TedE

I saw it at Cairo Liquors this past weekend. $12.99/750ml if I recall.

Or drink 1-2 after your birthday dinner at a friend's house, go out for a night on the town, and be surprised to wake up the next morning in the comfy massage chair in your downtown office

I like Bar Pilar for game watching (I've been known to drop in on Sundays for football), but you really have to have the right seat. Those pillars at the bar are really good at interfering with your line of sight ...

It really should have been Taint Ballbuster. That'd teach people to choose wines based on the picture on the label! And +5 for the excellent "Aliens" reference

Onward and downward: 2 more down, 4 to go. This was the hardest training week on the schedule, though.

I caught the pilot of this show (Asia) earlier last summer (what was re-aired as the pilot again a few weeks ago). I assumed it was a one off and was glad to see it back as a series. Travel Channel is airing better food shows than FN nowadays ....

Bring on the bread! Yet another perfectly healthy part of a balanced diet that has been trampled upon by the Atkins gestapo. Good whole grain bread is not the culprit. Only when combined in a diet that also includes high proportions of other nutritional gems such as Doritos, fries, and candy-sweet "bran muffins" does bread form part of the multi-headed carb monster ("I call him Carblor!") that f*ucks with your glycogen reserves enough to produce a temporary sugar imbalance. Do it enough and that imbalance becomes a medical condition. No need to fear bread in moderation. In fact no need to fear anything in moderation and in reasonable proportions with each other. That's basically every diet plan in the world boiled down into one simple sentence. And you know what? It freakin' works. That will be $5, please.

Well, I had chalked that one up to weighing myself immediately after a big workout (dehydration and all), but I didn't exercise this morning and the scale said the same thing. Let's see how that averages out for the next few days, but (tentatively) 3.5 more down in the last two weeks, 6 to go.

I'm not keeping a daily food diary because I don't have that sort of discipline when it comes to record-keeping (as tax season is reminding me on a daily basis!), but here's today's planned schedule on the eat-small-and-often plan. It's fairly typical for a weekday, but maybe a little higher in calorie content since we are in the middle of the toughest 2 weeks of the training schedule right now. 5:00 AM pre-swim (yes, Tuesdays suck!) - 1/2 bagel with light veg cream cheese; banana 7:30 AM pre-run - energy gel (~110 calories) just so not to bonk on the run 9:00 AM post-run: another bagel (whole) with light veg cc 11:00 AM - 8 oz. non-fat yogurt w/ granola mixed in 12:30 PM - small salad with rice vinegar/soy dressing; apple 2:00 PM - leftover fettucine w/ sausage, broccoli rabe, and peppers (probably 2/3 of my dinner sized portion (will usually pack a sandwich if no leftovers) 3:30ish PM - orange 7:30-8:00ish - dinner. Some recent staples: chicken/shrimp stir fry w/rice + whatever appropriate veg we have lying around; panko-crusted chicken breast with veg side + couscous/quinoa/risotto; stocked up soup from the freezer + crusty bread + salad; couscous salad with grilled chicken; pasta of some sort. I have tea and LOTS of water throughout the day and then something sweet after dinner (damn you Del Ray Dreamery! Oh, and you too Wegman's bins of assorted gummi products!!). I'll usually sneak in a snack or two before dinner if I'm home on the early side: bread/crackers with peanut butter, handful of chips, etc. I haven't been denying myself a beer or glass of wine (or 2) recently during the week. Weekday drinking was totally absent for a while, then I decided it wasn't entirely worth it I may go cold turkey again 2-3 weeks before the race. We'll see. Weekends are another story. I don't make eating plans because they just go out the window anyway. It usually shows on Monday and I've been avoiding the scale until later in the week because of it (although I did step on last night). The badness over the weekend usually leads to retained water and other, um, by-product weight. Case in point: a full 5 pound difference between 9:00 last night and 9:00 this morning. So don't be discouraged by daily fluctuations, they can be pretty extreme!! It all comes out in the wash, so to say.

It may not fit everybody's schedule, but for me the whole eating small but often thing has worked. I bring a multi-part "lunch" and eat something every 1-2 hours. It really helps that 3:00 hunger feeling knowing that I still have something in the fridge. Lots of green tea has helped, too. This type of grazing keeps the metabolism going all day which in turn burns more calories. It took me awhile to get used to not being full after "lunch" and I still have to be pretty disciplined to keep to a schedule, but I haven't had any late afternoon sugar-crash hunger issues. I'm not keeping a food diary, but I'll post a typical day in my thread.

I can attest to the Three Wisemen and Four Horsemen. Truly vile with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I think that applies to any combination of tequila + X, though. Some of those are totally mild by comparison (Cement Mixer? Tastewise it's tolerable, but the texture does people in I guess). Some real horror stories? I need to dig some up from the depths of high school (ahem) ingenuity. There was one we dubbed the "Swamp Foot" from a particularly disturbing commercial on local TV at the time. Kiwi-Lemon MD 20/20 and OJ were involved, that's about all you need to know. In fact we had a whole series of Mad Dog inspired "cocktails". I seriously had them written down somewhere. This was about the same era that I lost most of my bangs in an errant flaming 151 incident. Ah, youth!!

The cheese pies are awesome. I grew up not far from Belvedere and we drop by whenever we are in town for lunch at Atwater's and to pick up things from Neopol and Ciriello.

It may have more to do with our general biology. We're not that far removed genetically from other large mammals that fatten up for the cold winter and get lean again in the warmer months.

But aren't the real "flavors" that are being detected the mineral oxides that are more abundant in stone X vs. stone Y? Wouldn't it be more correct to refer to those? I get the difference between metals (copper vs. iron vs. lead are all fairly distinct "tastes"). Or is it just that much more badass oeno-Rambo to say you detect "a slight undercurrent of orthogneiss". The geek in me wants to be able to pull that sh*t out one day and mean it!

I was being more than slightly facetious. I get the mineral elements in many wines, just not the differentiation. Granite vs. limestone vs. slate? It's all rocks to me.

I've noticed asparagus flavors before, but only because it is such a recognizable scent, and I don't normally "get along" with tasting notes. But granite? Slate? Nuh uh. Maybe I didn't spend enough time licking rocks as a kid to have the necessary olfactory benchmarks . (BTW, the ability to detect the mercaptan by-products of asparagus that give it it's, um, unique odor on the way out of your system is genetic; so is the enzyme that breaks down said compounds to produce the smell. So some people may be able to produce it but not smell it, which may also prevent them from detecting the hints in a wine's flavor profile). Back to the blurb. There's a lot of really boring chardonnay out there (like really, really boring stuff). And there is a lot of boring cabs out there as well. Joe - what makes merlots the king of the cheap, boring wines aside from their tendency to be unoffensive to the novice wine drinker? Is merlot an easy grape to grow cheaply, or are there just tons of merlot vineyards out there? ETA: nevermind, I think you answered these questions above

They have to put retail on the ground floor of the new building, condos above; it's part of what was holding the whole thing up, negotiations about what was going in once they tore down what is there. The lines seemed to be hit and miss at Dremo's. I always found the rotating taps to be more reliable than the house beers. After one try during the summer I never got another one from the patio taps, though. I don't think the insulation for those lines was up to spec ; the one beer I did get was warm and flat. Still, the place had it's charms and was always a reliable bet in the neighborhood.

Well, there will be one less dive bar to kick come early '08. It looks like the Dr. Dremo's closing date is more or less official. And they're taking the Taco Bell with it, thereby destroying the perfect good beer + crappy late night Tex Mex fast food symbiosis that those two establishments had developed. The place was about as down and dirty as they come, but I will sorely miss it. Any guesses on what boring chain establishment will go in? Maybe in some really cruel twist of fate it will be a Hops Brewery

"Isaboo"?!?!? Wonder if that other dog yelped "Yummo!" after the deed was done ...

Others may have dissenting opinions, but in my view ceramics just aren't worth it. Are they sharp? Yes, but not any sharper than you can get a good steel knife. Will they stay sharp longer than a steel knife? Yes, but only if you are assuming the steel knife is not honed regularly. Are the new ceramics sturdier than previous generation? Yes, but one drop on a tiled floor or careless bang against a pot/counter/sink and your expensive knife has an unfixable chip in the blade or is broken clean in half. I don't see any advantage they have over a well kept traditional chef's knife. If you don't want to do any knife maintenance at all (no honing, no sharpening) they may be a good option, but that's the only positive they have in my view. The light weight is actually a big disadvantage to me; I want some heft to my blades. I would consider one as a paring knife just for kicks, but nothing of the size of a chef's knife. All in my humble opinion, of course.

Am I reading this correctly and that they are removing the downstairs bar? If so, terrible idea. People waiting for tables do so clustered around a bar and having one on the second floor so removed from host stand could be a real headache. Or are they saying that the main floor bar will just be scaled back? Service bar only?

Another 1.5 down, 9.5ish to go. I was expecting to be level this week, so that is a surprise. I was pretty lean on the intake early in the week due to a busy schedule and late nights at work, so that may explain it. The Dairy Godmother on Saturday and two meals at Dino this weekend surely can't!

I dropped by here a couple weekends ago to stock up for a party. The tasting was definitely fast-paced! I'm fine with it since it fits Franco's enthusiastic style. He's definitely dialed in to the wines he stocks and it shows; doesn't hurt that our tastes seem to run along the same lines. I'll have to check the bottles at home, but we really enjoyed a Portuguese alentejo (sp?) for all of $12/bottle. I'll be back in a heartbeat when we need to restock.

Same storyline with slightly different details in today's Weekly Dish. I'll be sad to see him leave my 'hood, but here's hoping that he turns the new place into something that would actually draw me to M St. Currently the Birreria is the only place that holds that distinction ...

Think watered down Gatorade. The lemon one (has a milky white color) reminds me a slightly less salty Pocari Sweat.