looking forward, looking back.

closing out the final days in my chapel hill apartment was a smattering of awesomely awkward meals lunches. i had a dozen eggs, loads of potatoes, and for a while, beans and bread. but eventually i had to resort to eating out, as i packed it all up and then refused to go to the grocery store (except for yogurt, which i ate with my spork).

may 7: steamed broccoli, navy beans with sea salt and crushed red pepper, sourdough with cheddar, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise.

 may 12: the butt of the sourdough with a fried egg and goat gouda. smashed potatoes.

may 13: sourdough with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and cheddar. green beans with the end of the pecorino and purple spring onion and garlic.

may 15: eggs scrambled with habanero pepper, onion, and corn (frozen). potatoes with salt and garlic. tortilla chips made from sliced corn tortillas toasted in the toaster oven. store-bought salsa.

i probably made about 2 more meals after this one, one of them being boxed mac-and-cheese (the once per year treat). because moving.

if it's going to look like winter

then i am going to eat like it's winter.

tuesday night = smashed potatoes + white beans with garlic and salt and pepper + sauteed collard greens and onion with a fried egg on top

thank you, herr's.

don't you want to know how potato chips are made?

that is not my photograph.

because there are no photographs of this magical evening. why would we have stopped to take photographs?

let's say i dreamt of au cheval. it's almost my dream restaurant, where everything is delicious and savory but not too salty and the place really prides itself on throwing a fried egg atop everything. this is practically the place that blake and i hypothesized about years ago.

it should be noted that we did not begin our evening at au cheval, but at scofflaw. (have i mentioned yet that i was in chicago with shira? i was in chicago with shira for the weekend.) the longest happy hour of fries and three well-crafted bourbon cocktails had us in just the right mood for this grand date.

date? yes, date. shira and i had dinner dates at au cheval. we shuffled up to the door after 9pm, thinking that our late-ish arrival would mean we wouldn't have to wait too long. we were wrong--discovered as we were informed the wait would be one to one-and-a-half hours. we must have had looks of devastation, because two men about to be seated in a four-top immediately invited us to join them.

of course we did. i sat across from shira, but next to my dinner date, sean. across from him was david.

it was glorious. the beers, all reasonably priced (no, i have no idea what i drank). the fries, with a mornay sauce (maybe). and the burger. yes, i ate part of a burger, shared with my real dinner date, shira. amazing. really. better than anything i have consumed in a while. no, not just the burger--the evening.

we were there for two hours, eating and drinking with our dates--both from minneapolis, though one now lives in portland, oregon and the other in chicago.

and so i have big love for you, au cheval. but also for shira, the windiest city, and our dinner dates, without whom this night would not have been possible.

baked.

i was totally in the mood for a baked potato the other night, but could not justify turning on my oven for an hour for lousy potato. and the toaster oven is sometimes a little inconsistent on its temperatures, so i was uncertain on that as well.

so, i sliced the potato into four large pieces and covered them in salt and butter (and added butter again later) and baked them in the toaster for about 25 minutes. flavor and butteriness and the taste of childhood. and so fast.

let's have a party; we'll all dance the hora.

i abandoned the great latke recipe of my mother's best friend, marsha, for that of adam rapoport. i am really trying to get the most of the bon appetit these days--i've been in a bean-pasta-carborific food rut for quite a while. the latke recipe did not really change that rut, just the way i intake the carbs. 

but, i digress. 

i followed this recipe to a T, minus the schmaltz, which i might have used if i actually had some. yes, even though i have been a vegetarian for a zillion years at this point.

the entire recipe is at the above link, so i won't repost it, but adam has us put all the grated onions and potatoes into a towel and wring them out. not a terrible idea. 

yep, i mixed all the wet things with the fancy anthropologie kitchen gear of last christmas. 

i made them in the cast iron, with canola oil, because that's what i had (the oil and the pan), but i don't think it really matters. 

this recipe is specfically for crispy latkes, which i actually don't think are my favorite, but they were certainly delicious.

with sour cream AND applesauce. (and a salad so we get some nutrients).

all the football.

in the last 2 weeks, i have not only been to a professional football game, but also tailgated it (defined as drinking beer behind and/or near a parked car) while wearing team gear. on christmas eve day, i witnessed the buffalo bills beat the denver broncos OUTSIDE. they are also one of losing-est teams in the NFL. but that's neither here nor there.

more importantly, i purposely went to a bar to watch another football game YESTERDAY. the university of houston played penn state in the cotton bowl and i was happy to see the ol' alma mater kick some ass. with a 23 oz miller lite. 2 of them. and a plate of nachos and potato skins.

with casey, of course. i could never have done it alone. friends don't let friends football alone.

also, hello, 2012.

the oiliest holiday.

hanukkah means latkes and donuts. the holiday of fried greasiness. shira fried up her mama's latke recipes this morning: sweet potato and regular potato. yeah, she did.

it was that kind of sunday morning, when people just sorta stop by and join you for breakfast. and the kind when i don't do all the cooking. awesomepants.

it's all like this.

but mostly everything i eat is a variation of this meal. on the weekends my sandwiches have eggs and i am able to cook potatoes and eat complicated salads. on a weekday, there would just be a carrot or two on the side. maybe some pretzels.

ciabatta with cheddar and a fried egg, roasted rosemary potatoes with olive oil and sea salt, and a salad of carrots, radishes, cucumbers, and basil. oh thank you, north carolina, for the diversity at your farmers' markets.

when we sing, we begin with do-re-mi.

perfection: an egg and cheese biscuit from sunrise biscuit kitchen, with hashbrown. 

the sunrise biscuit kitchen is a local institution. it's a drive-thru biscuit shop in chapel hill, with lengthy lines of cars every weekend morning. it's greasy and lovely and cheap and is, quite possibly, the best cure for a hangover. most people, after they buy their biscuits (with chicken or bacon or whatever you might want), scoot their cars and trucks into the small parking lot next door and eat the goodies in the car! for the most part, there's no waiting 'til you get home.

variations on the same.

right before the midterms. it's hard to be creative when you are just working out math problems all the time.

february 19th.
fried egg sandwich on sourdough, potatoes sauteed in butter and sea salt, kirby cucumber, black beans with onions.

february 23rd.
this one was dinner.
salad of roasted and beets and carrots over a bed of spinach, potatoes, black-eyed peas with onions, toast and a sunny-side up egg. 

 

february 26th.
baguette with fried egg and sheeps' milk cheese, hash browns, grape tomatoes.

growler. of potatoes.

brett gave me a growler full of smashed potatoes for my birthday. that's 64 oz of potatoes, people!

i spent much of tonight trying to extract the potatoes from the growler. i ended up making a sort of double boiler to soften them so that they could be removed. above is an unfortunate photo of what was left after i ate a healthy serving, taken with my computer. silly.

a truly incredible gift. hard to beat.