meatless loaf

I'm so annoyed with myself that I didn't have my camera last night to photograph my dinner because it was so perfectly A Home Cooked Meal.

I'd been wanting to try to make a version of "meat"loaf since I'd had the Meatless Loaf Hero sandwich platter at Kate's Joint when Barbara and I were visiting NYC. I'd asked our waiter what the base was, and he thought it was Gimme Lean ground beef style. So, I found this recipe, and tried it out last night. It was so good! It totally reminded me of my mom's meatloaf when I was growing up. Unlike lots of other kids (if the TV can be believed), I *loved* meatloaf. It was one of my favorite comfort foods. Now it is again! It was perfectly moist with the fantastic (and so simple) tangy glaze. I had it last night with roasted blue potatoes, sauteed green beans, and some challah. Today I'm going to have it for lunch on a sandwich of challah bread, and leftover green beans on the side. Yum.

I'm going to try to make a snack either tonight or in the morning for our road trip to the Ramp Festival. Last year I made some of (a riff on) Heidi's pocket tarts (and, while delicious, they were a pain in the behind to make because I used phyllo instead of puff pastry). But, I made the curried potato-pea puffs for new years (using actual puff pastry), and they were great and not to difficult. I've had a request for them again, so I'm gonna try to redd up some. Will report back...

Also, stay tuned! My good friend Nowlzie will be guest blogging for us about her recent lunch at a Google location (they're known for their FREE gourmet-style meals. I can't wait to read all about it!!

NYC or bust!

We had a fantastic time in NYC! Spent time with friends (though not enough, never enough), ate fantastic food, shopped 'til we dropped (literally), racked up walking miles like they were going out of style, laughed until our armpits hurt, enoyed one another to the fullest, showed the meerkat the sites, got the most use out of a whoopie cushion ever in the history of whoopie cushions, and generally had the Best Trip Ever. I [heart] NY. For sure.

Here's a little run-down of our adventures, day-by-day style.

Thursday:
We arrived in the afternoon, and headed straight for Kensington to visit pal Sarah, drop our bags, and start the eating tour. We walked down to a 'hood haunt called the Vox Pop Cafe for some eats, while the Meerkat read (with a little help) and laughed it up over how we'd used the whoopie cushion on the plane.

Then we wandered over to Park Slope to check out the ladybar Ginger's where they were not having karaoke, despite the advertisement that proclaimed they were. Still a good time, though. But, after a beer, our travelin' caught up with us and we retired back to Sarah's to have a chill evening and get some rest.

Friday morning we met up with my pal (and Beach Baby!) Doggie. She showed us around her 'hood in Williamsburg. We lunched at Bliss (where a mean Heidi Klum-ish waitress deigned to serve us between sneers). The food was eh, but it was a great time catching up with the Dog and people watching. Then we set out touring the nabe. Doggie showed us her favorite shop, Fuego (formerly Loveshine) which featured all kinds of awesome little things and Alex, the friendliest shopkeep ever. He had a little lotteria game that we got to play when we checked out that earned us 20% off. And, then he threw in an extra 5% because he wanted to play, too. Seriously, one of the nicest guys I've ever met. If you find yourself in Williamsburg any time soon, definitely stop in. Definitively a Good Time.


We stopped into the Bedford Cheese Shop. All I can say is: wow. I've been lucky enough to try cheese from this shop when the NYC Beach Babies have brought some to the beach. It surpassed all my hopes and dreams. The shop is fairly small, but was packed with fantastic, unusual and interesting cheeses, cute-funny-snarky signage, and uber-knowledgable staff. I tasted several, and lamented not being able to throw away everything I'd brought with me to stuff my bag full o' dairy delights. Another must see/try.


After that we bid Doggie farewell for the afternoon (although she and her pup, Java, did make another brief appearance!), and sat in a cafe for a bit. The one we wanted to try was filled to the gills, so we went across the street and settled in at New York Muffin. Perhaps we were asking for it by shunning the muffins in a muffin-based establishment, but our snacks were kinda grody. Great people-watching, but bad eatin'. Eh. Barbara fears and loathes any kind of wetness on a bread, and her eclair was actually dripping. However, I have a theory on how it got that way:


After that we made our way over to Nowlze and Bdub's. I love the Wolfinellis! They're in B-Burg, too, so after we made their dog, The Biscuit, sit on the whoopie cushion (and he called us "jackholes"), we hit the town for a dinner of fancy pizzas and more whoopie cushion hijinks. Dinner was at Fornino, and was fantastic! We each got a small pie. I had the special which was fresh mozzarella, gorgonzola, spicy olive oil, arugula and figs. Barbara got the Spinach Pie with olive oil, garlic (she swears she didn't taste any, but I swear it was loaded with garlic), mozz, spinach and pine nuts. Nowlze got the Margherita Classica, that was straight-up classic and delish. Bdub got the funghi misti with mixed wild mushrooms, truffle oil, thyme...and I forget what kind of cheese. We split a salad of baby greens, frisse, walnuts, dried cranberries and humbolt fog cheese, with some little cheesy crackers on the side. And, we had a pitcher of some of the best sangria I've ever tasted. Yum and yum.


The Wolfinellis had to work on Saturday, but we met back up with Doggie for a lovely breakfast at the Roebling Tea Room. The restaurant is housed in a gorgeous old building (I'm really curious what it used to be). The service was plagued by hipsteritis, but the food was interesting and exciting, and the food was so good the blasé attitude of our waitress ceased to matter. I had the Scrambled Egg with wild mushrooms, thyme and marscapone on brioche with a side of grits served with a sharp white cheddar and chives. Seriously fantastic. It tasted like a highbrow version of my favorite breakfast my mom made as a kid (called "egg gravy"). The eggs were creamy without being overly wet, the mushrooms were perfectly toothsome, the brioche was perfect, the grits divine. Really super. Plus they use as much local and organic ingredients as possible, which I always love. Yumazing.


Afterwards, we hopped the train with Doggie to Union Square to hit the market. So great! We almost skipped it, and I'm so-so-so glad we didn't! I bought several small prints at great prices from friendly and talented artists, we got the most hostile looks so far from some yuppies when we used the whoopie cushion and then howled about it, bought several flavors of locally-ish made maple candy (pure, pecan--my favorite, coconut and ginger), and looked at some gorgeous produce and other various offerings. It was sunny, and the perfect afternoon activity.

We then bid Doggie adieu, and hit The Strand--18 miles of books! Heaven! It was so packed that we didn't stay awfully long, but had a great time browsing. It's amazing to see that many books, and even though navigating the stacks was difficult, it was inspiring to see so many people in a book store.

That night we checked into a hotel (courtesy of my Marriott points!), dropped our bags, relaxed for a bit, then headed out to the East Village trekking to Kate's Joint. This place is a vegetarian/vegan dream! It's all about the comfort food, and has a huge menu of mouth-watering choices. We both started with an awesome caesar salad (that tasted like the one I made from the Veganomicon recipe) I went with the Meatless Loaf Hero, a "meat"loaf sandwich on foccacia with grilled onions and "special sauce" with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy. Barbara got her favorite, the Tofu Francese. It's a "crispy pan fried tofu in a lemon, herb, caper, garlic wine sauce" with mashed potatoes. This was definitely one of my favorite meals of the trip.


And, then afterwards all my hopes and dreams and prayers to the baby jesus were answered when we spotted a Pinkberry! I LOVE frozen yogurt, and it's hard to come by in the 'burgh. The craze has definitely hit NYC. There were gagillions of fro-yo spots newly popped up on every corner, but none compared to Pinkbery. It's freakin' awesome. Seriously awesome. I'm now officially an addict, or groupie as the case may be. I gotta get a new ice cream maker so I can make my own every single day. I got Pinkberry twice while we were there (and one knock-off pinkberry). I could probably live on it for every meal forever. I like the original with strawberries and mangoes. Dang.


Sunday we were going to stay with another friend, but loved staying in a hotel so much that we decided to keep on keepin' on. However, that particular hotel was a little rich for our blood so we checked into the Comfort Inn in Park Slope. The rooms were small, but it was great! Really good location, super-friendly (and predominantly queer) staff, free breakfast--what more could you ask for? Highly recommended! I love hotels. I could live in hotels 4-eva, TLA.

We got up early, and combed the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood for a breakfast spot, and found Teresa's, a Polish cafe near The Promenade. It was fine--not bad, not great. The Promenade was lovely. Then we went to Vegetarian Dim Sum House in Chinatown for lunch, but it was disappointing. (Nowlze and Bdub were planning to join us, but poor Nowlze got some kind of flu-ish nastiness. Suck.) It's long been one of my go-to spots when visiting NYC, but it was really just kinda eh, and after fighting our way through all the foot traffic in Chinatown it made me grumpy for a moment. But, then we walked over to Soho and did a little shopping at Pearl River, another of my must-hit spots--which lived up to my rememberance. We peeked into the MoMA Design Store, the Paul Frank store, and Babeland, but were so tired, we just hopped a train back to Brooklyn to rest a while before dinner.


For dinner we met up with Sarah again, and hit Veselka for some delish Ukranian food--pierogi (potato and an arugula-goat cheese special), vegetarian borscht, challah, and Barbara's favorite--baked chocolate custard. Afterwards I hit up Pinkberry again (love!). Then we retired back to Brooklyn to a nice little neighborhood bar, Great Lakes (with a fantastic jukebox). By a weird coincidence I'd actually been to both Veselka and Great Lakes before!

Monday morning we strolled in the drizzle around Park Slope starting with a great diner breakfast at Dizzy's where I had some (really, really hominy-y) grits, hashbrowns, and chocolate-almond stuffed french toast. Plus, we were greeted by a friendly dyke when we walked in, our waiter looked like The Jesus from The Big Lebowski, and a little girl at the table next to us infiltrated our minds with her sing-songy chant of "yellow tur-tle, yellow tur-tle".


We wandered around afterwards, popping into any shop that caught our eyes, got some tea at Cousin John's, and then stopped next door at La Taqueria for some giant burritos and street-style corn (mmmm). Then a quick stop to YogoMonster for a Pinkberry-style knock-off (good, but you sir, are no Pinkberry).




After that, it was time to depart. Sarah picked us up at our hotel, and hauled us out to JFK where we had the only real bummer of the trip. Our flight was repeatedly delayed, so we didn't get home until 3 or 4 in the morning. (I lost count at that point). But, the rest of the trip was so great, that even that was pretty okay when I was in the company of the finest lady in this here township or all of NYC, and the cutest meerkat in the land. All in all one of my favorite trips of all time.





[p.s. darn it. i had some really cute slide shows included in this post, but i keep getting errors about the html. hmm. perhaps i'll try again tomorrow from another computer...]

it's a new dawn...it's a new day...

The times they are a-changin'. And, evidently I'm feeling like quoting old song lyrics today. So, for good measure, I wear black on the outside 'cause black is how I feel on the inside.

But, not really. The sun is shining, it looks like the end of winter and onset of spring may not be too far away, I'm embarking on new challenges and new adventures, and...I'm feeeeeeelin' good.

[small tangent--years ago, when Nowlzie and I first discovered chatting On The Internets, we sometimes would have entire conversations in Smiths/Morrissey lyrics. good times.]

Okay. I'm slowly getting back into action after being off for a week, being outta town, starting a new job, and just figuring out what the hell is going on in general. Over the past couple of weeks I have cooked and I have eaten. The most memorable meal was my going-away from the old job lunch. A big group of us went to the Church Brew Works (the pesto portobella pizza is fab, btw), but the best part was after lunch. I mentioned that a few of the guys were forming a small band to play a little going-away. They were great! They played two songs--one an Irish jig, and the other an Irish funeral dirge--something about "she's gone tomorrow". It's the best, sweetest send-off I've ever gotten. If I ever find myself at a computer again that is not dial-up and has the drivers I need to upload the video I'm going to post it on youtube under "Ehrrin's lads".

The new job couldn't be more different in atmosphere from the last. The last was in an all-beige space, it was quiet, you had to have security clearances to enter the office, it was cerebral in a very tech-saavy way, many of the jokes included formulas and code, nearly half the words spoken were acronyms, and there were mad scientist/aspergers types littering the place. The new job is colorful, loud, raucous, risque and moving at breakneck speed. I think each of the environments complements a different side of my personality. I'm a lucky gal.

My restaurant discounts should kick in soon, but I'm trying to save all my pennies for a trip I have coming up at the end of the month. Barbara and I are heading to The Big Apple for a long weekend. I can't wait! We're planning out The Homosexual Agenda for our trip based on restaurants we want to hit. Some of those on the list so far are Shopsin's (home of the mac-n-cheese pancake), Kate's Joint, Vegetarian Dim Sum House, some little tea shop in Nowlzie's 'hood, some fancy veg place (I think in Park Slope?), B's favorite bagel shop...and more!

Okay, I'm going to try to post more regularly again, but bear with me--change is hard.

unrelated PSA: sign up for your CSA now! CSAs are where it's at! And, after you sign up, it feels like spring and summer are way closer! If you need some help on figuring out which Greater Pittsburgh Area CSA might be right for you, send me a message. I have lots of info!