different, but they were made by Amish women and they are DELICIOUS!) I have big plans for this pile of produce :-)

Watermelon & Tomato

I have always wanted an excuse to make these tomato, watermelon and basil skewers that I saw on an episode of a Giada De Laurentiis show and then again in her book New Italian Favorites.

Today I had a seedless watermelon, grape tomatoes and basil olive oil. (By the way, I don't mind cheaper eevo for everyday use, but I LOVE basil olive oil. I use it in everything! If you're a big olive oil user, this is something you should definitely try.)

Close enough for me, I decided to make a salad. I also had some fresh mozzarella in the fridge and stopped and got some rosemary focaccia and balsamic vinegar from my local favorite Firestone's Market on Market.

Oh this was sooo good! A sort of, take on caprese salad. The bread was delicious too, especially when dipped in the leftover vinegar, olive oil and watermelon/tomato juices. (A second piece was required.)

The perfect end to dinner was the Raspberries in Dark Chocolate Bar. They sell them for like a dollar and I can never walk into that shop without buying one.

A Sunday in the Park

A summer time favorite in Frederick, concerts on Sundays in Baker Park.


On this particular Sunday, there were about 30 hula hoops being swung around. The hula hoops seemed like they'd be fun to catch in a picture. The music wasn't too bad either.

Las Vegas - Round 1

If I ever right a book there WILL BE a chapter about the time I went to Vegas with my Dad. Yup, that's right I went to Vegas with my father. We went to see a fight. We gambled, drank, took in a show and oh, that's right got referred to as a married couple. Luckily I find myself a rather well adjusted person and figured it would happen so the mental scarring will hopefully be minimal.

So, if you haven't been ... you've gotta get to Vegas, even if it is with a parental unit. (In all honesty, I think I liked being introduced to the idea of Sin City, I'll be that much more comfortable drunkenly gambling when I go back on my own.)

 Dad & me at the Mayweather v. Mosley fight. This whole thing started over some Bourbon & Diet Cokes and the idea that we always said we'd go to a UFC Bout. (There weren't any coming up in Vegas soon and Dad flipped when I mentioned this fight was taking place.)

Caesar's Palace ... ate at the bar in Rao's (make sure you order the Antipasto della Casa.) My first try at Black Jack ... we made money. 

Other memorable places we ate ... 

- Segundo (Mexican) had a very interesting cucumber margarita and a pretty good quesadilla. They also had some good salsas. 

- Cabo Wabo Cantina, yes we ended up getting Mexican again, but I couldn't resist.

Almost won $7000 playing "Let it Ride," had to settle for about $350 because the dealer had a 3 of spades instead of a 4. 

And Priceline is the way to go for finding hotels. That whole "name your own price" thing is amazing. We stayed (in separate rooms of course, haha) at the new Trump Towers. Hands down nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. You could live in one of these rooms. Huge bathroom, euro kitchen, tons of storage, would make a very nice home away from home if you were one of those people that frequented Vegas.

 

 

You can see more pictures on my Facebook.

A New Meal at my Favorite Restaurant

Located at 44 North Market St. in downtown Frederick (not more than 1 block away from my apartment) is Isabella's Taverna & Tapas Bar, an incredible restaurant serving Spanish cuisine. Their specialty is tapas (small plates) meant to be shared. Of course sharing isn't necessary and after tasting I doubt many people want to. A couple weeks ago I joined my parents and younger sister there for dinner. It was unmistakeably summer at this point so my usual meal seemed a little too warm. 

With one exception ... there is no way to visit Isabella's and not order their Esparragos Fritos con Salsa Alioli. These are crispy panko crusted asparagus "fries" with Smoked Tomato Alioli and could make anyone like asparagus. Really if you're ever in the area, you must visit and try these, they will change your life! 

But I felt it was indeed time to try something new, so to round out my meal I picked out two cold dishes. The first was a special, was a heirloom tomato salad with jalapeno slices to give it a little kick.

 Perfectly refreshing, with cucumber and red onion to add more crunch.

The second was Salmon Curado de la Casa. Organic Salmon cured with White Truffle on Red Onion and Grilled Bread

Absolutely delicious and now something I regularly order. This is definitely something to try if you love smoked salmon (like I do.) I am hoping to try and recreate something like this at home.

dabbling in my kitchen

Frugality is something I've struggled with my whole life. Graduating from college and moving out of your parents house can be a quick lesson. I've been doing my best to cook from within my kitchen. Meaning using the things I have lying around. Trust me, I'd much rather be following a fancy recipe from one of the many food blogs I spend so much time drooling over. Those have to get saved for special occasions as I really can't afford to buy new ingredients every day, plus I could never in good conscience throw out all those leftovers and my roommate sure isn't going to eat them! (Man I need more people to come over for dinner, as I really want to cook for  more "special occasions.") So these dabbling in the kitchen posts will be my attempts at making edibles mostly from things I've got lying around with maybe the occasional real recipe (I can only hope.) And no it won't just be pasta!

 

 For starters, grilled cheese. Wheat bread, a wedge of Laughing Cow Swiss Cheese, pear slices and caramelized onions. I used a panini press. Gotta love those grill marks

So my initial inspiration came from a blog post on The Kitchn about how to french cut an onion and how an onion cut that way lent itself favorably to caramelizing. So this whole effort started with an onion. And caramelized onions are just so easy to add to food, ya know make them just a little
                                                                                    fancier ...

Next came some macaroni and cheese, there's no picture of this one but, you really should try it. Just a box of macaroni and cheese, another wedge of Laughing Cow Swiss Cheese (really great stuff), onions and a favorite ingredient Siracha! (The swiss cheese probably isn't essential, I just didn't have any milk and this helped make the mac n' cheese more creamy.)

P.S. caramelized onions also go great in eggs

Gary Conklin should be thrown in prison

Along with the rest of the workers at the Conklin Dairy Farm!
So I'm dabbling ... political/social activism this time I suppose. If you haven't already seen the video of Gary Conklin and his workers beating cows (young and old) in the face, poking them with pitch forks and kicking them in the utters, please watch it. It's actually pretty horrible, but it needs to be seen. You probably don't want to eat a hamburger right before you do it though. This is ridiculous, I don't pretend to be a vegetarian. I'm not a huge fan of red meat anyway. But a world without cheese simply isn't a world worth living in, but how is this worth it? This is probably crazy, but why would you want to eat something that came from a miserable creature? Maybe you do?

Watch it for yourself http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/26/conklin-dairy-farms-video_n_589826.html

Firestones & Restaurant Week

So for those of you that don't know, Firestones is my favorite bar in Frederick. Hands down its just the nicest place, fun people, pleasant atmosphere, great food, etc. And they certainly know how to mix a drink. However, I can't exactly afford to eat there as often as I'd like. So as soon as I heard Frederick was going to try its very own Restaurant Week, I made reservations at Firestones. I'm 99% sure it was the best meal of my life. A three-course meal for $30 ... what could be better. OK so I splurged on the wine pairing and it was better.

The amuse bouche being offered around the restaurant, compliments of the chef. A very tasty sip of tomato bisque. You can tell I tasted it before I took the picture ... we were really hungry. As for the bread I’m really glad we ordered it.

Appetizer
"Seared Diver Scallops
Virginia country ham, frisee, poached pear, hazelnut smoked bleu cheese, three-herb vinaigrette, toasted hazelnuts"
The scallops were well cooked however there was no hint of smoked blue cheese, and blue cheese is definitely a taste you can't miss.

To cleanse the palette, Fresh Melon Sorbet ... can I buy this somewhere?

Entree
"Ancho Chili Lime Spring Chicken
garlic cilantro whipped potatoes, orange mustard pan jus, ginger glazed carrots"
Delicious sauce, impressed that I could taste the chili.

My roommate ordered the pork chop with bourbon sauce ... hint of teriyaki ... kept dipping my fork in the sauce while she was eating ... just too good

Dessert
Chocolate Terrine
a.k.a chocolate heaven on a plate with strawberry and vanilla syrup

Fried Rice

So my original plan was to make some fancy ginger fried rice yesterday for the Chinese New Year. Well, the blizzard of 2010 held my car hostage until this morning when I was finally able to get a hold of a shovel, so there was no way I was making it to the grocery store. I had even cooked the rice on Saturday night before heading to the bar. Oh well, pizza and wine sounded better at the time (I get really caught up in the Olympics), so I Googled a simple fried rice recipe and came up with this one on About.com. Easiest meal I've ever made. I seriously only had rice and eggs. Maybe not the healthiest dinner, but the addition of a little Sriracha both eliminated the need for salt and pepper and made me want to go back for seconds. By the way if you don't know about Sriracha you need to get out from under your rock of a home. Also, everyone needs a wok, you can make a stir fry out of almost anything. (Great for leftovers!!) It has to be one of the easiest ways to cook and I will definitely be pulling mine out more in the future.

FOMO

Hey!

According to Merriam-Webster Online, the definition of dabble is "to work or involve oneself superficially or intermittently especially in a secondary activity or interest." Well I have a lot of secondary interests. Right now I'm trying to learn how to cook, decorate a first apartment, enjoy downtown Frederick and get around the world. There's really just a laundry list. Now the other thing I need to define to help explain my goal for this blog ... FOMO. It stands for "fear of missing out," and no I can't take credit for making that one up. I have a fear of missing out on anything, so when something intrigues me or strikes my fancy I dabble. Why not, right? Maybe I'll find a new passion or two, but that isn't really my intent. As I dabble my way through life, expect a whole lot of everything.