i made a pie.

our friends e&e had us over for a back deck barbecue the other night, and i decided to make this pie from caroline's bake shop.

except mine didn't come out looking like this:

it came out like a big soupy chocolatey mess. probably because instead of making it the day before, like i knew i should, i made it the day of, which meant there was nowhere close to enough cooling and setting time. and i think i filled too much of the shell with meringue, so everything overflowed.

but, no one complained about it's less-than-solid state and it got pretty well gobbled up, as evidenced by this:

though the well-set leftovers definitely tasted a little better.

so, in short, it's a delicious recipe and if you are the kind of person who plans ahead and has a good sense of proportions, you should try it.

you're welcome.

top chef

one of the great surprise lessons of marriage has been that the kitchen is just not as scary a place as i thought.

i always just assumed i was not very good at cooking but it turns out that i can make my mom's recipes and they taste just as delicious and i can figure out what to substitute for shallots (because i can't quite figure out what those are) and i can make recipes that use double boilers and sifters and all kinds of other things that used to send me running for the hills/chipotle.

and tonight we conquered the fanciest kitchen adventure yet: creme brulee.

because turns out even wielding a torch isn't as scary and hard as you think.

shake it up

of all the things we craved during no-sugar-march, milkshakes were at the top of the list. so, we scratched our itch last night with a trip to burger tap and shake, accompanied by our burger besties, e&e.

a six buck chuck (plus bacon. yum), some sweet potato fries, a black and white shake and the awesome company hit the spot.

and now, with that out of the way, we just might be ready to give up sugar for another month.

animal style

for in-n-out first-timers, i'd say we did it up pretty well.

though i'm not going to lie, i thought all this advice about asking for our burgers "animal style" was just a trick to get us to look stupid at the cash register.

good news. it wasn't. and animal style is delish.

here are six words i am never sorry to hear.

"how about a burger for dinner?"

yes, please.

cheeseburger in paradise

my burger craving has been raging out of control, so i finally gave in and got a burger bowl yesterday at big buns.

it was pretty good, but a burger on lettuce is just not the same.

smitten kitchen

in the wake of my dental surgery and subsequent weeks-long soft-food-only diet, i seem to have lost my ability to plan and prepare a decent meal. my trips to the grocery store have been few and far between, and my culinary creativity has been pretty lacking.

it's been a little sad.

but i got back on the horse last night, as it was my turn to host the poynter crew for our monthly dinner. i made the mama bear's gazpacho recipe, plus grilled pizza (pear and gorgonzola (ABK thought it was apple and gouda but that's OK. these things happen), peppers, mushrooms and artichoke hearts, and peppers artichoke and prosciutto), and homemade peanut butter cup ice cream for dessert.

we scarfed everything down so fast i don't have any pictures, so you'll just have to take my word for it that the meal a) really happened and b) was delicious.

i should also mention that key players in my triumphal return to the kitchen were AWD's blendtech and EH's grilling skills. and her pizza pan.

it felt good to be back.

today was brought to you by the number five

we celebrated cinco de mayo as close to mexico as we could get. namely, the totally sketchy mexican restaurant by our office where i once killed a baby cockroach (in the restaurant, not the office).

seems pretty authentic, right?

(i mean, not all of us can be this lucky.)

ole!

good times at hard times

half-price burger monday at hard times cafe in old town went down like this.

frances: whiskey river barbecue cheeseburger with bacon and onion rings

AWD: black and bleu burger with my extra tomato

emma: bacon cheeseburger and a dc

eric: chili cheeseburger, medium

everyone: happy and full. and not eating again until lunch tomorrow.

what a crock

my hopes were high that a much-hyped ice storm would hit last night and force us to work from home (best.office.ever) today but, alas, there was no commuting treachery this morning and so off to the real office i went.

sigh.

the day was not a total bust, though, because i made delicious pork chops for dinner in my new crock pot. this was my second crock pot outing and i have to say, i am a convert. i love coming home to something ready to eat, plus my house smells delicious as soon as i open the door, plus my crock pot is a delightful shade of red, plus using it makes me feel like a real grown-up. and saves me from eating cookies for dinner, which is something a real grown-up would never do.

if any of you are feeling the itch to do something nice for me, you could send me one of your favorite crock pot recipes. or you could pray that a work-from-home ice storm hits tonight, instead. either one will do.

three strikes, that's a turkey

last night EH and i went to the grocery to get everything we need for thanksgiving dinner. this was a lot of things, but we pretty much found them all, so you just rest your pretty little heads about that.

when we went to check out, we decided to just sort of divide the goods up so what she payed and what i payed were roughly even. and get this. we got it within $2.

two dollars!

(i want my two dollars!)

if that is not a thanksgiving miracle, then i guess i don't believe in thanksgiving miracles at all.

add to that the fact that i saved $16 (sixteen dollars!) using my "very important customer" card, which represents more than half of my savings using said card for this whole year (the WHOLE year), and i think we can all agree that it was a highly productive trip to the grocery.

then today i went to the library and checked out every "friends" DVD they had so we can watch all the thanksgiving episodes. it is going to be epic. and hilarious. but don't be jeal. i bet your thanksgiving is going to be awesome, too.

citywide rodeo

the first thing i would like you to know is that i am composing this post on my brand-new macbook pro. that is right. my apple conversion is complete and i have a feeling my entire life is going to be revolutionized. get ready.

the second thing i would like you to know is that the downtown crew has voted to change their name. they will now be known as the red line crew. it was determined that this was a more accurate nomenclature, even though sarah points out that it is also code for yuppie a-hole. which is so ridiculous because those kids are not yuppies.

see what i did there? joke! because they are not a-holes either.

the third thing i would like you to know is that the maryland state fair is a place where all your dreams will come true. it surpassed my absolute wildest expectations and i could not have asked for more, from a fair or from anything or anyone else, really.

even though i swore, after my other recent fair experience, that i would not gorge myself on artery-clogging food, i just couldn't walk away from a corn dog, or roasted corn or french fries or sips of everyone else's highly sweetened lemonade or pinches of cotton candy, and i certainly couldn't pass up the holy grail of fair food, the deep-fried snickers bar, which was one of the most delicious things i have ever tasted. truly. i recommend sharing a deep-fried snickers bar, though. it is really too much for one person to handle.

sarah also got a turkey leg, which we are pretty sure was actually ham. we are also pretty sure it was approximately the size of heather's head.

then there was pig racing, skee ball, the ferris wheel and the swings, which were just as fun as i remember them being when i was a kid.

and then, to top it all off, we watched a calf be born! yep. we totally saw a cow birth. it was incredible and so exciting and not at all gross. i sort of loved it.

i did not love that the woman sitting in front of us, also witnessing the cow birth, was eating a hamburger. seriously. you can't make that stuff up.

the only thing we missed was the justin bieber concert, which went down the next day. but, like i need another underage crush, so probably just as well.

i must admit that, after such a magical day, i was worried regular life would seem dull and uninspired.

but then i figured, it's nothing a little something deep-fried can't cure.

look who came to dinner

we put some good work into the house this week and weekend (kitchen unpacked! artistic dining room lighting design accomplished!) so we were ready for our first dinner guests on sunday, just in time to celebrate lance and robert's birthdays.

emily h. got a grill for her birthday last month, so our motto these days is "grill everything." (maybe we should make it "grill, baby, grill." thoughts on this?)

sunday's grilled menu included chicken, corn, zuchini and squash and melon (indeed! you can grill melon! and it is divine!) and then homemade raspberry frozen yogurt and grilled (!) angel food cake for dessert. we made a creamy chili powder sauce for the corn, which i thought i might hate but ended up loving, and squeezed lime juice in the melon once it was off the grill, which gave it a perfect little zip and made it even more delicious, despite the fact that such a thing seemed impossible.

laura's homemade garland added just the right touch of festivity, and was a lovely complement to our new paper lantern montage in the dining room.












it was so lovely to have people over to our new home and to feel like it actually is a home after a couple weeks of boxes and terrible work schedules. grilling adventures on the horizon include grilled pizza and shrimp sandwiches. and the ice cream maker is always at the ready. stop by any time.

picked a peck

it is a fact that autumn is pretty much my favorite season, and, as far as i know, always has been. (and i don't know how anyone would know any differently, but i thought i would build in a loophole just in case.)

i think my attachment to fall has mostly to do with my attachment to nostalgia, which fall seems to be filled with. i was born in the fall, started college in the fall, left on my mission in the fall. fall is full of remembrance for me. plus i always happily salute the return of scarves and gloves and hats and other adorable outerwear.

unfortunately, fall has been a little slow to make its way here (though it is cooling off quickly and pouring down rain, so it might have finally arrived) and it occured to me a little while ago that i hadn't yet celebrated my favorite season adequately. so emily and i set about to rectify the situation on monday (thanks, columbus!) with a trip to maryland to pick apples.

the air was crisp, the leaves were richly and brightly colored, the picking was good (despite the sign that said, "apple season is over. no more apples until 2010," which turned out to be an inexplicable lie) and before you know it, we had amassed 20 pounds of apples.

that's a lot of apples, folks.

i had, in fact, seen on the orchard's web site that the price of apples per pound dropped if you picked 20 pounds or more, and i distinctly remember thinking to myself, "who on earth would pick 20 pounds of apples? or more?"

me. that's who.

not that having 20 pounds of apples stopped us from buying one more, of the caramel variety. because it didn't.





swarms of bees did force us to enjoy said caramel apples in the car, though.

we spent the rest of the afternoon baking our many pounds of apples into many delicious things. namely apple ginger cupcakes and butterscotch apple cake and german pancakes with apple (which we enjoyed for lunch) and apple crisp.

by the time everything was out of the oven we couldn't stand to look at another apple let alone eat anything with an apple in it, so we called in reinforcements. it is amazing how many people will respond to a plea to consume fresh apple baked goods.

we still had about half the original haul left over at the end of the night, but split between the two of us it didn't seem so impossible, and uncle bob and aunt joyce have been making short work of the apples i brought home. (i still haven't been able to eat another one, though my saturation level is starting to come down.)

welcome, autumn. i think we did you right.

eat your heart out

the other day my dad made the observation that it seems like pretty much all i do since i moved to d.c. is eat. which is a fairly accurate assessment. especially since it is what i spent basically all of saturday doing.

it was the taste of georgetown festival, you see, wherein delicious restaurants from all over the city set up tents on wisconsin avenue and serve little sampler tastes of some of their most popular dishes, and you just walk around and trade tickets for little pieces of heaven in the form of clam chowder and lobster rolls and paella and ribs and chocolate tarts, or whatever else strikes your gastronomic fancy.

and, as if it could get any better than that, uncle john was in town so i had a partner in gorging. (that stack of plates only represents part of our consumption.)





but, never fear! that wasn't the end of my daily caloric intake (though it probably should have been) because later that night i met up with out-of-towners becky and marina for dinner in dupont circle. (seriously, i wish there were gay rights marches in washington every day. they bring all my favorite people to town.)






and then i had to roll myself back to the metro.

i would say maybe this is perfect preparation for a side career as a competitive eater, but i don't think i could pour a bunch of water on hot dog buns and mash them up into a ball and then stuff them in my face.

a cake, maybe. but hot dog buns? that's just gross.