ktmoomau

We had District Taco on the way home from a fundraising event that we just didn't have time to eat at.  Luckily DT serves in Alexandria until 10 pm on Saturday night.  I got fish tacos on corn tortillas and was quite happy- I added some hot salsa, and they had a good amount of spice.  Their fish tacos are really one of my favorites, although there are a lot of menu items that I have never had.  A lot of people seemed to have the burrito bowl, so I might need to try that sometime.

Last night we had leftover grilled chicken breasts on brioche buns with leaf lettuce from the garden.  I sauteed onion and squash and tossed in the last of the potato wedges and green beans from the other night.  I also roasted the last of the costco broccoli with some balsamic.  

No idea what the plan for tonight is going to be... I have a lot of little leftover tidbits, but nothing really comprehensive, and not really enough individual items that go together to combine things into a new dish per se... 

3 hours ago, Pat said:

Salad of iceberg lettuce, grape tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, cubed Jarlsberg cheese, hard-boiled egg; Bolthouse Farms Cilantro-Avocado Dressing
Sourdough baguette and butter
Fettuccine with Lemon Herb Yogurt Sauce

The pasta was excellent. My husband raved about it. I will definitely make this again. It looks like some version of Fettuccine Alfredo at a glance but is wonderfully tangy with yogurt, lemon, and salty feta.

This is interesting.  I think Hubby might like this dish, I never get to make more creamy pasta type sauces (except for like carbonara) due to the cream, so I will try this.

4 hours ago, Keithstg said:

 Resy is a great app.

I like the notify feature.  I wish they would show you all the available reservations, and then the unavailable ones, so you could use the notify feature more, without having to know a specific name of a place you were thinking about.  I know I can use rezhound, but I like that they will automatically book you if your preferred place and times becomes available.

Last night was chicken marinated with balsamic, honey, soy then grilled, accompanied by green beans cooked with a leftover ham hock and potato wedges on the grill.  Not sure the little boys ate any of it, but out of a big pot, there were very few beans left, and only a handful of potatoes so I think it was a successful Mother's Day dinner.

In our old condo- we had a Kenmore fridge ss, next to a Bosch range and microwave both ss, it all had the same exact color, ours didn't really have any color variation, but I don't know if other brands do?

What about a sushi place?  she could get sashimi and then maybe like an avocado and cucumber salad sans dressing?  Or veggie rolls without rice (I assume seaweed is safe, but I don't know?) I am not sure what edamame is considered... 

I have thought this was really interesting- so far I have only watched Bangkok, Osaka, Delhi and Singapore.  I like the format, of course I think all of those cities would have enough of this to have been a whole season instead of just an episode.  

Trying to rack my brain, the only thing I can think of would be Kabob palace, but their sides don't strike me as ones she could eat.  I am not sure if Souvlaki bar marinates their meats, their greek salad is really good and I am sure they would have plain oil and vinegar for dressing?  But you just had Greek.  Ruth Chris is in CC, too.  Sorry, this is a tough one.

Chicken marinated with lemon, parsley and garlic overnight then grilled.  Served with a succotash of green beans, potatoes and corn.

We stopped here on Sunday just to check out our chicken options on the way to Lowes.  I kind of wanted an empanada, the yucca with the shredded pork, etc, etc, but the reason for the visit was the chicken so I knew I had to get that.  To my surprise on the Tex Mex Specials- special 1 was an empanada, fried yucca, cheese pupusa, chicken with rice and beans.  So that is what I ordered.  Now I liked this place, the service was very nice, the food was fine.  It wasn't Caribbean Grill, El Pollo Rico or Don Pollo in terms of chicken, but it was fine.  It just didn't seem special.  The beef empanada was seasoned ground beef, and again fine, but not special.  The yucca was good.  The cheese pupusa, I took notes on, mine aren't this good.  I think they use way more cheese than I do, those were very good.  All in all, it really wasn't a bad lunch at all, and we will go back.  But I still miss Caribbean Grill.  This really is a nice little place if you need a meal, it's just not a travel out of the way for kind of place.

22 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

ETA:  Never-mind.  Can't take the trip because of a conflict.  I will have to do this at a later time.

Well when you go check back in.  One the Visa- I would say apply very early and use tracking for everything you send, ours took longer than expected and was a PITA, but it was a few years ago now, and the system could have improved?

Burgers on Friday night that we did a mix of venison and beef, I used one of Gordon Ramsey's recipes with chili flakes, Hubby wasn't crazy about it, so I likely won't use it again, although I didn't mind a little punch of flavor, especially with the venison.  The last of the pork chops last night.  Both with sides of simple roasted veggies- broccoli and squash with butter, olive oil, salt, pepper, parsley and chives.

4 hours ago, mr food said:

I would say the Cabot white cheddar in the black wrapper is not too crumbly.   Good for a quick snack and grating for mexican dishes, etc.

You must have better luck than I do.  This has crumbled to pieces on me, every time I try to slice it, twice now.  There is one other cheddar I tried instead and it was also extremely crumbly when sliced.  I get that it is aged and a harder cheese, and maybe the big block contributes to the crumbly nature.   I have tried them both straight out of the fridge, or when more room temp either way no dice.

22 minutes ago, astrid said:

Make sure you grow 2 tomatillos, even if you keep one very small.  They don't self pollinate so you need 2 for fruit.

Will do, the very nice lady at Ivy Nursery let me know that when I only had one picked up (and also said since I am on a balcony if I might need to use a little paint brush and pollinate).  She had some very cool varieties of eggplants they had already sold out of...  I have never grown tomatillo before, hoping it does well, Hubby loves tomatillo salsa.

As an update:

On my patio (which gets less light) my boxes have kale, leaf lettuce and spinach coming up from the seed I planted.  Hubby set up a little irrigation system that works really well for watering.  It is smart and tracks the soil moisture and weather.  My herbs are going nuts, my parsley is happy as can be, I have been using lots of fresh parsley.  

On the balcony, tomatillo, hungarian and bell peppers have been planted and are doing well.  I am going to the Spring preview at Mount Vernon this weekend and am hoping to pick up a few things, if not I am sending Hubby to the Green Spring sale we used to go to.  We need to set up the irrigation system up there this weekend. So if anyone is looking for plants from heritage seed, Mount Vernon Garden sale this weekend.

I also repotted two of my orchids, their new home isn't as sunny as their old home, so I am going to move them up to the 4th floor which gets much more light and is hotter.  I won't see them as often, but they will like it better.

That sounds great Pat!

We had a pasta salad last night with cucumber, green pepper, feta, pepperoni, olives and cherry tomatoes.  I made a sort of Italian/Greek style dressing with what I had- oil, vinegar, herbs, garlic powder, a dash of Worcestishire, a splash of lime juice (was out of lemons), caper juice, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper.  

I could not find a topic for Monterey's Pizza in Alexandria.

They just opened a new location about a block away from their old location.  They are going to have a patio, they have some inside seating (not huge about 7 tables of various sizes).  Beer and wine license coming.  We have tried DRP, Lost Dog (our previous favorite), Lena's and Monterey's so far has been our favorite delivery/eat in pizza that we have found so far in the Alexandria/Del Ray area.  the crust has nice char, I think the toppings are really good.  The staff is really nice, delivery is fast.  We have eaten in their new location and while not amazing ambiance wasn't bad, we watched baseball and ate some pizza.  I think the sauce is better than Lena's, crust is better than Lost Dog, and I am not sure why exactly, but as a whole I find it better than DRP.  Anyway, just my two cents.

Carmello's- In the shopping center with the AutoZone and Marshalls.  The inside isn't much to speak of, this place used to be in another location.  It was very family friendly and we saw lots of tables with kids.  Our waiter was very nice, but extremely frazzled.  He didn't quite know what they had, didn't have, and just seemed to say whatever came to the top of his mind (he said they had no cappuccino because the staff drank it all?).  I got veal parmigana- which was a huge plate of veal, it came with a really small side of spaghetti that was overcooked and dry.  The veal itself was good.  Hubby got gnocchi and it compared to the veal it was a really small portion, so I gave him what I didn't eat.  I always think it's kind of tough when entrees have real disparities in size, it just makes it hard to know what to expect.  We had a bottle of Veritas cab franc which was quite good.  In addition there was a glass of riesling recommended by the waiter for my SIL she didn't drink it, just wasn't feeling it.  I sipped it and it was a little on the sweet side, but I really think it just needed to be a bit cooler and would have been better.  Anyway, I won't really be rushing to go back.  I had wanted to go to Vivace, but they just couldn't take a res for our party size.

Bebedero- we went here on Saturday around lunch time and they had a brunch menu.  It was very breakfast focused, I had wished there were a few more items that were a bit more lunch.  Hubby had the fish tacos, the one kind of lunch thing other than a salad and soup, which he said were very good, and made up for the abysmal ones he had in LA.  They looked very good.  I had huevos rancheros- which was eggs, beans, and a very salty chorizo sausage in ranchero sauce with sliced avocado and tortillas.  I didn't mind that it wasn't your typical version you get in the US with the tortillas already in the dish, and instead served on the side, but the whole avocados and sausage pieces meant it was a little difficult to eat.  I thought it was quite good, but just overly salty.  I would go back to try some other items at dinner.  I don't know that this is my favorite lunch though based on the brunch menu.  But I love the decor and I think at dinner they likely have some very good things.  

I would say that as long as you are ok with taking some Ubers it isn't a bad location for a trip.  It would be a little far of a walk to the metro each day, to then walk around the Smithsonian's, but should be a pretty affordable Uber ride.  There are a lot of government buildings in that area, so it doesn't have the most restaurants, but you aren't far from areas with lots of restaurants and stop ins to get some snacks and you will be down along the mall for a lot of your trip and finding options down there.  North Carolina also has a lot of kid friendly types of places in the Capitol Hill area.  

On 4/20/2019 at 5:34 PM, captcourt said:

Just to add to the "what do you buy at Costco" part of this thread...there are two of us + one pup, and we have a good amount of storage space:

- dental chews for the pupper, which are basically candy and I should probably search for something else;

Haven't seen them in Costco- but we get Max the CET dental chews from Amazon.  He is a small pup and they are known to have not the greatest teeth, so our vet has recommended any CET product from early on.  Max eats the dental chews and doesn't seem to have a problem with them potentially being more healthy??? than name brand ones.  

Has anyone found a cheddar cheese at Costco that isn't super crumbly?

Last night was roasted tomatoes, zucchini, onion in a white wine, lemon, garlic and butter sauce, when they were mostly done, I added shrimp.  Served over some black rice.

The night before was pork loin sandwich with roasted red pepper, spinach and pepperjack, griddled.

Last night was cuban pressed flatbread sandwiches- Sliced pork left over from the dinosaur sized chops, ham, we didn't have swiss so I subbed one slice american, one slice pepper jack and fridge pickles I just made, all in naan flatbreads, that I folded over and pressed on the skillet.  It wasn't a traditional cuban, but it was good.  Hubby laughed that I forgot to take a picture, I have been kicking myself lately as I have made some nicely plated meals and forgotten to photograph.  

13 hours ago, Smita Nordwall said:

Were these the loin chops? I haven't bought them in a while but I used to butterfly them and use one for two people. 

These are still on the bone, so you could cut them off the bone and butterfly them. 

Last night was cavatelli with red sauce and the last of the chicken meatballs (Hubby fessed up that he didn't really like these much, although said they were better in red sauce, and likes the frozen  Restaurant Depot, so we likely won't get them again.) With some fresh herbs and parm.

This is going to be an interesting location...