Tio Pepe: Still Great After All These Years

Last Saturday was Mike and Alicia's 11th wedding anniversary.

Along with our friends, Sean and Alison, we helped them celebrate with dinner at Tio Pepe. The Bargers celebrate their anniversary at Tio every year; sometimes they also go in July for Alicia's birthday. This year's trip felt especially timely, though, since Richard Gorelick had just published a love letter to the restaurant in The Sun.

Heyyyyyy, Baked Alaska!

As for Cooper and me, we hadn't been to the restaurant in over five years. There are upsides and downsides to staying away that long. On the downside: Less Tio. But the positives include the excitement of the return visit and an appreciation for just how little changes there, year to year.

On this visit, we got to experience the restaurant not just through our own eyes, but also through the eyes of Sean and Alison, who hadn't ever been there. We weren't sure what they were expecting - it's such an old school experience, which makes it feel familiar, but it's also unusual. When you're used to newer restaurants, visiting a place where the waiters where jackets and where dessert does not come in a mason jar actually feels fresh.

It was raining on Saturday night, which made the walk down the steps to Tio's cozy basement space feel warm and welcoming. During Gorelick's visit, the restaurant wasn't packed; during ours, it was. As he mentions, part of the Tio charm is walking through the would-be diners, tucked into corners and waiting patiently at the bar. The wait is part of the experience.

It's also a great opportunity to people-watch. During our brief wait, Alicia befriended a lovely lady in a dressy red suit. Her looks and her banter would've fit right into a movie from the '40s. Or '80s. It's safe to say, though, that we wouldn't have met somebody like her at dinner at, say, Fork and Wrench.

Enjoyable as it was, we didn't wait long. We had a reservation and Tio is not a place that makes people wait and wait. It's well-run.

Once seated, we got right into the food. To start, we went with our old standbys - shrimp in garlic sauce and the snails in garlic and butter. Garlicky, buttery, obviously. And just like they tasted last time we visited. Nothing changes.

And oh, is there butter. But at Tio, that's standard. Our entrees - several of which aren't on the regular menu (it's an "off the menu" kind of place) - were all, frankly, swimming in sweet butter and, sometimes, cream. My sea bass, lightly breaded and served in a sauce of butter and capers, was one of the lighter things on the table.

Cooper can't resist the suckling pig - it's lovely, though one of the more rustic preparations. Like all the entrees, the serving is enormous. He ate half for breakfast on Sunday morning.



Spanish coffee prep.



Alison, Mike and Alicia went with a trio of buttery, gorgeous seafood dishes. For Alicia, grouper topped with crabmeat and champagne sauce. For Mike, a seafood Wellington - crab, lobster and shrimp in creamy sauce, wrapped in puff pastry. And for Alison, the 303, shrimp, lobster and crab in a rich sherry sauce.

Not exactly light stuff. But all the food has a certain sort of "special occasion" heft to it. It feels grand.

During dinner, it was sangria by the pitcher for the table. The Tio Pepe version is dangerous: Not sweet at all (which I like) but doused with brandy, for an extra hit. If nothing else, it keeps the conversation flowing.

After dinner, we ordered a pine nut roll - de rigeur when you're with Tio newcomers. I remember my mom telling me about the cake - light and fluffy and shockingly orange - after her first visit to the restaurant, with some of my dad's coworkers, nearly 30 years ago. Like the rest of the place, the cake hasn't changed.



During our entrees, we spied something cool at a nearby table. Gorelick correctly describes the service at Tio as "not friendly (a neutral position, the specialty at Tio Pepe)...when the staff cares nothing about you personally but cares deeply about serving you a wonderful meal." One of those stoic waiters was at the helm of a rolling cart - they're pressed into service for all sorts of reasons. On the cart was a mound of something, which he set on fire.

Baked Alaska!



And Spanish coffee enjoyment.

Cooper was enthralled and insisted we order one for the table. He didn't have to twist any arms. None of us had ever tried the dessert, which is not only a mid-century classic, but is also a running joke among my parents and also Cooper and me. "What's for dessert tonight? Baked Alaska?" I've heard those words from my dad and husband more times than I can count. (Trust me, it's funny like an actual joke in real life. On the screen, not so much.)

So Baked Alaska it was. It takes a few minutes to prepare and can be scaled up or down, depending on the number of people ordering. We ordered for two and had more than enough for six (especially after all those buttery sauces). The tableside theatrics were worth the price - there's nothing quite like seeing flames after dinner. But we also enjoyed the dessert itself. It is very sweet, but really very good. There's a reason it's a classic.

Speaking of theatrics, Mike and I also ordered Spanish coffees, Tio's special after dinner drink. It's an intensely boozy coffee - I shared mine - prepared tableside (there's fire involved) and served in a glass with a sugared rim. Like the sangria, the coffee doesn't taste as lethal as it is. It's an excellent way to end the meal.

We also ended our dinner with a visit from a nearby table - a high school friend of Mike and Sean's came over to say hello. Turns out, his father had just retired from Tio, after working there for 44 years (since the beginning).

Forty-four years. In an age when chefs sometimes last only a few months and waiting tables, as a career, is a dying art, hearing about someone who spent his whole career at one restaurant is just lovely. Tio experiences turnover, of course. Some of the faces on the floor are young and obviously new.

But not all of them. It's a place that values experience, tradition.

And that, as much as the layers of butter and the tableside fires, is what keeps people coming back.


 [Photos: Alicia Barger. Also, I should note that Cooper was actually wearing a jacket, to start. The restaurant might have relaxed its dress code, but special occasions deserve nicer outfits. At least, I think they do.]

Mini-Restaurant Review: Cinghiale

Note: This review, like most of them on this site, is based on just one visit to the restaurant. So please keep that in mind.

A while back (OK, it's been two months and I'm a slacker), Cooper and I had dinner with our friends Alison and Sean one random Saturday night. Actually, it wasn't that random, since it was Alison's birthday, but the dinner was a fairly last-minute sort of deal.

Alison, if you need some backstory, is my friend from high school and was my roommate during my crazy younger days. Sean, her husband, was in Cooper's fraternity. Sean is also Mike's best friend from growing up and high school. Like everything about Baltimore, our little friendship corner is incestuous.

Anyway. Onto the meal. We decided to go to Cinghiale (822 Lancaster Street, 410-547-8282), Cindy Wolf and Tony Foreman's Italian place in Harbor East. None of us had been there and we'd all wanted to go for a long time.

Cooper and I arrived early and had a drink at the bar, which was long and had an old school European vibe that I find immensely appealing. I am a sucker for big, somewhat tarnished mirrors, which is what hangs behind the bar, and for airy restaurants with a friendly, but not downscale, sort of feel. That's the vibe at Cinghiale. It seems like a restaurant that's been in the area for much longer than it has.

My cocktail was really excellent - it was a summery combination of basil and prosecco and limoncello that was perfect for the spring day. When we sat down at our table, I very nearly ordered another. But at that point, it was time to focus on the matter at hand: what we were going to eat.

The menu is a little overwhelming. There are a lot of options and several different paths that you, as a diner, can take. We opted for the more formal choices, though I'm sure the more casual "della Nonna" dishes are excellent as well.

Each of us decided to go with the three-course option which, when paired with wines, is $75 (without wine it is $52). As a result, we managed to try a variety of different dishes. So many, in fact, that I'm not going to write about them. But I did make a little chart of what we ordered. The dishes highlighted in yellow were the group favorites:

As you can see, I was not a big overall winner. Each of my dishes was good, but I always ended up wishing I'd ordered something else. The proscuitto di Cinghiale was tasty, but in the end, it was a big plate of proscuitto. The spaghetti with lobster and red sauce was also good but it wasn't anything exciting. And the duck, while excellent, was also very rare. I'm a rare meat-lover, but it was almost too rare for me.

By contrast, Alison's calamari was really perfectly cooked and Sean's veal chop was absolutely amazing. I can't pretend I wasn't wildly jealous.

One place I did come out ahead was in dessert. I ordered a selection of three cheeses and was very happy with my choices (not that I could even remember them by the next morning. I also ordered a glass of champagne for dessert).

Service was excellent, from start to finish and the paired wines were truly thoughtful. Overall, it was a good experience - good food, good service, nice atmosphere. However, with our additional drinks and desserts, it was a pricey one. It's definitely a special occasion place, but without the formality associated with many more expensive restaurants.

Will we go back? Maybe, though not anytime soon. And it definitely won't replace Petit Louis as my favorite Wolf/Foreman restaurant - now that's a place that does an excellent job straddling the neighborhood/special occasion line (as an aside, we had dinner there last week, including perfectly tender veal sweetbreads and a ridiculously silkly golden zucchini soup).

But I digress. Cinghiale: it's good, but it hurts when the bill arrives.

[Photo credit: an old post on the Sun's Dining @ Large blog.]

New Year's Eve: Dinner and Beyond

Picking up this story where I left off, Cooper and I sat down to New Year's Eve dinner at our house with six of our close friends. Our appetites were whetted and everyone was in a fabulous mood.

Dinner was simple, especially since I only made parts of it. We started with a delicious salad made by Alison - my favorite kind, it was full of apples and pecans and walnuts and had a mildly tangy dressing to counteract the sweetness of the fruit. Alison was worried about how it would turn out, as she was improvising as she made it, but everyone loved it. Especially Clancy, who practically inhaled silverware along with the vegetables.

Then, on to the main course. Cooper grilled a London broil (which he thought was overcooked, but I thought was fine) and Alicia hauled her steamer over to our house to make asparagus and hollandaise. I made scalloped potatoes with onion confit and crab cakes to round out the meal.

I don't have photos of the potatoes, and they probably wouldn't photograph well, anyway, as they just look like a big mess of sliced potatoes and cheese. But they are consistently tasty and always a hit, so here's the recipe (it's a modified version of a Julia Child recipe):

SCALLOPED POTATOES
(serves 6)

Ingredients:
- Onion confit (recipe here - you can use all that you make, or a little less, and you can make it a day or two ahead of time, just let the confit reach room temperature before you make the potatoes)
- About 2-3 lbs. potatoes (I use Yukon Gold, but others will do)
- Butter
- Pepper
- 1 c. beef buillon (or vegetable)
- 3-4 c. grated Gruyere
- One clove garlic

Preheat the oven to 425. Rub the garlic clove all over the inside of an oven-safe pot or pan that holds roughly the equivalent of a 13x9 pan. Discard the garlic clove and butter the inside of the pan.

Peel the potatoes if desired (I don't)and slice them into thin, even pieces, no thicker than 1/8 inch. I use a mandoline - if you have one, that's an easy way to go. My mom uses her Cuisinart.

Place a layer of potatoes on the bottom of the pan and top with a few pats of butter (maybe 2 pats total, divided) and pepper. Add a thin layer of confit (don't worry about covering every piece) and scatter grated cheese over the top, until roughly covered (about 1 c.). Repeat all layers two or three more times.

Just before placing the potatoes in the oven, bring the buillon to a boil and pour over the entire dish. Bake until done - this could vary from 30-60 minutes depending on the thickness of your potatoes and type of pan. Keep covered until last 5-10 minutes.
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I promise, people will love this. We ate it all the time when I was growing up (minus the onion confit - that's my addition). Once I started making it, Cooper started loving it, too. It has just a little crunch, which is great - and anything with that much cheese has to be good. It's great without the onions, but I think that adds a little something extra.

Now, I've made scalloped potatoes a million times. I could do it with my eyes closed. This was my first time, however, making crab cakes. As Annapolis-y as I am, theoretically, making crab cakes should be in my blood. But I wasn't so sure. And definitely felt the pressure.

I chose a recipe from the Annapolis Junior League cookbook, figuring that the ladies who wrote the book should know what they're talking about. And they did. The crab cakes couldn't have been easier, were super fast, and tasted, well, exactly how crab cakes should taste. And they looked pretty, too:


crab cakes
Originally uploaded by Kit Pollard.

Making crab cakes really starts with buying the best crab meat. I got mine from Eddie's, which is one of the nicer grocery stores near my house, and it came from Virginia. If I'd been in Annapolis, I would have gone to Annapolis Seafood.

Crab meat is iffy, especially since it's not summertime. Asian crab is everywhere these days. It's OK, but just doesn't have the flavor of local crab. But I digress.

I modified the recipe a tiny bit (and doubled it for 8 people), but it was very straightforward to begin with. And here it is:

MARYLAND CRAB CAKES
(serves 4-6)

Ingredients:
1/2 c. dry bread crumbs
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
1 tbl. Old Bay seasoning (this is far more than the recipe called for, but I like my Old Bay)
1/4 tsp. salt
1 egg
1/2 c. mayonnaise (I used half homemade, half storebought...but making my own mayonnaise for this was semi-insane)
1/2 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 lb. crabmeat, shell and cartilage removed

Mix bread crumbs, mustard, Old Bay and salt together and set aside.

In another bowl, combine egg, mayonnaise, lemon juice, and Worcestershire sauce. Gently fold in bread crumb mixture. Add crabmeat and shape into individual cakes, placing them on a plate or cookie sheet. You should end up with about 6 or 7 cakes.

Refrigerate for at least two hours, so they won't break apart when cooked.

To actually cook the crab cakes, you can either put them under the broiler or saute in oil - I sauteed. The recipe says it will take about 5 minutes to brown each side - it took me 3 (but I have hot pans). I then stuck them on a platter in a 200 degree oven until we were ready to eat.
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I served them with cocktail sauce, a lemon-garlic sauce and a mustard sauce, all of which were sort of experimental.

Really, they were a perfect dinner party food. I did most of the work beforehand and everyone loved them (of course, everyone was also from Maryland, where everybody DOES love crab cakes). At any rate, I'd highly recommend.

And we still had dessert. Alison made a very pretty and surprisngly moist chocolate chocolate chip bundt cake, which we ate with vanilla ice cream. And then we all purged so we could start over. Just kidding.

Oh, and I can't forget the wine. We did start out the night with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot (well, I did, anyway). Alicia and Mike brought a 2001 Meritage from the Dr. Konstantin Frank winery, which is close to Alicia's family's lake house (and which we visited last summer). It was mellow and sort of deep, and a perfect complement for all of the flavor in the food and the all the sauces.

Cooper also parted with one of his highly prized bottles of Faithful Hound. The fact that he opened this just proves how much he likes the people we ate with - he hoards the Faithful Hound like it's gold.

By the time we'd finished dinner and dessert, and everyone had told a few stories, it was after 11. Clancy and Suzanne headed home (she had to work early the next morning) and Alison and Sean went downtown to another party, but not before dropping the rest of us off at the wine bar.

So, we ended the year like we spent most of it: Cooper and I hanging out with Alicia and Mike, drinking wine and taking pictures of each other. At the very, very end of the night, each of us had an espresso martini, which was fabulous tasting, and had us all talking even faster than we normally do.

Overall, a great end to a very good year. And a great start to what promises to be a very, very tasty 2006.

Back to Canton

Long, long ago - back in the pre-Cooper days - I lived on Fleet Street in Canton.

My roommate Alison and I fancied ourselves social butterflies. We went out at least five nights a week, though we didn't branch out too much in our choice of venue. Claddaghs, Coburn's, maybe  Razorbacks or Canton Cabana thrown in once in a while.

Then Cooper and I started dating (we met for the first time at the Cabana and our relationship sparked, I guess you could say, at Claddaghs). And Alison moved in with her boyfriend Sean (aka Cooper's college friend and Mike's lifelong BFF) and we all grew up and got married and had kids.

And our Canton days came to an end.

In the nearly 11 years since I moved out of the house on Fleet Street, Canton has grown up quite a bit. Claddaghs still sits in its corner on the Square, but most of our other old haunts have moved on, replaced by new places and new crowds (who, let's be honest, aren't actually that different from the old crowds). New houses have popped up all over town. New restaurants, too. And the people we went out with - the ones who didn't move out before the housing market collapsed - now have kids, so the neighborhood has a new sheen of family-friendliness.

Family-friendly wasn't our goal last weekend, when Cooper, Mike, Alicia and I piled into a cab and headed down to the Square. But as it turns out, our first stop - Plug Ugly's - was pretty packed with kids.

We got there early, around 6:30, which probably explains the kid-friendly atmosphere. Our plan was to have a few drinks and some appetizers before heading to a surprise party, thrown by Alison for Sean's 39th birthday.

Actually, our initial plan was to go to Mama's on the Half Shell, but even at 6:30, there was a line out the door. Plug Ugly's was a perfectly good substitute.

Cooper and I had a drink there last summer, on Jeff's birthday, and liked the space very much. Housed in the old Helen's Garden, Plug Ugly's renovation was legendary for its craaaaazy slow pace. All that time was worth it, though - the space is warm and comfortable, and it reflects the late 19th century time period for which the bar is named (the Plug Uglies were a political gang of sorts).

Overall, we were very happy with our experience. We were psyched to see bowls of half-and-half (mixed cream of crab and Maryland crab soups) on the menu - Island View Cafe is the only other place I've seen that (outside of my own dining room). Plug Ugly's versions of both soups were excellent.

The rest of our crab-oriented apps were just as good. Crab and corn fritters with Old Bay aioli were lighter, but just as tasty, as we expected and the crab dip was some of the best I've had in a while, with noticeable lumps of crabmeat. (And I eat a lot of crab dip.)

House-made potato chips, seasoned with Old Bay, were a great call, too - and perfect for dipping in the crab dip.

The only controversial dish was a plate of mussels with sausage, steamed in a saffron beer broth. Cooper and Mike loved them. I thought the mussels were cooked nicely, but that the broth had a sort of weird metallic flavor. Alicia didn't like them at all.

However, I maintain that the wine Alicia and I were drinking was the problem. We both liked the wine - a grassy sauvignon blanc - but I think it didn't mesh well with the saffron in the broth. These things do happen.

So the food was good, but the service was better. Even before she knew that Mike is old friends with the owners - even before Mike's aunt walked through the bar with one of the owners' dads - our waitress was sweet, helpful, and prompt. More impressively, she wasn't the only one. Every kid bussing tables was polite and attentive - we watched them keeping an eye out for empty water glasses and dirty plates.

After dinner, we headed northeast a few blocks (via cab - it was cold!) to the Cardinal Tavern, where we'd help Sean ring in the year leading up to the big four-oh.

It would be hard for any of the four of us to be objective about the Cardinal Tavern, since we all go way back with Larry, the owner. He's a super likable guy - big heart, jovial, etc. - so it's no surprise that his bar is very likable, too.

It's under renovation right now, so from the outside, it looks like a big old mess, with scaffolding and a ton of dust. But inside it's warm and cozy, with exposed brick and lots of polished wood.

Larry's into music, so it wasn't too much of a surprise to see a jukebox in the corner, but it did remind us that jukeboxes seem like a rarity these days. Cooper and I spent a lot of time huddled over jukeboxes when we first started dating; we did the same thing as soon as we got to the bar last Saturday night. The music is decidedly un-poppy...which I like, and which felt right for the place.

Because we were at a party, I didn't have much of a chance to saddle up to the bar to really get to know the bartenders and what the place is all about. But I will say this - drinks came quickly and the mixed ones were good. So there's that.

Apparently an expansion and possible food might be in the cards for the Cardinal Tavern, which would make it even better.

A few hours, and several drinks, later, we piled back into a cab, which then drove us home via 95 (despite our requests to go through the city), charging us 50% more than the cab driver who drove us downtown.

Definitely not like my quick stumble home during the Fleet Street days. But still better in so many ways.

Birthdays Birthdays Birthdays!

Back in October, when I wrote about my mom's 65th birthday and Dixon's 8th birthday, I mentioned that around here, fall is birthday season. And is it ever - especially when you let "fall" stretch into early winter. 

Since those first two September birthdays, we have been in full-on celebration mode. This is just a taste of the fun.

October: Patsy, Cail, Xander and Bill

Clockwise from top left: Chicken tortilla soup; Chickens at the Stambaughs; Cail's cake in progress; Stambaugh chili; Cail's cake, the final product.

Cooper's mom's birthday celebration was low-key this year but Cail's was a little less so. My parents and I went down to Richmond to visit for the weekend and Cail's parents and her brother came up from New Orleans.

My brother threw Cail a surprise party in the private room at a cute wine bar called Secco and Cail's dad, who has made her birthday cake every year forever, outdid himself with a gorgeous pink and turquoise "drama queen" concoction. Mr. Moran is an architect and very artistic - watching him work was super cool.

Later in the month, we celebrated Nathan and Liz's son's birthday up at their house in the country. It was a gorgeous day to roam around their yard, checking out the chickens and eating their awesome food - including chili, hatch chili queso and root beer braised brisket. Oh, and apple pie moonshine. Because that is how they roll.

To wrap up October, we celebrated Bill's birthday on a Sunday afternoon at our house. I made a big batch of chicken tortilla soup, since it was starting to get chilly...and Bill likes Mexican food. It was one in a long string of fall Sundays that we spent at our house, surrounded by friends and delicious food. I could do that every day.

November: Mike

Seafood tower; Mike and I with our gifts; Stacy's first oyster.

In mid-November, Mike turned forty, giving us a great excuse to head to Thames Street Oyster House, where our friend/neighbor Teresa proved once again why she is one of the best servers in the city.

Bill was out of town but Stacy came down from New York, so with the Swartses, we were a group of seven. We did our best to order everything on the menu, including tons of oysters (and Stacy's first oyster ever!) and a suckling pig special that came with a side of oyster and butternut squash dressing. Ridiculousness.

I loved my monkfish entree but my favorite part of the night was a quail appetizer accessorized with chestnuts and quince puree. I absolutely couldn't stop thinking about it. They are so good at what they do there.

The night was funny, too. Alicia asked us each to come up with a story or two to roast Mike. Which...we did. I created a "strengths and weaknesses" roundup that was quite funny, if I do say so myself. I keep telling my friends that I'm funnier than they give me credit for. I stand by that.

December: Cooper, Tom and Me

Clockwise from top left: Cooper and Dixon at Parts and Labor; Corn fritters at Shoo-fly; Clay Davis mug from Patrick and Amanda; Me with Suzanne and Alison at Alison's party.

December is an especially busy month around here, with not just Christmas but also Cooper's birthday, Clark's birthday (the same day as Cooper's), my birthday and my brother's birthday.

We didn't celebrate with Clark this year (he was in DC, we were in Baltimore) but we did manage to have a bunch of good meals out. For Cooper's, he and Dixon and I went to Parts and Labor, which was just as good as everyone said it was. Tons of meat, beautifully cooked, in a super cool space. We'd already been to the butcher shop a few times, so we knew what to expect...and we're looking forward to going back

December birthdays are tough, since it's such a busy month. But it's also so much fun. Since we're in celebration mode, I usually get to see friends from all over the place either right before, on, or right after my birthday.

This year, my birthday was on a Monday but the celebrating really started on Saturday night with a party at my friend Alison's house. She's my high school friend and old roommate (from our Canton days) and her husband is one of Cooper's college friends. So the party was full of people I love.

The next day, I made my annual trip to McGarvey's, where a bunch of high school friends came to celebrate with Cooper, Dixon and me. We ate oysters and crab dip and burgers and crab cakes and drank a bunch of Aviators. Just like last year and the year before and many, many years before that.

That night, we came back up to Baltimore and got to hang out with Patrick and Amanda, of Paris fame (they have since moved back to Denver). They came over for crab soup and general revelry - and brought us an awesome Clay Davis mug made by someone they work with. We loved it and it was especially timely, what with the re-release of The Wire.

Finally, on my actual birthday, Dixon and Cooper and I drove through Hampden in the rain, then went to Shoo-fly for dinner and I remembered that I can't get enough of their corn fritters. They come with spicy honey and are just so good.

After Christmas, Tom, Cail, Erin and Clark all came up and stayed with us for a couple days. The 27th is Tom's birthday, so we met my parents at Clementine, where we got to have one last big family dinner before everyone returned to their respective homes.

Some of the Waskoms had been to Clementine for lunch or brunch, but not for dinner - and Cooper and I were happy to introduce them to some of our favorites, like the charcuterie and the basil-lime elixir. We all loved our meals, ending a big visit on a high note.

January: Kyle, Bert and Matt

Top row, left to right: Kyle's birthday at the Waterfront Hotel; Dinner in Deep Creek; Pear and bourbon cocktail. Middle row: Dixon at Wisp; Bert using the sabre; Puzzled in Deep Creek; Bottom row: The table at Matt's party; The entire Deep Creek crew; Matt and his "40" glasses.

We took a break for dinner at our house on New Year's Eve, then jumped right back into the birthday celebrations. Kyle's birthday is on January 4th - a Saturday this year. Immediately after our great dinner for Mike's fortieth, Kyle announced that he wanted to go back for his birthday. So we did.

Once again, it was fantastic. Alicia got the porgy, which is served standing up and is crazy good. Mike kept it simple with a lobster roll (outrageous) and I ordered against type, getting tuna, which was also delicious. The quail, again, was a show-stopper, as was the octopus, which I can never resist.

After dinner, we went to the Waterfront Hotel to watch the Ravens beat the Steelers (much to Mary's chagrin), finishing the night on an extra-sweet note.

A few weeks later, Cooper and Dixon and I headed off to Deep Creek, to celebrate our friend Bert's fortieth with a bunch of people I've known since high school or longer. (Bert's birthday is in December but we couldn't get it together to go away until January.)

It was four days of so much fun. We ate and drank way too much, did a bunch of puzzles, played some Cards Against Humanity, hung out in the snow, watched our kids bond and retold stories about stuff that happened two decades ago. And, of course, I got sentimental about how lucky I am to have so many great friends from high school and even elementary school.

Last Saturday, we got to celebrate with even more of those high school friends, when we went to a party for another fortieth - this one for my friend Matt. It was at his parents' house, near Severna Park, and was gorgeous. Matt's mom works at a flower shop; she and a friend often do flowers for weddings and they are so good at it. The party was catered by Mission BBQ, so the food was awesome, and was tons of fun, all the way around.

But the celebrations really aren't over. Because this is the year my high school class turns forty, we are in for a year full of parties and big nights out. Which is busy, it's true. But wow is it fun.

Boys in Ties (and a Cinghiale Review Preview)

We had a busy Saturday, starting with Dixon's very first wedding, to which he wore his very first bow tie and his very first pair of Croakies:

The bow tie, which has little bulldogs on it, is from Crewcuts and the Croakies are from, well, the Croakies website. As it turns out, it's not that easy to find kid-sized Croakies. Maybe most three year olds don't beg for them?

After the wedding on Saturday, we had drinks and dinner at Cinghiale with Alison and Sean (Alison is my high school friend and former roommate and Sean a) was in Cooper's fraternity and b) is Mike's friend from high school). It was over the top and fantastic, from my basil and limoncello cocktail to Sean's ridiculously tender veal chop, and I'll write about it in more detail tomorrow because it deserves its own post.

Brunch at Woodberry Kitchen (with Scrapple!)

Yesterday morning, I met my high school girl friends (Suzanne, Alison and Mandy) for brunch at Woodberry Kitchen. It was slightly cursed at the start - at some point during the morning, a warehouse in the vicinity of the restaurant caught on fire and the fire department shut down a ton of roads in the neighborhood. Including the road right in front of the restaurant, where they ran a huge firehose that ended up springing a full-on geyser of a leak.

Once we got there, though, things looked up considerably. Everything was, as usual, pretty fantastic. Mandy and Alison, the vegetarians, had the winter vegetables over gravy, which they both liked a lot. Suzanne had pear crepes that looked fantastic, and I had goat cheese ricotta pancakes with honey and a side of scrapple.

My pancakes were great - I didn't even put butter on them and they were light and fluffy and moist. Loved them with honey. And the scrapple was, of course, amazing. Amazing and conversation-starting.

At the end of the meal, our waiter said to me, "Can I ask you something sort of presumptuous?" We all looked at him like, "WHAT exactly?" So I said yes and he asked when I started eating scrapple. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn't it.

So I told him that I'd eaten it all my life and he nodded, saying that most people who order scrapple have been. He asked where I grew up and I told him that, too, and he mentioned that it seems to be an Eastern Shore thing. We talked a little about the Apple Scrapple festival in Bridgeville, DE - he suggested I go - and, after Mandy asked, what scrapple is made of ("it's kind of like pate, but fried," he said). On my way out, he gave me a "go scrapple" thumbs up.

Then I ran into one of the hosts in the ladies' room, where she asked me what I ate and we had nearly the very same questions about the scrapple.

All of that made me wonder - when did my scrapple-eating start? I've eaten it for as long as I can remember and I order it all the time at diners. I called my dad last night and asked him why we eat scrapple. He confirmed that my mom doesn't eat it, but said that he doesn't think he ate it growing up - he started sometime later, but he can't remember exactly when.

I sometimes think of the mid-Atlantic as lacking a whole lot of regional foods or flavors. Yes, we've got crabs, but that usually seems like about it, and one food does not a region make. Then I remember that foods I've eaten for my whole life - like scrapple - are actually regional specialties. And when you put together all those regional specialties, you end up with an actual regional cuisine, not just a bunch of one-offs.

[I did not actually take that photo. It's from City Paper and was taken by Christopher Myers.]

Old School Thursday: September 11th

In terms of food events, today’s not a very big day. The Harvest Festival in Hungary and National Hot Cross Bun Day (Why in September? Why not at Easter?). Today in 1851, Sylvester Graham died. On the plus side, he invented the Graham cracker, but on the somewhat less gourmet tip, he was an outspoken advocate of vegetarianism and temperance.

And that’s it. Except that today is, of course, the seventh anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

Not really about food, of course, but one of the things I remember best about the day is what I ate – or didn’t eat. I was working downtown and our building was evacuated in late morning. I spent a couple of hours at the bar across the street with my coworkers, and then went back to the house that I shared with my friend Alison. She also worked downtown and had also been evacuated.

We sat on the sofa for a few hours watching Peter Jennings and we finally decided that we were going to have to eat something, so we ordered sushi. We went to pick it up and went to Blockbuster on our way home, thinking that we’d watch a movie instead of more hours of news that didn’t really tell us anything, well, new.

Instead, we took the sushi back to Alison’s boyfriend’s house (they’re married now) and we watched more news. Actually, I’m not sure that we really did eat anything.

We’re so removed from it now, but if I try I can still recall that intense non-feeling of shock and disbelief. I hope I never have to feel that again.

Ringing in the New Year

Posting will be light (read: nonexistent) for the rest of the weekend, as I prepare for our big New Year's celebration which, in reality, will not actually be so big. Last year Cooper and I had a big party, but this year we're keeping it low key. A few friends are coming over for dinner, even bringing dishes (which normally stresses me out, but today I am totally cool with), then we're heading to the wine bar (officially known as Grand Cru) for midnight.

We're keeping dinner (fairly) simple, which should be nice. I'm making Barefoot's cheese straws (no recipe online, unfortunately) and French Laundry's Parmesan crisps with goat cheese mousse, and Alicia and Mike are bringing a marinated cheese to serve with drinks. Alison and Sean are bringing an apple, walnut and Stilton salad to start, and our main course will be crab cakes with three sauces (maybe - I'll see how today goes - might be one sauce), grilled London broil, scalloped potatoes and Alicia's asparagus with hollandaise. And Alison's providing dessert.

Suzanne and Clancy and Alicia and Mike are all bringing wine, plus we're going to break open one of our bottles of Veuve Clicquot - between our wedding (a year and a half ago) and our birthdays, we've gotten a few as gifts. We've been hesitant to drink them, but really, what's the point of having good wine if you're never going to drink it? And what's a better "special occasion" than New Year's Eve dinner with good friends?

Hopefully I'll remember to take lots and lots of pictures...and hopefully none of them will be disaster shots. More to follow...

Happy New Year!

My Food Story - Part V: Learning to Cook

(This is the final installment in a five part series all about my history with food. The first four installments are here, here, here and here.)

Some people learn to cook at a very young age. Tugging at their mom's aprons. Growing up covered in flour. Shocking their families with prodigal talents. Never wanting to leave the kitchen.

I was, quite decidedly, not one of those people.

My mom encouraged me to enjoy the kitchen when I was little. By forcing me to do the dishes. I think it backfired. Actually, what I really think is that she, like me, is a little bit of a control lover - and control freak - when it comes to her kitchen. So while my dad was always trying to tell my brother and sister and I to help her, she was trying just as hard to keep us out of her way.

And thus, my love of cooking was not born when I was young.

Fast forward to sometime around my 25th birthday. I was living in downtown Baltimore with my friend Alison (the same friend who took me on my first trip to Whole Foods), eating pretzels with guacamole for dinner three or four nights a week. And popcorn-plus-ice cream for dessert. And Miller Lite for dessert-dessert.

Then I met Cooper.

For our second date, he invited me over to his house, where he cooked dinner for me. It wasn't anything super-fancy - lots of grilled meats and grilled vegetables and some rice that, if I remember correctly, was not actually grilled. He knew how to cook. I was in trouble.

Within the next few weeks, as our relationship got more serious, my inner housewife started to bloom. Despite the fact that my mom spent my youth shooing me out of the kitchen, I realized that I'd picked up a little bit of interest in cooking from her. But absolutely no knowledge.

So, I did what any good student does, and I went to Barnes & Noble. I bought a few cookbooks and sat down to teach myself how to cook. Unfortunately, cooking is more like calculus than European history - reading alone is not enough. You have to try the problems to learn the language.

And so I tried. I invited Cooper over for dinner. Alison went to her boyfriend's house. I took the day off work. After spending a week at work looking for a recipe. And spending nearly $100 at Whole Foods - on ingredients for sauteed chicken with basil. I still have no idea how that happened.

I spent the day chopping. I called my mom and - when she wasn't home - my dad at work to ask how to chiffonade basil. There was laughter from the family.

In the end, when Cooper walked in and saw me in an apron, he knew I was serious and said, "Maybe I haven't made a big enough deal out of this." But he had - I was nervous enough about meeting my own expectations - I didn't need any pressure from him.

And finally...Cooper did all the cooking. Once I stepped up to the stove - after gulping down two glasses of wine and setting a very beautiful table - I got stage fright. I worried I'd overcook the chicken and it would be dry and stringy. Or I'd undercook it and we'd both end up in the hospital. So I turned to him and said, "Please cook the chicken." And he did. And my cooking career was not particularly advanced that night.

But the spark was enough. In the years since then, I've gotten a lot better - Cooper is the first to tell people so, since all he does these days is grill. He even leaves the marinating to me, and that was always his domain.

I certainly still make a lot of mistakes, and cook a lot of dinners that look prettier than they taste, but I have gained an amazing amount of confidence in my ability to cook a decent meal. And not only to follow a recipe - in the past six months my kitchen creativity has really blossomed.

And hopefully will continue to do so.

Old School Thursday: A Perfect Day for a Rioja Edition

So, today is National Spanish Paella Day. As it turns out, my reservations at Mari Luna have larger significance. Quelle chance!

Today really should be a holiday of sorts in my house. Today in 1860, M.L. Byrn patented a new and improved corkscrew, and God knows our corkscrews get a workout. So thank you, Mr. Bryn.
In other liquor-related news, that’s also an interesting bit of trivia, today is the anniversary of the death of Sir James Dewar (1923). I don’t think he actually created the not-very-good blended scotch that bears his name, but he did invent the “Dewar Flask”…better known to the rest of us as a thermos. (Side note: my friend and former roommate Alison has a cat named Dewars. We always assumed he spoke with a British, not Scottish accent.)

And that is about it for today in food news. Enjoy some paella tonight, preferably with a nice bottle of wine – the kind that still uses a cork!

In My Mailbox

A note from my friend Alison, along with a page torn out of the most recent Us Weekly.

She circled the following (first bullet in the VIP Scene section):

Renee Zellweger sipping a glass of rose wine and diving into a salad with friends at Petit Louis Bistro in Baltimore.

Petit Louis! In Us Weekly! I'm pretty sure that I'm famous now. Especially since rose is my new summer drink.

Easy to Buy For

Last week, I turned 35 - an age when it's way too late to expect a bunch of birthday presents. In a nice surprise, Alison and Alicia defied my expectations and each gave me a something small that they saw and thought I'd like. As it turns out, their gifts were a lot alike, and I'm pretty sure that says something about me.

Both notepads, both partly pink, both prominently featuring cocktails. Yep. Sounds about right.

Quotable Tuesday: Le Petit Prince

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

I have a little bit of a Petit Prince obsession. I have a copy of the book - in French - even though trying to read in French gives me a headache. Poor Dixon has no choice but to let a Little Prince doll hang out in his room (it was a gift from my sister). It's next to his Little Prince bookends (a gift from my friend Alison).

It's such a nice, simple, sort of lovely book and my favorite quote is the one above. Of course, none of it has anything to do with food.

But I started thinking about the book last night because I was thinking about my French classes in high school. Junior and senior year, I had this teacher named Mme. Hamerstrom. She was so funny - kind of a goofy lady who was always smiling and who had crazy red hair. She had pretty much no control over her classes (and I had her for French IV and AP French - not exactly classes populated by the biggest troublemakers in school). She had endless patience, though, and never seemed more than exasperated when we called her at home to admit that we hadn't paid any attention all semester and really needed her help to study for the exam. (We really were good kids. She just made it easy to take advantage.)

Junior year, to get an A in her class, we had to read Le Petit Prince and come in after hours for a small group discussion on the book. I'm pretty sure I actually went to that study group wearing a bathing suit, just so she'd know that I was anxious to get out of school so I could lay out.

Somehow, despite my active effort to not learn anything, I ended up really enjoying her class, I have a passable knowledge of French (reading it, at least - I have a terrible accent) and I developed this Petit Prince obsession.

And here is how this is about food: Mme. Hamerstrom let us have fetes in class at least every other Friday. Sometimes more frequently. Fete day meant that we didn't have to do any work, and we got to eat leftovers from my friend Mandy's job at Vie de France, as well as other nominally French treats we brought in.

One of those treats, though, was pretty legitimate, and it's something I still eat. One of the girls in class, Sarah, had just moved to the US from Belgium and she'd spent some time living in France, too (her French was waaaay better than ours). During our first fete, she brought something so simple that we almost laughed at her, except that a) she told us that people actually ate it in France and b) it tasted really good.

And when I say simple, I mean really, really simple. All she did was slather some chocolate frosting (out of a can) on a baguette.

Healthy? No. But really pretty amazing. It's delicious and, for whatever reason, I was daydreaming about that exact snack last night. Which got me thinking about Madame and her crazy good-heartedness...and Le Petit Prince and his childlike existentialism.

Double Restaurant Review: Oregon Grille and Gertrude's

Standard pre-post disclosure: I've only been to each of these restaurants once, so the reviews only reflect that one experience.

I ate a lot on Saturday. It was a good day.

A busy day, too. My first meal (I'm not counting the 7:30 am cheerios) was brunch at Gertrude's with some of my girl friends from high school. When we get together (more and more sporadically these days, between the kids and the jobs), we have two primary restaurant criteria: location and menu. OK, that's obvious, I guess. Those are pretty basic criteria. But for us, the restaurant has to be relatively convenient to the four of us - two in Towson, one in Bel Air and one holding down the fort in Severna Park. Sometimes we haul ourselves down to the Annapolis area, since all of our families do still live around there, but mostly we end up someplace downtown.

Menu can be a little more tricky. Until very recently, I was the lone red meat eater in the group (actually, I may still be). Alison doesn't eat red meat. Suzanne was fish and veggies only until she got pregnant. (She also said she felt like she wasn't quite as quick-thinking during her pescatarian days, which I find interesting. She's a thoughtful eater. A thoughtful eater who likes the taste of meat.) And Mandy is a straight-up vegetarian. Not a vegan, but she doesn't eat eggs. Plus, she really hates onions. And she worked in a restaurant during college and grad school, so she's very, very leery of eating at most places.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that we ended up meeting for brunch at Gertrude's, in the Baltimore Museum of Art. The chef, John Shields, is fairly well-renowned for his commitment to local foods and his fresh approach to cooking. Our meal didn't do anything to tarnish that reputation. The food was fairly simple - crab quiche, crab soup, salads, a vegetarian sandwich and french toast with apples - but all nicely executed with good flavor. Plus, I had an excellent mango mimosa.

The only weird thing about the meal was that our waiter totally tried to upsell us to the crabcakes on the "specials" menu, saying that unlike other crab dishes offered, these were made with "Chesapeake Bay crab". If I described his whole spiel, it would probably seem like I was exaggerating; he really went on and on about how the other crab sucks but this is the real thing.

After not ordering the crab cakes, and even sort of making excuses as to why we didn't, he finally took our order and left us alone. At which point, we all looked at each other and were like, "Um, it's MARCH." Not exactly crab season. Which means either the restaurant's doing something illegal (doubtful) or they're using frozen Bay crabmeat. Which is fine, but taste-wise, it's not really more special than, say, frozen North Carolina crabmeat.

It was a weird exchange. But overall, a good meal. And it was nice to stop into the museum shop after brunch. If I'd had more time, I would've loved to actually get into the museum. It's been too long since I've been.

Verdict: I'd go back. Especially for dinner on their wine deal Wednesdays.

Just a few hours later, after depositing Dixon at my parents' house, we were back in the car on our way to Hunt Valley and The Oregon Grille for dinner with Cooper's family in honor of his sister's fiance's birthday.

I'd heard a lot about the restaurant - it seems to be one of those local institutions, even if it hasn't been around forever. It has a very strong reputation for good food and good service - it's one of the few local places I know of that requires jackets for guys after 5.

It's expensive, and the menu is on the old school side, with a definite emphasis on red meat - not a big surprise on either front. When we arrived, I also wasn't surprised to see that the clientele was mostly a little older. There were a handful of families with adult children near us, but mostly it was tables with two or three couples in their 50s or 60s or 70s.

For the next two-ish hours, we did a lot of eating and a bit of drinking...and when we left, I realized just how high my expectations are.

Here's the thing: my meal was fantastic. I had an appetizer of baked artichokes, sundried tomatoes and goat cheese, followed by one of the specials, veal medallions in a red wine and whole grain mustard sauce with arugula and pumpkin gnocchi (actually pumpkin-stuffed gnocchi, as it turned out). Flavors were on point, everything was cooked perfectly, and overall, it was wonderful.

But I do have some issues.

First, the rooms are just a little cramped for my taste. Not terribly, but I didn't feel relaxed. More importantly, the service wasn't perfect. It wasn't bad, by any means, but our waiter left it to Cooper to refill our wine glasses (we were the only two drinking wine - granted, the bottle was next to Cooper and tough to reach, but still). Our plates were cleared before everyone was finished (a particular pet peeve of mine). And the waiter forgot to bring Seth (Cooper's sister's fiance) a beer at one point, and he didn't apologize. (Actually, the way he handled that beer left me wondering if he was being a little condescending because Seth had ordered a beer in the first place. I could have misinterpreted the whole situation, but that's the impression I got. Which is so totally uncool.)

Besides those things, he really wasn't a bad waiter at all. But this is where I come back to my expectations.

I don't expect service to be perfect at, say, Zen West. Decent, yes. But not perfect. For whatever reason, I also don't expect super perfect service at trendier restaurants who cater to a younger demographic. But I expect near perfect service at any restaurant that charges an average of more than $35 for an entree and caters to the over-50 crowd. Waiters and waitresses are human, I understand, so it's not actual mistakes that bother me. You forgot what I ordered? I don't mind telling you again. And sometimes people do forget to bring a beer.

The issues that I most often have with service (Oregon Grille's not alone here) seem to be systemic. The plate-clearing, for example. That's a clear violation of etiquette. Which is codified. Maybe restaurants of a certain caliber should require their waitstaff to read and then take a test on, say, Emily Post. (I realize people have different views on this subject, but when the restaurant in questions is the jackets-on-gentlemen sort, I think it's reasonable to expect an old-fashioned approach to service.)

It's possible that I've had classic fine dining ruined for me by a couple of meals my family had at The Williamsburg Inn when I was in college. The food was always perfect but what I remember more about those evenings was the service. It was amazing. The dining room has an atmosphere of absolute serenity, and the service is friendly, but not overly so, knowledgable, respectful, and there-when-you-need it but not-when-you-don't. I just looked at the menu online and the prices are quite comparable to Oregon Grille's, but the service at the two places is completely mismatched.

So, this is a really long-winded way of saying that I'm not terribly interested in going back to The Oregon Grille soon, despite the fact that I had an excellent meal.

(Final note: I've been mulling over my reactions to Oregon Grille since we left the restaurant on Saturday, and I feel a little guilty about them - like I'm being too harsh. Last night, Cooper pointed out that my expectations might be so high in part because we cook very nice and interesting food at home - food that for some people would be "restaurant food". So when I go to a restaurant, I expect much more than that - something I wouldn't make at home, something SO much better than I would make it at home, and/or outstanding service. He's probably right, but I wish I could learn to let it go and just enjoy sometimes.)

P.S. Now that Urbanspoon is in Baltimore, you can also check out their review pages. For their Oregon Grille page, click here:


And for their Gertrude's page, click here:

Cream of Whatever Soup in the Hot, Hot Summer

On last night's Top Chef, hometown girl Jessie, along with Bob Marley-boy Ron, served New England clam chowder to 300 airmen and their families stationed in the desert just outside Las Vegas.

Ron and Jessie obviously did a decent job with the soup - the airmen liked it, plus they managed to avoid the Judge's Table - but during the course of the episode, a couple of people commented on the wisdom of serving a hot, creamy soup in 100 degree heat. Tom started the discussion, which Gail picked up on, saying that she doesn't mind the hot, but does mind the cream. Preeti, while scrambling at Judge's Table, tried that old "throw somebody else under the bus" routine, mentioning that she didn't think clam chowder was a wise choice, considering the location.

After hearing all these comments, I was left wondering why it never occurred to me that clam chowder was a bad choice. Then I remembered: oh, right, I live in Maryland. Where summertime is crab season and, therefore, summertime is also cream of crab soup season.

In early August, Elizabeth Large did a top 10 cream of crab soups on her blog. She timed the post to coincide with Restaurant Week, when several area restaurants participated in a crab soup cookoff in the Inner Harbor. I found this in the comments:

Cream of crab soup in August? Can we expect Top Ten ice creams in January?
This used to be the only time you could make it, when crabs were in season. So Baltimoreans think of this as the right time to eat it. EL

The summer after I graduated from college, my friend Alison and I made it our job to discover the best cream of crab soup in Annapolis. While I'll always be partial to Annapolis Seafood's carryout, my favorite in-restaurant version comes from Carroll's Creek Cafe (which made it on Elizabeth Large's list). And the best way to eat it is sitting out on the CCC deck, watching the boats in Spa Creek. I must've done that ten times that summer, and the heat never bothered me once.

So I'm going to have to give this one to Jessie. She's a Maryland girl through and through, so why wouldn't she go the chowdah route? Cream in the summer? That's just how we roll.

Reminder: if you're looking for more Top Chef coverage, we are all over it at All Top Chef. ALL over it.

Good Stuff

I am a Martha lover from waaay back. Maybe not as long as she's actually been doing her thing - but as long as I've been an adult.

When I was living in my first post-college house, back in the late '90s, I bought, and fell in love with, her 1997 book Good Things. Filled with advice that somehow both practical and aspirational, it promised a life that was organized and blessedly efficient - but also pretty and fun. I still can't use a drill, and I'm useless in a garden. But that doesn't mean I don't want to be Martha.

On her website, she just shared a slideshow of forty favorite "good things." The list is full of good tips - including a few I've done before. And some that just make so sense I can't believe I didn't think of them myself.

This suggestion - to make vinaigrette in nearly-empty mustard jars - is so logical, I can barely stand it. Why haven't I done that? I roll through mustard at an alarming rate around here. And I make salad dressing all the time. Why not combine the two?

Mise-en-place? Oui. Seriously, if you're having people over for dinner, or if you are, say, responsible for dinner during a weekend away, taking 30 minutes before the weekend/party starts to prep makes an absolute world of difference. When you don't have to think about measurements, or focus on not cutting off your fingers while you chop, it's much easier to enjoy yourself, and your guests.

Teensy muffin tins are so useful. I, admittedly, do very little baking. (That's what Alicia, Missy and Erin are for!) But muffin tins are actually good for more than muffins. Case in point: I made the little frittatas pictured for a wedding shower for my friend Alison (in 2002!). They were simple - I couldn't cook at all back then, but I was able to make them and they were good. Just chop some herbs and vegetables, place them in the tins. Beat a couple eggs, season with salt and pepper, and use a ladle to fill the tins 3/4 of the way. Bake, pop out, and you're done.

They were adorable - perfect shower food - and gave me a ton of confidence.

This ribbon bulletin board was probably the first Martha project I ever attempted, way back in the nineties. I covered a bulletin board with navy linen then attached grosgrain ribbon with round silver tacks. It didn't involve anything more than a stapler, some tacks and some scissors - but it looked much, much nicer than a standard issue, brown cork board.

I think it was destroyed in one of my early-to-mid-twenties moves. But when I moved into the house where I am now, I covered two boards with green leaf-printed fabric and attached them to the inside of a kitchen cabinet. Still better looking than a regular cork board (and hidden)!

Martha...she's a genius.

[Photo credit: marthastewart.com]

Birthday 2012

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

December is a busy month around here.

Cooper's birthday was on the 12th - we celebrated with dinner at Petit Louis and also dinner at his parents' house.

My birthday was last Saturday, the 22nd. (We both turned 37.) As is my tradition, I celebrated with oysters, Aviator beers, and crab dip at McGarvey's.

This year, since it was a Saturday, the party was even better than usual. For one thing, in the morning, a couple of Cooper's high school friends came over for brunch. We try to get together every Christmas, and this year, brunch worked best for all involved.

It's always a good time and this year was no exception.

As an extra bonus, his friend Patrick brought me macarons from Laduree in Paris, where he lives. Macarons, as it turns out, are a fantastic way to kick off a new year.

The Annapolis portion of the day was even more fun than usual, too. Most years, we have a low-key lunch with just a few people. But this year, since it was a Saturday, we started around 4:30 and kept things going at McGarveys then Harry Browne's, our late-night Annapolis go-to, until late. Very late. 

Tons of my high school friends came out - including the ones who live in Maine and also Alison and Suzanne, who have been at nearly all of my birthday celebrations since I turned 21 - and Alicia, Mike and Bill made the trek down, reserving a room at the Governor Calvert House in downtown Annapolis.

There were plenty of oysters, an enormous amount of crab dip, and more holiday cheer than I can even put into words.

We carried that cheer through Monday, at my parents' house (more oysters) and yesterday, at Cooper's Aunt Diane's and at his parents'.

And now, as I look out the window, it's snowing.

Very merry, indeed.

Recipe: Awesomely Awesome Brussels Sprouts

Like most kids, I was not a childhood fan of Brussels sprouts.

I wasn't even a young adulthood fan. When I lived in Canton, my roommate/BFF Alison used to microwave frozen Brussels sprouts and eat them (alone) for dinner. Words can't describe how much it grossed me out. (To better set the scene: Those were the days when I ate pretzels and guacamole for dinner at least twice a week.)

But now...I love them. It just happened magically one night a few years ago. All of a sudden, I realized they're amazing and really quite versatile.

Usually, I sautee them in olive oil with some chopped bacon, then sprinkle them with a dash of balsamic before serving. But over the weekend, I mixed it up a little...with much success. So I thought I'd share the recipe here.

Brussels Sprouts with Dried Cranberries and Pecans

(Serves 10-12)

Ingredients:
3 bags of Trader Joe's Brussels sprouts
1 handful dried cranberries
1 handful chopped roasted pecans
1/4 cup plus 4-6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 450.

Cut sprouts in half or, for especially large ones, in quarters. Divide between two large cookie sheets.

Drizzle sprouts with olive oil - about 4-6 tablespoons - and season with salt and pepper. Using your hands, toss the sprouts in the oil and seasoning until they are evenly coated.

Roast the sprouts for 30 minutes, or until dark and tender, but not burnt. Rotate the pans two or three times during roasting.

When the sprouts are out of the oven, let them cool for just a minute, while you make the vinaigrette. Combine the 1/4 cup of olive oil and 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar. Season with salt and pepper and whisk to combine.

Put the sprouts in a bowl and cover with the vinaigrette, tossing to coat evenly. Add the pecans and cranberries and gently mix to distribute the nuts and berries throughout.

And that's it! The sprouts absorb the vinaigrette in a really lovely way, and the nuts and berries add just a little sweetness and crunch. It's so easy and I was so happy with the results

**Note: I owe my sister some credit for this recipe. She and I were talking about vegetables and she suggested Brussels sprouts - and suggested the nuts. So thank you, Erin!

#waskineau

My little sister is married!

Erin and Clark got married last weekend in Annapolis. It was such a fun weekend
all the way around. So much fun, in fact, that I barely took any pictures.

The weekend kicked off with a little siblings-and-friends lunch at
McGarvey's on Friday.  McGarvey's is, of course, my favorite bar in the entire world
- my sister loves it, too. We had a couple Aviators (the house beer), some crab dip
and a variety of seafood-related sandwiches (crab cake, soft shell, rockfish, etc.)
It was a fantastic way to start the weekend.

The rehearsal dinner was at Carrol's Creek Cafe in Eastport. Long, long ago,
in the summer of 1996, my friend Alison worked at Carrol's Creek,
so I ate there a ton (their cream of crab soup is awesome). This week, I had crab cakes
(just like I had for lunch) and the Barrineaus - my sister's new in-laws -
surprised Erin and Clark with a giant Washington & Lee cake
(where they both went, and met).

The Barrineaus made sunglasses as a rehearsal dinner favor:

I stole this picture from Erin's friend Lyndsay Polloway's Facebook page. Thanks, LP!

The dinner was fun and speeches were sweet. Then, right before the slideshow, created
courtesy of Clark's sister Sarah, the power went out. It was strange. Fortunately, it
came back on, so we all got to ooh and aah at pictures of baby Clark and Erin.

After dinner, everyone headed to Ram's Head, where we met up with my
old friends Bert and Heidi. We stayed out too late, of course, but had so much fun.

Saturday started with Waskom sibling Starbucks in Erin's room, then Erin and
all the bridesmaids went to my parents' house to get ready. I was careful not to
take any pictures while we were at my mom and dad's - I was afraid I might
accidentally post something on Facebook.

The ceremony was at St. Mary's, where my dad and his family went to school,
I got married, Dixon was baptised - and a whole bunch of other family events
have taken place. It's a gorgeous church and Father Flynn, the priest who
married us and married Clark and Erin, rocks.

(I don't have any pictures, of course, since I was busy matron of honoring.)

The reception after was at the Annapolis Maritime Museum. It's a small museum
housed in the old McNasby's building on the Bay in Eastport. The space was
super cool - filled with interactive exhibits that educate about the oyster and
crabbing industries of Annapolis. Dixon loved it.

After a bunch of windy waterfront photos and a fun cocktail hour, we shipped
Dixon off with Cooper's parents and got down to business. 

The wedding was catered by Ken's Creative Kitchen - the team that must be the
best caterers in Annapolis. The food was amazing (especially the crab cake appetizers)
 and the service was excellent. A few years ago, Ken catered my friends' Pete and
Liz's wedding. That night, my mom couldn't say enough about how great the
service and food had been. There was really no other choice for Erin's caterer.

We started with lovely salads of mixed greens and goat cheese:

The entree was crab-topped rockfish with spring vegetables
and super airy potatoes:
(Note the royal blue tablecloths - it's a W&L thing.
The bridesmaids wore hot pink and orange.)

After dinner, we all celebrated with Erin, Clark and their favorite college band,
Snackbar Jones. It was crazy fun.

And this photo came from Erin's friend Lis Juterbock's Facebook. I really didn't take any of my own!

The reception flew by, of course - they always do when you're having fun.
Once it was over, we headed downtown on a hilariously bumpy water taxi ride.
We went to Pusser's to continue the party and then, eventually, home.

Erin and Clark are in Spain now (the Basque region, including San Sebastian)
and I am at home, wishing I'd planned a post-wedding trip of my own.
Because who says only the bride and groom should get a honeymoon?

It was so much fun all around - and wonderful to see my little sister so happy.
I wish we could do it all over again!