I Suck

It's been way too long since I last posted. I even had a fairly good food trip to NYC that I never got around to posting about. The store has been sucking my mine. Oh sure, I always blame it on the shop but seriously, small business owners definitely know what I'm talking about when I talk about my lack of time and energy.

So what has gotten me out of my non-posting slump? A change of seasons perhaps. Fall is certainly upon us in New England. Luckily our CSA share doesn't end until the end of October so we've gotten to see what the change in seasons brings.

Tonight we're having a couple of friends over. One is an old friend I've known forever and another is a fairly new friend I'm introducing to E. Infact the old friend asked what time for dinner, I said 8 and she said she'd be here around 6:30. That's how we roll.

So when I went to the CSA on Monday, I knew I wanted some stuff that we could cook or share with friends. I was happy to see heads of lettuce and some last of the summer cherry tomatoes. I grabbed a couple of green peppers so I could make a salad and Beth's favorite salad dressing to go with it. I also was thinking of making an apple tarte tatin. In my family, the only apples we cooked with were Granny Smiths. We're a family that really enjoys tart with our sweet. So alas no GS were to be found but they did have plums. I found this kinda cool because I always only thought of plums as an early summer or late spring fruit. I didn't know they were still even really in season. So I grabbed a container of plums and decided that I wanted to try and make Evan Kleiman's plum sour cream pie. The recipe is here.

I also really wanted to try and make an apple tarte tatin. My friend Caroline makes one every fall and she uses puff pastry dough. So I went ahead and looked for a recipe on epicurious and found this one.

So I was going to attempt two new recipes. I wasn't 100% that either would work out well. Infact, I was a bit concerned that the desserts would be a big fail but I hadn't been baking in so long that I wanted to try something new.

I started by cutting up the plums. Look how pretty!




It seemed like a lot of plums and Evan didn't really say now many. So I decided to make two pies. I ended up doubling the sour cream mixture. Unfortunately, as I was pouring the plums and sour cream into the pie crusts I started to realize that maybe there was too much sour cream stuff and should have just stayed with one pie. My hunch was confirmed because the pies took close to 2 hrs to cook. Eeek. They looked cute coming out of the oven though:



Look! Pie crust cozies, teehee. Anyway, I let the pies cool and snuck a piece. The filling wasn't right at all. It was lumpy and not sweet enough. I was kinda bummed but hoped that the ice cream a guest was bringing would help disguise the issue.

I moved into the apple tartin.


I followed the recipe down to the letter and when it came time to flip, the middle of my apple tartin was completely burned. I was so sad. I even used less time than what the recipe asked for just because I knew our oven ran hot (damn electric!)

Sigh. Well luckily, Jenny did bring ice cream that that helped. It also helped that E made an amazing pasta dinner. But E making an amazing dinner is to be expected.

Since it's fairly early in the fall season, I think I will be attempting the apple tartin again. Watch out apple tartin, I'm gonna make you my bitch for sure! ;)

Marliave Restaurant Week

Imagine yourself coming home after work on a Friday night. You plop down on the couch next to your partner in crime. "What do you want to do for dinner?" "I dunno, what do you want to do?" Imagine that this conversation gets played out over and over again over a period of 30 minutes. Sad. I know. But sometimes when you've live in a place long enough, you get so bored with everything and this includes meal options.

Luckily I remembered that a friend on Twitter had recently tweeted about her RW meal at Marliave and I've heard good things about it from my partner in crime as well. Typically, I avoid restaurants during RW because I've never had a stellar experience. The quality of the meal is average to sucky and the quality of the service really blows too. Infact, the service is why I avoid RW all together. When I go out to eat, I'd rather not be viewed with unveiled distain. I get it though. You get the odd assortment of people coming to your fine dining establishments acting like they're rock stars when infact all they are are a bunch of hacks. We sometimes get people like that in my shop as well and let me tell you, serving them is not pleasant. It's not about the cost of the meal but it's more about a certain mentality that seems to go with it at times too. So I can't imagine having to work RW for 2 weeks twice each year.

So after 30 minutes of our played out convo on the couch, I checked Open Table and saw that we could book a reservation for 9pm. Perfect. It gave us enough time to get ready and hope on the T. I decided it was time to bust out my new Manolos (see above!) and take them for a test drive. Luckily I didn't have to do much walking because walking in these shoes was not easy at all. It wasn't that they're painful but because they are so high, they pitch me forward a little too far. So walking because an interesting endeavor. I'll have to figure out how to exactly "fix" the situation with my shoes because I love them so much and refuse NOT to wear them. If I had to chose my true loves in life, I'd list: food, premium denim, insanely expensive lingerie, make-up, E and stupid expensive shoes (not in that order but close to).

Slowly, very very slowly (due to my heels) we made it to Marliave. Luckily we got there by 9pm. I have to say that I thought it was odd that I was able to get a last minute reservation on a Friday night so easily.

Hmm...sadly, E and I should have taken it as an indication of what we should expect. I was going to write up an entire review of our meal but E beat me to the punch and already did a fantastic write up here. I'll let you read her take on it because she use to work in the restaurant industry and her observations seem so keenly on point with Marliave.

Here's the thing. I wanted to like it so much. I'd heard so many wonderful things about it and their RW menu was beyond expressive in its number of offerings. But what I got to experience didn't feel like Marliave in its prime at all. Even the space felt a bit run down and not looked after too caringly. The food was decent but the attention to the experience overall wasn't good. Perhaps it can be best summed with my dessert that came to my table looking like a giant boob. I suddenly felt like E had gotten me a gag dessert from Sweet Nothings.

However it was fun to try Marliave. Although I won't be jumping at the suggestion, I'd definitely give it another shot at some point. Besides any excuse I get to show off my expensive shoe collection is always good by me!

A Quick Lactose Update

The lactose intolerance test came back positive. Explains a lot. However, doesn't explain the odd skin rashes. I still believe those are wheat related so I'm gonna ask for the blood test.

Even though I was really sad to get the test results back positive, I decided that it's not gonna keep me from living my life. For example, I had ice cream last night and didn't seem to have any issues. I have skim milk in my coffee today and everything seems good. I did skip the cheese from my egg/bacon croissant because 1.) I didn't want to press my luck 2.) I don't really care for the melted plastic texture on my sandwich.

I think I'll just be mindful of what I eat, how much I eat...Besides, isn't that what we're all suppose to do anyway?

Thanks for all the support everyone!

Julie and Julia, Meh.

Everyone I know who went to see the movie has gushed about it. I mean, GUSHED. Go see it, see it now. Men, women, gay, straight. How could I an adorer of food not see Julie and Julia? So I went to a 10pm showing by myself...I packed ice cream for a snack and set off.

I wiggled in my seat in full anticipation of the amazingness that was about to occur. Sure, I read the book and thought it was painfully boring; so boring that I skimmed the end and laid the book down. But everyone said that the movie was better than the book and it had Meryl Streep for goodness sakes! And this movie reconnected her with Stanley Tucci. I loved them in the Devil Wore Prada. And while I didn't love, love that book (I did finish it and enjoyed it as a day read) I adored the movie and could watch it day in and day out.

So I expected the same greatness. And while Meryl and Stanley were totally lovely and moving as Paul and Julia, I couldn't quite get passed by my distaste of Julie Powell. Amy Adams is a really great actress because she had me disliking her just as much as I remember from the book.

Julie Powell is disliked so much in the blog world, I believe, because so many people are jealous of her almost meteoric rise to fame and fortune. Personally, that doesn't bother me all that much, kudos to her for all that. But what does bother me is this feeling I get from her of her overwhelming sense of entitlement. I have this feeling that she's a person who isn't mystified by her fame/fortune but sees it as her God given right. I imagine her internal dialogue goes like this,"Of course, I'm a successful writer, fools! In fact, fate was suppose to have made me one years ago! Duh!"

And maybe my sense of her is way off and she's a sweet, humble little slice of pie, but she certainly doesn't come off as such in Julie and Julia in book form or movie form. Sadly, I think her next book, "Cleaving" will just confirm my sense of her further. It's apparently a book about her affair and need to run away and learn the ancient art of meat butcher. Oh jeez. Yes, that's how we all get to deal with issues in our lives, by running away to butcher shop training. Very few people have such a charmed life.

Overall, I liked the movie but couldn't love. Infact, all the flashes to Julie Powell scenes made me cringe and left me yawning. I couldn't get over my distaste for her long enough to enjoy anything she did.

I guess the easiest way to sum up my feelings for this movie is to say that if they make Cleaving into a movie, I won't be standing in line for a ticket. But if anyone wants to just make a movie devoted to Julia and Paul, I'm in!

Wait, I thought milk was suppose to do a body good?

I'm sorry I haven't seen posting much lately. My work life has truly eaten up time, space and energy for little else. I'm trying to get an online shop for Jean Therapy up and have another little pet side project in the works as well. Sometimes I consider blogging but my meals and life with food really haven't been anything too special these days.

I've been trying to make peace with my issues with wheat. It's been tough. Anytime E had anything with bread involved, I ask to take a sniff before she digs in. And I take a deep inhalation. Sometimes I have a little nibble. Even a hotdog bun causes me to go into rapture. I miss bread so damn much that it all seems so damn unfair. If only I had known how truly "unfair" it was about to get.

Recently I had a doctor's appointment. I remembered to mention my stomach issues to her and she instantly scheduled a lactose test for me. I was a little taken aback. I mean, I'm Korean and all but I'm also adopted so I've had a glass of milk with every meal since I could remember. Dairy in the form of cheese and ice cream are a daily requirement for me; my cheese bin in the fridge is always stocked so I can have a quick snack and don't even get me started on the gallons of ice cream I typically have on hand.

When I came home and told E, we both thought the same thing. Perhaps, not really meaning to, my doctor had kinda stererotyped me as being lactose intolerant because I'm Asian. No matter, I'd go ahead with the test. It would be one more thing to rule out for me to be allergic to.

The test is a breathorlizer dealie and one that takes three hours to administer. Also, you can't have anything to eat or drink for 10 hrs before and this includes water. Since I was having the test in the morning I was able to sleep for most of the 10 hrs. But the period from 9-12 was a little rough because this was my typical midnight snacking time. E will have a glass of wine or bourbon and I reach for ice cream. Actually it's probably not the healthiest evening routine and I think we both might want to reevaluate.

I arrived for the test early. I was parched, cranky, tired and my breath was a little funky because I couldn't use "a lot" of water to brush my teeth and absolutely no Listerine. "Why, did I decide this was a good idea? I already KNOW I'm not allergic to lactose". I fumed and chided myself for going along with the test.

Soon I and four other people were ushered into a room and given clear keg cups half full of what looked like water. These were the lactose/sucrose solutions and we were told to drink the entire portion. I took a small sip thru my straw and deemed it not so bad. It was tepid and slightly sweet.

"Well, it could be worse", I thought as I proceeded to try and down the rest of the solution.

Okay, a few more sips into the beverage and I changed my mind. It was disgusting. Drinking lukewarm sugar water is really not fun at all. It was a lot to stomach and I was having trouble downing it all. I kinda felt like a wuss until I looked around the room at the four other people. They didn't look too happy either. Infact, the woman next to me said, "blah, this is awful!".

So armed with the knowledge that I wasn't the only one suffering, I pulled thru and emptied the cup. Every 30 mins for 3 hours we had to come back to the room and blow into the plastic bag. So for 3 hours, I played with my phone (the day that Twitter went down! drats!), watch the Today show and marveled over how many times they recycled the same damn new stories and internally kicked myself for taking the test when I was so not lactose intolerant.

But the reason for kicking myself changed about 20 mins after I chugged whatever was in the cup. My tummy was a mess. I was in a bit of pain and had some GI distress. F-ck! And it didn't stop. My tummy was a mess all day and into the evening as well. Damn me for taking a test that made me so sick!

I haven't gotten the test results back but I'm fairly certain that my test will come back positive and I am indeed lactose intolerant. My GI distress was almost immediate.

While the possibility of being both lactose and wheat intolerant really bums me out, I'm also trying to figure out how to move forward. People have told me that there are plenty of substitutes for wheat and cheese. Plus I know my friend V uses the lactose pills so he can easily handle the cheese on a cheeseburger. And I know that this is true but I also wonder if the best course of action, for me, not for anyone else, is to clean those foods out of my diet completely and see how I feel. I'm tempted to do the latter but I'm also baffled by what to eat, especially as someone who is so wedded to cheese and ice cream. And yes, I've had rice milk and soy milk ice cream and I don't really enjoy either one very much. And sorbet?! I mean it's got a place but sometimes you just want a big ole ice cream sundae or a vanilla creme brulee.

Alright, so I'm being a little pouty about the entire situation and I recognize that. Besides, if all this had come up for me years ago, I'm sure that I wouldn't have the world of alternatives and subs I have at my disposal now. And you know what? Pecan crackers aren't really half bad so maybe I'll be ok afterall.

Danielle Chips

It's no secret that I'm a small business owner right here in Boston and as a result I meet a lot of other small business owners too. One of my friends owned her own chocolate shop here and it was thru her I met my buddy Ed. Ed owns a company called New England Herbal Foods. They produce dried fruit snacks called Danielle chips. They're really good. I especially like the jackfruit chips and especially dislike the durian chips (but hey, I wasn't raised eating durian so I never acquired a liking for it).

Okay, so I was pretty darn pumped when I saw that Danielle chips were cool enough to be picked up on one of my favorite style blogs Cool Hunting. I alerted my friend Ed who didn't even know about this shout-out. Honestly, the product really does speak for itself. And the packaging is kinda urban cool too.

Anyway, this has been Danielle chips year for sure! Besides getting a shout out by Bobby Flay on the CBS morning show, they also picked up a sofi gold medal!

Being that I don't really know a lot about what the sofi award means or a ton about the Fancy Food Show either (other than the Barefoot Contessa was there!!!!!!), I'll just link you up to stuff that kinda explains it all at the bottom of this post. I do know that when your business wins an award, of any kind, it's a big deal. And to win a national award and national press is a huge deal.

All I can say is that these two guys that have this company rock and my friend Ed is one of the best guys I know. Seriously, if you wanna great snack, great product look for Health Spa stuff or Danielle Chips. They're SOOOO good, no really they are. Like I said, the jack fruit is my fav but the pineapple is good, hell even the durian (if you're into that stuff) is good. I'm so proud of my friends. Congratulations you guys! Ed, I'll see you at the cook out tomorrow so expect a big congratulatory hug from me!

SOFI Awards

Here!

CBS News!!!

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A Meal for One

CSA greens: lettuce, purple kale, the leaves of kohlrabi. Cowgirl Creamery Point Rey Blue (thanks Caroline). Parm. Olive Oil. Rice Wine Vinegar. Red Pepper Flakes. Salt. Pepper.

Dolin: a tiny glass on ice.

Love.

Why the hell did I wait this long to join a CSA again?