Radishes: The Starr of the meal?

Steven Starr’s Le Diplomate has become known for many things in DC in the few months it’s been open: fantastic service, consistently great food, and the unbelievably long waits if you don’t have a reservation. For me, though, I can’t stop thinking about the radish appetizer I had a few weeks ago.

I know – you think because I’m a healthy eater, I went for the boring vegetable dish. But that is so not the case. The dollop of butter on the plate would quickly convince you otherwise. The Radish Crudite was quite straightforward: sliced and whole radishes served with a generous portion of sea salted and whipped butter. I got skeptical eyes from the others at the table, but they were quickly convinced of my swooning once they tasted it.

I dared to replicate this dish myself and while not exactly picture-worthy, it was pretty good. Doesn’t get much easier than washing some radishes and dunking them in butter with salt.

Check out Tom Sietsema’s review if you need more social proof for Le Diplomate. Or just go and find out for yourself. And enjoy the bread, which an entire blog post could be devoted to, it’s that good.

Airports are FINALLY getting it.

While traveling, it’s generally acceptable to eat like crap and chalk it up to lack of options. Well, obese America, this message is for you.

Airports are beginning to supply healthy snack and meal options including low fat mozzarella string cheese, plain greek yogurt, low fat and low sodium sandwiches and my favorite- vegetables and grains freshly made.

So put down the TCBY and step away from Five Guys. Your excuses are no good here anymore.

Periwinkles: Not just for your crayon box

With plans to go to dinner tonight with the boyfriend, I perused a few online menus  of restaurants in DC I’ve yet to visit (yes, it’s possible).  The tasting menu of Birch and Barley on 14th St particularly caught my eye, not just because of how delicious the meal looked, moreover because the pasta course listed “Periwinkles” as the first ingredient.

If you are anything like me, you immediately envision the Crayola 100  pack where Periwinkle was a staple color. Bluish-purple with an Easter-like pastel-ness,  this word musters memories of flower and balloon drawings galore.

In obvious curiosity, a bit of research was done (read: Wikipedia) and to my surprise, Periwinkles are edible sea snails.  The Periwinkle pictured above, also compliments of Wiki, isn’t blue and purple at all and apparently these mollusks have no relation to the flower from which Crayola identified with.  But I guess a snail-colored rose wouldn’t look as good on mom’s fridge anyway.

Guinea pig – not just for your third grade classroom

No, I didn’t eat that little guy.  The whole fried Guinea pig was the most popular dish at a traditional Peruvian restaurant my boyfriend and I were enjoying on a sunny day in Arequipa.  We watched the “Cuy” being served to multiple families and discussed how it wasn’t so different from seeing a whole cooked chicken or lobster.  Except of course that neither of us grew up eating or even seeing a cooked Guinea pig.

Shortly after that conversation, I saw a woman packing up the Cuy, probably to take home for dinner that night.  She had brought a large pot with her, but it was just small enough that the pig needed to be folded onto itself in order to fit inside.  As I watched her stuff this helpless animal into her pot, its little hands seemingly gripping over the rim in resistance, I knew there was NO way I could eat this dish, tradition or not.

Until dinnertime.

I may not have been able to eat the Guinea as a whole, but I was able to have one as thin crispy fried strips wrapped in a corn tortilla with slaw and sweet hoisin-like sauce.  I know you’re thinking this probably made me sick, but it was actually delicious and I felt just fine.  It was the llama I ate 5 days earlier that gave me food poisoning.  That’s not a joke.

Stay tuned for more Peru cuisine posts.  And they won’t all involve animals Americans raise as pets.

Snowboarding with a side of butter

I think there should be a type of cuisine called “Rural America” and it would consist of all things made with butter, mayonnaise and nutrition-free white starches.  Oh, and gargantuan portions of meat barely garnished with vegetables.  Maybe I am exaggerating a tad, but it was truly alarming to see just how difficult it was to eat on a restrictive diet, or even a mildly healthy diet on our snowboarding trip this past weekend in Pennsylvania.

We arrived Saturday evening and after checking into a Bed & Breakfast, we decided to have dinner the ski resort so we could check out the slopes. I ordered  shrimp cocktail and a salmon dish with basmati rice and baby carrots.  Sounds perfect.  Except that the fish came in a beurre blanc sauce. Actually, the entire plate came in beurre blanc sauce.  Now, if I had remembered anything from French class,  maybe I would have known that beurre blanc = white butter, and I definitely would have been that really annoying girl who asks for everything grilled with no sauce (you know who you are).  It’s not that butter is specifically on my “do not eat” list, but in general I rarely eat or cook with anything but olive oil.  And butter is dairy after all.

Instead of boring you to death with every indiscretion over the course of two days, I will just list a few examples of the type of food I consumed at the lodge and how each had something or multiple somethings I should not have been eating:

1. Chicken salad wrap -> Mayonnaise, flour wrap, raw celery

2. Grilled chicken sandwich with tomatoes and smoked mozzarella -> cheese, raw tomato, white bread, french fries that I stole from boyfriend’s plate ( bad, bad, bad)

3. Hot Chocolate, goldfish crackers, an orange ->  Nothing allowed on this list, but I heart goldfish crackers.

You see where I’m going with this?   My two breakfasts were no exception to how much I deviated from typically healthful behavior, but I’d like to point out the difference between the ski lodge cuisine and the fresh homemade deliciousness that was served at the Bed & Breakfast.  I expected fairly fresh food as that was one of the reasons I chose a B&B over a hotel, but this exceeded my expectations.  Between both days,  we were served pancakes, scrambled eggs with spinach, fresh fruit, blackberry cobbler, sausage, bacon, toast with homemade raspberry jam, and the winner – walnut apple muffins literally right out of the oven and still warm.  These were so good that I felt they deserved a featured photo and I’m totally kicking myself for not getting the recipe.

Yes, the majority of my breakfast options were not part of the elimination diet but I was sitting in a woman’s dining room, being served fresh food that had not been processed or infused with unpronounceable chemicals.  That was my rationale for eating whatever I wanted.  I got sucked right into the plethora of comfort food that surrounded us and have accepted that I’m pretty much the worst dieter ever.

Red meat, you’re dead to me

I heart food.  I’ve always enjoyed eating out, getting drinks, and more recently, cooking. But I can barely go one day without a stomach ache.  It sounds like irony but it’s more like my personal purgatory.

For about 9 years, I’ve struggled with a plethora of stomach conditions and have attempted more remedies and diets than I can recount.  It is only recently that with the help of a holistic nutritionist, I am finally finding some relief.  With this relief comes a  restrictive diet, which at first, I will admit, did not seem worth the effort.  (I mean I literally eat a smoothie every morning-  EVERY MORNING??)

After slowly becoming convinced that this may be a permanent change, and not one of the short-lived attempts I’ve tried in the past, I am realizing real changes need to be made.  I’ll be cooking much more, but more importantly, I’ll be reporting what types of foods I’ll be eating when dining in as well as out in DC.

This blog may interest you if you a) love food, b) have any type of diet restrictions, c) need to find good food in Washington, because let’s be real- this isn’t New York.

Tomorrow night, I’ll be eating at Volt out in Frederick, MD.  While I wish my first real post could be how I maintained by super diet at one of the best restaurants in the metro area, but I’ve been waiting for this dinner for over a year (I’ve literally had a gift card since January 2010),  and likely, I will cave just a little.  But I’ll try my best and report how it goes.

My last first note will be the guidelines of this diet so you know what I’m dealing with, and choose to keep reading or find something way more interesting.

No Dairy, Coffee, Alcohol, Nuts (whole), Raw Foods/  Limited amounts of Sugar & Wheat/  Only Lean Proteins.  Kill me.  I mean Let’s Do It!!!