Baltimore Brunch c/o Mt. Vernon Stable and Saloon

On my way back to Philly I dropped my dad off at the Baltimore airport and then went into the city to meet up with NC C., as she has recently relocated, which potentially should make her MD C...but we'll C about that. In any case, we walked to the nearby Mt Vernon Stable and Saloon for a lunch/brunch kind of meal. I asked for a non-alcoholic Bloody Mary and found it to be quite delicious - overlong celery stalk and all.

They also had a crab soup of the day, which I was determined to try. I generally enjoyed it but perhaps wished it had been a little lumpier in the crab department.

The crab theme continued with my main meal, which was basically eggs Benedict but with crabcakes instead of ham. Pretty good stuff.

And then it was back on the road. Traffic got kind of stupid on 95 north of Baltimore and what shouldn't have taken much longer than 1.5 hours ended up being more like 3, but that's just what happens when traveling on a Sunday after a major holiday in the U.S. I feel quite sorry for anyone who really needed to go into any of the rest stop facilities, because just stopping for gas was a madhouse feat with lines that literally took 20 minutes to inch forward to actual pumps. Madness I tell you, madness!

Birthday Dinner c/o Le Diplomate

When we established that we were going to spend the holidays in the Maryland/D.C. area there was the matter of a birthday dinner. Dad and I talked a bit about it at K. and A.'s wedding and then I began my research stage to consider the options. At first I was limiting myself only to the Silver Spring/Wheaton/Rockville area, but the conversation with Dad made me broaden it somewhat. I considered this Top Chef guy's place, but honestly the reviews were a bit mixed on Yelp. And I don't take Yelp very seriously, but if the overall message is 'some of the food was really good, but it was kind of weird and service wasn't awesome,' you still need to ask yourself if it's worth the hassle. I did think that a French meal of some kind would please me and also be in Dad's comfort zone, so I began honing in on French restaurants in the D.C/MD/VA vicinity. In the end, and not without at least a little Facebook input, I suggested we try a reservation at Le Diplomate. This is a relatively new restaurant in D.C. and is actually part of the Stephen Starr umbrella. Stephen Starr has a definite stake and reputation in the Philly area as one of the 'big-time' restauranteurs. I have not been to all his establishments, but I have been to a hand full. And whatever the formula is, they generally seem to work. Le Diplomate certainly did. Due to not planning many more weeks in advance, the only available times were either around 5 or 10 PM. Dad went with the earlier of the options, which I think was a very good idea. I started off the meal with a pamplemousse cocktail, which I can't find on the website to more fully tell you about. From my own recollection it did the balance between sweet and tart quite excellently. Refreshing but not cloying, with just a little effervescence in the mix.

I will admit that the lighting in the restaurant was better for the actual moode and place than for the photographs I tried to take. They also had very neat/old school tiled bathrooms with sinks that one child I encountered called "really cool." So please forgive the photographs, is really what I'm saying. So the Starr restaurants, I think the thing that really is down to a science is how to put together a relatively effective and professional team. Our server never got flustered by our delays in actually making a decision about the meal, laughed at our jokes, asked the right questions and knew most of the answers to ours. Basically I have zero complaints about the service. Though I will say that we pretty much stumped one newer employee when we asked for more detail about some of the accompaniments to our first round of dishes. But when he didn't know the answer he made the effort to go find out and come back, so that was nice.

I debated on what exactly I would order quite a lot in the days and hours leading up to this meal. I had a few concrete ideas but didn't know what combination would make the most sense. In the end I showed very little restraint. Here is the foie gras parfait...this was the fluffiest, spreadiest, heaven-on-earthiest of foies that I've had in quite some time. The thick toast and fennel aigre doux were the perfect texture and flavor to accompany this rich piece of manna. Seriously good stuff.

I also couldn't resist the frissee salad with duck confit, poached egg and potatoes. Variations of this salad have been my favorite for quite a number of years. The way the yolk mixes in with the existing dressing just makes a magic meal, especially if you add duck into the equation.

Then there was the deliberation of what to actually eat. Ultimately I chose to go with the roasted scallops with red wine salsify, truffle sabayon and black trumpet mushrooms...as well as what I recall as being some kind of legume or potato? I kind of forget that detail. I thought the scallops were well prepared and executed though I thought they were perhaps just a tad salty...that might actually be a reaction to my father's dissatisfaction with the grilled loup de mer he ordered, which he found too salty. His dish did come with tapenade, so perhaps it should have been expected. Meanwhile when I tried his dish I thought it wasn't that salty and, in fact, though my own dish was moreso. Dad didn't agree on his own comparison testing. In the end I wasn't too bummed about the salt level and was pleased with the tenderness of the scallop and the savory elements of its rich butter sauce magic topping.

We had this wine with our entrees.

Above, the photoshopped version. Below, the original. It's bascially like I did nothing, except I spent 15 minutes trying to do something. Alas. The main change is that Dad's country terrine and lettuce accompaniment turned a very different set of colors. Blue lettuce is de rigeur, don't ya know?

We opted for coffee and Armagnanac instead of dessert, in large part because we did have a secondary appointment for the evening and I felt that we were going to be too late if we had any additional courses. When we exited the restaurant we both took a moment before looking around for cabs, and during those moments I noticed a guy standing a few feet away that looked vaguely familiar. After a few surreptitious glances, we met eyes and I finally just asked him if his name was H., which it was, and he asked me if I was me, which I am. H. and I went to high school together! I was quite amused by this random run-in and asked whether we could have a photograph taken in order to prove that it ever happened. Dad and I were both a little punchy, so this is actually the photograph that he took for us. H. is pretty tall and clearly Dad's main goal was getting the sign in the photo. Still, a funny ending to a great meal. 

Big thanks goes out to Dad for the birthday dinner!

Breakfast and Childhood Home Walkabout

On Saturday morning D. made his delicious scrambled eggs, which were accompanied by the choice of scrapple or bacon, as well as toast. Good stuff.

After that I went and did a little walkabout the house and yard of the house in which I grew up. There was an area between our main backyard and what had been a garden, which I had always liked hanging out in because of the twisted vines that created a lovely canopy in the winter. There were always some strange relics of a time past, a mailbox, some random metal stakes in the ground, a fallen tree slowly turning to mulch. I was glad to see all relics remained, though even more worn than 20+ years ago.

Burger c/o Duke's Grocery With Old Friends

Back in the day, when my parents still lived in Maryland and I was in high school or during the early years of college, returning to the area generally included hanging out with T. at one point or another. But then the parents moved, and those funny holiday or summer interludes came to an end. I've certainly still seen T. in Brooklyn from time to time over the years, but the Washington D.C/Maryland meetups are generally a thing of the past. So when I realized that I was going to be in the D.C. area for Thanksgiving, I reached out to T. to see if he might be returning to the area. And in fact he was! So we made a plan for dinner in the Dupont Circle area. I arrived at Duke's Grocery not long before T. and his gf A. showed up, and only a little bit later C. also joined us. Conversation ranged in a few unpredictable but interesting ways, and I ordered a burger that turned out to be two burgers in one. It was a lot of burger.

After that we went to a funny basement bar not too far away and had a few drinks. I always enjoy catching up with T. and that A. is a keeper. A good night and, as far as I can recall, the first time T. and I ever had a proper grown-up-with-drinks kind of night in our old collective hometown area.

Hot and Sour Ramen c/o Ren's Ramen

The day after Thanksgiving Dad and I went and had lunch at Ren's Ramen in Wheaton. This was dad's first ramen experience, and he seemed a bit perplexed by the options. I decided to try one of their non-traditional specials: hot and sour ramen. This was very much like a hot and sour soup of the Chinese variety, but with ramen and a seasoned soft boil egg. It was pretty good. I might have preferred a slightly thinner broth, but the basic taste elements going one were pretty good.

Thanksgiving Dinner in Maryland

Dad and I returned to Maryland for another Thanksgiving dinner with the T.s. I began driving on Thanksgiving day and picked Dad up from the airport in Baltimore. Traffic was generally not bad and we made it to our old neighborhood during the daylight hours. The T.s were our across-the-way neighbors for pretty much my entire life. They and my parents went to Royal Ascot together for quite a number of years, and I really appreciate their ongoing family friendship and their willingness to include us in their holidays. Here is a very cute cream cheese Dorito pumpkin that B. made.

Here is the dinner table.

There were two kinds of turkey this year...I think one was a bourbon glazed variety, grilled...and the other perhaps a more traditional roasted turkey? I feel like this was the first year I really tried stuffing with oysters...I've never been a big stuffing person, but I have to say that particular stuffing (there were about 6 different varieties) really spoke to me.

As in past years, the birthdays of R. and me fall quite near the Thanksgiving holiday...so we each had the opportunity to blow out some candles and sing the 'happy birthday song to one another.

Mmmmmmm. Sweet heavenly dessert.

B. and T.'s nephew and his wife recently had a baby, who did quite well during the entire evening, I would say. Here is a picture of him meeting his cousin-uncle for the first time.

I really am thankful for being able to spend this holiday with a great group of folks whom I have known in one way or another for quite a number of years. I'll have to post some of the photos that B. and D. gave me for my birthday...major throwbacks from childhood, and images I feel like I've never seen or only saw at the time. Very neat.

Road Trip Lunch c/o Penn Alps

What is it about certain places? How do they manage to lodge themselves into our minds as meaningful, as beautiful, as timeless? And how often can those places ever measure up to whatever strange hold they've had on a person's brain? I ask these questions because when I started planning my drive to Columbus in order to celebrate Cuz K.'s engagement I did not struggle very much in making the counterintuitive decision to drive south before west and north. This is not the first time that I have driven to Ohio and made a stop at Penn Alps. The first was pretty much three years ago. I drove to Ohio on the way to go down to Tennessee to be with my parents for became my mother's second and last extended stay in a hospital. That was the drive that began a reality that ended with my mother's death less than a month later. When I was driving there and while I was actually eating and walking around Penn Alps and its rather remote Grantsville, MD location, however, it was not entirely apparent that that was the circumstance. I haven't actually re-read what I wrote about the last visit. I know that I was generally reflecting on the same ideas of place and time and nostalgia. And that I was non-plussed by the change to the entrance and to the gift shop, both of which were expanded and made slightly less quirky and more in line with the 'tourists stop here and we sell them things' vibe that I don't totally love. The funny thing is that as I knew I was going to stop at Penn Alps, I also started thinking about another location that I'd been to a few times in my youth that strangely stuck with me in terms of shaping some element of something that I care about. It seems. Hancock, Maryland is a second example of a place where I never spent much time, but that I visited a few different times throughout some formative time in my life.

I took no photographic evidence of my last minute decision to peel off the highway and drive down Hancock's main strip. I hadn't actually been sure that the place in my memories was Hancock, but when I saw the roof of and sign of the orchard/farm market literally just off the highway, I was pretty sure it was a place I had been. I don't know when. As a four year old. As an eight year old. As a nine year old. As a 12 year old. I simply don't know if I've been to that town three times or ten. At least three, that is for sure. In any case. It was a surreal thing driving down Hancock's Main Street and having at first a moment of feeling like I was totally mistaken. If it wasn't that apple/farm building market thing, then what town was it? I was driving the same route that my mother would often take when we drove to Ohio, but I had never remembered any of the roads. It's a strange thing to see things you've already seen but not entirely on purpose or realizing you are about to do so. Hancock is like that. I remember the market. I remembered a diner that I kept thinking was going to be just a little bit farther, and then I started to think that it didn't exist, and then it suddenly appeared and was exactly as I thought it would be. I remembered a General/Discount store with some weird mix of cheap toys and groceries and asundry things. The kind of place where there really is dust on some of the merchandise. I remembered going entirely through the town and turning right and going who knows how far to a place to park in order to then hike a while to get to a cabin with my parents that was along the Appalachian Trail.

So this town is just a location I somehow saw a number of times up until the time I was about 13. It is 17 years later and I am still drawn to it. And why? It's just a pretty small town with no huge anything that I could tell. Just strangely fragmented memories of being there. Being struck by the small town-ness of it. Struck by perhaps the run-down-ness of some of the people I saw. I don't know and I've just gone on a considerable tangent when my main point is that I revisited an entirely different place that I totally associate with driving trips with my mother for the first time since she died. That may not be my main point, but it certainly is part of the fabric of the situation.

In any case. I got to Penn Alps around 1 after hitting just terrible traffic on 95 south. I went directly to the hostess stand (past the still weird-to-me cashier plaza) to get a table. I was seated in an area I'm not sure I'd been to before. Though there is an especially cobwebbed part of my mind that feels like the answer is yes, and there was hot chocolate with whipped cream involved. But I could be wrong. In any case, I knew that my meal the last time hadn't been a runaway success so I tried to choose more carefully this time around. I went with a sweet tea that totally won. And enjoyed taking a look at the place mat - or should I say place map? With its nicely illustrated landmarks and routes as well as a pretty interesting slogan...the photographic evidence of which is only on my phone. Oh man it was funny, perhaps in part because of its spacing. It went:

Come once & see what we 

have yet, still

That shit is deep. 

More thinking led to a far better choice in meal. Though I don't usually order Reubens (in large part because the sandwich reminds me of my ex-boyfriend's eating tendencies), this seemed like the place to get even more over something that is so far in the past as to be the kind of thing that shouldn't influence my eating habits. It wasn't the thickest of sandwiches, but the country style bread (I requested non-rye b/c that is just the truth of my preferences) really did add something to the mix. And what I believe was truly homemade sauerkraut was absolutely not your standard stuff. It was deep and dark in taste and not crunchy, which to me suggests it really did ferment and pick up a lot of flavor before landing in my sandwich. I really don't know enough about corned beef to say how it ranked, but I will say it was thicker than some of the Reuben sandwiches I've seen in my time. I also ordered a side of mashed potatoes and gravy even though the sandwich came with homemade potato chips that I shamefully ignored. The potatoes had some nice lumps that suggested being made not out of a box. And I liked the gravy regardless of its providence. Providence? Provenance?

And then it was time to take a stroll through Spruce Forest. I, again, somehow found myself too shy to actually go into any of the workshops. Honestly I think as a kid I never did go inside. I just loved all the little cottages and the idea of creation happening within.

In this instance even if I wanted to go in I couldn't "due to a weekend workshop in feather carving." Because THAT IS A THING THAT HAPPENS!!!!!!!

Then I went to the bridge/Casselman River to sit for a moment. The ground was a little wet so I didn't really do what I thought I might, which was take off my shoes and put my feet in the river. This was in part due to the squishy-ness of the ground and one part the fact that there didn't seem like there was a really perfect place to get in there. Also, I'm not sure if there are rules against putting your feet in a river right by a crafts village and don't want to be banned.

Yup. I haven't read what I wrote, but I have looked at the photographs. It's kind of terrible. It demonstrates an entire lack of creativity. I keep getting stuck wanting to capture the same exact view or a very similar one, which doesn't capture any more of the feeling or thoughts that I may have been trying to capture. How can you capture the feeling of just being a kid being slightly interested, slightly mesmerized and slightly bored by a place?

In the end I basically took the same exact photographs that I took the last time, only fewer of them. After my meal and stroll I continued heading west. For a while I was on a pretty solitary/small road, which provided me many a beautiful vista of the hills and mountains around me. I am still not entirely sure what the mountains would have been, but my car definitely enjoyed the challenge of driving up and down a few of them. Also: coal propaganda is the worst.

Preakness Day Proper 2013

Preakness day dawned cloudy and chilly and while I hoped against hope and logic that the sun would do a repeat of its glorious path through the sky on Black Eyed Susan Day, it was not to be. At one point it full-on rained, driving those of us with seats not protected by the overhang of the upper grandstand back. The race track doesn't have much in the way of indoor seating on any given day, but especially not on a day where all seats were spoken for...so that left a great many of us standing around in odd places or sitting in others' seats just to be dislodged once the rightful owners returned. It also predicated layers that covered up the ladies' outfits. But L. and Fat T. still looked pretty slick.

This is when the rain was really coming down in earnest.

D. looking on and ignoring the rain. B. was also able to attend, and it was good to see her. I also made additional sandwiches of the roast beef, asiago cheese and horse radish variety.

Three cousins in a row.

Two friends in a row.

One fat headed friend and two less so (in this instance the fat headed person is me, not Fat T.) in a row.

The crowd.

While everyone and their mother expected great things from Orb, it was Oxbow who ended up winning the big race.

Dude with giant, but seemingly not all that recent camera getting a view of the main stretch.

Crabs c/o Crackpot

Last year Dad and I both were excited about the opportunity of having crabs after a day at the races, and we ended up at Crackpot, which was much to our collective liking. While our Black Eyed Susan day lineup was different than last year, crabs were still on the agenda. D. and R. couldn't come, as they had the drive back to Silver Spring to keep in mind, but V., L., Fat T., my father and I all happily made the trek to Crackpot. It's a pretty nondescript place from the outside, tucked into a strip mall in Towson with an attached liquor and wine store, but inside the restaurant's walls are laden with maritime themed doo dads and painted fish and the vibe is decidedly chill and knowing.

We were on top of it enough to have made a reservation for a table and two dozen jumbo crabs, so when we sat down most all of our decisions were already made. What wasn't made, however, was the knowledge base L. and Fat T. needed for their first ever (ever!) experience with blue crabs. I found this a bit surprising, but then I realized that while I don't very often feel like a Marylander, I was one for the first half of my life simply by the geographical location of my birth and childhood...and that comes with certain inalienable rights: like knowing what it is to sit down at a paper-covered table and dive into a pile of Old Bay laden hard shelled blue crabs...something Long Islanders like L. and Fat T. simply wouldn't have been as exposed to during their respective youths. But no worries, my father was happy to expound his own crab wisdom to new ears.

I had a Fat Tire beer with a hammer chaser.

And then the crabs arrived.

Beautiful, beautiful crabbies.

L. took to seducing hers.

Another more hands-on tutorial.

I would say that it was a success. Fat T. and L. seemed to very much enjoy the process and the result.

T. was very triumphant over a portion of shell that he had helped turn into a mountain.

Detritus.

Lovely, lovely meal. I was very happy about it. While I realize that I have to make sure that I get my soft shell crab fix soon (tis the season), it was good to remember the far more labor intensive process that is deconstructing a crab that hasn't shed its shell. All around good time.

Dinner c/o Orchard Market & Cafe

After we said our goodbyes to B. and D. we gathered ourselves up and went to Orchard Market & Cafe for a nice Persian meal. The place is BYO, so Dad brought a white wine that particularly lovely. 

We shared their hummus and an eggplant and artichoke dish, which was described as: layers of eggplant and artichokes & Bulgarian feta cheese smothered in a tangy-sweet dill dijon mustard sauce. It was quite sweet. Surprisingly so. Interesting.

I also ordered the salad shirazi, which I was happy to enjoy. Gotta love sumac.

I chose the combo kabob for my main meal, which was way more food than I could actually deal with. Chicken, koobiedeh, and a half skewer of filet mignon. Tasty stuff. The onion was really spicy, like shockingly so.