Our Block's First Progressive Dinner

I'm never shy to say that my street is the best. We have an awesome annual block party and a terrific monthly book club. I'm good friends with neighbors whom I would still love to hang out with even if our houses weren't in such close proximity.

To add to the neighborly fun, this past weekend I added what I hope will become an annual tradition -- a progressive dinner. This is when a group of friends moves from house to house for different courses. In our case, the first house hosted a happy hour with appetizers, the second house had entrees, and the third house offered an assortment of desserts.

Several households contributed food (Paul made an excellent seafood paella), others made strong mixed drinks and still others donated money to the cause. I'd been to one progressive dinner more than a decade ago, and I had a blast even as we drove from house to house. This one was even better since each house was only feet from the next.

In the summer, our neighborhood basically lives on front porches and front lawns, but the winter is long around here. It was great to come out of hibernation to talk to neighbors that we haven't seen since practically last fall.

Good food, even better conversation and calls for us to do it all again next year -- a wonderful evening all around.

Why We Got Rid of Family Supper

Before we had kids, Paul and I regularly ate supper at 9 p.m. That was particularly true when we lived in New York, when we usually didn’t get home until 7 p.m. or so anyway.

That changed not long after Edith was born, and probably more particularly after we moved back to Ohio, where people tend to go to work earlier — and get home earlier. Supper began at 6 or 6:30 in our house for a long time.

That changed recently. The kids have been going to bed earlier, and getting ready was getting rushed, especially if Paul got home even 10 minutes later that normal. So for the last few weeks we’ve traded in family dinner for more quality time.

What that means in reality is the kids eat around 5 or 5:30. Sometimes I’ll eat with them, but often not. Then when Paul gets home he can actually play with the kids instead of spending those 90 minutes before bedtime largely in the dining room before getting on their pajamas. Paul and I eat after they go to bed - not 9 p.m. like in the olden days, but closer to 8.

We still eat together on Friday night and during the weekend, but we have found the split meals to work well for our family. We enjoy our time together more without rushing to feed hangry kids. I’m sure our schedule will change again in the summer when we stay up and outside later, but so far, so good. 

Road Trip Food: Kansas City and St. Louis

Our western-Midwest road trip was prompted by Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in Omaha, but it was the food promised to us in Kansas City and St. Louis that really got us on board. Who can say no to a week of barbecue? And why would you want to?

Our first barbecue stop was our first evening in Kansas City: Gates BBQ. I'm not sure what decade the decor came from, but it wasn't any that I've been alive for. It had a decidedly old-school feel, down to the music, and the food was excellent. We shared a sampler platter of beef, ham, ribs and fries. The woman taking our order wasn't sure it would be enough for all of us, explaining that it was only about two pounds of food. Um, two pounds is fine.

Atticus at Gates

The next day's lunch was one of my highlights: Joe's KC BBQ. And judging by the long line, it's a lot of people's favorite. We shared a pound of pulled pork and a bag of some of the best seasoned fries I've ever had.

Atticus at Joe's

The barbecue joints within walking distance of our hotels in Kansas City and St. Louis were convenient, but the food was nothing to write home about. Maybe that's why I opted for the smoked tofu at Vernon's BBQ, in St. Louis. It was fine, but it was the peach barbecue sauce that really stole the show. Paul's sausage was excellent, too.

The sauces at Sugarfire Smokehouse took up nearly half a table, and I think Paul liked the unique selection of soda nearly as well as the meat. It really was delicious.

Sugarfire sauces

I didn't get a meal at Adam's Smokehouse, and I regretted it. We stopped here on our way out of St. Louis, and I wanted to save room for the frozen custard stop we were making just a short distance away. Big mistake. The Montreal-smoked meat (pastrami, Paul tells me) practically melted in my mouth. I didn't even know I liked pastrami. Luckily Paul shared.

But we didn't exclusively eat barbecue (although we came pretty close). In Kansas City, we also ate at a memorable fast-food restaurant, Runza. It's actually an Omaha thing. The eponymous food is a long hoagie-like bun willed with ground beef, cabbage and (in mine) cheese. I liked it.

In St. Louis we tried Imo's Pizza before the baseball game. I didn't know that St. Louis-style pizza existed, but this is it -- thin crust and topped with Provel, which Paul tells me is some kind of faux provolone. It was good, but I wouldn't go seeking it out.

And how could I have forgotten that St. Louis is home to one of my very favorite desserts, butter cake?! Thankfully a city-guide magazine reminded me. I stopped for a piece at Park Avenue Coffee, the cake/cream cheese/butter concoction making a perfect late-night snack that evening. Happily, I like mine better.

Let's not forget the snacks. One little girl very much enjoyed her Dairy Queen treats at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting and the free popcorn machine at our hotel in St. Louis. I guess at least one person could have gone without barbecue after all.

Atticus Eats

Atticus very recently started eating real food, and what a difference it is. Not only is he happier during our meals, it's such a difference from the way that Edith began.

For the first few weeks of Edith's eating adventures, we stuck to homemade purees. I remember carefully smashing her first food -- avocado -- and adding liquid to make sure my precious baby would be okay.

Atticus's first food was also avocado, but we served it to him in strips, following the methods of baby-led weaning. BLW essentially means giving babies finger foods that they are able to pick up and put in their mouths by themselves. Finger-sized strips allow them to hold one end while placing the other in their mouth -- six-month-olds don't yet have pincer grasps, so no peas, Cheerios or the like!

I'm not a BLW purist, so we do help him put some food in his mouth -- yogurt, in particular! He seems to really like green beans. And if he can't quite reach the bullseye that is his mouth, he at least enjoys squeezing his foods to a pulp.

Avocado a few days later - even messier!

Finding Okonomiyaki in Columbus

One of my best vacation memories happened in Japan almost six years ago, when we were visiting friends who lived in Hiroshima at the time. They took us to a restaurant that we never would have found on our own, and we sat around the grill eating okonomiyaki. We ate a lot of new foods during that trip, but that was probably the best.

Since then, I've tried to find a place that recreated the okonomiyaki I remember from then. We found one place in New York City, in the East Village. It tasted similar, and it was cooked in the Hiroshima-style, with the layers of cabbage and toppings piled high, almost like a warm salad. After we ate there once or twice, the restaurant shut down.

I was excited to find one place in Columbus that served okonomiyaki, and we finally tried it last month. Unfortunately, it was made in what I understand to be the Osaka style. It was pretty much a savory pancake. (In my head, I think of it as Kyoto style -- we had it in the train station there, and I remember it pretty much being like pizza.)

Nevertheless, ZenCha Tea Salon was good. The okonomiyaki was filled with vegetables and topped with your choice of protein (I got tofu), along with a type of mayo and sweet sauce. While it was fun to fulfill my okonomiyaki fix, the real star of the show was the tea of the day: an iced rose latte. I don't drink much tea, and I drink absolutely no coffee (yuck), so I don't know much about them. In fact, I thought that latte referred exclusively to a type of coffee. My bad. The rose latte sample the server brought to the table was delicious and is worth a trip back to ZenCha on its own.

So maybe the okonomiyaki wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but I'll be back for the rose latte. And maybe next time, the blueberry lavender pancake.

Dinner at Aab India Restaurant

Ever since we joined a CSA in Brooklyn, Paul's been into making Indian food at home. The strong spices required in curries were the perfect way to mask the natural taste of many of the bitter greens we would receive week after week! But we also simply like the taste of Indian food. Yet we rarely (never?) go to Indian restaurants. On Saturday, however, we visited Aab India Restaurant in Dublin.

We visited during Restaurant Week, which meant we got three courses for one set price. We each ordered vegetable pakora, a type of deep fried fritter.

We then chose a piece of naan and garlic naan. And for the main course, we each picked something we knew: I got the saag paneer, which is a spinach-based dish with cheese cubes. Paul ordered chicken tikka masala, which features tender strips of chicken in an orange tomato-based sauce.

Edith liked the pakora about as much as we did and couldn't get enough of the naan. The main dishes were spicy and good, with plenty leftover for later meals.

The atmosphere was pleasant, but certainly not so fancy that we felt out of place with a toddler. They had high chairs, and Edith was content looking around. All in all, a good meal. I'm anxious to return for Aab's weekend buffet so I can explore Indian dishes that I haven't yet tried.

Hungry All of the Time

I now eat approximately seven times a day.

I am hungry all of the time. You would think it would be fun to eat whatever, whenever you want. And the only time you can do that without judgement is when you're pregnant. (Not that it's ever stopped me before.)

But it's not fun. I'm always eating or thinking about eating. My meals/snacks go something like this:

• Breakfast (cereal and orange juice)
• Second breakfast (usually a Toaster Strudel)
• Lunch
• Snack #1 (toffee ice cream bar)
• Snack #2 (currently chips and salsa)
• Supper
• Bedtime snack (nowadays, milk and cookies)

 And if I skip any of those, chances are I'll feel yucky and won't want to eat anything. It's tiring.

At least I have the Christmas smorgasbords to look forward to. I'll be taking advantage.

A Quest for Sesame Pancakes & Jallab Juice

One of the biggest things I miss about New York is the food. New York has both quality and quantity -- really, really good food at many, many places. Columbus, too, has great food, but it's just not on every street corner (although it's coming closer, which is perhaps a post for another time).

But there are two foods in particular that I'm missing right now: one that I enjoyed the last couple of years of our time living in New York, and one that I was just introduced to on our trip back in June.

First, the old: a sesame pancake with vegetables from Vanessa's Dumpling House. As I wrote after trying this for the first time in 2011: "The pancake was really more of a sandwich in the shape of a pizza slice, filled with cilantro along with julienned carrots and cucumbers. So delicious, and really a meal by itself."

The bread is nicely crisped, and the seeds and whatever oil and/or spices they use give it a unique flavor. I made it my meal regularly -- and twice in June. It's only about a $1.50, but I would gladly pay more.

And the new: jallab juice, purchased at an old favorite. One of our last stops in Bay Ridge in June was Al Safa, the restaurant just across the street from where we used to live. It was our last morning in Brooklyn, so I splurged and ordered a glass of jallab juice: a mixture of rose water and date juice. Just sweet enough, deliciously refreshing and a wonderful complement to a crispy zaatar pie.

Now, to find these in Columbus. Help!

And Now, Sausage Links

You've probably heard that it's not a good idea to see either laws or sausage being made.

I'm out of luck. Not only do I know how a bill becomes a law by working at the Ohio Statehouse once upon a time, but Paul has shown me firsthand how to make sausage.

I'd rather stick to politics.

I wrote earlier this year that Paul has taken to grinding his own meat with the help of our stand mixer. He recently went a step beyond by buying casings (read: intestines) at Cabela's so he could form his own sausage links.

Let's be clear: I was born in northwest Ohio. I wasn't raised on an animal farm, but close relatives have long had plenty of animals raised specifically for our eating pleasure. I'm not a vegetarian.

But making sausage links is disgusting.

Some of the meat bust through the casings, so Paul made a couple of patties out of that. Pretty good. But those giant links? No thanks.

My head knows that they are basically the same thing. But ... ick. I'll be deleting these photos from my phone as soon as I can.

First, grind the meat.

Slip the casing onto the stand mixer attachment.

Feed the meat back through the grinder and watch it slide into the casing.

Ready to cook. Yuck.

Saturdays at the Clintonville Farmers' Market

One of the many reasons we love where we live is the location of the Clintonville Farmers' Market -- it's just down the street, a few minutes' walk away. We went to several of the outdoor Saturday markets after we moved in last summer, but we'll go to even more this year. My mother-in-law is one of the vendors.

She has sold produce and flowers in past years at markets in Worthington and Hilliard, but this year she opted for our neighborhood. And I'm doing a lot of the Facebook marketing, so be sure to like her Red Brick Farm Facebook page!

Edith helping Grandma.

But that's not the only reason the market is so much fun. There's a lot to like at the market (meat, bread and coffee -- for Paul at least) and quite a few pastries and desserts, too (those are for me). I'm also anxious to get some real maple syrup. Each vendor tent includes a sign that explains where the items are from and the distance from Columbus. It's interesting to see how much comes from so near.

The market runs through November, so this is the very beginning.

Finally Learning to Cook

I kind of like to cook.

That's something I never thought I would ever write. In our family, Paul has always been the chef, and I'm the baker. That's still the case, but I'm inching into Paul's realm, first out of necessity and then because I actually enjoy it.

It goes something like this:

Before Edith was born up until she starting eating solid foods last May, Paul and I would eat supper at about 9 p.m. Because of our hours and commutes, we were rarely both home before 7 p.m. When we did get home, we would relax for a bit, and then Paul would start supper.

With Edith, that plan became untenable. It didn't make sense to always feed her a meal before bedtime, only for Paul and me to eat a couple of hours later. Plus, our move to Ohio shortened Paul's commute, so he's home a little earlier. We decided to move up our dinnertime by a few hours.

I began to feel like I needed to chip in more for supper, and I don't mean heating the oven for a frozen pizza. Although Paul was home slightly earlier, our mealtime would still be pushed back if he had to cook supper each night. So I've slowly taken over some meals during the week.

At first it was just the easy things I've long known how to make: quesadillas, salmon cakes, breakfast burritos, chicken bakes. Then Paul taught me enchiladas, and I can make tacos if he reminds me of the correct proportion of spices to add.

Now I'm branching out without his help: homemade macaroni and cheese, a couple of lentil dishes that Edith just loves, and a tortilla pie that is seriously one of the best things I've ever made -- not that there's much competition.

I've had a miss or two -- Edith liked my applesauce rice and I thought it was OK, but Paul determined that it was kind of disgusting. But at least I'm trying new things and looking up new recipes.

I still have a long way to go before I would consider myself a good cook by any means. But I am proud that I have at least a few well-rounded meals that I can depend on without resorting on anyone but me.

Making Sausage: Paul's Newest Hobby

Since we moved to Ohio, Paul now has more room for his hobbies. The newest: making sausage.

He requested and received for Christmas a sausage grinding attachment for our stand mixer -- the mixer being one of those items we simply didn't have the space for in our Brooklyn apartment. He bought a pork shoulder last weekend and tried his hand at sausage-making when he was off from work on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

It went surprisingly smoothly. He cut the pork shoulder into chunks and fed them into the grinder. They needed very little coaxing to pass through the machine. The whole thing was done in minutes.

He added seasonings (sage, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper) and mixed them into the meat. Of course, he couldn't wait to sample the fruits of his labor. So he took about a pound of the sausage and formed them into four patties for lunch.

I'm not a huge fan of sausage patties, but these were pretty good. I can't wait to try the meat in Paul's sausage spaghetti sauce, which I already think is excellent.

So this new hobby of Paul's? I'm a fan.

An Afternoon at Columbus' North Market

One of the highlights of Columbus is downtown's North Market. That's especially true if you love food. And who doesn't?

North Market is home to about three dozen vendors that sell pretty much everything you need to get through the day, plus a few things to make that day a bit more pleasant -- fruit, vegetables, spices, wine, fish, eggs, pasta, salsa, flowers and much, much more.

 
And that's just the take-home stuff. What really lures me to the North Market is all of the places to eat-in. I haven't tried half of it, but I love to slowly browse the options before I make my decision and take it to the seating area upstairs.

There's the chocolates and pastries and baklava and pretzels. There's Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams -- in fact, North Market was home to her first location, and her fame has spread throughout the country. There's Polish food and Italian food and Middle Eastern food and barbecue.

And there's what Paul and I decided on when we visited on Sunday. Paul went in knowing what he wanted: a Chicago-style hot dog from Best of the Wurst. I finally decided on a chocolate chip brownie that was at least three inches tall from Omega Artisan Baking before opting at the last second for a piece of chocolate cheesecake from the same shop.

It was a good choice. One of the best, richest desserts I've had not only in Columbus, but anywhere. Yet another reason to return to North Market soon.

Low Country Food of the Carolinas and Georgia

More than anything else, our trip to South Carolina and Georgia was about FOOD. I think I had pulled pork every night but one. No complaints.

In addition to meat, I also had my fill of sweet tea. It's odd: Normally I hate buying drinks in restaurants. But if I'm in the South, I make an exception for sweet tea. (My other exception: Thai iced tea in any Thai restaurant.) I'm sure I gave myself about four cavities from all of it I downed.

Edith also tried a lot of new foods. She got her fill of grits, and I couldn't feed her enough baked beans -- they might have been the sweetest food she had tried up to that point. And cornbread. I hated giving it to her because I wanted it all to myself! But I was a good mama and shared.

Here are some of our memorable meals and foods.

Fried okra was a popular side that Paul and I both liked.
Edith's favorite side by far was baked beans.

Favorite sides of the trip: plantains, plus sweet potato salad

Tomato pie in Hilton Head Island. Yum!

Paul got the fried chicken at Hilton Head.

Paul getting boiled peanuts at a roadside stand outside Charleston.

No pulled pork tonight! Cornbread, tomato pudding, sweet potatoes and fried grits.
Edith liked this meal as much as I did.

Another meal without pork: We waited until our last day to get seafood.