Coffee Fail

I knew my morning was going to be a crapfest when I failed at making coffee...twice.

First, Nic calls me at like 4 in the morning from Egypt to remind me to wire him money since he lost his ATM card. I briefly consider letting him starve as retribution for calling me at that hour. Instead I wake up at 7, put on the coffee pot, and try to use Western Union's website. The stupid thing is loading so slow you would think I had dial-up and AOL and it was 1998.

While I wait for a page to load, I go to get my coffee, throw in some stevia (my attempt at using less artificial sweetener, because stevia is supposedly an herb, and obviously all herbs are good for you), and some milk. And the milk curdles. I throw out the coffee and the carton of milk, and put the coffee pot back on for take two.

I go back to the computer to continue with the Western Union website. I get all the way to Step 5 Receipt, but there is no receipt. So then I have to call Western Union, at which point they tell me the system cancelled my money order because I entered something wrong, and I need to start over. Obviously this is going to be a morning with a lot of take twos.

I go back for my coffee. I have another carton of milk in the fridge, so I grab that and the stevia. The milk curdles AGAIN. Seriously. I throw the chunky coffee down the sink. Whatever. I'm having a Diet Coke, so much for cutting back on those artificial sweetners.

Anyway, long story short, it took three tries to wire the money and one more phone call. It took me three tries to leave my building because I forgot stuff/dropped my rent check in the hallway somewhere. And it took my 20 minutes to get my bagel with cream cheese at Dunkin Donuts (vehicle for delivering the remainder of my smoked salmon to my belly, I didn't want it to go bad while in Chicago).

Really too much to handle without my coffee.

P.S. I Just realized this is my second post about coffee on this blog.

Eating Down the Fridge

If you've been following the food blogging trends as of late, you may have noticed this little challenge--to skip a week of grocery shopping and subsist on what you have in the fridge, freezer, and pantry. From what I can tell, it started over at eGullet at the end of February, where it was called "national eat the stuff in our freezers and pantries week." I've seen it mentioned on quite a few other blogs, but when I saw that A Mighty Appetite (Kim O'Donnel's Washington Post food blog) was hosting an "Eating Down the Fridge" week starting March 9, I thought it would be fun to participate.

And by fun, I mean I thought that if I was participating in an external challenge, I might be able to control my urge to stop at the moderately expensive grocer on the way home every day. I have to say, having this food blog has certainly exacerbated my grocery shopping habit. I can't tell you how many times I go to the store just to buy one or two (or ok, maybe ten) things just to make a particular recipe I've been wanting to try.

So this week I've been saving some money, rotating out some long-stashed food, and putting together some creative, if not blog-worthy, meals. And I haven't been to the grocery store for anything.

Thus far I've made the two loaves of bread, a chocolate-stout cake (which I planned to post, until I destroyed it while frosting it--delicious but hideous), tuna pasta salad, and pulled pork. I defrosted half of a pork shoulder that I've had in the freezer since the fall, rubbed it down with a brown sugar and spice mixture, and dropped it in the crock pot to cook while I was at work. I used about half of the pulled pork on these bar-b-que sliders, served on left over dinner rolls from last week that were getting dangerously close to the crouton stage.

Next week we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Where Have All the Girl Scouts Gone?

Maybe I'm getting antzy too soon, but isn't it Girl Scout cookie season? CNN is writing about Girl Scout cookie selling ethics, so it must be the season of the Thin Mint. Apparently there is a "a flock of 3.7 million Girl Scouts" and all their unethical parents are hawking their cookies for them at work so their daughters don't have to take time away from their "soccer, Hebrew school, karate" commitments.

First of all, you think with a flock that big I could score a box of Thin Mints, but I haven't seen one yet. What are my coworkers the most ethical parents around or something?

Second, why weren't my parents so unethical? I was a Girl Scout for (far too many) years, and my Dad never took that little sign-up sheet to work. Just like my parents never put that stupid sticker on their car that said "Proud parent of a Burnside Honor Roll Student." And you know what, I'm okay with that. Sure, I had to sit my little butt at a table outside the bank to sell my cookies in the freezing cold, but at least I know how to make correct change and talk to strangers now! Look, I've even made a career out of talking to strangers. Although, I have to say, I think strangers like Girl Scouts more than reporters. But the point is, what are parents going to do next, do their kids Hebrew school homework and play in the soccer games for them?

Back to the cookies. I'll take as many boxes of Thin Mints as I can fit in my freezer, please. And one box of those ridiculously sweet ones with the caramel and coconut for Nic. (I checked the cookie descriptions on my local chapter's site and apparently they're called Samoas now, but I'm pretty sure they were Caramel Delights back in my days in the old Green and White.)

And even though I object to the practice on principle, I will compromise my beliefs and buy from some Girl Scout's parent if need be. I'm a sucker for a Thin Mint.

What are you ordering? If you like the peanut butter ones, have no fear, the Girl Scouts are apparently immune to the recent peanut butter recall fiasco. Whew. Close call all you Do-Si-Doers.

Photo by Flickr user bandita (Creative Commons license)

Fun with Stats

I was flipping through my StatCounter information today, and I came across some pretty hilarious stuff in there with the stats. For example, recent keyword activity (in other words, my blog came up in a search when someone entered these search terms) includes: home made pepper spray, cooking with pepper spray, cooks in the kitchen story, and--my personal favorite--"peppermint extract to stop cat spraying?"


First of all, I don't recommend cooking with pepper spray or making it at home, from my personal experiences. Second, what is this story about cooks in a kitchen? And finally, what are you people doing to your cats?!

I was pleased to see however that there were quite a few people looking for a kibbeh nayeh recipe that might have found some guidance from blog. However, the person looking for the "balsamic reduction for desert" is probably not going to have much luck. I never met a Bedouin who stocked balsamic vinegar. (If you didn't get the last joke, desert as in Sahara, not dessert as in chocolate cake. Also, it was a bad joke.)

I also found out that one of my best friends, MK, has been lurking in the blogosphere with a cute little blog about her life. My picture was even on this blog, and I didn't know about it! But she slipped up in her covert actions when she linked to my blog on her blog, because someone (actually several someones) clicked that little link, and so her blog showed up in my "recently came from" statistics. Caught ya!

I am going to have to start looking through these statistics more often.

Layer Cake, A Testament to My Intelligence

I don't really bake cakes, mainly because they're kind of impractical, especially if you are a household of two. I guess I could bake cupcakes, but unlike everyone else on the planet, I have not been swept up in the all too enthusiastic cupcake trend. Plus, I think of cake as a dessert that only really goes with birthdays. But since my dear friend Taylor was celebrating a birthday this weekend, I promised to make the cake. A lemon layer cake to be exact. The taste and texture turned out perfectly, and the recipe came from my friend Katie, but none of that is as interesting as my attempts to actually assemble the tasty, perfectly-baked cake and fluffy frosting. Consider this a tutorial on how NOT to put together your layer cake.

Okay, so when you bake a cake in two round cake pans, the tops come out a little bit rounded. No surprise. So you're supposed to remedy that for proper stackability by shaving off some of the dominess. Well, I'm cheap and hate wasting stuff, so I did minimal shaving. In fact, I took off so little it didn't really do much except let me taste the cake before I served it. Then I started spreading frosting to "glue" the layers together. Okay, going good so far. Then I plop the top layer on, and start frosting the outside of the cake.

At this point I realized something clearly wasn't going according to plan. First of all, the space between the layers was more like an abyss. Second, the icing probably needed more confectioner's sugar or less lemon or something because it was a wee-bit on the runny side and was pooling at the base of the cake. The only thing I could think to do was throw the whole thing in the fridge and hope that that would make the icing set, or something.

About an hour later Nic took the cake out of the fridge and tried to help smooth out the icing. The only reason it looked somewhat presentable was because he did this. My attempts only further damaged the cake's appearance. So I sliced up some lemon, and we decorated the cake in an attempt to distract the eye from the mishapen cake and its melting frosting.


At this point, I called my mom while I was waiting for everyone to come over for dinner and explained to her my cake decorating dilemma.

"I think I should have shaved off more of the rounded part of the cakes so that they stacked better," I said.

"Well yeah, you should really shave the bottom layer until it's flat," she said. "But at least you don't have to shave the top layer since it's already flat."

"It's already flat? What do you mean?"

This is the point where I realized that instead of stacking the cake the way any normal person would, with the flat part of the second cake on top of the first cake, I (for some yet unknown reason) stacked the cake rounded side to rounded side. I think I was thinking that I had to do this so that the top of the cake would be flat. (And look at that cake again, the top IS perfectly flat!)

"I thought you were supposed to be smart," my mom said. (The other quotes were sort of an approximation of the conversation, but that right there is an exact quote, albeit said while she was laughing at me.)

Also, that icing definitely need less lemon juice or more confectioner's sugar because by the time my friends got there to eat the cake, the lemon had separated out of the frosting and formed pools on top of the perfectly flat top and along the sides. Chris called it a "Hurricane Katrina" cake, i.e. flooded.

But hey, it still tasted good!

Two New (To Me) Cookbooks, And Where I Have Been

I'm not much of a cookbook person, but I have to say, I am so excited about my two new cookbooks! Nic gave me The Flavor Bible for my birthday, and I couldn't resist picking up How to Cook Everything when I saw it on super-sale at Costco. I read Mark Bittman's blog, and after much consideration decided that this was the perfect all-purpose, general reference cookbook which my small cookbook collection was lacking. (Sorry Joy of Cooking, you're just too old-fashioned for a modern girl like me. No offense.) All I have had time for so far is a quick scan of both, but I'm sure you will hear me (or rather read) reference these two books a lot in the coming months. What I like about both of them so much is that they are more general reference and less specific "have-to-follow-exactly" recipes, so they allow for a lot of creativity and flexibility.

I know I haven't been a very good blogger this week, and I know this is kind of cheating for a post, but I have mostly been remaking some of the holiday goodies that I posted last week for more packages for coworkers and friends. And this weekend I will be doing it all a third time for the family I will see on Christmas. I have made second batches of the candied pecans and almonds, both types of marshmallows, and the fudge--but this time I added 3/4 cup of dried cranberries, which made this SO much better. (I'll put a little note on the original post.) I am going to try out a few new goodie recipes for the rest of my packages tonight, if time permits, so those should be coming up soon. And eventually I will get back to cooking (and posting about) real food.

Birthday Dinner

This weekend I had the pleasure of going out to eat with some friends on Friday night at Tallula's in Arlington. The dinner was delicious, but I couldn't possibly write anything resembling a review because the Gnome's Water (gin, lavender, and cucumber) and the Apples and Ale (apple cider and bourbon, I believe) were so strong. I know, I know, how un-foodie of me to order cocktails with a nice dinner, but it was my birthday dinner! Nic held up his side of the foodie relationship, ordering a lovely Zinfandel to go with his steak.

For much better pictures than you will ever see here, head over to my dear friend MK's blog (she's professional wedding photographer). She took some lovely pictures of the food and a not-so-lovely picture of me, awkwardly shirking from the camera after blowing out my candle. What can I say, I'm not photogenic.

In other food news, I think I may have made my new favorite biscotti recipe last night (CHAI FLAVORED), but unfortunately, I didn't measure the flour I had to add to get it to the right consistency, so I will have to make them again (the tragedy) and post the recipe later. In the meantime, I have some sesame seed cookies coming up as soon as I have a minute to edit the pictures!

FAILURE

I just made the WORST tasting gingerbread that has ever been made. And a double-batch! This means I wasted more than 4 cups of flour, 2 cups of molasses, and 2 cups of sour cream. And I have two bald, zest-less oranges in the fridge! I also now have nothing to bring to my running group Saturday morning. Where did this recipe go wrong?

I adore Ina Garten, she has the best recipes ever, but this one was NOT a winner. After consulting with Nic I confirmed that it wasn't just a matter of taste. This was pretty much inedible. I like not-sweet desserts, but this was beyond just not-too-sweet. The only thing I changed from the original recipe was that I omitted the white raisins and the crystallized ginger. I can't believe that those two mix-ins would have saved this. Maybe they are magical, but I just don't know...

Some one, please, send me a better gingerbread recipe. I don't have the heart, or flour, to test something else without a personal recommendation.

I will get back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow morning.

Snacks of Shame

This is how I know I'm having a bad day. I ate this:



And this:



Which were both after eating a burrito bowl from Chipotle for dinner. Shameful.

I developed a bad habit in college of eating large quantities of [some sort of gummy]+ queso+ diet coke while staying up to write papers. So when I worked three hours overtime to try to pull together a story about the conference I was at all day, I resorted to my snacks of shame to keep myself sane. I finished my story and filed it a few minutes ago. Now excuse me, I have to go lay down. I feel nauseous from all the cheese and sugar and jittery from the massive caffeine consumption. Hopefully tomorrow I will have some more pleasant eating to report.

Please feel free to share your snacks of shame in the comments. It will make me feel better about myself.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

I just got these pictures from Carrie and I wanted to share them, even though I know everyone has already moved on to Christmas, as evidenced by the incessant carols playing in all stores and public places. I'll post a real leftover recipe soon: turkey pot pie, made entirely from leftovers. Then I guess I'll have to get in the holiday spirit and start baking Christmas cookies.

The Ghost of Thanksgiving Past

Thanksgiving 2006

The last thing I remember was the ball of blue, firey gas barreling out of the oven. The force from the fireball, or maybe it was my natural reaction to reel backward, pushed me across the kitchen until the refrigerator brought me to an abrupt stop. I still had the match in my hand.

To explain how I ended up nearly blowing myself up, I have to back up about a day. We had a long weekend for Thanksgiving because we went to an American university in Cairo, and we were supposed to go to Upper Egypt to check out the tombs and whatnot. I was not even supposed to be making Thanksgiving dinner. Then Nic got sick, had a 104 degree fever, and we canceled our trip. I went to the pharmacy at the bottom of our building and bought Nic some super strength antibiotics and prayed they would bring the fever down. I had seen the inside of the hospital once, and I didn't want to go back unless the situation was really dire. I’m talking hit by a bus dire.

The square my apartment building sat on. I have no pictures of the kitchen for some reason...
This is when I decided to make Thanksgiving dinner. All our friends were gone, Nic was sick, and I had nothing else to do other than take his temperature every couple hours. I went to the big "Western" grocery store in the "suburbs" to get some things to make a "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner. I got everything I needed for stuffing, mashed potatoes, and even pumpkin pie. I bought a little chicken to stand in for the turkey. Everything was going smoothly. Until I had to light the oven.

Our stove was a 1950s gas model that had seen better days. You had to turn on the gas then light the pilot with a match. To light the oven though you had to turn on the gas and leave the door shut for just a minute or so or else the pilot would never light. I guess I left the door closed for a minute too long.

I jumped up from the floor in front of the refrigerator screaming, "I'm on fire! I'm on fire!"

I wasn't actually on fire, but I was at a loss for words to describe what had just happened.

Nic, delirious with fever, came running to meet me on my way to the bathroom. I felt my face. It was still there. I felt my neck, that was ok too. Then I grabbed my hair. And it came out in my hand. I started wimpering. Confused to see me not actually up in flames, Nic grabbed me and started shaking me. "Are you ok, do we have to go to the hospital?"

I couldn't really form words. I was staring into the mirror wimpering, watching a significant portion of my bangs flutter into the sink. I leaned into the mirror and saw that my eyelashes were also gone.

"Are you crying because you’re hurt or are you crying because you lost your hair."

"My hair," I wimpered.

I know it’s vain, but I really liked my eyelashes. They were ALL gone. But other than that, I was ok. No visible burns, except for a squiggly line across my neck where the flame hit the chain from my necklace and a very uncomfortably warm face for about a day. I still managed to finish Thanksgiving dinner. The pie even turned out somehow. Neither Nic nor I went to the hospital. But I know how lucky I was to walk away with just a handful of stinky burnt hair. This is why I will never, ever deep fry a turkey. I don’t want to press my luck.

Six months later when we were moving out, we told our landlady that we thought the oven was a little dangerous.

"That oven? I love that oven! That’s the best oven I’ve ever owned! There’s nothing wrong with that oven. You just don’t know how to work an oven."

I guess not.

If only I could justify using a POUND of butter...

This recipe just blew me away. Whipped potatoes with garlic and cheese from Saveur, courtesy of my RSS reader. I am sure they are great, mainly because they call for cooking the potatoes in a POUND of butter, but who in the world can use that much butter for 6-8 servings and still sleep well at night? I did the math. Assuming you shared with 7 other people, that's still 400 calories a serving in butter alone. That doesn't count the cheese and potatoes in the recipe. I love mashed potatoes more than anything, but I don't think even I could come to terms with making these. Still I have to wonder how rich and creamy these potatoes would be...

Puck-in Food Art

Now there's some team pride. I was going to do the Eagles logo on the other side, but that was a little more complicated. Nic tried to make a rival Washington Capitals pumpkin, but it didn't really turn out. He's going to try again this weekend. (I know a Phillies logo would be more apropos because of the World Series, but I'm not going to lie, those will be the only baseball games I watch all year.)

The roasted pumpkin seeds were really good too. Salted and toasted in the oven for 10 minutes. I was going to bake something with them, but I just ended up eating them all instead.

World Food Day

Today is World Food Day. A day to "highlight the plight of 923 million undernourished people in the world," so designated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. And this year, the day comes as food prices around the world are rising, meaning more people are going hungry.

923 million--I did the math for you, that's a little less than 15 percent of the total world population, although of course the hunger is not evenly distributed . Undernourished means continuously consuming less food (energy) than is necessary to carry out basic daily tasks and remain healthy, according to the FAO, or in other words, constantly being hungry. This year the focus of World Food Day is on "Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy." Because global warming is going to make more people hungry.

This article in the Washington Post blog, A Mighty Appetite, points out that 1.4 billion people in the world live on less than $1.25 a day. In the U.S., $7 a day is the maximum daily allotment for a family of four on food stamps. The article raises the question:

Ever wonder how much you spend a day on food?

Well, I'm pretty meticulous about budgeting, so I went back and looked at what our household of 2 spent on food in September. On average, we spent about $20 a day. For two people. Not four. Shocking, even embarrassing, but eye-opening.

Gourd-geous

I'm back from my long weekend. I finished the Baltimore Half Marathon and ate a ton of great food I didn't have to cook. I picked up a peck of tart apples on our drive back through farm country, but unfortunately I also picked up a wicked bad cold. So I am eating canned soup and oatmeal. Thrilling.


No food, but here's a picture of a pretty fall basket I put together with some gourds I got from the bed and breakfast where we stayed in Gettysburg. I was going to go outside and get some colorful leaves to add, but then I realised that here in Northern VA the leaves are still green, and it is 80 degrees outside today. Those 100 miles or so really make a big difference.

Top 5: All Time Favorite Comfort Foods

A little while back, Nic and I were talking about food, a fairly regular topic of conversation for the two of us, and we started making "Top 5 favorite foods in the whole world" lists. I think the conversation started when Nic was extolling the virtues of rice pudding. This soon branched out to "Top 5 favorite food combinations," "Top 5 places to eat in the world," Top 5 places to eat in D.C.," etc. I don't remember if I ever decided on my all-out favorites. That seems like a big commitment, but my favorite comfort foods was an easier list to put together. Just typing the list makes my very, very long day at the office seem not quite so bad.

(In no particular order.)
1. Poppop's meatball sandwiches on REAL rolls from the bakery
2. Chocolate-raspberry cake (see Final 12 Hours in D.C.)
3. Mashed potatoes w/ brown gravy
4. Perogies w/ sauteed onions and butter
5. Fried tomatoes w/ Italian bread

(I realized while typing this, I have made exactly zero of these since I started my blog. We'll have to remedy that. Maybe I can even get Poppop to do a guest post for the meatballs!)

Let me know your Top 5 in the comments--or if you can't think of the full list at the moment, one or two will do.

Top 5: Worst Kitchen Moments

Anyone who has read High Fidelity, or seen the movie, might get the reference in this post's title. In the story, these three guys who work at a record shop are constantly making Top 5 lists. There Top 5's are more like, "top 5 musical crimes perpetuated by Stevie Wonder in the '80s and '90s," but you get the idea.

They liked to talk about music, I like to talk about food.

My Top 5 Worst Kitchen Moments
(In no particular order.)
1. Watching a roommate boil ground beef.
2. Spilling an entire pan of banana bread into the oven.
3. Loosing my eyelashes and a significant chunk of the front of my hair when a ball of flaming gas exploded from my oven in Egypt.
4. Getting stuck in an elevator with a turkey brining in a (clean) trash can.
5. Catching 100 lbs. of Alaskan halibut and salmon, then having it rot when the chest freezer broke three weeks after we bought it.

Feel free to share yours in the comment section. I would like to be outdone.

The best part of waking up...

I think the most enjoyable thing I consume most days is my first cup of coffee in the morning. I know, I know, that probably isn't going to inspire confidence in repeating the recipes I post on the blog, but they really are delicious, or I wouldn't post them! (And trust me I have had some FLOPS, which can usually be detected by a lull in posting for a few days.) But as I begrudgingly force myself out of bed in the morning, the only bright spot is the coffee pot, shining like a beacon through the morning fog.

And that cup of coffee hits the spot like few things can. I think the only other times I feel that intense food-satisfaction on a regular basis is after I finish a long run or race and get to eat. (That's how I motivate myself through the final miles...just finish and you can have a Five Guys cheeseburger. Sad, I know.)

I don't have an espresso machine or a milk steamer, much to mother's dismay whenever she comes to visit. I have a $10, 4-cup generic coffee pot. (Nic doesn't drink coffee, so why waste the counter space with something bigger?) I create my own poor, just-out-of-college, economy Starbucks. I heat up the skim milk in a wee-tiny saucepan, a hand-me-down All Clad that I think is really intended for melting butter. (A special pot just for melting butter! Alton Brown would be appalled by such a uni-tasker.) So, that's kind of like steamed milk. I use pretty decent coffee, some South American Kona blend I bought at Costco, and then the real treat--hazelnut syrup. (The whole bottle cost about as much as one hazelnut latte at Starbucks.)

Five minutes, three ingredients.

Final 12 Hours in D.C.

I was scanning through the food blog posts on my Google Reader, and I came across a great post on Amateur Gourmet (one of those blogs that is so successful the author got a book deal out of it). The post posed a meme:"12 Hours in..." How would you would spend your final 12 hours ever in your city? Obviously, there has to be a lot, but not too much, food involved.

I pick a Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

10 a.m. I woke up and it was miraculously exactly 65 degrees with just a light breeze outside. Perfect running weather! I hit the Mount Vernon Trail for a run, winding my way up the Potomac from Old Town, around the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Monument, and to the National Mall. (Since I don't expect these last 12 hours to be tomorrow, I have gotten so much faster, I can do this in an hour without breaking a sweat.)



11 a.m. Like I said, I am not even too sweaty, so I get on the metro and ride over to Eastern Market. I walk around, get a coffee, eat some samples (especially cheese samples), and pick up some hot sauces at Uncle Brutha's. I have to stock up on the special green Fire Sauce No. 9 they make if I'm leaving town for good! I take a chunk of cheese, probably the 5 county cheddar, and some bread for the road.

11:45 a.m. But before I leave Eastern Market, I get a crab cake sandwich at the Market Lunch. There is a spot for me to sit at the one table they have.

I was pretty decisive up to this point, but then it started to get tricky.

12:15 p.m. I think about going to the Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress, in my opinion, the most beautiful room in the city. But I only have 12 hours, and there is so much more that I want to do. So I head over to a place I spent much more time while I lived here: the Sculpture Garden (The National Gallery of Art one, not that one on the other side) to dip my toes in the fountain and people watch.

1:00 p.m. Then I'm off to Dumbarton Oaks to stroll through the gardens and maybe sit in my favorite tree branch to read a book. (The branch is about 3 feet off the ground.) I don't know what time of year it is, but I'm assuming the roses are in bloom. Of course this is one of the only places in D.C. where you have to pay admission to get in, but it is definitely worth it.



3:30 p.m. I jam in a quick trip to the National Zoo. It's not the most impressive zoo I've ever been to, but I have a nostalgic attachment to it. I say goodbye to the pandas. Tai Shan's not so little anymore, but I will always remember him as that tiny little fuzzball that graced the front page of the Post for weeks.

4:15 p.m. On my way to the metro, I stop at Open City in Woodley Park for a chai latte to go. So good. Then it's back to my apartment to get ready for my fabulous going away dinner and night on the town. (I thought about skipping this step, but my sense of logic and order would not be appeased. You can only gracefully do so many things in running clothes. I had to draw the line.)

6:00 p.m. Now how to get back into the city, why by water taxi of course! From the harbor at Old Town Alexandria to Georgetown, I float my way back downtown.

6:45 p.m. Deciding where to get dinner was extremely difficult. I basically narrowed it down to Rosa Mexicana, 1789, and D.C. Coast. I was able to eliminate Rosa Mexicana because I remembered they had a sister restaurant in NYC. I think I like 1789's food better than D.C. Coast, but it can also be a bit stuffier. In the end I choose 1789. It is quintessential D.C., which let's be honest, is a little stuffy in general. And their lamb is amazing. But I have to save room for dessert, which although tempting, I will not be getting at the restaurant.

8:00 p.m. Since I chose to stay in Georgetown for dinner, I can now get my favorite dessert in the whole world (the. whole. world.): Filomena Ristorante's chocolate raspberry cake. Maybe I will just get the whole cake instead of a slice. I can eat it for breakfast the next day.

8:30 p.m. For my last stop of the day, I didn't pick the snazziest place in D.C. In fact it is decidedly un-snazzy, but again nostalgia got the better of me. So I spend my last 1.5 hours at the 4 P's in Cleveland Park with friends. (Technically, it's Ireland's Four Fields, but I have never heard anyone actually call it that.) And in the perfect last 12 hour scenerio (since I already control the weather and when flowers bloom it seems) that great Irish band that plays there a lot, the one with the female singer and the bassist that looks like a bobble head doll, is playing.

So where would you go and what would you do with your last 12 hours?

Breakfast of Champions: Chocolate

Saveur has a great article on the Web that combines two big parts of my life: food and D.C. politics. They asked the presidential candidates and a regular whose who of the inside the beltway crowd what they eat for breakfast. A lot of the answers are your standard, boring, health cereal. But there are some good ones in there.

My favorite answer: "Chocolate ice cream, but a chocolate doughnut will do in a pinch." That would be Nancy Pelosi. How can you not think she's cool?

A close second, however, was Andrew Sullivan, "A large coffee and ginger snaps. Terrible, I know."

I however am not so cool, but I do have the same thing for breakfast as Maureen Dowd apparently, "just coffee."