Discovering cucamelons and making The Gail from Bringing it Home.

The GAIL! (Coaster is by my BFF who has been working on Moroccan tile.)

I feel like the last six or seven weeks has been conspicuously rainy here in Baltimore, and on the East Coast in general. Every week seems to have at least one cloudburst, and more recently it’s a matter of when, not if, a rainstorm is going to converge over us. When we were in PA to celebrate summer birthdays during a particularly nasty bout of storms we were delayed from leaving my in-laws’ because their street had completely flooded up to the curb in a matter of an hour, which was a new and unsettling experience for me. (The consequences of over-development, live in front of your window.)

Advertisements

Some cocktails we’ve been sipping on this summer: Franny’s Rhubarb Bridge and Alton Brown’s Bitter-Day Martini

Alton Brown’s Bitter-Day Martini

My interest in cocktails waxes and wanes: sometimes I’d rather drink something that barely qualifies as one like a kir, and other times I’ll happily pull a bunch of bottles off the shelf and mix together something elaborate and interesting. Often I’ll kind of go to the beat of my own drum, but lately I’ve been enjoying finding drinks in cookbooks and giving them a try. Inevitably these usually have me either buying ingredients I usually don’t dabble with—including more obscure liquors—but if I’m lucky, I’ll find myself making these drinks again and again.

My top New Orleans picks, the Chris Hannah Napkin edition.

Boquerones, radishes with sea salt and butter, baguette with lardo butter and fermented tomato from Longway Tavern.

When I first sat down to write about our recent trip to New Orleans, initially my plan was to condense it into a concise top five list of food and drink that we enjoyed…and then I realized that was basically an impossible task. I then realized that I could break out my favorite drinks and dishes by theme, and so here’s hoping I actually get around to writing all of them. But first, I must speak of The Napkin.

The Tom Cat cocktail from The Hygge Life.

The Tom Cat

While I can’t believe January is almost over, I’m also relieved that January is almost over. This is my least favorite time of year, and furry blanket and globe lights aside, I’m eager for the trees to have leaves on them again and for a 60-degree day to be a normal one rather than a data point either supporting or denying the existence of climate change. At least this weekend we get a respite of sorts from football, so for the first time since September our neighborhood will not be run amok by people trolling for parking spots to hit up the bars all day. Next weekend, on the other hand, should be interesting—while the Ravens aren’t in the Super Bowl (obviously), we are close enough to Philly that there are many an Eagles fan around here too, so I have a feeling we’ll be staying firmly in our apartment after Michael returns home from the gym. We do have some excellent food plans for that day, so I’m not complaining.

On Cherry Bombe’s new cookbook and their International Supper Club from this past weekend.

The Sinsear Cocktail

I was doing so well in getting back to the blogging habit, and then my weekends got busy there in October between visits home and visitors here and a trip up to New York for work, so I’ve been a little distracted from this space. I’m always eager to get back to cooking after a few days on the road, and that combined with the acquisition of five new cookbooks since my self-imposed buying embargo lifted meant that I took to both weekend meal planning and figuring out what I’m making this week while Michael is away with gusto.

One of those books was the Cherry Bombe cookbook, which was one I was not expecting to get so soon, but a few weeks ago I was scrolling through Instagram and saw that the authors (and founders of the magazine) were coming to Baltimore as part of their cookbook tour, and they were having a really cool event up at Trohv in the Hampden neighborhood. It was billed as a party featuring some local food people and promised delicious snacks and YesWayRose’s Summer Water, so I ended up getting two tickets for Michael and myself and we took an Uber up on an otherwise unassuming Monday evening after work.

Cava sangria from José Andrés, because even I am finding this heat to be a little much.

Cava Sangria

Sangria was something I dabbled with in New York but fully embraced when we moved to Stamford–many a weekend during the spring and summer months would I make a big pitcher for us to sip on, often relaxing out on our balcony. My sangria-making frequency went down significantly since we moved to Baltimore, likely because we’ll spend many weekends either traipsing around the city looking for fun or we’re on the road to visit people.

Israeli salad and Israeli salad water martini from Zahav.

Israeli Salad Water Martini from Zahav.

One of the things I always lament about getting cookbooks in the fall and then later in winter during the holidays is that inevitably I’m going to find a whole host of recipes that sound amazing but I must wait to make them until better weather arrives. While flipping through Zahav back during Christmas I did exactly that not far into the book–not only did the Israeli salad featured look both fantastic and simple, but then Michael Solomonov went and did one better and add in an Israeli salad water martini that looked damn refreshing as well.