Words on a Wednesday

A short (well, it didn’t exactly turn out that way) post today while you’re “digesting” the salmon blitz of yesterday..(see posted comment to that)

Event O’The Day

In the never ending stuff to do department, there will be a (what may be a first for Lexington Park) book signing today at Blue Wind Gourmet. The book is: "Woman of the Vine" by Deborah Brenner, who started a consortium of female winemakers: "Featuring hand-crafted, limited production wines, Women of the Vine Cellars unites award winning women winemakers from around the world under one brand. It is the first art gallery of artisan women winemakers designed to showcase their individual styles and nuances of their regions." Ms. Brenner will be at the signing (and tasting) from 4:30 to 7:00…

Buzz around the park:

Bombay Garden, or whatever the name was of the place that arose from the “The Roost” has not surprisingly shuttered. In its place will be another in the growing number of “pub” themed places.. Good luck folks, I hope you have the money to lose. Doomed by location, location, location.

I guess “Rick’s Cheese Steaks” is still slated to be taken over by the other side, “Donovan’s Pub”. Whoops!! There’s that word again!

And hey! Let’s not stop there, the old Petruzzi’s has morphed into DB something, an Irish themed pub (is that redundant?). I have not heard any reports..

Lastly, word is that the Coffee Quarter in San Souci is trying to branch out from caffeine and offer beer, wine, and liquor, pending licensing. Didn’t we hear something like that about Starbucks?? Have belt or two, drink some coffee…

Interesting to note that all of the above seem to revolve around alcohol… I guess times are tough demanding drastic solutions..

Consumer Reportism of the Culinary Sort..

Received my “Cook’s Illustrated” yesterday (with pictures in black and white, unlike some blogs I know). I used to place this publication at the top of the food rags, but I think it’s slipping. The old “cooking for engineers” approach has dwindled somewhat, and now there are articles with titles like: “Foolproof Vinaigrette"; “Rethinking Sunday Gravy”; and “Secrets to a Perfect Cup of Coffee”. A good practice is to avoid any article with the word “secret” in it. Further, in the Quick Tips section, there’s this gem entitled: “Warming Coffee Mugs”. It points out that when pouring coffee into a cold mug, the mug absorbs heat making the coffee cool. Gosh! Really! Wow! I had no idea! And so they pass along a brilliant Tip from some guy in Nashville Tenn., who tells us how to put hot tap water into the mug while the coffee is brewing! Boy oh Boy you just can’t beat good old American ingenuity. Who would have thought..Epiphany! My life has changed...

And to pick up the consumer report angle, in the Notes from Readers section, there was a question about “What’s White Soy Sauce?” In the course of a (to be fair)pretty informative answer, they happen to mention their “favorite Soy Sauces”. They turn out to be those common household names which we all know: Lee Kum Kee Tabletop Soy Sauce (for cooking) and Ohsawa Nama Shoyu Organic Unpasteurized Soy Sauce (for a condiment). “Hey Honey! Stop by Giant on your way home and pick up some Lee Kum Kee – we’re running low”. All they missed was the little asterisk leading to the famous phrase – “Available in some specialty shops”. Yeah, right, like in Japan.

DFD