my cup runneth over

So I turned 25 over a month ago, but I’m only just blogging about it. This is for a few reasons

- It seems like a really big birthday. I’ve had to change checking off “18-24” to “25-29” on surveys, surveys in which I had NO idea how frequently I participated until I moved up an age bracket. Eurgh.

- Work has been an endless, grim, fairly crappy experience lately. I think I’m coming out on the end of that particular phase (knock on wood profusely) but I wanted to blog cheerfully about my birthday! I think I’ve been able to muster it.

- My birthday was pleasantly prolonged by a visit from my mother the weekend after it! I was delighted to spend some much missed quality time with my mom; and didn’t feel like toting around a camera all weekend (although Mom, I just remembered that you took pictures at Sunday brunch! Send ‘em!) but it included lots of fun times and great eats: dinner at Milltown, brunch with my roomie and her mom (so cute!) at Panzanella, hot cocoa at Matthew’s Chocolates, a Greek FEAST at Kipos, and the aforementioned brunch at Crook’s Corner. We sure packed in a lot of eating! Eating and shopping!

But anyway, my wonderful local friends, who I feel so blessed to’ve made in my short time here, as well as my fabulous boyfriend, showed me a really great time for my birthday weekend, and it’s worth sharing.

We begin with the Saturday before my birthday, in which Steve and I embarked on a trip to HIllsborough, opting to stop along the way at the (completely randomly located) Buddhist temple. It was gawwwwwjous.

Steve disappeared on a birthday-shopping trip, ordering me to peruse the town at my leisure. I obliged, buying myself a birthday present (and inadvertently spending more than I ever have on shoes on some craaaaaaazy awesome vintage cowboy boots- bless my auntie for sending me birthday money to make the expenditure less insane!). This happened at this fabulous store.

Steve hosted a birthday dinner for me at his place. Lots of great friends showed up. Alex and Myra bought me these AWESOME THINGS.

The pickles themselves are great (duh, they are pickles) but the sweet and tangy syrup in which they float may be even more revelatory. I’ve been mixing it with dijon to toss with my brussels sprouts and boy is that great.

My other friends, who will be nameless because of the contents of this story, broke up the day before the birthday dinner and still came together to wish me a happy birthday. That verges on absurdity.

Steve made portabella burgers. Oh I think he might have put a little bit of cheese on them too…? A little hard to tell…

 

Dinner was eaten al fresco, by candlelight. Had to use flash for the shot above (note that the meal included additional delicious grilled vegetables that escaped the camera’s bright beam) (oh and really good wine. There was really good wine on my birthday). Managed to get a naturally lit photo of the dessert.

SWEET HOLY HEAVEN, THE BIRTHDAY DESSERT. From Matthew’s Chocolates, the place I have basically decided is my mother ship, came the pumpkin roll. Now tell me, like me, when you think “pumpkin roll”. do you think of fluffy pumpkin cake rolled up with some vapid, light, cool-whip-esque thing?

Well friends, this was PERFECTLY spiced, walnut packed, moist and tender and perfect pumpkin cake rolled up with TONNNNS of CREAM CHEESE FROSTING.

Boom. Done.

After we concluded the birthday meal, some of us strolled to downtown Carrboro to enjoy live music at Second Wind, which had a lovely outdoor seating area I hadn’t known existed. Blurry shots, but hopefully nonetheless signifying the pleasant feel.

 

They also infuse their own spirits- this magnificence involved tequila, strawberries, and jalapeno. As sassy as my awesome new cowboy boots.

The next day we strolled to downtown Chapel Hill for brunch, where I got my first proper taste of Soul Food at an establishment that is a highly reputable source for it.

 

Steve and I SHARED their four-side-dishes-and-bread meal (opting for one additional side dish).

 

Yes, sports fans, meaning that each person’s plate- a mere HALF of an entree- looked like this.

I have a hard time conveying the magnificence of the rich and meaty and perfectly toothsome (not mushy) blackeyed peas, the sweet and succulent but not saccharine yams, the soft fried apples, the oh-so-creamy corn casserole, the go-ahead-and-smear-a-ton-of-butter-on-me cornbread, and the comparatively virtuous but no less tasty okra and tomato casserole.

Suffice it to say, we ended the meal thoroughly satisfied and not a whole lot poorer.

The actual birthday dinner, at Foursquare, was too classy and gorgeous to ruin by whipping out a camera. Let’s just say that I ended the birthday (birth week…birth month, really) feeling thoroughly spoiled, and moreover blessed with all the fabulous people in my life.

southern fried birthday

My baby sister graduated from college, turned 22, and recovered from knee surgery. So we had a party. Summer parties are the bessssst because you can set things up outside.

Let me tell you, trying to fit 18 people on our deck involved some exciting furniture movement. Thanks boyfriend, for bringing that extremely heavy bench up from the backyard with me! There was also rearrangement of the plants that usually take up most of the deck. An attempt to use a mosquito defogger resulted in some leaf trauma. Blessedly, they seem to’ve recovered.

Foodwise opted for a decidedly non heart healthy Southern theme. The menu included:

- Pulled pork barbecue on buns
- Coleslaw
- Creamed corn with bacon
- Cornbread
- Pimiento cheese with veggies (SO GOOD!)
- Green bean casserole
- Green salad
- Various pickly guys, in a vain attempt to contribute a flavor that wasn’t fatty :)

And then there was a whoooole saga with the baked beans that were also meant to be served. In that they cooked for like 15 hours and showed no softening whatsoever. Bizarre.

Anyway, it was still a heavily laden table. Because when we invite over 18 people, we make food for 50. Just in case.

    

Everyone knows you have to put the coleslaw on top of the pork, or there’s just no point.

My plate.Yknow, minus the gobs of pimiento cheese I’d already consumed. The cornbread was a definite highlight. So sweet and creamy and moist it was almost like little squares of corn pudding. There were lots of diabolical leftovers calling me from the kitchen at all hours.

 

Malindi’s godparents were nice enough to get her TWO cakes! One for birthday and one for graduation, I spose. Chocolate, pictured below, and a lovely lemon one as well. They were bee-yoo-tiful!

On Malindi’s actual birthday, I made her pancakes (by which I mean I got up four hours earlier than she and left pancakes for her in the toaster oven). Then I cursed a blue streak in my head prayed to the heathen chemistry gods suffered through took my organic chemistry final.

Blessedly, it was over. I went on a wonderfully carefree shopping spree for my sister. I’m proud of many of my purchases (a Snuggy magnet, attachable snakeskin gel nails, etc.) but the item I knew my sister would both love most and use a great deal was:

Yep. Then Malindi was off hittin’ the club with her friends that night, so I joined Steve’s cousin and we headed off to Freddie’s Beach Bar, the gay bar that employed my boyfriend for a few months this summer (he has now departed). It was a BLAST. There was karaoke! I sang Every Rose Has its Thorn. Naiiiiiiled it.

Since we’re discussing birthdays, why not include a belated Mother’s Day update? Sure! Our tradition is to get Vietnamese food, specifically banh mi at a great deli not too far from our house. Tragically, the last time I ate banh mi I was receiving injections of a medication that caused me to be intensely nauseous. So my stomach needs a little while to bounce back. BUT, I thoroughly enjoyed a Vietnamese iced coffee and the desserts we brought home to share:

 

On the right is a dish that’ll be familiar to some: it’s just coconut sticky rice wrapped around banana and steamed. That coconut milk by it is for optional dipping- highly delicious.

As for these taco-esque looking items…

A rice wrapper contained layers of rice and sweet bean; some sort of mysterious pancakey thing and coconut. The secret bringing it all together was the little baggie on the right, which contains sesame seeds, salt, and sugar. The combination of flavors (and the sesame crunch) elevates these little tacos to excellence.

Easter, etc.

Cookies!

 

Inquiring minds who want to know: oatmeal date nut cookies, which are already vegan, can also be made gluten free. They’re just a little crunchier and snappier, and who minds that?!

I baked those tasty things for a church choir potluck. For Easter! It being June as I write this and Easter, of course, not being a June holiday, let me clarify. I celebrate Orthodox Easter (the Easter of the Orthodox Christian church- if you have Greek, Russian, Lebanese, Romanian, etc. friends it may be theirs, too) and it’s on a different calendar than Catholic and Protestant churches. So it was a LOT later than American Easter. (Though, er, still awhile ago).

So anyway this Easter potluck was so we could practice the complicated and difficult music. Except only five people showed up (and two of us were related). So it was not all that successful, except the food part!

Making the food was actually a fun challenge since for food to be Lent-appropriate, it should be vegan (I don’t eat totally vegan during Lent because of calcium fears, but many in my church do, and the food served at the church itself should be supportive of the church’s official policy, obvi).

It also had to be gluten free (or should be, out of kindness) because both our church’s choir director John and his wife Betty have Celiac disease.

Also, Betty for charming reasons best understood by her had come up to me in the middle of church one Sunday and handed me this pad thai sauce container:

I appreciated her gift, and figured I might as well use it on something I could share with her.

So I cooked up some rice noodles, made some tofu:

threw in some veggies:

And voila, pad thai. Ish. No final picture- it was ugly. But good!

And we also brought, of course, dessert.

But the really exciting dessert was a week later, on Easter itself. Something I have allllllllllways wanted to make? Olive oil cake!

I discovered this scrumptious-sounding if ever so slightly vague recipe for olive oil cake and mostly followed it (subbing a mix of white flour, whole wheat, and semolina for the plain flour) then consulted this overly complicated but methodologically clear olive oil cake for timing (which caused me to let the cake rise for two hours before baking it) and anyway it was great!

Heat some olive oil

Infuse with lemon

 

Plus anise seeds (mm)

 

The recipe wasn’t clear whether or not you were supposed to strain out the seeds, and I thought a few might be nice to help retain the flavor, so I casually poured the oil mixture in the batter, leaving behind the lemon and approximately half the seeds in the pot.

Batter was SUCCULENT! Could’ve eaten the whole thing with a spoon. So dense and creamy.

Baked that off- it didn’t rise much but it was real tasty! For the finished cake, I improvised a glaze which involved orange marmalade thinned with water- not a lot more complicated than that.

This ended up REALLY good.

 

Meanwhile, right before Easter, we received a VERY generous Easter basket from a very sweet family friend. It contained this GI-NORMOUS sweet, almond-paste-studded Easter bread.

   

And the Easter celebration itself was at my sister’s godparents’ home. They had gotten a lot of it catered. The spread was quite beautiful.

 

They had requested that all the lamb be cooked well done (…) I snuck into the kitchen with the caterers and begged them to save a medium rare bit for me. They obliged, and were very very nice :)

My dinner plate:

Blessedly medium-rare lamb with scads of tzaziki (definitely eyes>stomach on that one, but Steve was nearby so all was good), grilled vegetables (done by caterers- EXCELLENT! Perfectly cooked!), spinach and cheese pies, roasted potatoes that were wonderful, and salad. And wine! Gave up booze for Lent. Such a worthwhile thing to do. I’m no lush, but I only want to drink when I feel like drinking, not when everyone around me is. It was a useful exercise in mindfulness.

Spent much of the meal lounging by their pool, looking at their e-normous house!

 

Believe me when I say this barely scratched the surface on dessert. Phase 1 was enjoyed poolside.

Gazillions of berries, koulourakia (traditional Greek cookies), some of my olive oil cake, one of Steve’s oatmeal-toffee cookies.

farewell to nola

It has been a joy writing these posts. And also apparently folks are appreciating them, since I got a text from my vegetarian best friend begging me to road trip again to New Orleans, with her, and that she would definitely eat seafood (!).

But lest we forget, I wasn’t in New Orleans solely to binge eat on seafood. I mean, I did a lot of that. But the main reason for my presence (and that of my mom and boyfriend) was to celebrate my sister Malindi’s graduation. She worked hard for four years, getting straight A’s her last semester (!!! It’s hard enough to get straight A’s in college- I never did- and particularly your LAST SEMESTER OF SENIOR YEAR) and we were excited to honor her accomplishments.

Reason #982375982379835 that going to my own college was a stupid decision: we never got free anything. By “free”, of course, I don’t mean “free”, I mean “recouping even a tiny percentage of the extraordinary amounts of money the school received from our family”.

Anyway, Tulane excelled at this, particularly at the form of their epic Wave Goodbye party. (Tulane is the Green Wave. Get it?! Get it?!)

All around the beautiful, oak-tree-lined quad, there were little stands that looked like this:

Doesn’t it look like we were at some epic food and wine festival?! They had a DAZZLING, all-you-can eat selection of virtually every New Orleans favorite that could possibly occur to you. Best of all, in miniature portions, so you can eat more. Because obviously one regular meal is equivalent to like… sixteen miniature meals. Right? Right? Hello?

Having tasted a lot of New Orleans specialties already (see above, re: seafood binge eating), I sought out the things I hadn’t tried yet.

Top on my list was the muffaletta. That is because a few months prior, I had tasted one for the first time at my pal Grace's Mardi Gras dinner. And it had kind of made my eyes roll back in my head.

So this happened:

 

It wasn’t as good as Grace’s (I mean, cmon, she made her own rolls; this one was mass produced and a little sloppy) but I think many many things in this world would be enhanced with a slather of zesty-olive chunkiness.

Next on the agenda was crawfish, in the form of crawfish pies (foreground) and crawfish balls (back right). The pies were not dissimilar to empanadas, with a pretty zesty filling. The balls were a feat of nature, managing to be crispy on the outside and utterly soft and dense on the inside, not dissimilar to Spanish croquetas, if you’ve ever had those. My one complaint is that I wish there were LESS on the plate! Steve  and I split the two crawfish plates and there were still leftovers. (Any of you who know Steve in real life or even read this blog regularly will understand that is shocking. In his defense, New Orleans in general was kind of a food O.D., and we were all at this point just trying to keep our bellies from exploding. While still tasting everything, obviously).

There was corn soup and everyone was all “Whoop de doo, corn soup”. Until Malindi actually got it. She took a bite, and her eyes got all wide, and she gave us a taste. And then we all booked it to get creamy creamy buttery buttery ever so slightly spicy corn soup. Plus, in a weak nod to health, a cucumber-watermelon-heirloom tomato-mint salad. Nice, although unevenly distributed between cups. I didn’t get any cute little heirloom tomatoes :(

We were in an epic line for the next item (oh, just wait) so we got some spiced nuts to keep up our strength. You know the sweet, spiced, crunchy, addictive nuts at baseball games? Yeah. Those. Dangerous. Crack-like.

The epic line was for… barbecued oysters! Mega mega amazing amazing enormous barbecued oysters. Drenched in cheese and an herby vinaigrette sort of thing. Who knew, right?! Grilled oysters and parmesan are a very very good thing.

Then we had to make a visit to the dessert department. Another epic line for ice cream.

I opted for the strawberry sorbet and the creme brulee (I didn’t finish these. I feel pathetic having to defend myself about this extraordinary quantity of food. But for the record, I didn’t finish these. But I did have to try my sister’s chocolate, and that one was the best of all and I should’ve just gone for it and gotten three).

Oh and then a slight ADHD moment, where I noticed that the red beans and rice line was really short and I hadn’t had those yet in New Orleans and well…

WORTH IT. So rich and smoky. This is (spoiler alert) the first item I have recreated since coming home from Nola. And, yknow, a complete protein. So there you go.

Shockingly out of character for me, the other desserts struck me as uninteresting. Steve like them okay, but I only had a bite of each (strawberry shortcake and lemon cheesecake. Eh.)

 

But the night was young. In a hilarious turn of events, Erin, our buddy from Americorps, was also in town! What are the odds that two people currently living in Virginia and another person currently living in Texas will randomly be in New Orleans on the exact same night?! So cool. While Steve and I waited for Erin and her buddies to arrive, we sipped sangria.

(love this pic with the moon in the background, Steve!)

And then we were off to Frenchman Street! Also in the French quarter, hopefully slightly less touristy than Bourbon Street. We dipped into a nifty jazz club and got drinks, and then went outside and wandered (getting drinks to go, yet again. Ridiculous).

We stepped into this cool little alleyway, ablaze with Christmas lights, and browsed the wares of local artists. I bought myself a fleur de lis headband for the simple reason that it was $5 and I wanted to remember this lovely night in New Orleans. Then Erin saw it and loved it and wanted one too. Then we were twinsies! Posing with my apparently inebriated boyfriend.

Good times. Thanks for the picture, Erin!

Another crappy night’s sleep ensued. Got home late, were woken up at six am by Malindi’s roommates shouting about curling irons (…)

We went to pick up Malindi and Mom, and motored off to the Superdome. On the way this wretched, wretched cop wrote me a ticket for running a red light because there are BS intersections in New Orleans where you are supposed to somehow know that when turning left, you can’t just turn left because that would be too easy. No, you have to turn left and stop immediately and wait on the median until the cross street has a green light. There is no sign warning you of this. The officer did not care that I had an out of state license plate and my sister was sitting in the backseat in her cap and gown. Ugh. So Steve drove the rest of the way to the Superdome and I sobbed in the backseat.

Graduation was amazing. In lieu of Pomp and Circumstance, a jazz band played wonderfully exuberant New Orleans jazz. The speaker was the Dalai Lama!!!! One point that really struck me from his conversation was that education was a wonderful opportunity but it was important not to isolate yourself as a result of it, and to reach out to the people in the world with less. And to always attempt to form friendships, both as individuals and groups, because with the trust that comes from that, solving all of the world’s problems will be done more collaboratively and more easily too.

A photoshoot with my glamazon sister ensued.

She is second from the left. Fun fact: her pal, furthest left, had been drinking since 6 am!

Then we were off to a VERY exciting lunch. We were pretty certain in advance that it would be amazing, since my mother had been at the dentist and read about them in Food and Wine (!). The name? Cochon. The word for “pig” in French, FYI.

Inside was lovely (sorry, backlight…)

Like seemingly everywhere in New Orleans, they had a great, intriguing cocktail menu.

What would you get?!

Being a celebratory occasion, we were cool with day drinking. Being day, we opted to share. My mom and Malindi split the Honeysuckle Rose, which was great. And Steve and I split The Swinekiller. I mean, rhubarb bitters?!

It was tangy and refreshing. Have no idea what that thing floating in it was, but I dug it.

Mostly small plates happened at lunch (have I adequately given you the impression that we had already eaten A LOT?!)

Steve got two soups. His first gumbo (which he loved, and we all got to taste and admire for its intense smokiness). And another corn soup, since he’d loved the one the previous night so much. This one was chilled, and different, but just as good.

My mom, demonstrating what a balanced, non-neurotic individual she is about food got a virtuous and tasty beet and arugula salad… and fried pork cheek terrine! I had a bite of the cheeks and they were good; nice and crisp on top. Not at all what you’d expect when you hear terrine (or at least we didn’t, we’d all been imagining pate) but unique and very good.

Malindi had a hard time deciding what to order but ultimately just wanted to get something Cochon was famous for. So she got the cochon! It came with little bits of pickled turnips and pork rinds atop. And wow, turns out pork rinds can be really gourmet and delicious!

I was kind of ridiculous with what I got. I knew I wanted small plates, and I knew the crawfish and green tomato gratin was calling my name (I mean come on!)

It arrived and was thoroughly delicious and satisfying. Creamy, flavorful, interesting textures.

And, not thinking all that clearly about all the creamy cheesiness a gratin would entail and still sad and wanting something comforting after getting my stupid ticket I also ordered the macaroni and cheese.

It was delicious, but I was much more interested in my gratin. Fortunately, my mom fell in love with it in a serious (SERIOUS) way. So I passed it over to her end of the table most of the time and a good time was had by all.

We saw some epic slices of pie go past us during the meal, and we knew dessert was a foregone conclusion. Like at every point in this meal, the menu was dazzling and we wanted it all.

But we ultimately opted to share two. The chocolate peanut butter pie was a foregone conclusion, and boy was it great. The crust seemed to have chunks of nuts embedded in it, and was amazing; crunchy and salty and just a little crumbly. The filling was creamy and perfect.

However, no less delicious, and simply categorically different was the pineapple upside down cake. Malindi ultimately opted to order it (we gave the graduate dessert decision making power) because she was intrigued by the presence of cornmeal. And gosh darn it, it was a great choice. The cake had the most wonderfully caramelized outside, and a wonderful, slightly toothsome texture throughout from the presence of the cornmeal. Its sweetness, and the sticky pineapple on top, was perfectly complemented by the slightly tangy ice cream. A unique and lovely spin on a traditional dessert. We all want to make this at home!

We took a bit of time to wander in the area around the restaurant, taking more pictures of Malindi. We returned to The Chimes and hung out in their lovely garden, then went inside for a quick marathon of My Cat from Hell episodes (I completely blame the graduate for this).

And then it was time to go to the ROCK AND BOWL! Malindi’s best friend Sarah had a HUGE contingent of family in town, and they planned to celebrate at this sports spot/music venue. They invited us along, their treat. So nice! So fun!

Aside from being a magnificent bowling alley, it had a bar! Open for party guests. I know beer is a traditional bowling alley beverage, but I don’t like it. So I got a white wine spritzer, which looked a lot like it, so there you go.

 

Rock and bowl has everything you could want from a bowling alley, but also so much more. For example, they cater. They cater AMAZING NEW ORLEANS FOOD. This was my first taste of etouffee on the trip and Lord. Have. Mercy. The big fat crawfish chunks were amazing, and the rich and butter soaked sauce was amazing. I’d never really want to see how it’s made, but it sure went down easy.

Unpictured, there was also tasty jambalaya and salad.

And then, of course, it was time to get our bowl on.

Due to a quirk in putting our information into our alley’s computer, Malindi accidentally played twice. Also Malindi was a dominant force in the game, and did a lot of trash talking about the obviously inferior Malindi.

(Things like this are my family’s lifeblood. We have such bizarre senses of humor. Oh and also we are not good at bowling. Clearly.)

Yet another display of the friendly New Orleans spirit: also having a party at the Rock and Bowl that day was a girl who’d graduated from LSU. She had the most ENORMOUS cake, and when her family barely made a dent in it, started offering it to us.

We politely accepted a slice of our cake, figuring it would be mass-produced and shortening-y. Well, not so! It had the most rich, crumbly, subtly almond-infused vanilla cake, and creamy and delicious frosting. We ate it with gusto!

And then we spent several hours cleaning my sister’s room, and an exhausting 18 hour day driving back to Virginia!

Au revoir, Nouvelle Orleans. It was a blast!