Dream with Our Eyes Open

Clockwise from upper left: country white bread, eggs, fresh basil, new yellow potatoes, blueberries, two kinds of tomatoes (still greenhouse-grown: local field tomatoes are only just setting their first fruit now), blackberries, sweet cherries, strawberries, more blueberries, and a miniature struan bread loaf.

There likely would have been a couple more things, but it started raining. So we decamped to Mark's Kitchen, where we were joined by our daughter for brunch.

(An odd thing: the icon here is displayed less effectively than it is on LJ. I've never noticed this phenomenon before, but that typeface, Pristina, has very distinct "thicks and thins," and the white-on-dark seems to have made the issue easier to spot as well. The type looks fuzzier here. WTF?)

The review of the Peruvian place will have to wait, because right now I want to talk about the awesome Chinese meal we had last night.

Washingtonian magazine does two big sets of restaurant listings every year: 100 Best and Cheap Eats. The 100 Best just came out, One of the places they mentioned was Sichuan Jin River (formerly called Sichuan Pavilion). Szechuan is not generally our favorite (neither the Mr. nor I care for really spicy food, and I simply can't eat bell peppers), but the review this time was so enticing (and we usually agree about 85% of the time with these writeups) that we decided to give it a try.

Really, the only problem that we had was that the review's recommendations weren't necessarily easy to match up with items on the menu once we got there. But with the things that did match up, the waitress' advice about the specials, and smillaraaq's suggestions, we did really well.

We started off with lotus root salad. I had been wanting to try lotus roots for a while. The salad was light, tangy, and slightly spicy; the slices of lotus root are crunchy and a bit crisper than water chestnuts. There were some bell peppers (red and green) in it, but they were easy for me to avoid. Then we had a scallion pancake, something we also get at A&J: this one was even better, a little lighter and with more scallions.

The first main dish was flounder with black bean sauce, one of the specials. It came in a huge, shallow dish, with scallions, some minced fresh hot peppers, and the black beans scattered on top. The fish was excellent, bits of fillet that were very fresh in flavor, with a great texture, and not at all overcooked. The sauce was spicy but not too hot for me and the Mr. As we started to work our way through it, we discovered a treasure trove of beautifully cooked vegetables underneath the fish: snow peas, fresh bamboo shoots, and carrots. Then we had a beef hotpot with young taro: tender, moist, lightly flavored with five-spice and soy. I didn't know what to expect from the young taro chunks, but they were like fluffy mashed potato balls. Our vegetable dish was snow pea leaves with garlic: one of my favorites anytime and very well made here. It was tender, flavorful, and a beautiful bright green.

We packed up most of it (we had overordered, of course, with all those tempting dishes on the menu), and then we had dessert! They actually have a range of desserts: eight choices. We had hot sweet tofu in rice wine and then eight-treasure rice: molded steamed sticky rice with red bean jam filling, jujube chunks scattered throughout, and hot rosewater-scented syrup with sesame seeds poured over it. This was a complete sugar overload, obviously, but we loved it (and took home more leftovers).

We're going to have to go back with more people sometime soon, and we may also try using Sichuan Jin River as the carryout for dinner at our next tabletop RPG session.

Just a few flurries, but it was very seasonal for the Winter Solstice today.

We'll have a late Hanukkah celebration with my sister Amy's family and our stepmother tomorrow. There will be cheese (goat brie, lemon Stilton, mustardseed gouda, and cordobes) and crackers with fig jam and red grapes; latkes (shredded potato pancakes) with applesauce and sour cream; beef brisket made with beer; fresh spinach cooked with scallions and parsley; cucumber sunomono (made by smillaraaq); chocolate Hanukkah gelt (coins); and iced gingerbread cookies (made by The Young Lady) ... .

We had some apples left over from the stock-up I did before Hurricane Sandy, so I made an apple cake (adapted from the 1975 Joy of Cooking - Apple Cake Cockaigne; mostly I made it a little leaner by using skim milk and the smaller amount of butter specified, and I added some oat to the batter for a little more fiber).

It's simply not that cold out - it's 55°F. But yesterday hit a high of 78°, with sunny skies: today it's rainy, and it hasn't been this cold for almost 6 months.

Yesterday I was wearing capris, a tank, and sandals. Today I just came in from spending 2 hours at the Takoma Street Festival, wearing jeans, a tee, a rainjacket, and (again) sandals. And I'm cold, and slightly damp.

At the festival, I had a vegetarian platter (felafel, green beans in tomato sauce, and rice with lentils), a couple of bites of the grilled chicken skewer and crabcake that the Mr. had, hot cider, and a yogurt. The yogurt was free: Quaker Co. (they of the oatmeal) is launching a new line here in Maryland, and they were giving the stuff out.

Clockwise from lower center: Juliet mini-tomatoes, green beans, assorted apples (Jonamac, Jonagold, Grimes Golden, etc.) and Bartlett pears, tatsoi greens, country white bread (for the Mr.'s toast), brown eggs, and in the center, assorted heirloom tomatoes.

(And the resolution on the camera phone really does suck: I've been working on editing photos taken with the big Nikon in the last couple of months, and the difference just springs out and waves "Hi." I've reduced the display size here on the fly with HTML so that it doesn't look too awful.)

So it's been a bit more than a month since whymzycal assigned me these seven things! Life has been rather complicated during that time, to say the least.

The Mr. wanted to eat out tonight, so I flipped through Washingtonian's "Cheap Eats" listing, which just came out for this year, and we picked this place in Wheaton (MD).

Ren's Ramen is a tiny shop (although apparently larger than their original location in Bethesda) with maybe seven tables and a counter in the front window that seats another five diners. And the menu consists of really only four things: shoyu ramen, miso ramen, salt ramen, and veggie salt ramen. The non-veggie ramen soups all come with bamboo shoots, ground pork, scallions, and one slice of roast pork, plus you can add things like additional roast pork, a soft-cooked egg, seaweed, and so on. (You can also order gyoza - but they ran out of them by 6:30 p.m. - and steamed or fried rice as a side, and coke, diet coke, ginger ale, or bottled green tea to drink.)

I had the miso ramen with seaweed and cooked cabbage added; The Mr. had shoyu ramen with extra pork and an egg. It was a good-sized portion (although you can get a larger one if you really want!) and completely delicious. I thought The Mr.'s was rather too salty, but I can be sensitive about that (and it was shoyu ramen, for heaven's sake ... ).

The shop imports its ramen from Sapporo. Service was friendly if slightly harried, but then, they were very busy at that moment. We waited about 10-15 minutes for a table.

vom_marlowe asked about "Five favorite foods!"

Dark chocolate - with or without stuff added to it. I like a smooth texture on the melt, so I'm not all that happy with Black & Green's much-vaunted organic stuff, which seems brittle and grainy to me. Chocolove Ginger, Lake Champlain Peppermint Stick, and Endangered Species (multiple types: Raspberry, Cranberry & Almond, Chocolate Nibs, etc.) are favorites. I like fancy boxed dark chocolates too, like Godiva and Neuhaus.

Sushi - salmon nigiri sushi with a squeeze of lemon, flounder with shiso (perilla) leaf, yellowfin, California roll (with tobiko), and eel and cucumber roll are favorites.

My own matzoh ball soup - made from my mom's recipe.

Broiled Wellfleet scallops with butter, or in a lime-honey mustard-soy marinade - fresh from the bay the same day!

Mixed green salad with garden or farmer's market tomatoes and balsamic vinaigrette dressing - I can eat salad for many, many meals in a row without getting tired of it.

There is a Cakelove cupcake with my name on it in the kitchen!