I just got power back on.   Irene caused a lot of damage here in Richmond.  Although we were spared any physical damage, I did lose all of my food. The power was out for 50 hours and I was unable to save any of my food. I need to get a generator to keep my fridge going.  Gonna add that to the shopping list.  Without internet, power or food, I was unable to make any recipes.  However, I am going to go shopping today.  I promise to have a new post tomorrow.

-Rex

Dana and I strolled through the strip district for a couple of hours.  We ventured into one of the many Italian Markets and picked up some pasta and bread.  We then left and went to Penzey’s Spice market to pick up some dried chili powders.  (I know that there are Penzey’s everywhere, even in Richmond, but I never find myself near it. )  We then stopped to watch one of the many street vendors making some Asian noodles.  It was a great little stop.

The main reason we stopped in Pittsburgh was to get a Primanti Brother’s sandwich.  By the time we finally reached the restaurant, we had already eaten too much food.  However, I did get a picture of me in front of it.

Next time I will have to check it out. I think that Pittsburgh will be one of many stops on my next trip to the Midwest.  I definitely recommend stopping by Pittsburgh the next time you find yourself driving down I-70 or I-80.

See you next time Pittsburgh.

-Rex

Besides counting down the minutes till I get to take my pain medicine again, I have been watching a ton of TV.  I used to love the food network, but lately it sucks.  There is only so many times I can watch someone make a cake, chocolate, or candy structure in a 1 hour show.  After you see one, the rest are the same.  Making it move does not make it more exciting for the viewer.  It actually makes it harder to watch because the pastry chefs are clueless.  The rest of the shows have lost their pizazz except for Good Eats.  I love Alton.

Alton is the reason I discovered The Cooking Channel.  I was searching to see if they were replaying his documentary feasting on asphalt.  When I did the search I found the cooking channel.  It is a great channel.  It is like the food network before it got shitty.  Most of the shows are awesome.  They did fill some time slots with the rejects that were not successful on the food network.  Quick tip to cooking channel executives – There was a reason people did not watch them.  Besides that, the majority of the shows are great and refreshing to watch.  I recommend that you check your local listings for The Cooking Channel.

Once they make it in HD, I don’t see myself watching the food network ever again.  However, I am sure they will turn the cooking channel into the same overly produced crap that the food network turned into and then we will have have to wait for the cooking channel 2 to come out.  But as of right now, it is awesome!!

I will return posting soon.  I should be able to start swallowing solid food within a week.  Plus, now that I can get up and use the computer, I have a few posts from that the past that I can finish.  Very interesting stuff people.  Keep your eyes peeled for these exciting posts.

-Rex

Dana and I attended the festival on Saturday. With your entrance fee, you get a souvenir wine glass for sampling and a glass of Stella Artois, Leffe or Hoegaarden.

The food was great and a variety of purveyors were featured from all around the DC area. Below is the whale shaped bread that Wegman’s had on display at their tent. Wegman’s also gave out 24 month aged Parmigiano-Reggiano and creamy brie, which was totally delicious.

Bloom grocery stores featured Angus Beef at their tent. Who doesn’t love free beef!

The Good Earth Peanut Company had some of the tastiest snacks around (You thought I was gonna say nuts didn’t you). The Bourbon Praline Pecans were some of the best things that I tasted all day.

We stopped by the show tent to watch a demonstration from the guys at Pork Barrel BBQ. Below is Brett and a guy wearing the coolest belt buckle ever! Take a look. You may have to click on the picture to see it zoomed in.

The food was great, but the wine was even better. The festival featured an amazing selection of wines from all around the DC area, especially the Loudon region. We tried to get a taste of all of the wines. Our favorites included the Rose, Cabernet and Raspberry wines from Fabbioli Cellars, as well as the Meritage from Thanksgiving Winery.

After the festival, we stayed for the National Harbor Fireworks. Every Saturday night the National Harbor shoots off fireworks over the Potomac. They were excellent.

I am not the best at taking fireworks photos. It was a rather calm night and without a lot of wind, the smoke did not clear, as you can tell from the pictures.

Overall, the Food and Wine Festival at National Harbor was a blast. If you did not go, you definitely missed a great time. Make sure to get your tickets next year!

Click here for more information about next years festival http://www.foodandwinenh.com. You do not want to miss it.

In honor of Cinco de Mayo I decided to do a little list of my favorite south of the border recipes. Since this is Cocktail Wednesday the first has to be a refreshing beverage. Nothing starts off a good Cinco de Mayo like a Margarita!!

The Margarita

Nothing beats a Margarita on Cinco de Mayo

Chicken Tacos with Homemade Tortillas

Chicken Tacos with homemade tortillas and hot sauce

Flank Steak Tacos

The tequila makes these amazing

Steak Fajitas

Steak Fajitas served with Roasted Peppers

Chicken Fajitas

Chicken Fajitas served Family Style

BBQ Chicken Quesadillas

A little play on traditional quesadillas

Chicken Nachos

Nachos

Tostada Pizza

Only the best pizza around

Hopefully these recipes will get you through this south of the border holiday.  When in doubt, have another shot of tequila.

Rex

All Weekend

The Cherry Blossoms are starting to bloom in DC.  Head down to the National Mall and then head toward the Tidal Basin.  The Jefferson Memorial is the best place to get a nice picture of the whole basin.  If you are not interested in seeing the whole National Mall and want to get right to the Cherry Blossoms,  take the Blue Line to Arlington National Cemetery and then walk across Memorial Bridge.  It is about 1/2 mile closer to the cherry blossoms.  The Cherry Blossoms should be in full swing for the next two to three weeks.  If you have never seen them, you have to take a trip to DC.  The puffy white blossoms amongst the National Monuments is a sight everyone should see.

Metropolitan Food, Libations and Luxury Home Show

Saturday and Sunday

200 elegantly design, home and art vignettes, trend setting kitchens, over 100 hart to find wine, artisan brew and spirits tastings.  There is also Gourmet food tastings and much more.  Located at the Gaylor National Hotel at the National Harbor.  Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 5pm.

Click Here for the Website

Gadsby’s Tavern Rum Punch Challenge

Saturday

Just as guests to the tavern did over 200 years ago, enjoy different rum punch creations from local distilleries, restaurants and caterers and vote for your favorite! The winner will be announced at the end of the evening. Also enjoy food (both period and modern) as well as a silent auction full of great items. Cost is $50 per person (includes admission and food and drinks for the evening) or $100 (includes admission, food and drinks, and a pre-event VIP tasting with Bacardi). Reservations are required.

Click Here for Tickets

Check out the events above.  There are also events happening all weekend on the National Mall.  Including the kite festival, Target Concert stage and various other events.

Have fun this weekend,

-Rex

Pasty

I used a standard pie crust recipe for my pasty and it was perfect.

Pasty

• 6 pie crusts – Homemade or Store Bought
  
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 lb ground pork
• 2-3 medium potatoes
• 1 rutabaga
• 4 large carrots
• 1 large onion
• 2 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 tsp pepper

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Dice up the vegetables into a small dice.

Dice up the vegetables

In a large bowl combine all of the ingredients.  Using your hands is the easiest way to accomplish this task.

Try to get the vegetables mixed throughout the meat

Next roll out the pie doughs into 9-10 inch rounds.

Place 1 1/2 to 2 cups of the meat mixture into the center of the dough.

It looks like a lot, and it is....

Next use some water to line the edge of the dough and then fold the dough over the meat mixture, forming half moon shaped pies.  Then using a fork or your finger crimp the edge so that the meat mixtures is secured within the dough.

Crimp the edge

Cut a few vent holes in the top of each pie.  Then place a small square of butter in each vent hole.

Butter the vents

Place the pies in the oven and bake for 1 hour.  If after an hour the dough is not browned, place back in the oven until browned.

Perfectly Cooked

Remove from the oven and let stand for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Serve them plain or with brown gravy or ketchup.  I prefer ketchup.

These are hearty meat pies that the coal miners used to take with them for lunch.  They are best served warm, but can be eaten cold.  Refrigerate any leftovers or make a few extra pies and freeze them before baking them.  Then pop them in the oven frozen and cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

• Maggot Sliders from Elle’s New England Kitchen – With a little rice for maggots these look delicious.
• Bloody Worms from Macheesmo – Nick made some creepy looking worms.  The oreo dirt is a nice touch.
• Spooky Ghost Meringues from 101 Cookbooks – Light and fluffy meringues make magnificent looking ghosts.
• Meat Hand from not Martha – Meatloaf is a great medium when sculpting body parts.  This meat hand looks pretty real with the onion inspired finger nails.
• Best Food Inspired Halloween Costumes from Serious Eats – Still need a Halloween costume.  Serious Eats has a pretty good list of food costumes.
• Mummy Meatloaf from Family Corner – Wrapped in Lasagna noodles and olives as eyes, this mummy is pretty sweet looking.

Have a happy Halloween.  Sorry for not have a sweet bacon inspired Halloween meal.  I am blaming it on the swine flu.

-Rex

The National Harbor was the perfect back drop for this event.  It also didn’t hurt that the event was located on the pier.  The location was awesome. 

With your entrance fee, you get a souvenir wine glass for sampling and two glasses of Stella Artois.

They had thousands of glasses which you also were able to take with you.  Not sure if you were supposed to, but everyone had their two glasses when they left.

But this wasn’t a beer event it was wine.  I visited all of the booths but one that really stuck was a local winery.  Tarara Winery in Leesburg, Virginia.  They explained the wines and gave me plenty of free samples. 

The Charval was my favorite wine of the day.  It was wonderful.  The Charval is a blend of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris.  It had light fruity notes with a well balanced hit of acidity throughout.  I am going to head over to their winery this summer.  Plus, they said that their winery is dog friendly.  Tucker is excited.

This is out on the pier by the Stella booth. Facing back at the Gaylord National Hotel.

Along with the wine vendors there was a huge assortment of food and kitchen vendors at the festival.  One group that I ran into was a group of guys from Pork Barrel BBQ.  They are a bunch of guys that worked on the hill in DC and decided to give barbecue a chance.  They have come up with a unique rub that is well balanced with just a kick of spice.  They are going to be competing in the National Capital Barbecue Battle.  Stop by their site and wish them luck.  I think that they have a great rub and wish them the best.  It is always good to meet other people passionate about barbecue.

The other vendor that was awesome was the Pepper Schlepper.  He offered every single type of hot sauce that you could imagine.  I love spicy stuff so this was right up my alley.  You can order any hot sauce that you can think of from their website http://www.pepperschlepper.com.

The food was a plenty this year at the festival.  I stopped by the Hard Times Cafe stand to taste all of the varieties of chili.  My favorite is the Terlingua Red.  It is their competition chili.  I can see why it wins awards.  It is awesome.

Along with the wine and food tasting there were cooking demonstrations and a the country fair cooking competition.  After watching the Top Chef cooking demonstration, I ran into Carla Hall and Ariane Duarte at the county fair tent.  They were the judges for Saturday’s competition.

I asked Carla to really concentrate on who the winner should be.

It was really cool.  Ariane and Carla were sneaking me samples of the goods.  I must say, the competition was quite fierce.  I got to try a couple bites of some extremely decadent cupcakes.  I didn’t stay for the winner but I was hoping for the strawberry banana cupcakes.  Delicious. 

Carla and Ariane were the nicest people in the world.  Heck, they shared their cupcakes with me.  You don’t see that too often.  I am going to have to take a road trip to Montclair, N.J. to try eat at Ariane’s restaurant CulinAriane.

Overall the Food and Wine Festival at National Harbor was a blast.  It is open today Sunday, June 7 from Noon-6PM.  If you don’t have plans for today, I recommend that you hop in your car and head on over to the National Harbor.  Click here for more information http://www.foodandwinenh.com.

Below I have included Eric’s ode to Cheesy Poofs.

I love cheesy poofs almost as much as Cartman, although I have never written a song about them.

Cheesy Poofs – (from Alton Brown’s, “I’m just here for MORE FOOD“)

Dry Ingredients

• 9.5oz or 2 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1/4oz or 2tsp baking powder
• 1/3oz or 1.5tsp dry mustard

Wet Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 3tbs vegetable oil
• 1 cup milk
• 1tbs sugar
• 1tsp kosher salt

Extras

• 8oz Sharp Cheddar Cheese – grated

Alton’s recipe was for a single loaf of cheesy goodness.  I wanted to have more hand friendly snacks so I adjusted the method a bit from the book.  Must say this is cheap eats.  The cheese cost the most but overall it was $2.15 for everything.  It made 60 poofs that were 3in. x  1.5in.  Enough for a whole week of lunches for 4 kids.

Place your oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat it to 375 degrees.

First step is to shred your cheese. I shredded my cheese rather coarse so it did not spread out that much throughout my cheesy poofs (I laugh every time I say that, Ha-ha). I recommend that you finely shred your cheese to make sure that it evenly distributes.

Sift the dry goods into a bowl and then add the shredded cheddar cheese and mix.

Next wisk together the wet ingredients in a separate bowl

Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients and stir just until the mixture comes together.

Don't over mix the batter, when you don't see flour anymore you are good.

Next scoop the whole mixture up and place it into a 1 gallon plastic bag. This is so that you can pipe little bite size pieces onto a cookie sheet.  I used a silpat on my cookie sheet, but if you don’t have one I recommend that you use parchment.  Then again, if you don’t have parchment, I would grease and flour the cookie sheet. 

I cute the tip a little big so it made really big cheesy poofs

I actually piped about 60 cheesy poofs (haha) onto two cookie sheets.  I cut a little too much of the corner of my bag and I made quite big cheesy poofs (haha).  Sorry, I can’t stop laughing when saying that name.  I would recommend that you cut about a 1/4 off the corner of the bag.  That should create good sized cheesy poofs (reluctantly I held back). 

It makes a ton of cheesy poofs

Place them in the pre-heated oven and bake for 15 minutes, if you like them perfectly cooked through, or 18 minutes if you like them crunchy like I do.  When done remove to a cooling rack.  Don’t worry they will crisp up nicely.

Look at all of the melted cheese

In the end, they were extremely tasty.  I cooked mine until they started to turn golden brown.  When cooled they were crunchy and delicious.

I ate about 10 with my dinner. They are amazing.