Recipes

Eat

The Great Fried Onion Burger

May 29, 2015

Ever since we hit Route 66 (or at least parts of it) I've been following the recommendations of my road trip book very nearly to the letter. Why a for-real, paper-pages book as opposed to a series of apps and Yelp reviews and road-tripping sites? Because something about driving the old road makes me feel like you need a book to hold in your hands. You need to turn down pages and have somewhere to tuck receipts and pamphlets you find along the way into, you know?

Anyway, one of the places that my book declared unmissable was El Reno, a.k.a. "Hamburger City."

Obviously I am stopping at a place with the nickname "Hamburger City."

There were three diners that came highly recommended, but we ended up at Sid's Diner because apparently it was featured in an episode of Man Vs. Food and I was all curious about why.

Eat

Oh My Memphis BBQ

May 25, 2015

One thing Kendrick and I both had on our shortlist of Must-Dos: eat Memphis BBQ. I googled and consulted my Road Trip America book and Twitter-sourced, and what we ultimately decided on was the chicken and ribs at Interstate BBQ.

The place is not pretty. It looks kind of like a run-down fast-food joint, and is located right off of (like, basically on top of) the interstate (hence the name). The plates could have come straight out of a 1980s cafeteria, and the service, while friendly, is very much in the "whaddya want?" vein.

But OH MY FOOD. We made our picks based on Yelp reviews, and ended up with pork ribs, a half chicken, potato salad, beans, coleslaw, a side of BBQ spaghetti (which is what it sounds like: spaghetti tossed with slow-cooked pork and BBQ sauce), and fountain sodas the size of basketballs. And we ate (and drank) it all, and our son said "MMM THIS IS DELICIOUS!" over and over and over. (Weirdly, you want to know what my favorite part was? The coleslaw. And I don't particularly like coleslaw, so this both makes no sense and speaks to some kind of weird sorcery happening with however they make their coleslaw in this place.)

Recipes

Heirloom Tomato, Cucumber & Avocado Salad

April 19, 2015

Yay for easy, pretty salads that taste as good as they look.

This is the kind of dish that is all about the ingredients, so they really do have to be as good as you can get - and right now we're heading into prime farmer's market season...so: get them now. And then get them again next week. And then get them over and over until fall rolls around and you can no longer get them.

I probably make this salad with 90% off my spring and summertime meals; it's that good. (And it takes thirty seconds to make, which is nice, too.)

Recipes

The Classic White Wine Spritzer (But Better)

April 15, 2015

For Sunday's afternoon garden party, I wanted to serve a light cocktail with a spring-y vibe, and decided on simple, kinda retro wine spritzers. Wine spritzers are something I associate with, like, ladies wearing shoulderpads sitting in a fancy restaurant in 1985, but for some reason they feel fresh again. Throwback-y.

And they are easy to make, and delicious, and lovely-looking, and there you go: perfect warm-weather cocktail.

Classic White Wine Spritzer

Eat

Farro Salad With Peas, Pine Nuts And Goat Cheese

March 31, 2015

When Indy and I were in California together, we stopped into a little cafe in a very expensive town (the town that it turned out would permit us to buy a one-room cabin with a ladder instead of a staircase). The sandwich that I got in that cafe - which was seventeen dollars and consisted of exactly what you traditionally find in sandwiches and not, as one might imagine, diamonds - should have perhaps indicated to me that we were in FancyLand, but I was less dismayed by the price tag of that sandwich than you might have expected, because oh the side salad that it came with.

Now, I recognize that food that you get in restaurants is generally good because it's full of secret things like All Of The Butter, and is often quite tough to replicate at home. But this little side salad seemed to me to be just a whole bunch of pretty simple stuff mixed together, and so I took out my handy little notepad, jotted down the ingredients that I could see, and when I got home:

made it.

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