Food Porn

We have another snow ice day! I'm probably going to hate life when we have to make it up in June, but right now I am loving watching the today show in my pjs with Eric. Also it was supposed to be my first day of grad class this semester, so I'm pretty excited about that being canceled.

Sunday night we did restaurant week. If you don't have that in your city, restaurant week is when a bunch of local, semi - fancy restaurants offer a limited menu for a fixed price. It's awesome because then super cheap people like me who usually won't even put out the 99 cents to buy fake beef at taco bell actually have an excuse to change out of my sweatpants get dressed up and go out to a nice dinner.

My handsome date (I was setting up the self timer and pushed the button)

Look, I'm wearing real clothes and no more Christmas tree in the background!

 We went to Blue Hill Tavern with five of our friends. Last time it was almost impossible to get everyone to agree but somehow we were all on board for this place!

I had been drooling over the menu for about a week. In fact, I was drooling over it one night while g-chatting with Casi, and she told me restaurant week meals are like birthday meals - the calories don't count! Even better! So if you like drooling over food in a different city that someone else has already eaten, scroll down. If not, just check out the hot couple seen above.

I get really jealous of couples that have similar food preferences and split restaurant meals, which I can only do with my sister, due to our unusual tastes. In fact, I might have said I wanted to be married to my sister, for dining purposes only.



Sadly that's illegal in most states, so I was really excited when Eric said he'd split two appetizers with me. BTW I'm not exactly a food critic, so you'll see a lot of descriptions that involve words like "awesome" or "delicious".


Baby Red and Golden Beet Salad
Mache, Vermont creamery goat cheese, walnut vinaigrette, walnut honey chutney

 Natty Boh Beer Cheese Soup
Aged Tillamook cheddar, mini fontina cheese and tomato sandwiches

 Both awesome, especially the soup, probably because I love cheese.

We thought it was funny that 5 out of the 7 of us got the steak.

New York Strip
14 oz. strip, mashed potatoes, haricot vert, roasted red pepper jus

 When it came out and everyone was amazed at the size (it was seriously huge, that's what she said) I announced that I better get an equivalent portion of mushrooms. And I was not disappointed.

Sautéed Wild Mushrooms
Crispy mascarpone polenta cake, asparagus, fried quail egg

 I almost got the Mahi Mahi but I was really drawn to this because its unusual and creative, and I could have fish anytime. My instincts didn't steer my wrong, whatever sauce was on the mushrooms was unbelievablely delicious, the asparagus was perfectly cooked (I'm super picky about that) and whatever they did to the polenta/marscapone was heaven in my mouth. And how cute are the little quail eggs?

Dinner was good, but what I had truly been waiting for all week was this.

The Candy Bar
Chocolate ganache, peanut butter mousse, caramel, candied pretzel crust, marshmallow fluff

 I'll just let that picture and description speak for itself.

Apparently eating a giant portion of mushrooms > eating a giant portion of steak, that Eric described as the size of a small baby. When we got home Eric tried to claim he had never heard the song Firework, so while I performed it for him using my own dance moves, he laid on the couch groaning in pain. Yet another reason to be a vegetarian.

While this dinner featured fabulous food and wonderful company, I did receive some extremely disturbing news.

We may be facing a chocolate shortage. In as little as 20 years. My worst nightmare. My friends had the audacity to try to discuss the oil shortage after dropping that bomb, and I had to steer them back to the important issues. Um, who cares about oil, why would I even drive anywhere, like work, when my paycheck can't buy me chocolate?

Possibly solutions:  start stockpiling chocolate now, start a special chocolate savings fund to buy chocolate when it's super expensive, and invest in chocolate. Any other suggestions?

Lastly, since this is my blog, I'm going to use it to complain. Here's something that I find a bit irritating.

People shovel out a parking spot after it snows, and then do this nonsense. Um, we live in an apartment complex, and they plow for us. So the "shoveling" involves only the area directly in front of your car, and like I said the other day, it took me only about 25 minutes. Which, as I understand it, entitles me to that area only as long as my car is there. Once I leave, that's open to the public. If I want to have the privilege of shoveling out a spot and then not allowing anyone else to park there, well, there's a name for that. It's called BUYING  A HOUSE WITH A DRIVEWAY. But, we have no urge to get shanked, so we're too chicken to move the chair and just drove around and walked a mile through black ice when we got home.

Meredith is interviewing DJ Tanner, which means she needs my full attention.