Sorry…still learning to use the blog’s mobile app.
Anyway I had dinner at one of my favorite DC restaurants. A real scene on a Friday night too, but I am a happy camper. A dozen oysters: 6 Blue Islands, 3 Quonset Points and 3 Wellfleets with a glass of Villa Maria Estate Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, NZ), a Cesar salad and a crab cake.
Topping it off in my room with a glass of pinot and a bite of dark chocolate.
YES.
They are everywhere you turn and every time you trip over one you land in either a museum or a big pile of pollen. Spring in Washington is spectacularly beautiful. I arrived last night and the first bit of local news I heard this morning was about how happy everyone was that yesterday’s rain washed a lot of pollen out of the air. The dogwood is in blossom and I could smell honeysuckle on my walk home after work; now I can’t smell anything.
When I arrived at my B&B last night I made a beeline to the nearby “supermarket” and picked up cheese crackers and a bottle of wine – dinner (and a chocolate bar for emergencies). When I returned the owner insisted that I have a proper glass and an apple to balance the meal. This alone is reason to return here.
Up early this morning for a great breakfast and off to meetings. First with the committee in charge of our feeding project with Washington Hebrew Congregation and then on to meet with the nutritionist at Bread For the City, one of DC’s best hunger relief organizations. We met in their rooftop learning garden. They are all about teaching clients how to grow food at home in small spaces – way in line with Global Hunger Foundation’s mission and with what we are doing in Los Angeles. From there on to have coffee with a couple of former coworkers at Share Our Strength and then another nice mile over to Georgetown to see my former supervisor at SOS and now must-see buddy whenever I’m in town, Eric. When I emailed him to see what he was doing late this afternoon his very correct reply was “Drinking wine with you?” I didn’t even need to say I was going to be in town… He had a very yummy central coast red decanted and waiting along with some veggie rolls and steamed dumplings to munch.
We had a great visit and then I had a really lovely dusk walk back through Rose Park along the Potomac Parkway and then over the river. I walked up from Dupont Circle to my DC home stopping to pick up a salad. I just wanted to get back here and take off my shoes. It is absolutely quiet and that is just what I needed after an day of wonderful noisy city. No picture of the salad – I don’t like eating out of take out containers and I don’t want to advertise the fact that I sometimes must. It was a faro and arugula salad with grilled shrimp: just what I needed.
And so to bed and another day of the same tomorrow.
This is Amanda. She’s six and in my completely unbiased Nana opinion she’s really smart. I took a beautiful drive out highway 126 to go play in the park and have lunch with my girls (oh yes, that’s my daughter Star on the right). Bonnie Lu’s in Ojai is great – they roast their own turkey, make all their salad dressings, use good local produce and make good STRONG coffee. I had a turkey dip, and Amanda went for the grilled cheddar on whole grain while reserving the right to dip in my au jus. She took a bite and declared “I am in HEAVEN” then looked up and noticed that there was a television on the wall and added “and the TV’s on”. What more do you need when you’re 6? Later she told me that though he mother is “not a professional she knows how to make cheese stringy!” 
All she asked for to complete her happiness was a lipstick kiss that would last her the rest of the day. I was glad to oblige.
I’ve been inclined to cook pretty simply since all the big deal of cooking for Passover. I happily broke my (mostly successful) 7-day abstinence from leavened bread with a sandwich. I don’t keep kosher and so I really went to town: grilled ham and cheese at Mendocino Farm, a great sandwich and salad restaurant that uses sustainable locally sourced products and GREAT bread.
I’ll be traveling to Washington for work this week – my part time gig with the Global Hunger Foundation – meetings and getting things set up for their annual Miztvah Day. As part of their marathon community volunteer activities they (and a local Jewish Day School) are packing more than 34,000 emergency meals for local anti-hunger efforts and almost 36,000 that will go to Burundi and Niger. So, you see, I really do have the great privilege of feeding people on a large scale in addition to a few at a time in my dining room.
Have no fear, while there I will take advantage of some of the great food DC has to offer. One of my favorites is to go to the featured exhibit at the National Gallery and follow it with lunch at the associated restaurant. They always have a buffet themed to accompany the art. Last year it was Italian Renaissance and a few years ago French Impressionism (think cheese selection to end all cheese selections…). This year an exhibit just closed last week so I’m not sure that the new one (and the menu change over) will be in place by next Saturday. ***sigh*** However, this is the weekend for the White House spring garden tour. I will get up early and hit the line to get tickets on Saturday – maybe Michelle will be in the vegetable garden plucking weeds and we can compare notes on our tomatoes…
Here’s what our beautiful table looked like for Passover. It’s scattered with rosemary and bay leaves, which smelled wonderful and even more so when we set hot pans of food on top of them. The after picture is the pile of silverware to be sorted and put away the next morning. There were 12 of us total but I somehow managed to miss counting myself in all of my calculations. We had to scramble at the last minute and squeeze in another place setting!
Here’s the never-ending menu:
Annie really has been re-dubbed “partner-in-crime”. I couldn’t have pulled it off without her. Between her most excellent chicken liver pate, the best sponge cake I’ve ever had (her great grandmother’s recipe) and just a tremendous amount of work I am ever so grateful.
For those who aren’t familiar – at Passover, after reading the Haggadah (the story of the Exodus+ … think The Ten Commandments) the meal usually starts with a hard boiled egg in salt water. This year I changed things up by updating an old standby Jewish appetizer called eggs and onions. My mother made it with raw white onions and I hated it. Old recipes call for using chicken fat; I used this year’s new crop unfiltered olive oil.
Matzo Balls cooking
We moved on to the fish and the beets with the pate, chrosset and matzo sticking around through the soup course.
Brisket heading back into the oven for its SECOND cooking
Then out came all the goodness of the main course followed by a break for more reading, talking and singing and then it was on to the dessert(s). Somehow, today, my pants still button and finally my feet and back have stopped aching. I LOVE Passover but it is a lot of work, which many hands make possible!
Next stop Shavuot, the cheesecake holiday!
Flori Cooks 