two bloggers are better than one

Ahhh, an early fall day in DC.

Paddle boarders on the Potomac…

Fetching young lasses eating froyo under statues…

Absurdly long lines for mediocre baked goods at Georgetown Cupcake…

After a longish workweek, I refused to let myself give in to tiredness and waste the weekend because, as seen above, it was stinkin’ beautiful out!

Fortuitously, I got a text from Maya suggesting a romp in the city. We met up at Dupont and (priorities) immediately went to tangysweet, one of the finer, in my opinion, frozen yogurt establishments.

 

Complete with hipster babies outside…

And a toppings bar inside, staffed by someone who apparently didn’t seem too keen on being photographed. Oops!

Maya is perusing her options in the photo, of which there were many of the usual suspects (fruit, granola, mochi, yadda yadda). However, being a Yelp addict like myself, she knew there was a secret backroom topping: cupcake crumbs (!)

I went purist, yogurt without toppings, because my favorite thing about TangySweet is their actual yogurt- their flavor of the day was tart pineapple and heavens it was delicious and fruity and entirely real tasting.

   

So after strolling, shopping, etc., a beautiful thing happened. Called Maya and I are really stoked with our lives right now (she starting college, me in Americorps), but said happy events are also slightly contributing to unhappiness called
1. Maya has no kitchen and
2. I’m wicked broke.

Solution?

BLOGGERS COOKING TOGETHER!

Why are meetups of FOOD BLOGGERS who COOK always catered by OTHER PEOPLE?!

Dude, it’s all SO OBVIOUS!

Planning this out involved hilarious conversations: really, it is totally bizarre meeting people online. Like, yes, you have this shared interest in food blogging, but ultimately even in this cozy little blog community we are strangers. As I pointed out on the Metro going home, I could totally be a serial killer. But fortunately am not. And so Maya got cozy in my kitchen:

Dinner involved okra, more photogenic than it’s previously been on my blog due to the fact that it was captured with Maya’s SLR (I let Maya eat most of it, not cause I don’t love okra but I already had eaten literally about a pound over the course of the week so I took one for the team and was like “Aw shucks, finish it.” Her dining hall doesn’t serve okra!)

I was tackling my own craving: cornbread cornbread cornbread! I wasn’t bothering with that fancy yeasted one I made earlier this summer, but I did like its addition of fresh corn and use of the cobs to make a corny broth, so I repeated both steps:

Aaaaaand baked it in a skillet because the best things in life come from skillets.

Recipe to come- I’m tweaking it because I want it baked in a hotter skillet so it gets seared and also a tad sweeter.

Still, there was corny crumbly goodness!

 

Then Maya looked wistfully at the acorn squash on my counter, since her dining hall doesn’t do squash (! Even MY dining hall did squash. Oh man, there was this butternut soup… it was at least half heavy cream. God that soup was good).

So we made some acorn squash.

There was a touch of fail on the squash seed roasting… due to me and Maya talking too much… oops!

But the squash was scrumpsh!

You can see that there is actual visible salt and pepper on the squash. I am such a wimp about seasoning. This is why it’s good to have someone else in the kitchen.

The real triumph of the evening was its proteinaceous component, a collaboration between Maya and I.

I said “I have yummy Trader Joe’s white beans! I have fresh deck-grown rosemary! I have farmer’s market yellow tomatoes! Let’s do something fun with those and garlic!”

Which we did, but then Maya did the reduced balsamic vinegar thing and seriously my taste buds got blown.

Mind boggling.

Fellow food bloggers- when are we all cooking together?!