365 Days of Food

I suppose it is late summer. Horticulturally, you can see it in the black-eyed susans: they still look like flowers, but here and there the yellow petals have fallen off with only the black bullseye centers remaining. Billy, the bartender at the Irish pub, told me the Irish like to drink port with a few…

A friend invited us to a party for Bloomberg staff at National Harbor, where you could take part in family activities like sand castles, magic shows, and a hat decorating booth. The food was prepared in thoughtful ways that made it easy for wandering guests to enjoy it; for instance, you could get salads in cones,…

There’s a particular taste I associate with Whole Foods cheese that I think might even be a conscious part of the store’s brand, and by this I mean the cheese they leave out in the fruit section and encourage people to sample as they walk in. It was flavored with balsamic vinegar and had a…

Met people at the Mexican restaurant below the office and a coworker ordered a mango drink with a jalapeño aftertaste that kicked in ten seconds later, so it was bracing and refreshing at the same time. Later I was at a giant bar next to the Verizon Center, one of those places so large that…

Leftover chopped salad for both lunch and dinner. It was the Ottolenghi and Tamimi mixture of tomatoes and cucumbers with lemon juice, and it seemed to taste good with anything, even when the pairings aren’t supposed to work. For lunch I tried it with a peanut butter sandwich and a peach, and for dinner, we…

It was around 8:15 when we sat down for dinner and we’d already closed the window shades. And so it begins, our slide into darkness. I had more Korean from Seoul Food and watched a peculiar Canadian/Mexican documentary about monarch butterflies, who look like leaves unfolding from the trees when they scatter from their perches…

We were at Ikea over the weekend and I picked up a refrigerated box of cinnamon rolls, even though my sixth sense for bread immediately told me they wouldn’t be much above what I’d find in a grocery store. I could not help it: I wanted lingonberries and maple syrup and a limited-square-footage apartment with…

The sports bar in the neighborhood is quickly becoming my favorite local place, not only because they seem to quite often play hits from the mid-90s, which annoyed me to no end during the era itself but now make me nostalgic for the time when everybody was forced to hear the same songs, but also…

It was hot enough all weekend that it felt unhealthy and hazardous to be outside when the sun was out. There was a breeze, which was also hot. An eggplant was ready in the garden and I knew that roasting it would not be an option, so I settled on a salad of fried eggplant…

Finally there was one tomato in the garden that looked very ripe and hadn’t been ripped into by an unknown creature. Without thinking about it, all the tomatoes I planted this year were huge beefsteaks, which probably isn’t the best choice for either flavor or looks. I made a salsa, using three tomatoes and a…

Brownies two ways. The brownie was supposed to have been invented by Bertha Palmer of the Palmer House in Chicago, who passed it out as a dainty treat for the ladies before the Columbian Exposition. I have eaten the Palmer House brownie, which has nuts on top and is served with ice cream and chocolate…

Slices of chorizo with crackers for lunch, and a peach. I stayed late at work and picked up breakfast tacos with scrambled eggs, cheese, and ground chorizo. (Photo: Sitges, Catalonia.) >> August 11 << August 9