Sur la route encore*

View Larger Map

We're off -- and so far, thanks to family, friends and barbecue, we've had a pretty damn good start to the cross-country jaunt.

You can see the route we're taking up top -- after an overnighter in D.C. for some delicious beer (and peripheral UFC viewing) with a number of good people, we stopped at my mom's in Ohio, and Lisa's folks came down from Milwaukee. I had to work; they all got to take in the Air Force Museum and Carillon Park and other good stuff. (Upside: Milano's at lunch for me Tuesday.)

We are sticking to the past trip's effort to eat locally wherever we stop along the way, and so far so good. Wednesday we got to Louisville around lunchtime, so we stopped at the birthplace of the Hot Brown and each had one. We got to Memphis Wednesday evening and celebrated with the sampler platter from Neely's (Pat and Gina were not in the house at the East Memphis location, alas).

Graceland is on the agenda for Thursday. So is more barbecue.

(*In case you're wondering why the foreign-language headline, I thought it approproiate to borrow an album title from Lisa's fictional French country-western band, Chapeau Fou. You might also enjoy their other efforts, "Qu'est-ce que c'est Chapeau Fou?" and "Ne fence me in pas.")

Continued ...

32 days and counting

Well, it's official. Kind of.

No, we didn't go and elope or anything like that -- we've already got like 60 RSVPs for the wedding, and we wouldn't want to piss off our family and friends who're coming to see us (and, by the way, we're getting pretty damn excited about celebrating with y'all).

I am speaking instead of the marriage license we obtained today. In the eyes of the Commonwealth of Virginia, we are now cleared to get hitched. No blood test and no birth certificate needed -- just $30, a picture ID and assurances that we're not already married to someone else (we're not).

Now, about that party ...

After getting the state's permission, we headed over to Richmond for a tasting with our caterer. We've heard effusive praise for A Sharper Palate pretty much from the moment we decided to go with them, and after today we totally get why. I can sum it up in three words: chicken and waffles.

We love us some Roscoe's and have joked (check that -- we really weren't joking) that if we were getting married in L.A., we'd have them cater the reception. And then we figured, hey, we've got a good caterer -- why not have them make this delicacy for us?

Our rep was puzzled at first, but after we described what were thinking of -- a small piece of fried chicken sitting atop a bite-sized waffle, with some kind of sweet-spicy topping for both -- something seemed to click, and it led to what we had today: a little round waffle holding a bite of a crunchy breast tender, topped with a maple-jalapeno butter.

It was exactly what we hoped we were describing, and it tasted really, really, really good. So did the other three things we tried, and I'm pretty sure the rest of the menu will be the same. Every last bite was awesome, and we're even more excited to have you come and share with us in about a month. See you then.

Continued ...

It's a Helluva Town

It's been so long since I checked in here that really, everything clever I had thought of to say (And who'm I kidding? The clever bar's pretty low.) has long since vanished from my head in a haze of sleep deprivation and wedding planning.

I did, however, want to mention our great trip to New York last month. We were both in town for work, and stayed the weekend -- and to the wonderful Jeffrey and Peyton I say (a) thank you for putting us up, and (b) we need to see you guys more. Oh, and (c) I want that recipe for chicken and green olive tagine.

There were many highlights:

I finally got to meet the great Keith Marder. Albeit in what amounted to a windstorm. But can't wait to see you again.

And got to spend some time with the great Mary Hood. That doesn't happen often enough either. And next time I might be persuaded to go to Hoboken with you, Mary. Or to the truck stop.

The Superhero exhibit at the Met. Sweet. And Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler are either insane or brilliant. I haven't figured it out yet. But since I buy clothes at Target, what I think about this probably doesn't matter much anyway.

Rice to Riches. We live right near some incredibly good gelato, but I have to say that if I ever get enough nickels to rub together, I totally want to open a franchise of this place. If you haven't been -- run, don't walk, to Mott and Spring.

Chris Robinson. I am a sucker for a good celebrity sighting, and as I am a proud member of Team Robinson -- even though everyone knows it's always a mistake to join a band with your brother -- this was awesome.

Gray's Papaya. Best recession special ever.

Brunch with the peeps -- including Zev, one of the coolest tiny men I've ever met. Yelling "Hi, Mo Blow!" has now become a daily staple in our house.


Plus, we found some insanely good fares to New York from Richmond -- so we'll be back. And soon.

Continued ...

Bacon and chocolate. Who knew?

I wish I could say the past few weeks had been filled with fabulous and wonderful adventures, and that's why we haven't blogged for a while. I suppose I could say that, but then that would be lying (although we did get to this the other night and had a lot of fun).

Because really, we've kinda been hunkered down with work and general late-winter boringness, and just kind of lazy when it comes to this here.

How lazy? We shared a candy bar with bacon in it more than a week ago, and I'm just now getting around to writing about it.

Background: We went to Richmond two weekends ago to celebrate Lisa's birthday (yay!), where we enjoyed a lovely evening in the Shockoe Slip/Tobacco Row historic areas, eating delicious food and staying in a fancy hotel. On our way home we stopped at the awesome candy store For the Love of Chocolate in Carytown. Words can't do it full justice -- the variety and creativity of sweet stuff on display there is kind of staggering, from Chick-O-Sticks to super-exotic chocolate flavored with chile, rosemary and all manner of other things you wouldn't necessarily think about putting into chocolate.

Which brings me to Mo's Bacon Bar, which, as you may be able to see above, is a combination of "applewood smoked bacon, alder wood smoked salt and 'deep milk chocolate.'" We were both a little trepidatious about trying it, but you know what? Turns out bacon and chocolate is pretty darn good (two great tastes that taste great together, as it were).

The smoky bits of fried pork are a nice compliment to the chocolate, which is darker than your average Hershey bar but not into the realm of the serious dark stuff. But it never gets overwhelming (at least not in the mini-size bar we split). Good crunch too.

More excitement to come -- we're going to the first and second rounds of the greatest sporting event ever in D.C. this weekend, and I plan at least one update from there. I have taken days off in the past to watch the first two rounds, and am doing so again this year, only this time I get to see games in person. This Salon piece from 2001 pretty much captures my feelings about the tournament, and I can't wait to experience it in person for the first time in more than 15 years.

Happy bacon, happy bracketing, and remember to pick at least one 12-vs.-5 upset.

Continued ...

Surviving a cold, gray Sunday

Sometimes it's just about hangin' out.

Today's recipe:

• Re-runs of America's Next Top Model, Cycle 3


• NBA: Lakers v. Cavaliers


• Frosting the red velvet cupcakes I made yesterday


• Tasting the rum-raisin brownies I also made yesterday


• A Duraflame log (the 3-hour kind) in the fireplace


• laundry (OK, so something got accomplished after all)


• The Sunday Washington Post


• The Sunday New York Times


• Mocking my (possibly now formerly) beloved Joe Jackson for selling out the great "One More Time" for a Taco Bell commercial. Oh, Joe -- really? You break my heart.


• Later: leftovers of the beef and butternut squash stew Rick made the other day

Yeah. I could live this day over and over.

Continued ...

I think I'm becoming a foodie

As soon as Lisa gets home this evening, we're probably going out to the Market Street Wine Shop in Charlottesville for their free weekly tasting. We did that last week too, and it's fun. And I mentioned free, right?

We've also made a habit of hitting the weekly farmers market that sets up shop down the street on Saturdays. It's tomato season, and we've been going a little nuts with the heirloom varieties -- probably spending a good 50-60 bucks on tomatoes alone in the past three weeks. We also invested in a new wine rack, because, well, we had too many bottles for the other one to handle.

Which leads me to wonder:



Have I become a foodie?

The answer, I think, is a qualified yes -- qualified because I had Wendy's for lunch yesterday, and sometimes I just want to sit on the couch and eat potato chips out of the bag.

But I also get excited by the prospect of cooking dinner a couple times a week, and by the idea of trying a new restaurant -- which, let's face it, is one of the good things about moving. The restaurants are almost all new.

The wine thing, too, is a recent development. Five years ago I probably would never have ordered a glass of wine with a meal. I was a beer snob, sure (and still am), but wine was a little outside my realm of experience.

Funny what a couple trips to Santa Barbara will do for that, though. Now, we have 20 bottles from all over sitting in our new wine rack, and if we try something at a restaurant that we like, we write down the name so we can find a bottle of it later. We spent an afternoon last weekend on part of the Monticello Wine Trail, drinking some surprisingly good (and a couple of really not very good) local wines.

Twice, we have stuffed dates with blue cheese, wrapped pork products around them and baked them.

A lot of this -- including the blue cheese-stuffed dates, which we had during our stopover in St. Louis -- started on the trip. We made a conscious and pretty successful effort not to eat big-box food while we were on the road, and that idea has pretty well carried over once we got here. Charlottesville also seems blessed with an inordinate number of good restaurants for a town its size, so there's probably no need for us ever to set foot in an Applebee's.

So now, I guess, the trick will be keeping this all in check, remaining a food lover while not tipping over into nose-in-the-air territory. I suspect that won't be too hard -- we both love our cheez-with-a-z too much to become true snobs.

Continued ...

Snack globally, eat locally

Since we left L.A., we've been undertaking a snack-food survey, sampling several different kinds of Doritos, some rather tasty wasabi Funyuns and Tom's Bacon & Cheddar Fries. None has been bad, but none has been a revelation either. We've also noticed, with a small measure of disappointment, that what you get at a gas station in Barstow is pretty much what you get at a convenience store in Tulsa.

(Although, I should note that the two best chips we've tasted thus far are regional ones: Tim's Luau BBQ, available mostly out West, and Uncle Ray's Kosher Dill, which are from Detroit and we found in Tulsa. Thes were maybe the best we've had, with visible flecks of dill on the chips and a slightly sour, not-too-salty taste like a good pickle. Plus, there are little stories on each bag.)



When we actually get somewhere, though, we've been doing our best to have food that we can't find everywhere else. Other than a couple of expedient and weather-forced fast-food stops on the second day of the trip, we've done a pretty good job of it so far. The only chain meal we've had since then were subs from Jimmy John's one day in Austin.

But we've also had great tamales from a shop half a block off the highway in Pecos, Texas; great Mexican at Jorge's, chicken-fried steak at Threadgill's (pictured above) and ice cream at Amy's in Austin; fantastic tacos at Benito's in Fort Worth -- thanks to Texas Monthly's "The Greatest Tacos Ever Sold"; and some fine Greek food from Zorba's in OKC.

Thursday night, in The Hill neighborhood of St. Louis, we poked our heads into a couple of delicious-looking Italian restaurants before settling into some great, great tapas at Modesto. Everything we tried was delicious, but the two highlights were a dish of cured tuna with smoky roasted peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers and bacon-wrapped, Cabrales cheese-stuffed dates that were just about perfectly balanced.

We're only a couple stops from home now. The last two days:

Wednesday: 400 miles
Route: Straight up I-35 from Austin to Oklahoma City.
Time: 7 hours and change
Consumed: In addition to some of the stuff mentioned above, we stopped at Robertson's Hams just over the Oklahoma-Texas border. Picked up a little gift for our host for the night (hi Lisa!) and some pretty good, all-natural beef jerky.

Thursday: Just shy of 500 miles
Route: I-44 from OKC to St. Louis.
Time: 8 1/2 hours
Consumed: Those Uncle Ray's chips, a solid BLT and grilled ham & cheese at Hood's Truck Stop in Bois d'Arc, Mo., and whole bunch of samples from a Wisconsin cheese outlet shop in Lebanon, Mo. We also bought some stuff there, and had a few white cheddar curds flavored with garlic and dill. Good food day.

Continued ...

In praise of Jo’s

Anyone who's known me for any length of time (i.e., more than 10 minutes) is aware that I am utterly enamored of Austin, Texas. I am a pretender; I've only been here four times (including now). I've been a pilgrim to South by Southwest – the film festival too. I've had a Texas Monthly subscription for more than seven years. There are Lyndon Johnson White House tapes on my iPod. And occasionally, I dream about Jo's on South Congress Avenue.




I get why people want to keep Austin weird, and agree it's important to take a stand against the hipster doofusication of truly cool neighborhoods. South Congress has changed a good deal even since the first time I came here – some for better, some for worse (unless I'm mistaken, it looks like Just Guns across the street is now a pet store specializing in tropical fish), but it remains, for me anyway, one of those places where you just want to hang out.

Jo's is a coffee stand/shack just up the street from the Austin Motel, across from the Continental Club and near the shop where I just bought my nephew a cowboy guitar. Right now, three umbrellas covered in what looks like hot pink hula skirts shade the sidewalk tables. Sit here long enough at least a good portion of Austin passes by. Don't let the fact that Rachael Ray featured it put you off.


To catch up:

Sunday mileage: About 560
Route: 285 South from Roswell, N.M. to Fort Stockton, Texas, then I-10 East to Austin
Time: About eight hours. The parts of West Texas where the speed limit is 80 ROCK.
Consumed: Some incredible pork and red chile tamales from La Nortena in Pecos, Texas; Wasabi Funyuns (I’d eat these every day, but no one would want me to come near them); another Doritos Collisions flavor combination: zesty taco and chipotle ranch (our verdict: save your money), and a delicious homemade dinner with family in Austin who were kind enough to welcome this interloper. Thank you. Couldn't be more delighted to be here.

Continued ...