This is Wendy from the American Red Cross. Glad to hear you stayed safe through Ike.
If you want to see how we feed people post Ike, watch these videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dQ1UDeshi8
First, many, many thanks to the lovely K for her shout-out! My stats went up exponentially after that. For those new readers, welcome! I’m usually better at posting, but it’s been hectic at work. Lunch is usually at my desk or non-existent.
To Sharon: Thanks for the recommendations; I’ll have to check those out. I also saw a little Mexican place on Dairy Ashford today between S. Main and 59 that looked interesting.
Second, I have a lot of ideas for posts bouncing around in my head. I want to get some photos on the site, especially of some of my cooking. I finally had success getting Matt to eat tomato sauce this weekend! (It involved lots of fresh veggies, an 8-oz. container of ricotta cheese, rigatoni, and turkey sausage.) I just have to find the time to get them from my head to the computer.
Again, if there’s anything you want to see me cover, please let me know in the comments. Now I have to decide what to get for lunch (since I’ve only packed a salad and an apple).
I think I have it figured out. I think I know what I am going to cook.
“Why are you obsessing so much about this, M?”
Good question. My in-laws are flying down from Illinois for Thanksgiving. This is the first year I have to cook something besides a side dish for dinner (the past two years Matt and I have gone to our church’s Thanksgiving dinner). And my father-in-law likes to cook and makes good food. I have to wow them. (Matt and my brother-in-law Mike are convinced I could serve them ham, stuffing and instant potatoes and they would be happy.)
Here are my limitations:
- My father-in-law has Type 2 diabetes. I am NOT going to kill him with this meal.
- My in-laws do not like turkey. Frankly, neither do I, so there’s nothing lost there.
- I detest ham. It’s too salty.
- I have a small kitchen and a small table.
- My mother-in-law hates anything with spice (any spice – she thinks Rotel tomatoes are too hot). She is not going to survive this weekend, especially if I drag everyone to a Tex-Mex joint in San Antonio.
So what’s a girl to do?
Here’s my menu:
Appetizers: Mini crab cakes with roasted garlic aioli, crudites with dip
Salad: Arugula, fennel and orange salad with a citrus vinaigrette
Main course: Pork tenderloin with a sage-rosemary rub, wrapped in pancetta and served with fried capers
Sides: Horseradish twice-baked potatoes, roasted winter root vegetables, green beans
Dessert: Pumpkin cheesecake for them, something else for me (I hate pumpkin)
No turkey, not a lot of simple carbs, relatively happy, fall-like menu, and no one will fall into a food coma. Yay! I hope it all goes well.
Things have been crazy busy at work. At the full-time job, we released quarterly earnings last week, have a major meeting this week that I organized from start to finish, I have myriad projects to accomplish, and I have a class at Rice Thursday and Friday for my certificate in Finance and Accounting. (Woo! I can critique box lunches!) As for Williams-Sonoma, we just finished Holiday Shopping Card sales, had a corporate visit yesterday, I’ve been helping with the Thanksgiving technique classes, and we’re gearing up for Thanksgiving and holiday sales. Not only that, but I have been obsessed with the election (I wanted to be in Chicago on election night – seeing the skyline at night made me homesick). AND I’ve been obsessing over what I’m going to cook for Thanksgiving dinner; my in-laws are flying in from Illinois to spend the week with us.
I shall leave you with these links, though:
Speculation on the next White House chef (I like the idea of several Chicago chefs doing a dinner during the Inaguration.) (Chicago Tribune)
Date night at Spiaggia (Barack likes wood-roasted scallops – a man after my own heart.) (Chicago Tribune)
Per Allison Cook, Houston’s own Reef restaurant named the best seafood restaurant in America by Bon Appetit magazine. Congrats on the honor! I now need to go there more than ever. (Houston Chronicle)
I’m Never Full is now writing for Citysearch! Here’s one of her recent articles.
She Eats covers the latest Flavor Tripping Party at The Social for Houstonist. (I hate working on Friday nights – I always miss the fun.)
Cattle rustling is alive and well in Illinois. Who knew? (Chicago Tribune)
I am registered for the 2009 BP MS 150 from Houston to Austin. So is everyone else, it appears. Registration opened at 10:15 this morning (get it? 10:15 on 10/15? how twee!), and it’s now 83% full. At 2:00 in the afternoon.
Again, I say: Holy crap!
(It is, by the way, sad that I am cursing so much in this post, because I ride with my church team, and our rector is riding with us this year. I am going to burst into flames during MS 150 weekend, I just know it.)
So yeah. I’ll be reviewing energy bars and gels, and extolling the virtues of Camelbak Elixir here (I can’t stand Gatorade, so this is my energy drink of choice). But you’ll get to see all the food on the rides I do!
Swiped from several people, including the Chowhounds page.
From British food writer Andrew Wheeler’s blog, Very Good Taste, comes this list of 100 things that — apparently — you should eat before you die. Here’s how it works:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.
- Venison
- Nettle tea
- Huevos rancheros
- Steak tartare
- Crocodile (I’ve had alligator)
- Black pudding
- Cheese fondue
- Carp
- Borscht
- Baba ghanoush read more…
And now, for something completely different.
Matt and I went to Himalaya restaurant for dinner a couple of weeks ago. (It was the night of the first presidential debate, which will be important in a bit.) I had some of the best Indian food there I’ve ever had. Food Princess has raved about this place, and I have seen it before a few times, but never stopped in. I’m sorry I hadn’t before, because this has to be my new favorite Indian place in Houston. Plus, I can’t wait to try the Pakistani food in future trips.
Himalaya is hidden in a little strip mall at the northwest corner of Hillcroft and the Southwest Freeway; India Grocers is also in the center, as are several other restaurants. The interior, which has been commented on by several reviewers at B4-U-Eat, is eclectic, which didn’t bother me one bit. I was more fascinated by the Indian and Pakistani music videos playing on the TV when we walked in. Chef Kaiser was wonderful, juggling us and several other customers that were getting large to-go orders; my guess was these were people picking up their evening meals to break the Ramadan fast. During dinner, Chef Kaiser had changed the channel to Fox News, and I was chatting with another diner about the presidential campaign and the bailout bill. This is the type of place where I felt I could have that type of enlightening conversation and not get dirty looks. I almost felt like I was back in college.
I ordered a mango lassi; Matt ordered a sweet lassi. It had a pronounced mango flavor, and wasn’t cloyingly sweet (sometimes I get that when I use mango nectar). Vegetable samosas were definitely spicy, with whole spices in the mix, but you could still taste the earthiness of the potato.
Chef Kaiser recommended two dishes, goat biryani and chicken hara masala. However, the green chilies made the chicken so spicy that his wife would not allow him to serve it. He brought out chicken karhai instead, which was excellent. Sinus-clearingly spicy (that is a compliment, by the way), tangy, and slightly sweet, this is the type of curry I have looked for in Houston. I ate this by hand with the naan (truly, as Food Princess reports, as big as your head) and enjoyed everything; I was very tempted to not share with Matt. The goat was slightly dry and slightly spicy. This is a biryani that my mother-in-law would not be able to handle with her bland palate. (Unfortunately, she cannot handle spicy food; too much pepper gets her hackles up.) The rice was perfectly cooked, which provided the moisture needed by the goat. Matt was pleased with this choice, and raved about the chicken, as well.
For dessert, we both ordered almond custard. Chef Kaiser says it’s a “richer, tastier version of the Mexican flan,” and I have to agree with him. Eggy yet light, with a sweet caramel on top, it was perfect and not too sweet. We topped this off with a shared cup of chai, compliments of Chef Kaiser. And we had leftovers! Our meal came out to just over $40, and considering all the food we got, that is a value.
I love looking at this menu. Robb Walsh has said that you can go there multiple times and never have the same thing, and I can agree with him. There are so many things I look forward to trying. I can’t wait to see if the chicken tikka masala gets away from its too-sweet, too-tomatoey cousins at other restaurants. I’ve never had fish masala, and I can’t wait to try it. The malai kofta sound wonderful, as do most of the vegetarian dishes. I hope that their saag paneer can make me like that dish; most places’ saag remind me of creamed spinach, which I detest. Plus, Chef Kaiser is such a great person; how can you not love him? He was so kind to us when we were there, and he was that way with everyone that walked through the door. Himalaya’s reputation is well-deserved and I can’t wait to go back.
Ugh. It’s been 24 hours, and I still can’t get the horror of my terrible lunch from yesterday out of my head.
I went to lunch with the office manager, a rare treat (I really do like her, and it’s nice to get out of the office). We walked across the street to Fish City Grill to grab a bite (I didn’t feel like P. F. Chang’s, her first suggestion). Boy, do I wish I had chosen P. F. Chang’s, instead; at least I know what I get there.
They had seafood enchiladas on the menu, which she ordered; I ordered a grilled shrimp taco salad (trying to be healthy, after all). The food came fairly quickly. My salad had five grilled shrimp (size 15-18/pound, I’m guessing), bagged greens, a bit of shredded cheese, avocado, and supposedly ranch dressing in a fried taco shell.
First sin: The plate had lettuce on it, indicative of sloppy plating. Okay, that’s not a huge sin in my book; I’ll forgive that.
Second sin: There were still pieces of the pit attached to my avocado. It looked as if someone ran the avocado through a table saw to slice it; the pit was perfectly sliced with the avocado. Plus, the avocado wasn’t particularly good; there were knots in the slices. I spent a good amount of time picking that out. This is more unforgivable to me.
Third sin: They didn’t do a great job deveining the shrimp. Since I didn’t know where the shrimp came from (I never assume the shrimp is local, especially after Ike), I wasn’t sure if the vein was okay. So I’m deveining the damn things at the table. Grrr. They were also a bit too salty; I like salted cold shrimp, but with warm shrimp, I like a little seasoning, usually just lemon juice. It appeared that the cooks just dropped the things in the spice rub. Poor shrimp; if they were good quality, I would have been happy with them as-is.
Final sin: The “dressing” had no flavor. It was supposed to be an avocado-ranch dressing. It was neither avocado nor ranch. It didn’t even taste like tartar sauce. Frankly, it tasted like mayo. I hate mayo on its own. It was absolutely disgusting, and it was loaded onto the greens. I had to add quite a bit of pepper to make it palatable, and even then I only ate a third of it.
My office manager’s seafood enchiladas were dry. There was a lot of “seafood” in them, but no sauce, just a schmear on top of the two large tortillas. The red beans and sausage were good, apparently. She had the leftovers last night (after asking them to add more sauce), and upon opening one of the tortillas, discovered that there was more chicken than seafood or fish in them. She was understandably angry. She said that they were not at all like the ones she had previously, and thinks that there may be a new chef.
I have never been impressed with Fish City. I’ve had pasta from there a few times, and the sauce has always been oily or greasy, and the pasta was overcooked. The shrimp was also very salty. It was fairly busy during lunch, with people from the neighboring offices inside and on the patio, so turnover should be fairly good. If you’re hurting financially, I understand that; we all are at this point. If your suppliers are having trouble getting you product, that’s understandable, as well. Most of the seafood in the region, especially shrimp, oysters and scallops, has been affected by Ike. But the “bait-and-switch” performed with the chicken is low. If you can’t put something that advertises seafood on the menu, then don’t! (Yes, I know the whole “Don’t eat fish on Monday” line, thank you Bourdain.)
I probably will not go back there again, which is a shame, because I do like a good seafood restaurant. But I think that there are enough good places out there that care enough about the product, that want to support local fishermen, that they should be rewarded for their work with my hard-earned cash. Unfortunately, Fish City is not one of them.
You’re probably asking, “Where the hell is Coffeyville, KS?” It is a town in southeastern Kansas, a mile north of the Kansas-Oklahoma state line. It is an hour and a half north of Tulsa via US-169. (Little-known fact: Google Maps’ default pin location is the Coffeyville Country Club.) And it is where my company’s refinery and nitrogen fertilizer plant are located. I had to go up there this week for a business meeting. The scenery? Not bad, especially if you don’t mind the smell of light hydrocarbons at 8:00 in the morning. (I took two years of chemistry in college, plus all my years in molecular biology; that stuff doesn’t bother me.) The company? Lovely. The food? Not so much.
It started on Monday, where all I had to eat was my leftover buffalo wrap from Hobbit Cafe in the morning and two packages of peanuts on the flight to Tulsa. Once the accountant and I got to Coffeyville and checked in to the hotel, I needed food. We went to a place called Lanning’s Cafe, which is a bar with a decent-sized kitchen. This bar closes at 9:00, though. I ordered a “chicken quesadilla salad”, which involved grilled chicken, black beans, corn, green peppers, lettuce, cheese, salsa, and cheese quesadillas on the side of the bowl. The corn was canned, the salsa was sweet, and the black beans had no flavor. The chicken was good, nicely seasoned. So all in all, my salad was okay at best, mediocre at worst. The accountant ordered a club sandwich (mmm, open-faced club sandwich…) with chips, and he ate the chips before the sandwich arrived. He said it wasn’t bad.
The next morning was breakfast at the hotel. I grabbed a little plastic bowl of honey-nut spooners (gotta support the Malt-o-Meal factory in my brother’s college town!) and a container of raspberry yogurt. This, I’m afraid, was the best food I had during my trip. Lunch was from the best restaurant in Coffeyville, the Tavern on the Plaza. It was a split chicken breast, char-grilled and topped with cheese, peppers and onions, canned green beans and sauteed onions, a dinner roll, and smashed potatoes. I ate the veggies from the chicken, a few bites of the chicken, some of the beans, and the roll. Again, it was okay; the chicken was too smoky for my taste, and I could taste the metal in the beans (for some reason, canned green beans always have a metallic taste to me). After such a carb-heavy meal, the food coma started setting in; I drank all my water and then had to grab a Coke to stay awake through the rest of my meeting.
At the Tulsa airport, there isn’t much to eat, at least not on the Continental side of the airport. There was a Quizno’s, a McDonalds, and a TGI Friday’s right in the center past security. I decided to go with a place close to my gate, since I got to the airport 30 minutes before boarding. I had a turkey habanero panini from a place called “Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe”. It was okay. The turkey was processed and oversalted, the habanero mayo was not terribly spicy, and the bread was dry. They were also in the process of closing for the night (what restaurant closes in the middle of the dinner hour, especially in an airport?!). I quickly ate it at the gate; I was very tempted to eat only half, but I spent $9 on the damn thing and I was really hungry. (Something about only eating a quarter of my lunch and a small breakfast.) I did notice that the restaurant on the non-sterile side of security, Cherry Street Cafe, was closed by 5:30, when I went through security. I was confused by this; the last Continental flight to Tulsa gets in at about 10:00, and I don’t know when Southwest’s last flight gets there. Misha, have you ever been through TUL? What gives with closing the restaurants early? I was very tempted to stop at Whataburger on the way home from IAH, but refrained, since I already ate dinner.
Next time I go up there, which will be in December, I am taking granola bars with me. I think, unfortunately, the town is a product of the citizens; this is stereotypical Midwestern food, the type that is really bland and colorless. It’s not that they don’t try; the salad was something that I hadn’t seen on another menu before. The restaurants remind me a lot of my hometown; you have to know where to go and what to order if you want decent, flavorful food.
I’m moving this comment from my previous entry to its own entry. Wendy Harman works for the American Red Cross, and she sent me some videos about the canteens that are providing food to our neighbors. They could use our help at this time to continue their important work along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. If you want to donate (and I highly encourage you to do so), please go to their Website and click on the banner at the top of the page. Also, check out their blog.
A letter that I will never send to the New York Times:
Today’s New York Times dining section had a story on hurricane cuisine post-Ike. While I appreciate the story, I must chide Ms. Murphy’s reporting. She focused mainly on people in higher-income neighborhoods such as Rice Village, West U, Montrose and River Oaks; the other areas included west Houston, Meyerland (woo!) and Spring. They had higher-paying jobs such as lawyers, retired doctors and business owners. Ms. Murphy did interview an elementary-school teacher (whose husband is director of regulatory affairs for Center Point Energy, I might add) and an Episcopal youth ministries director. The article focused on the meat, such as “Kobe beef, venison sausage, baby lamb chops and chicken – all cooked on a large gas grill outdoors” at the dinner in River Oaks. And later, “grilled steaks rubbed with olive oil and salt and pepper, as well as a pork tenderloin, which they butterflied and marinated with a soy ginger sauce” in West U after church the day after the storm (for all I know, these may be my fellow parishoners at church). In a paragraph on canned foods, they only mentioned Robb Walsh’s $20 pate and canned lobster recommendations. I do not begrudge Mr. Walsh his pate or his lobster, but I can’t afford that! I was eating Campbell’s soup from the can!
No mention of all the canned soup and crackers that people ate, or the Hot Pockets that my neighbors heated through on our camp stove a few days before we got power back. No mention of the creative uses of canned odds and ends from our cabinets, as was demonstrated in a blog entry at the Chronicle. No mention of the delicious (real) Chinese food that was made by our next-door neighbors on their propane camp stove. No mention of the lower-income people that needed the MREs that were distributed at PODs, or the Salvation Army and Red Cross canteens that may be delivering the only hot meal of the day to those less fortunate. No mention of the first responders’ shrimp boil lunch on Galveston that was generously provided by Gaido’s, or the thousands of dollars that will be lost by all the restaurants that have no power, which may force them out of business. It is possible that these were mentioned in news articles last week; I did not see the NYT, due to no power, difficulty reading anything on my BlackBerry, and no access to the print version at work. But this article is not indicative of everyone’s hurricane cuisine, just those who have the means to purchase these items.
Of course, you’ll tell me, the New York Times is not geared toward people in your income bracket, especially the dining section. It’s geared toward your bosses, who do have the means to purchase these things and pay for the subscription (which is not cheap, since they’ve sent me information on subscribing). Bull. They lead people to believe that the only people who can enjoy “fine” hurricane cuisine are those that have money.
The one bright spot for me in this article was the mention of the “Kimberly Street Cafe,” which was the brainchild of Eric Moen, the youth ministries director. He and his neighbors have cooked what they had in their freezers, and what they can find at the grocery store. He was able to score leftover barbecue from a conference put on by the Houston province of the Diocese of Texas. He used the brisket, beans, and peach cobbler to help feed his neighbors. This, to me, is my hurricane experience, because it is a lot like mine. My neighbors didn’t necessarily eat with each other, because we all have different eating habits (some keep kosher and halal, while others will eat almost anything). But we did share camp stoves and grills, coffee and food and conversation. The adults talked, the kids played outside. We went around together and inspected the damage to our homes and our neighbors’ homes, and we helped clean up the debris that littered our street. Some of us lingered outside for hours past the sunset, chatting and enjoying each others’ company. There was a conviviality I haven’t seen since our transformers blew last summer, plunging my entire complex into darkness and heat for an afternoon and evening.
What will I remember about Hurricane Ike? The damage, though I will forget that once we move out of our apartment. Definitely the cramped night sleeping in the warm, stuffy hallway with husband, two cats and a flashlight. Mostly, I’m hoping to remember the neighbors and the fun we had, dealing with five days without power and “roughing it” in the urban jungle. And I think we’ll have better bonds because of it.
UPDATE: The Houston Chronicle had the audacity to publish an article last night online (and probably in today’s print edition; I haven’t looked) about how the rich “survived” Hurricane Ike. Someone went to Paris, others went to Aspen, and those that didn’t leave, including former mayor Bob Lanier, went to the Four Seasons downtown, at the special price of $300/night. This is worse than the NYT article. I hope the editor that approved that article gets their due.
