get in mah belly

it's good to know that some things never change

2012-01-26T23:01:00.003-05:00

today is my friend denise's birthday so like any normal person i decided to bomb her facebook wall with the very best craiglist m4w personal ads that money can buy. here are some of the highlights.

"SWM, 60+ would like to meet mature WF... Down the road if I can find someone I'm comfortable enough with I want see what its like to lick butt. I've never done this and since I'm getting old I'd better find someone I can do this with if I ever want to see what its like. Prefer BBW. I'll do the licking, no reciprosity required."

"I'm a fat kid..420.. tats.. not able to chill at my place due to slob roommate and lack of working heat lol..I am right by u.c. campus.. I'm fun.. I provide Arizona tea and I'll bring snax.. I own a 360.. I have my own money.."

"I'm looking for a submissive girl that could get into being a man's pet for a while. Get naked, put on a collar and I'll train you to be a good dog."

"I'm looking for a woman that would like me to be their pet for a couple hours. I'm content to wear nothing but a collar, and be trained to be a good boy."

"third time attempting to use craigslist... I liked what I said the first time but I accidentally posted it in the gay section so it won't let me remove it..."

"White male seeking a Filipina. Lets be friends first. Upside down English ok."

"I am a 49 year old blk professional man. I stand 6ft/3in & weigh 240 llbs. I wanna give my heArt and sOul to a mature, passionate, stylish and confident white female. Yes! Confidence is so, so seXy. I enjoy a variety of foods, music, and sports. My favoRite movie is "Annie". That should give you an idea."

"62 yr old married male (no plans to change current situation) 5' 7", chubby regular guy, looking for a dinner date Thursday or Friday evening."

"hello girls i am on here trying to find a good match for my bestfriend! ...my boy is 420 friendly its cool if your not just throwin that out their so you know whats up. sappy i know but i know my boy is the cuddling type when your alone. he can be sensitive to your needs and feeling. he somehow pulls off being accomodating to your needs without changing who he is.. so in other words hes always himself no matter the situation. he is a faithfull loyal being! in the past he is the one that has been done wrong everytime. he listeins to all type of music, he pretty much fits in no matter where hes at or who he is around. he works very hard, even with the flu!!!"

"snookie is my celebrity crush"

"Ok ladies I'm so sick of the games. If your looking for someone to take care of you. Keep moving it's 2012 learn to be independent! If your looking for a thug I'm not it! If you want a thug go find one you can visit him in jail when he's not stoned on your couch. If your in a relationship don't bother me please I mean really??? If you only talk in single word or sentence text not interested. I sick of girls saying there's no good men! When the reality is there are! Your just not giving them a shot!! Oh and if your going to get mad because I flirt with you? Nope!!! It's a dating forum! That's what you do!!"

"any lactating women out there? I am very experienced and would love to help you out when you need it. I am available everyday until 1 and can come to you."

"During penetration, we can begin to explore one another's wants and needs. Does this interest u?"

"Im super super curious as to how fake boobs feel. I wanna grab and squeeze a girls rack that has implants. Nothing sexual, i dont want to fuck or anything, but just want to satisfy my curiousity once and for all. I have pics, you must also, id even buy you a few drinks first if it would help!"

where to go in cincinnati if you want sashimi

2012-01-22T23:51:00.001-05:00

living in new york, home of the $12 chirashi, pretty much puts you (or me at least) off of sushi rolls for good. i will still get them if i am at like dancing wasabi or whatever place that sells half off rolls all the time or with other people who want to share rolls. i can eat rolls and enjoy them. but true sushi bliss for me can only be found in straight up pieces of fresh, buttery, tender raw fish. here are my favorite to least favorite places to go for sashimi (or chirashi if you luck out and they have it). this is by no means an exhaustive list, i am sure there are other good sashimi options out there. my rankings are based on the following factors: freshness + selection + good value.

ruthai. this is your absolute best bet for a generous portion of fresh, varied fish. the sashimi special is $21 and you get way more than the 12 pieces that they say you are going to get, and there is mackerel (my favorite) and tuna and white tuna and salmon and shrimp and snapper and yellowtail and octopus and the pieces are big. plus this place is byob. you can't lose.
mr. sushi. surprisingly high quality (i don't know why i'm surprised, i guess i just figured that anything located directly next door to "bartini" was going to give me food poisoning to go with my alcohol poisoning) and the chirashi is a great deal at $17. you can also get a sashimi platter for i think $20 but whenever i can go for chirashi i do.
mei. this might be higher up in the list if it wasn't so far and if i had been there recently. chirashi is $21 and excellent. they just have great sushi and great everything else japanese and a great atmosphere.
ko sho. i used to fear ko sho when it was in the dilapidated, deserted location downtown (how could that scary place possibly be able to store and prepare decent raw fish?) but now that they are in northside i like it. the sushi is all really fresh and they give you a great selection, it's just a little pricy. i think the chirashi is $23 and the sashimi platter is $27. they do have an excellent selection of other delicious japanese treats too so if you are looking for more than just sushi this is a good choice.
green papaya. this is just ok. there is no chirashi and the sashimi deluxe is $23, and one of your 12 pieces of fish is a fucking crab stick (seriously???) and the rest is just tuna, salmon, shrimp, and yellowtail... yawn.
painted fish. i have been there twice and see no reason to ever go back. there are white people making your sushi which scares me right there, sorry to be racist about it but they are proving my stereotype right. service is slow and one time i was there, all of the sushi (rolls) we got were made with undercooked rice. it was impossible to enjoy. the other time i got the chirashi and it took two hours to get it so i don't even remember if it was good or not because i was delusional from hunger. also i feel like it was expensive but was too lightheaded to be able to remember any prices.

totally unacceptably omitted from this list: ando. i feel certain that they have amazingly delicious sashimi but i have actually never gotten sushi there any time i have gone... i always go for one of the traditional japanese dinners and last time i was there i got the shabu shabu. this is just wrong and i strongly urge you to try the sushi if you are there because i am sure based on the freshness of everything else i have had there, and how authentic their menu is, and how good the sushi on other people's plates looks that it is delicious.

yes i have seriously never been to: jo an. i know. i know. i need to go. but it's far. someone please take me there. and buy my dinner. no stalkers need apply. thanks.

green dog cafe

2012-01-07T13:32:00.005-05:00

the rumors that this place is overpriced are true but it is also delicious, at least from what i tasted. some yelp reviews claim otherwise but i didn't eat what those people ate so i can't say. i had one of their daily specials which was carbonara type pasta with grilled shrimp and it was very delicious but at $16.50 when you are ordering at a counter, it just seems pricey. however they do have a really good deal with the wine where you can get their bottle of the day (they have a red and a white) for $14. last night the red was a 2008 red diamond shiraz which was surprisingly good for the price and also from washington and i am obsessed with washington wines.

the decor is a bit strange because you are sort of in this color blocky cafeteria-ish feeling place (in particular, the lighting was horrible and uneven and not intimate) but if you can get over that, i think the food is worth it and you can definitely order something cheaper than what i did. and you will feel fine wandering in here in sweats or pajamas or whatever you want which is always a plus for me since i have a hard time remembering to brush my teeth some days.

other perks: they have a full alcohol selection including mixed drinks, they do brunch, they serve jeni's ice cream, they are very vegetarian friendly, their bread is amazing.

jean robert's table can lick my asshole

2012-01-05T08:27:00.000-05:00

the food is ok to good depending on what you get, but there are no surprises and nothing exciting. the atmosphere is stuffy and old. the real reason for my vindictive desire to publicly bitch slap them is because their reservation system is a bunch of fucking bullshit. i made a reservation on open table a few weeks ago at 6 pm. the day of the meal, i got a voicemail saying that they have a "two hour limit" and that i "have to be done with dinner by 8:00." of course, i canceled and went to bouquet instead, which was much more a) delicious, b) friendly, and c) worth the money. and i stayed there for three hours.

go fuck yourselves table. it is marginally socially acceptable (although still tacky and stingy) to tell people when they make a reservation that there is a time limit. however, there was no notice of this policy anywhere on opentable and i received the information via a bitchy voicemail the day of my reservation. even king of shitting on social graces gordon ramsey tells you upon reserving that you're on a deadline. i have received no response from the restaurant to my complaint about this, so clearly not only do they not give a shit, they don't give a shit that they don't give a shit. or something.

the most absurd part about this whole scenario is that a restaurant purportedly celebrating the culinary tradition of france (long, relaxed, drawn out meals to be enjoyed over lots of drinks and meandering conversation) is the only restaurant i am aware of in cincinnati which is not only in the business of making you eat your meal by a stopwatch but is not even willing to give you proper notice to find somewhere else to dine if you're not ok with that.

ode to picnic and pantry (apologies to pablo neruda)

2012-01-04T21:51:00.003-05:00

and it was at that age...picnic and pantry arrived

in search of me. i don't know, i don't know where

it came from, from kitchen or a restaurant.

i don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a tavern i was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there i was without a meal

and it fed me.

i did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my stomach,

thirst or forgotten hunger pangs,

and i made my own way,

deciphering

that menu

and i tasted the first flavorful bite,

flavorful, full of substance, no

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows everything,

and suddenly i saw

the breads

blue oven

and earthy,

salads,

palpitating plantains,

kale perforated,

riddled

with braggs, garlic and ginger,

the winding rice noodles, the roasted vegetables.

and i, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great gastrointestinal

void,

likeness, image of

bounty,

i felt myself a pure part

of the gastronomy,

i wheeled with the jeni's,

my gut broke free on the open table.

christmas gifts i don't want

2012-01-01T16:22:00.000-05:00

1. dark chocolate

i hate dark chocolate. i have always hated dark chocolate. never once have i presented myself to the world as someone who likes dark chocolate (and in my experience, those people just love presenting themselves to the world). yet for some reason, every year someone gets it for me. my mom is going to be pissed that i am even writing this because someone got me a big hunk of $22 dark chocolate from some expensive catalog purveyor of disgusting, nasty ass dark chocolate this year and it is probably super bitchy of me to be writing about this. however, this person staunchly refuses to even think about going within 50 feet of the internet so i doubt she will ever read this.

dark chocolate is like cigars or clothing from kohl's or porn and should only be purchased for someone if you are 100% certain that the person likes it. milk chocolate is a fine gift for anyone, way more people like milk chocolate than dark (this is america, i don't care about you "cacao" lovers from rural peru) and plenty of people who like dark chocolate also like milk chocolate. but nobody who prefers milk chocolate also likes dark chocolate.

please save your bitching about how great dark chocolate is and how you have lost all respect for me as a food blogger. i don't care, that shit is disgusting and tastes like dirt, and if you haven't lost respect for me by now then you may have a learning disability which you need to get checked out because i have been way more culinarily offensive than this before and you might not be very good at reading.

2. self help books

do not buy me self help books. it's not that i don't like them. i own and have read a shit ton of self help books, all of which i have purchased myself. but nobody wants to receive self help books from other people, especially for christmas or any other holiday for god's sake. if i have to explain why to you, then you should probably go get some self help books for yourself. i would start with the social cognitive disorders section. the one caveat to this is if you:

are really really close with the person for whom you are buying the book; AND
are certain (not through intuition or feeling but through actual, concrete sentences spoken or actions taken by the potential book recipient) that they are open to your help; AND
have actually read the book yourself and feel strongly that this particular book could be helpful to this particular person, and not just "hey you're single, here is that neil patrick warren or whatever book about how to find your soul mate through his expensive and time consuming online personality test."

i had one situation in my life where a friend sent me a book that i got pissed about and threw away but then he called me and asked me if i got it and i said yes and he asked me if i threw it away and i said yes and he made me take it out of the trash can and gave me a long (hour+) explanation about how he had read the book, and it helped him, and he really thought i should give it a shot even though i had total PTSD just looking at the book. so i did and it was a good suggestion which i appreciated in the end.

but still, this is not a gift to give to celebrate jesus's birth or boss's day or yom kippur or any other holiday. i can redeem myself with the person mentioned above here because her son apparently sent her like a book about her newly diagnosed heart condition for her birthday and she was like what the hell because come on, who gives people books about their medical conditions for their birthday? lame. now my mom is probably going to be even more pissed though because i am writing about this on the internet but i am pretty sure the son does not read this blog either and if he does then at least now he will know that it was a crappy birthday gift.

3. underwear

do not buy other people underwear, unless they are your spouse or your small child and regardless, it's not a holiday gift. i know some people are going to argue that lingerie could be the exception here but if i have to sit through one more bridal shower where my head is crammed with disturbing mental images of someone i barely know wearing crotchless panties and whipped cream and fuzzy handcuffs and shoving anal beads up their partner's anus while beating them with a pleather riding crop, i'm going to puke. i mean really, nobody wants this and if they do they can purchase it themselves from the privacy of their own computer.

4. gift cards

just give me cash. i always lose gift cards or forget to use them and odds are, you are buying it to some hell hole den of mindless consumerism that i don't even want to set foot in anyway, especially now that i am super slow and gimpy and scared of crowded public places. i barely shop unless i have to and mostly spend my money on food, and generally food that i just decide at the spur of the moment i want to eat, not because i have some dumb piece of plastic that i have to fish out of some drawer somewhere that they are going to tell me is expired and/or does not apply to alcohol or tip. gift cards are a huge consumer scam. if you can't stand giving cash, give a generic visa or master card gift card i guess, which is better, but seriously, let's just get over our cash thing, or you know what, give me a kiva gift card and if i don't use it, the money gets donated anyway and you might have a chance of going to heaven after all, killing two birds with one stone.

5. nuts/fruit

why do people give nuts and fruit? it is not 1840, i do not live in a little house on the prairie, and i can readily get these things at my local supermarket at a low price and without having to pay for the stupid ugly ass basket and green saran wrap that i am just going to throw away and which is going to contribute even further to our already desperate landfill situation. i do not understand this gift. i do however enjoy tasty specialty food items, so if you are going to get me some like amazing hand picked macadamia nuts or juicy bursting with sunny goodness turkish apricots, then i will be very happy, but what i am talking about is when you get some fucking unshelled walnuts (who actually owns a nut cracker?) and red (not) delicious apples. this is a dumb, waste of time gift that says, "i had no idea what to get you and didn't care to find out what you might like, but now you have to either eat shitty food that you don't like or else feel guilty about throwing away perfectly good food while there are starving children in africa, AND you have to thank me for it, sucka!"

the cake i have been fantasizing about for 15 years

2011-12-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

i need a recipe. the recipe i need is for some type of rum/coconut/pineapple cake. the reason i need this recipe is as follows. when i was in high school, i used to work in the gift wrap department at what was then hudson's and is now marshall field's. i worked with a bunch of old ladies who would bring in food all the time on a varying scale of amazingness.

the person who brought in the best food was connie. she was the best baker i have ever encountered. and the best thing that connie ever baked was this super moist, rich, fluffy, boozy layer cake made with pineapple and rum and covered in a cloud of rummy coconut whipped cream. i kept sneaking pieces of it and i don't really know if anyone else got to eat any. it was the cake to end all cakes.

i harassed connie nonstop for the recipe but she refused to give it to me. there is some generational thing that i do not understand where old people guard their recipes like cash. i mean come on lady, i am a 16 year old kid who you will probably never see again after i go away to college, i am not going to steal your loved ones with this cake.

(i say that i do not understand this phenomenon but i do. i have a couple recipes that i don't think i will ever give to anyone because i have a sick fear that one day i will be so bitchy and obnoxious and smell so bad that nobody will like me any more and the only way i will be able to keep friends is to feed them these foods. i am so secretive about this that i won't even tell you which recipes they are).

anyway, connie was a really nice person other than the fact that she would not give up her damn cake recipe and she had nothing to fear. but i could not get that fucking recipe out of her no matter how hard i tried. eventually i gave up, and hoped to just forget the cake.

well i am now 31 years old, and connie is probably dead, and i am still thinking about that damn cake. i need it. i want it. i must have it. i have actually been scouring cookbooks and the internet on and off for years looking for a recipe and only recently have i been able to find a few that look like they might be similar. but i thought maybe you readers would have something up your sleeves?

here are the recipes that are giving me hope and keeping me from giving up the dream:

http://carolynnsrecipebox.blogspot.com/2011/08/coconut-layer-cake.html except i don't think it had almond flour in it (and i don't like almond desserts anyway) and it definitely didn't have white chocolate shavings

http://www.dallamiacucinadmc.com/2009/02/true-delights-pineapple-rum-cake-with.html (scroll down) except there was no zabaglione... the filling between the layers was just the whipped cream

http://lazychefrecipes.blogspot.com/2011/05/easy-pineapple-coconut-cake.html except that it was not this easy

http://www.food.com/recipe/tommy-bahama-pina-colada-cake-449664 except again, no white chocolate

http://baking.food.com/recipe/pina-colada-cake-164836 except it wasn't cool whip

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljwzo9VULr1qc5cg7o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1324496720&Signature=%2Bo2JOI2Zj6zYOtnWZZsQBs00DD8%3D except the coconut wasn't toasted and there was no white chocolate dammit! or maybe i am wrong about the white chocolate...?

please help!

the worst places you should never eat at in cincinnati

2011-12-18T15:31:00.000-05:00

this post is super bitchy but then so am i. here are some shitty places that you should avoid at all costs. i am not even going to bother with most chains because those usually make me want to kill myself and this post would go on for days.

1. cadillac ranch

enough said.

2. tumi cafe

this place is fucking nut case land and terrible. it's this "peruvian" place in mt. washington with a giant life-sized leprechaun sitting at a chair in the window, which right there should scare you away. but not me. i went in, sat down, and fucking ordered CEVICHE. i think the mental illness vibe pervading the entire restaurant infected me. the owner appears to be bat shit crazy. there is weird, creepy kitsch cramming the walls (stuffed animals, painted glasses, books about jesus, etc). there is not a peruvian to be seen. aside from the obvious decor and mental health issues pervading the place, there is the huge sanitation/health code problem of the fact that the place does not appear to have a kitchen. all the food seems to be kept on hot plates, and i did not see anyone washing their hands or wearing gloves, EVEN WHEN PREPARING FUCKING CEVICHE, which yes, i was a lunatic to order. the food itself is weird (hot canned chicken mixed with peas and oregano and... nacho cheese colored spicy mayo? deep fried nuggets of... what exactly? with more spicy mayo?) and not peruvian and really, questionable as food in general. do not eat here.

3. shanghai mama's

this place is absolutely foul (an inside source, who i have no doubt wishes to remain anonymous and who used to be a health department restaurant inspector, told me this was the number one place he would not eat in cincinnati, except maybe washington platform). if that was not bad enough, they appear to only have the ability to season food with one ingredient: soy sauce. gross, bland, and possibly the most overrated crap i have ever tasted. i hope this dump never reopens.

4. indigo

most overpriced, underwhelming, piece of crap restaurant i can think of. like $18 or whatever for a spinach salad in a neon hell hole with decor that has not changed since 1987 with no parking and a bunch of hyde park pricks for company? kill me.

5. andy's

i am lebanese and this is the worst lebanese food i have ever tasted and way overpriced. it is the kind of place that people who have no idea what lebanese food is supposed to taste like would say they like so that they can seem cool to their white, suburban, applebee's loving broskys. i have never had meat here that was not so dry that i wanted to dip it in a glass of water just in order to swallow it and nothing is seasoned even remotely sufficiently. the labneh is pretty good though. so i guess go there and eat that, or just don't go there.

6. camp washington chili

you know what, maybe the stuff on the menu besides the chili is ok, i don't really know. but i know that the chili is pure hell. i heard from a bunch of people that this was the "best" chili in cincinnati, which could only have been true if it was opposite day. the chili tastes like nothing, the spaghetti is mushy and overcooked, and there is not enough cheese. gross.

6. b-g restaurant

ok, nobody i know but me has ever been here anyway so it's probably not even worth bitching about, except for this. the one and only time i ever ate there which was years ago, kieran ordered a cheeseburger and he took the top of the bun off of it to put ketchup on it and THERE WAS A DEAD FLY STUCK IN THE CHEESE. i am going to throw up just thinking about it. besides that, the food tasted like hell anyway. there is no reason to ever go here.

7. grand finale

i know everyone from cincinnati loves the sunday brunch at this place because they grew up eating it or whatever but i find it mediocre, overpriced, and annoying. everything is overcooked and swimming in oil and little children are sticking their grimy hands into the said overcooked, oil coated buffet line food. loud, crowded, expensive, terrible food, horrible decor, and i got into a car accident once in their parking lot so i extra hate it.

8. grammer's

quit opening and closing and quit serving shitty food with no real kitchen and quit focusing your "german" menu on buffalo chicken wings and quit whining about the neighborhood and for god's sake, if you are a server and you spill an entire fucking diet coke on my body, soaking me from head to waist, i better get something other than a fucking ugly ass XL grammer's t-shirt to compensate me for my suffering. hell.

9. lavomatic

i can't believe i forgot to include this on the original list and had to add it on because i just hate this place so much. i have been here probably five times ("there's a new chef!" "there's another new chef!" "i promise, this new chef is so much better than all the other ones!") and every time, the food was completely disappointing and totally overpriced and underseasoned with the added insult of the servers acting like it was the most obnoxious thing ever that they actually had to, gasp, SERVE you. once i got chicken here that i am not kidding you was totally raw inside, which is unforgivable. the bar is ok i guess, but why not just go somewhere else and avoid the whole possibility of culinary trauma altogether?

this post is not about food, but i promise to still bitch a lot

2011-12-12T18:21:00.000-05:00

there is at least one person out there who still wants me to blog, even if all i am going to write about is vomit-inducing amounts of pus oozing out of a boil on my ass. the time has come to give the people/person what they/she want/wants.

on saturday during oktoberfest (september 17... oh my god that was three months ago) i was doing what normal cincinnatians do during oktoberfest... prancing through the streets with mobs of other people with both fists full of giant mugs of spaten optimator (7.6% alcohol) with a name tag on me that said "hans" and stuffing a giant bahama mama down my throat. odds are i was also yelling inappropriate things and trying to grab the ass of anyone wearing lederhosen. this is the same thing i have done at oktoberfest every year since discovering it, and it is one of my favorite things to do in cincinnati.

the optimator and i have a long and sordid history. each year at oktoberfest, i attempt to conquer it, and each year, i lose. the goal for me is to get optimated (taking full advantage of the optimator) without wreaking general havoc on my entire body. to date, i have not been able to accomplish this goal, but i am no quitter. my getting optimated usually ends in me alone in front of my own toilet in a pool of vomit. nothing to be proud of but nothing that catastrophic either.

this year the optimator had other plans for me. "enough of your mockery, 'hans'," it shouted. "i am taking you down this year!" and take me down it did. a quick jaunt into a cobblestone alley, a twist of my leg on some mud, two loud cracks in my right leg, and i was down on the ground on my ass. "i broke my leg!" i started yelling. my friend lavine came running. "no you didn't," she said. "get up."

the very last pre-break photo

"i can't. i broke my leg." lavine rolled her eyes. "maybe you twisted it or something." (i would like to note for the record that this is the exact same reaction lavine had during another infamous incident, known to all my friends as "the time liz broke her nose in an alley in spain"). "no, it's broken," i said. "you have to call 911." neither of us had our phones on us though so lavine had to leave me to go get hers. lavine ran off to where we had left our stuff and our friend sarah, which was about a block away.

lavine returned soon enough with sarah. they started to try to convince me to let them go get the car to drive me to the hospital. 911 still had not been called. i was still laying in a muddy alley in the dark. then they decided to tell the rest of our group what happened. i was again left alone in a dark alley. i heard a dude come up and pee nearby. i wondered if his pee was going to get on me. i wondered if i should yell to him to get him to call 911 but i was afraid i would scare him.

after a while, i realized i was still laying in an alley with a broken leg. after all this time i finally decided to look at my foot. if you are laying in a mud filled alley, your foot should be pointing up towards the sky. mine was not. my foot was pointing toward my left foot. "that's strange,"i i thought. i sat up and pushed on my foot. it flopped over and then was pointing off towards the right. i thought to myself, "my foot is flopping around like a fish. that makes me feel like i am going to vomit and pass out. if i vomit and pass out, i am going to die by choking on my own vomit in this dark mud filled alley. i have to do something about that foot."

so i decide to try to prop the foot up. i scoot over towards a dumpster and push my right leg towards the dumpster. once my leg is right up next to the dumpster, i shove the foot so that it is in position, leaning on the dumpster, pointing up towards the sky the way it is supposed to. this hurt a lot, and involved some disturbing crunching noises, but i felt that it was worth it as opposed to dying due to being unconscious in a pool of my own vomit.

at this point i began to panic because i had been laying in this mud filled alley alone for a very long time (in reality it was probably about 5 minutes). i could not move and anybody could come along and rape me if they felt like it. plus, i felt that my leg was just getting more broken as the seconds passed. i started screaming "lavine!!!" at the top of my lungs.

a group of my friends, including lavine, reappeared. someone again suggested that i get in a car and they drive me to the hospital. there was no way in hell i was letting anyone touch my leg. "CALL 911 NOW!!!!!!!" i roared. an ambulance appeared almost immediately and the paramedics started the whole song and dance again. "try to stand up," they urged, which apparently i did, but i do not remember it, and then i fell down (of course you fucking morons). i kept telling them that it was broken. "that's ok," they said, "we'll just get that shoe off of you." they pulled. i screamed. they tugged. i howled. finally, these fucking nut cases gave up on the shoe and just put a cardboard splint on it. i was then in the ambulance and on my way to university hospital.

apparently i was a good patient even with all the screaming because when i got there, the paramedicts told the ER staff to give me a "nice nurse." i did get a nice nurse because i got drugs you have never even heard of before. 3 shots of morphine did nothing so they started upping the ante. they were squirmish about telling me the names of the drugs because apparently drug addicts go in there and find out what they got and then come back and request it. i argued that i did not look like a drug addict and they said you can never tell and thinking back, i probably did look like a drug addict anyway by that point. the nurses would give me little hints and i managed to figure out that i had gotten dilaudid ("it starts with a d and ends with a d") and fentanyl ("it starts with an f and it's basically heroin"). finally i felt better until they decided to send me over to radiology, where my leg was bent and moved and i screamed in more agony.

this is what i look like when i am in the emergency room with a broken leg

after the x-rays (which showed that i had clean breaks on both my tibia and fibula, and a fracture and a bone chip on my tibia above the break, and which also finally convinced everyone that yes, i had actually broken something), the doctor had good news. apparently my decision to push my leg up against that dumpster was a good one. "you reset your own bone!" she said. "that was the best thing you could have done. if you hadn't, we would have had to do it here and it would have hurt a lot more. plus that limited the swelling, so you don't have to wait for surgery."

by this point it was about 3 am and i sent my friends home. the minute they left i started to feel ill (up until that point i had been almost punchy and making jokes at everything). i started vomiting up all kinds of shit and i felt like hell. at around 4, i was taken up to a room (no roommate!) and i had to say goodbye to my wonderful ER nurse and i cried my eyes out. fortunately i had a new nurse who was really nice. she informed me that it was her last day and she was moving to north carolina tomorrow. i cried my eyes out again. i sort of dozed in and out and at 6 am, another nurse showed up to take me down to surgery prep.

on the way down to surgery, which i was already freaking out about, or would have been, if i did not still have 10 kinds of opiates and a significant amount of alcohol coursing through my blood, the nurse gave a running monologue about how she is the most sleep deprived person on the planet. "i get home at 8 am and i'm supposed to sleep! but i have 3 kids and they just don't let me! if i get 2 hours of sleep before somebody is yelling that they need a peanut butter and jelly sandwich i'm lucky! my oldest is 8, make your own peanut butter and jelly sandwich! but he says he likes how mama makes it! so i make it for him! how can you say no to that! then it's back to work!" i am frothing myself up into a panic about how this sleep deprived lunatic is going to run us into a wall and jam my leg and crush it to bits, or i would be if i had the appropriate brain chemicals at that moment to get to that state of anxiety.

i get down to surgery and they tell me they are going to be putting an intramedullary rod and some pins in my leg and it's going to take 3 hours. they hook me up on still more drugs and i get to a state of mind where i am thinking, "wow, i am really freaking out about surgery. i am going to be in there for 3 hours. i could die." but i am feeling no emotions related to this.

the next thing i know somebody is waking me up and telling me the surgery is over. i go back to my room and my friends are there. i laze through another mostly pleasant day and a half in the hospital. the food was really good. the nurses were very nice. i got used to the bed pan really fast and enjoyed making the male nurses uncomfortable by demanding that they wipe me ("front to back! front to back!" "i want the wet washcloth, THEN the dry washcloth!"). i had visitors and pushed a little button every time i wanted more drugs... and i got them. the next day, i was given physical therapy to learn how to use crutches, and i got some ice packs and i was sent home.

i spent the first week and a half in a soft cast. i was mostly out of it during this time because i was on percocet and was constantly extremely tired and dazed. i had conversations, phone calls, and emails during this time which apparently were totally coherent but which i do not remember at all. my mom and sister, who live in michigan, came down to take care of me. amazingly, my mom stayed with me for six weeks. she went home for a couple days in there but for the better part of a month and a half, she took care of me. she even slept on an air mattress on my floor which you would think would be really weird but it never was.

my sisters each also came, and several of my out of town friends. and many of my cincinnati friends stepped up and really helped me in ways i could not have even imagined. it was really amazing. of course there were also some real duds who totally did not do shit and pissed me the fuck off, but i'm trying to focus on the positive here.

happy 31st birthday liz! love, your broken leg. p.s. you're my bitch.

on september 29 (the day after my birthday), i had an appointment with my surgeon to get the cast off. my leg was doing well (i have a rod inside the length of my tibia with pins holding it in place) and he let me start using an air cast instead, aka "the boot." i was still not allowed to put any weight on it but i was damn happy to be out of the cast.

i continued to stay on the couch for a while. i was still on percocet and at that time, could not imagine getting off of it due to the pain. i began having other body issues such as lower back pain, difficulty sleeping, lots of different body aches, etc. all the things that you would expect from sitting on a couch for several weeks. i started physical therapy, but it was limited to things like leg lifts and pulling on my foot with a rubber band because i could not put any weight on the foot. i had a lot of visitors which was nice, and some friends put together a schedule to start bringing me food because i could not cook.

frankenleg, circa 9/29/11

i went back to work half days on october 10. this was extremely difficult. i was still so tired, and my doctor had told me that i had to be off the percocet before i went back to work. so i was also in a lot of pain. i would prop my foot up at work, but it would still get really swollen and painful. i had to get driven to and from work, and crutching in and out of the building, up the elevator, and to my office, was so exhausting. i would be there for a couple of hours and feel like i was going to pass out by about 11 am. i couldn't imagine what i was going to do when i had to be there longer, or how i was going to do things like get my lunch or go to court or anything like that.

on october 27, i went back to see the surgeon and he told me that i could start putting weight on my leg. he didn't give me a specific percentage but told me to follow the recommendations of my physical therapist. my therapist suggested that i start at no more than 50%, and continue to wear the boot and use the crutches. he helped me take my first steps which was really exciting! i had totally forgotten what it felt like to walk and it was very awkward.

i was still at work part time and i had been having a lot of issues because i have to go to court a lot. although the courthouse is only about 2.5 blocks from my office, it was too far for me to crutch and i had been having people push me in a wheelchair. after i was allowed to start putting weight on my boot, i decided to try to walk to court one day (november 2, if you are keeping track) because all the sidewalks were torn up from construction and it was too hard for people to push me in a wheelchair (plus i felt bad that so many people were having to take so much time to just do things like push me around).

so you thought you were past the nasty frankenleg photo... sucka!

this was a completely stupid idea. it took me over a half an hour each way just to go the 2.5 blocks, and i ended up messing up my left leg because the boot made my right leg longer than my left leg and it had had to work too hard to overcompensate. plus my right leg was in horrible pain from being overworked. my PT told me to stop wearing the boot because it was messing up my left leg too bad.

around this time i also started to notice a small lump on my ass right where my left leg meets my ass cheek. i sort of ignored it until it gradually began turning into the most fucking excruciatingly painful thing i had ever had. i went to the doctor. "it's a boil," she announced, and gave me an antibiotic and some vicodin. it continued to grow and hurt. all i could do was go to work for a half day, sitting on a donut, and then i would go home and sit on a heating pad and pop vidodin and try not to kill myself.

i can't even explain the pain of this thing. it felt as though someone had taken one of those large really strong black binder clips clamped it onto my skin and left it there for a week. the pain was constantly shooting from the boil all the way down to my left foot. my sister came for the weekend and bought me a hot pad which i began sitting on constantly. i could barely focus on anything but the pain. my thoughts were "boil, boil, boil, boil, boil" 24-7.

people kept trying to get me to let them come over or go out and do things and i was like "no. i have a boil. i can't do anything," and nobody got it. i began to hate my friends, myself, my life, and most of all the fucking boil. the doctor had said that she could not lance it until it came to a head or it would risk serious infection. i spent hours googling "how to make a boil come to a head" and "home remedies for boils." i made hot water compresses. i choked down tablespoons full of apple cider vinegar (try that just once and tell me how horrible it is). i rubbed tea tree oil and topical antibiotic and vitamin e oil on it.

at one point my roommate walked in on me mumbling incoherently about scraping out the inside of an egg shell and putting that on it and he announced, "enough with the home remedies!" i moaned. "it's horrible!" i howled. "LOOK AT IT!!!" and can you believe it, he actually did. now that is true friendship. and he said that he thought it was coming to a head.

on november 9, i went back to the doctor and she lanced the shit out of that thing. the doctor and the nurse oohed and ahhed. "this is awesome!" they said. "we love boils! we sometimes watch people popping their own boils on youtube!" this is insane but who better to lance my boil? all in all, "3 golf balls worth" of pus came out according to the doctor and i felt instant, although not complete, relief. the boil did continue to hurt for about 4 more days, but it was nowhere near as bad. my friend heather came right after that and checked my deflated ass boil for me and cooked and cleaned and even washed my possibly mrsa-infected laundry. how do you thank someone for something like that?

this is what it looked like on 10/15/11, which is pretty much the same as now except there is less bruising and more leg hair

the day the boil was lanced i had a sore throat. the sore throat got worse and worse. it developed into the cold from hell. which then developed into insomnia from hell. i think i actually started to go insane. i got a prescription for ambien. that didn't work. then i got a prescription for lunesta. that finally worked. if you have never had insomnia, you are lucky. i don't know if it was worse than the boil, but it made me more psychotic.

right before thanksgiving i was given the ok to stop using the one crutch i had been on for the previous couple of weeks, and start walking on my own. i was down to physical therapy once a week. it seemed like smooth sailing, other than the fact that i still had to walk extremely slow in order to not limp, and that i could not walk more than about a block without starting to have pain and swelling. oh and the fact that my body has been consistently rejecting my internal stitches, causing painful lumps under the skin which eventually come to the surface of my skin and start oozing pus and pieces of what appear to be fishing wire.

thinking i was near the end of the road with this thing, i went to the doctor last thursday, expecting to hear the usual "you're doing great and it looks good" type doctor speak. instead i got, "well your fibula is still completely broken. so hopefully it will come back together. see you in three months." ok, what the hell. once more i was thrown back into the land of anxiety and insomnia, thanks to hours of google searching in the wee hours of the morning. i scheduled an appointment to go back to the doctor later this week to ask questions and bitch about the fact that i might have wanted to know that my fibula had not started to come back together at all maybe some point in oh say the past twelve weeks.

so now i am basically at the point that some people are at WHEN THEY FIRST BREAK THEIR LEG (ie- a broken fibula). yet i am allowed to walk on it? i think? but i can't run for... a long time? and i should probably _____________ but definitely not __________________. and i will need to be doing lots of _______________ and _________________ in physical therapy. and if the fibula doesn't come back together within one to one million days, i definitely will or will not have to have more surgery, or do some other type of unidentified treatment, or not. yeah, i don't know because he did not tell me any of that. thanks doc!

so that is my broken leg story. i am planning a future post on the dos and don'ts of dealing with a person with a severe injury. i just feel that the public needs this information. stay tuned!

the way more than top 10 best things you can eat in cincinnati

2011-11-23T09:29:00.012-05:00

in response to lori's post on how there is nothing good to eat in cincinnati, and her constant harassment to start up my blog again, here i am (for now). my position is that the upscale food scene in cincinnati mostly sucks, other than orchids, but that there is plenty of really good cheap food around here. (side note: lori's blog is the only blog still worth reading in cincinnati, in case you were wondering).

i have always been annoyed with snobby/snobby-ish, high/high-ish priced food, even if it is actually good, because i am kind of poor and therefore always way happier when i feel like i am getting a good bang for my buck and because the people that tend to hang out at higher priced restaurants generally freak me out (of course i probably freak them out too). if i can't show up in flip flops and pay less than $15 for a meal, i'm just not going to enjoy myself as much (notable exceptions: orchids. bouley. the publican).

here is my list of the best things that you can eat in cincinnati. nothing expensive and no chains. i hate rankings so these are in no particular order.

spit roasted chicken at floyd's. if you have to call ahead for something because they might run out at 5:30 pm on a tuesday, it's fucking good.
goat tacos at la mexicana. what's that? you don't like goat? yes you do, you just don't know it yet.
ban chan at asiana in west chester (no relation to the asiana in oakley). the best ban chan anywhere (sorry riverside). while you are there, get some hot and sour soup too. and by "some" i mean "a gallon."
anything you can get your hands on at shadeau breads. whatever. it doesn't matter. grab whatever you can see, at 7 am, with coffee, and run.
cumin lamb at sichuan bistro. you can't go wrong with anything on the chinese section of the menu here but the cumin lamb tops it all. the second best dish here is the dry sauteed green beans so if you are vegetarian (and even if you're not), get that instead. actually just get both. and get a bunch of other stuff too. just point to whatever other people are eating that looks good.
coconut gelato at dojo. this is the only gelato flavor that i am aware of with its own fan club. michael never makes it because he claims it doesn't sell. anyone who is passing this up is going to have one more item on their list of regrets when they die.
tagliatelle alla bolognese at nicola's. yes i know this is not a cheap restaurant but on monday nights you can get an absurd portion of the bolognese, a huge and amazing house salad, and the bread basket of your dreams (seriously) for $13 at the bar. and you don't even really have to sit at the bar because it is always full whenever i go and they just let me sit at a table. this is very possibly the best bang for your buck ever in the history of mankind.
tzatziki from areti's gyros. it redefines tzatziki. also, it's TWO. DOLLARS.
whatever the hell toppings you want on the mind altering sourdough crust at zz's pizza. la rosa's vs. donato's? i don't even understand the words you're saying.
goat curry at shaan. it's not on the menu so call ahead to find out if it is on the buffet that day. you will love it because you already ate the goat tacos at la mexicana and you are now obsessed with goat.
biscuits and gravy made by sierra. there's no more forkheartknife so good luck getting your hands on this one. trust me, i have been trying. the runner up which is actually still publicly available (almost every sunday... if you get there early enough...) is take the cake's.
singapore rice noodles at suzie wong's. there is no legitimate explanation for how good this dish is other than that there must be crack in it.
grilled tilapia at teranga. you don't eat seafood in cincinnati? you're scared of the west side? you don't like your dinner staring at you? get over it and go eat this.
the getinmahbelly at tom + chee. actually there is no getinmahbelly on the menu but there really should be (are you guys reading this, tom + chee?) because i order this combination every time. sourdough bread, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and pesto. bliss.
swiss raspberry or swiss strawberry sundae at aglamesis. the ice cream itself is fine but what you are really going for is the amazing rich fluffy delicious fresh whipped cream with the fruit folded right into it. holy hell.
roast pork banh mi at pho lang thang. i am obsessed with everything on the menu but what keeps me up at night (what, no bike delivery at 3 am?) is this sandwich.
roasted cauliflower salad at a tavola. it's not often that i find myself crapping my pants over a vegetable but there you have it. runner up: the white anchovy pizza. sometimes i fantasize about taking the entire pizza, folding it in half, and cramming the entire thing into my mouth and then just blissfully chewing for like 3 hours. as if all this were not enough, they serve the absolute best mixed drinks in cincinnati. try the ginger beer me with bourbon. you can thank me in cash via paypal.
galbi jhim at riverside korean. a dish which got its very own whole post on this blog. enough said.

well that is all i have to say and if i get a bunch of annoying "i'm so happy you're back" and "you're so amazing" and "i love this blog" type comments i'm going to puke. but if i get any "you're stupid" and "i hate you" type comments that's going to piss me off too. you're probably better off just not commenting. happy thanksgiving bitches.

cincinnati cocktail quest: the blood and sand

2011-04-22T14:24:00.005-04:00

with my bloody mary quest well underway, i can now focus on other tasty adult beverages. my new holy grail of cocktails is the blood and sand. what is the blood and sand, you ask? as well you should, since if you have not had one you are missing out on one of life's great pleasures, right up there with winning the lottery or finding out it isn't cancer after all.

wikipedia to the rescue:

Blood and Sand is a scotch based cocktail introduced in 1922. The red juice of the blood orange in the drink helped link it with the recently released film the cocktail was named after, Rudolph Valentino's bullfighter movie Blood and Sand. The recipe first appeared in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book.

Blood and Sand

Primary alcohol by volume
* Scotch whisky
* Vermouth

Served: Straight up; without ice

Standard garnish: Maraschino cherry, Flamed orange zest

Standard drinkware: cocktail glass / collins glass

Commonly used ingredients
* 1 oz blended scotch
* 1 oz blood orange juice
* ¾ oz sweet vermouth
* ¾ oz Cherry Heering

Preparation: Pour all ingredients into cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into Cocktail glass. Flame orange zest over the top of the glass.

Notes: A variant is to combine all ingredients in a collins glass, add another splash of orange juice then flame the zest over it.

i discovered this life alteringly delicious drink in chicago over new year's. lavine and i were gorging ourselves on the gluttonous gustatory riches of longman & eagle when i overheard a girl next to me practically trading away her future first born child in an effort to persuade the bartender to make her a blood and sand. after she got the drink (which involved melting the oil of an orange peel out of the orange peel and into the drink) she started moaning and flailing like a quaker in a jesus filled ecstasy.

we took one look at that display and the facts that it was 2 pm, that we had already had 3 cocktails each, and that we were on our way to see black swan all went down the toilet. we had to have that drink. it was just as good as we hoped. the fact that it has cherry liqueur in it makes it over the top because cherry is my absolute favorite fruit and it's pretty much impossible to get a delicious, not overly sweet, cherry flavored cocktail.

at the new year's party the next night, my friend marc tried to make the drink and while i applaud his efforts, it just didn't come out nearly as good. but at least in chicago you can get it at bars. i haven't seen it anywhere on any cocktail menu in cincinnati. which isn't to say that there aren't good bartenders who know how to make it, but it just makes me wonder if anyone really knows how to do it right. the wise one (cherry infused woodford reserve + simple syrup + fresh lemon juice + fresh sage) at the bar at palm court is extremely delicious and hits the cherry spot, but it is not the same.

readers, i need this drink in my life. has anyone seen it around town? please help a lush in need.

sacred heart church ravioli dinner

2011-04-18T22:23:00.006-04:00

i had been hearing rumors about this dinner for years but once it showed up in the saveur top 100 of 2010, i knew i had a date with destiny. after years of trying to hunt it down, beth mysteriously got a flyer in the mail and i marked my calendar. i am now on their mailing list myself because i filled out a request form. never in my life have i been more excited to get on a mailing list.

readers, i am here to tell you that it lives up to the hype. we got there at 1:00 and waited in line for an hour and magically tickets were bought and wine was opened and food arrived and we were in heaven. nobody rushes you out, regardless of the line. and if you can't wait (or if you're just really smart) you can get takeout. well actually you still have to wait for that but it is a ridiculously, wrongly good deal... 50 ravioli for $8. mamma mia!

now... the food. ignore the salad, dessert, and bread. they don't matter. what you are there for is the ravioli. and damn is it ravioli. it is homemade. it is stuffed with a delicious blend of spinach, veal, beef, and cheese (ricotta + parmesan is my best guess). and it is served with the most perfectly balanced, savory, rich, smooth, delicious sauce you have ever eaten. and if that is not enough it is topped with two of the world's most perfect meatballs. and just in case you are not in the mood for ravioli, you can get spaghetti. AND, just in case you can't pick, you can get BOTH. praise jesus!

after living most of my life in terror of organized religion, three years of eating delicious fish fries has completely broken down my fear of setting foot in a church in order to get some good food. i am now a born again cincinnati church food fanatic. and the sacred heart church ravioli is probably the best church food i have ever had. this is the real thing. eat it... if you can figure out when it's happening...

600 miles for some brown rice and vegetables... well sort of

2011-04-11T20:44:00.011-04:00

i just got back from a long weekend in new york for my law school reunion and my friend christine's baby shower. normally i have a long list of things to eat in new york but this time i had so many non-food plans that i decided not to try to kill myself with a food list too. there was only one meal i had to have...

that's right suckers, it's the stir fried vegetables with tahini dressing at dojo. laugh away, food snobs. i seriously crave this shit constantly. dreaming of a meal for five years and then having it be just as good as you remembered = one of life's great pleasures.

me and the adorable mom to be, reliving our younger and drunker days

the reunion was at the waldorf astoria... this was just one of many dessert tables. they don't fuck around. i of course was so focused on the drinks that i forgot to eat any of this.

dinner and a ridiculous number of mojitos at boca chica = a requirement for any trip to new york

i also ate this delicious brunch at telepan

cincinnati bloody mary rankings

2011-04-03T14:17:00.010-04:00

there is nothing better than a good bloody mary and there is nothing worse than a bad bloody mary. i have been on a lazy, meandering quest over the past year or so to figure out where to get good bloody marys in cincinnati. here are my findings so far. i will update these rankings as i drink more bloody marys.

all places only got one shot to prove their bloody mary skills. if you serve me a bad bloody mary once, i am never going to try it again so you better get it right the first time. i don't want to hear any whining that i need to give whatever place another try. if i am spending $7-12 for undrinkable bitter swill that gives me heartburn and bloody mary ptsd, you are off my list permanently.

the queen bloody of the queen city is at cityview tavern

here is what i am looking for in a bloody mary:

strong, savory, spicy tomato flavor. it should be rich, thick, and have a depth of flavor
no discernible alcohol flavor. if i want to taste my liquor i will order a gimlet or a vodka tonic. also, it's a brunch drink and i don't need to get drunk at noon. at least that is what my sponsor tells me.
no bitterness. this is a cardinal sin because it makes the entire drink undrinkable. i can't tell you how many watery, bitter bloody marys i have been served in my life. disgusting, disappointing, and totally avoidable.
good garnishes. if i like a bloody mary then i am someone who is into briny, salty flavors. if all you stick in there is a dried out celery stalk and a sliver of lime, i am going to be pissed. i am fine with omitting the celery altogether actually in favor of pickled green beans or carrots or asparagus. get creative and also i want a lot of shit in there, not just one thing.
spicy but not too spicy. my stomach is empty and i do not need to start the day with heartburn.

the good, in order of how good they are:

cityview tavern: believe the hype... this is the epitome of bloody mary perfection. rich, savory, smooth, and full of flavor. not a hint of bitterness and the flavors just go together perfectly. did not give me heartburn at all. the spicy/salty/peppery mix on the rim was perfect. very nice pickled vegetables (green beans, olives, etc.)
nada's bloody maria: a very close second. nice call on the peppadew garnish and the substitution of tequila for vodka just works. very flavorful and not too spicy. also a similar rim spice mix to cityview. this one was just ever so slightly less thick and robust, and did not have any big crunchy pickled things in it. very good showing however.
otto's: nice and horseradishy. rich and thick and a big portion. it gets docked a few points for inconsistency but if you get a really good one, you will be very happy.
honey: good and will scratch your bloody mary itch. one big fat celery stalk does not cut it in the garnish department, and it's not as complexly flavored or rich as others above it.
neon's: very average. it is too spicy for me (even when i ask for it to come not too spicy) and also is just not very flavorful overall. however, it earns points for having lots of excellent garnishes (including cheese, pepperoni, and blue cheese stuffed olives, yum).

neon's bloody mary

do not even bother drinking these bloody marys, in no particular order:

the comet: it was like 90% vodka and 10% flavorless red stuff, and was tiny and overpriced. bleah.
motr: a bitter, watery disaster. i think i got heartburn just from looking at it. was this a cocktail or a punishment?

bloody marys i still need to try (please tell me if there are others i am missing)

jeff ruby's walnut street grill: it is made with bacon infused vodka. i need this drink.
teller's: i hear they have a garnish bar... yum
the pub at rookwood: another garnish bar. why haven't i been to these places yet?
orchids: they can do no wrong in any other area of food or drink. although i have not heard anything about it, i am sure their bloody mary is a serious contender
keystone: i have heard they have a number of different bloody mary options which means they take the drink seriously
roxy's: i have had other good mixed drinks there so i think they are up to the challenge

orchids served me a meal so good that it dragged me out of blog retirement

2011-03-21T14:56:00.013-04:00

i know i said i was done blogging due to boredom, annoyance, etc. but i was unprepared to have my blogging resistance conquered by a restaurant meal whose awesomeness was so overpowering. i had a meal that i must write about.

do you want to have that meal too? well i can tell you that cincinnati magazine is right... go to orchids. it is the best restaurant in cincinnati. i ate there a few weeks ago with cincinnati eats and had the most delicious, impeccably served, and memorable meals that i have had in a very long time. i have no pictures so you are going to have use your i-mag-i-NA-tion!

orchids is inside the netherland hilton (or whatever it is called) hotel downtown. i have blogged about its brunch before. i love the brunch, it is amazing. i have never had a sit down meal there before though because it is too expensive for me, so i jumped at the chance to go with cincinnati eats. they do events at different restaurants around cincinnati where you get a 3 course meal for $35-40 on an off night. they do their events once every few months. you preorder your menu choices and you buy your own drinks.

i started off the night having cocktails in the lounge with a couple friends. the atmosphere there is so nice, it is all art deco and beautifully maintained. it is upscale but you will not feel out of place in jeans. we were treated to some hilarious people watching as a couple girls seemed to think that the appropriate attire for a cincinnati eats dinner was 80s prom dresses with spiked heels.

i had a cocktail that i think was called the wise one. i think it was some combination of whiskey, cherry liqueur, sage, and maybe something else. it was completely delicious.

then we sat down to dinner. the first thing to note is that even though this was a group event with everyone paying well below menu price for the food served, the restaurant did not skimp at all in the quality of service or food. it was exactly like you were having a meal there that you had paid big cash money for. they served us three types of bread with three different delicious dips and spreads, an amuse bouche (some type of savory bacon custard inside an eggshell, which gave me the fun new experience of eating out of an egg cup with a tiny little spoon).

the meal itself was perfect. i went for the full carnivorous experience and got pork belly as my appetizer which was melt in your mouth delicious and rich, and a ridiculously tender strip loin for my main course which was perfectly medium rare and served with i forget what kind of unbelievably rich mushrooms and savoy cabbage in a dark, rich sauce. yes, i just said rich 3 times in one sentence. both portions were very generous. i also tasted the tuna loin which was huge, perfectly rare, and served with a really interesting chick pea sauce and brussels sprouts leaves.

the desserts were... actually i don't remember. i had my cocktail and a few glasses of wine by then and i'm not a dessert person so it wasn't memorable for me. i do remember that along with our dessert, we got one of those cute little multi tiered plates with rich, smooth chocolates and tasty homemade candied fruit.

the service was absolutely top notch, to the point of having all the waiters remove the lids off our food at the same time. however you know it was really good service because you always had what you wanted when you wanted it but nobody was snotty or made you feel at all out of place. it is the best service i have had after my meal at bouley, which is the highest compliment i can give for restaurant service. during our meal, the chef came out to meet everyone and thank us for coming. this was for people who were paying below price for his food. he was totally modest and welcoming, a rare and awesome quality in a chef who is creating food this good.

the price was obviously good because of the group meal. it is definitely worth shelling out for full price though. you will not be disappointed. i will probably retreat back into hiding now but this meal is still on my mind three weeks later and i had to share it.

cincinnati is going down the toilet

2011-03-10T23:04:00.006-05:00

i don't feel like food blogging anymore but that doesn't mean i feel like giving up my public megaphone. today i am going to bitch about how this city (and state) is a complete hell hole.

this week alone we have learned that cincinnati's population figures have (gasp) dropped 10%, just a week after mark mallory announced on undercover boss that "cincinnati is growing!" ummm, maybe should have checked your facts first. not only that, but unions are going the way of the betamax and apparently the streetcar funding is going to get sent back only to go to some other state where, you know, people might actually want something more out of life than living in isolation in the burbs with only gigantic televisions and high doses of antidepressants to keep them from a) suicide and b) having to actually interact with another human being. and on top of all that, forkheartknife is closing.

the last item might seem insignificant, but it's not. as a food lover, and an otr lover, and an always-trying-but-never-quite-succeeding cincinnati lover, i think it is just one illustration of the very big problem that we have in this city. people just don't give a fuck about other people (unless of course they went to high school with them).

tell me this isn't the most depressing thing you've ever read:

things feel pretty wild and crazy and we are starting to see lots of new customers who are finding out about us, making treks to OTR from who-knows-where. bringing with them expectations that we can’t and don’t want to meet. managing new customers and their expectations, managing long wait times: this is starting to feel overwhelming. our space is so intimate, the experience we offer is so giving of ourselves: our creativity, our emotion, our grieving, our energy. we are sharing all of this with a new kind of customer. one who doesn’t know that we are limited. one who doesn’t know that there is a long week of work going into just these four meals. one who doesn’t respect that we have opened and are maintaining a business (and a restaurant at that!)- we find it hard to rejuvenate after these meals. we are not getting the joy from our neighbors and friends and families (who decide not to wait, or take up a table) that made this place feel so magic. we can’t imagine another year of trying to make this tiny, ill-equiped, intimate space work . . .

do you know why they are closing? they are closing because there are just not enough other people like them in cincinnati. if there were, we would have other cozy, welcoming kitchens serving creative, wholesome, delicious food where we could go eat if it was too busy at forkheartknife and then they wouldn't be so overwhelmed. if there were, the suburban zombies wouldn't be suburban zombies and therefore wouldn't be driving an hour downtown on a quest to grasp some tiny feeling of connection via a lovingly cooked meal only to have a panic attack after having a HOMELESS PERSON!!! ask them for money while they shivered on the sidewalk (they didn't wear coats) waiting for a table.

these are the same people who don't want a streetcar and hate unions and thought that cincinnati was growing just because their subdivision razed a hundred more trees and threw down 20 more plots of land to build 20 more houses with 20 more 3 car garages for 20 more families just like theirs, not that they're going to actually interact with them other than sending them daily invites to play farmville on facebook.

i'm not even going to get into my usual rants about how this place treats immigrants like shit they just scraped off the bottom of their collective shoe (which went in and out of style five years ago everywhere else in the world), has no interest in learning or accepting anything about anyone who hasn't been here since their half german/half irish catholic ancestors came over on the mayflower, and has a population with an alarming number of people who have never even traveled to chicago (let alone outside of the country). not to mention that our state's superbowl (sorry, national championship) winning football coach is a national spectacle of hypocrisy and that nobody seems to give a fuck about whether some dude in warren county gets a fair trial (a fair trial? that sounds like socialism!).

in the name of tradition, family, and pseudo-christian morals the majority of cincinnatians run around in these isolationist bubbles of fear coated in insecurity wanting nothing more than to just. feel. safe. this drives them to compulsively live the exact same life as everybody else they know, with absolutely no interest in anyone else (unless, remember, you went to high school with them).

i tried to be optimistic for years but let's face it, it's never going to change. if you don't fit into a very specific demographic (white, moderate to conservative politically, christian, middle to upper class, and originally from cincinnati) or are not rich enough that nothing else matters, there's not much for you here, and it's only getting worse. most of the people who do fit that demographic are at best not doing anything to change things, and at worst doing everything in their power to keep it that way.

i'll admit that i'm feeling especially hateful right now but seriously, this place is a fucking joke on a stick. don't delude yourself with a new restaurant or a couple renovated buildings. if you're smart you'll get the hell out just like that 10% who already did. if you think there's any real hope you're only lying to yourself. and if you don't agree with me, you can... well, you know.

enquirer letters to the editor

2011-02-18T10:41:00.005-05:00

reading the enquirer's letters to the editor are seriously one of the best parts about living in cincinnati. i never get sick of these nut bags.

We stand between liberty and tyranny

A lady asked me a few days ago if I really thought it was possible that our country could fall into socialist hands. I couldn’t believe my ears! How could she watch the daily assaults on our founding principles and be in any doubt?!

My answer was that yes, I do believe America could well be redefined as Amerika, just as the great nation of Russia was redefined as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) by the Bolshevik Revolution, if we the people allow it to happen.

The same Constitution that bestows the blessings of liberty on we the people also demands an obligation from all of its citizens to understand why and how our founding principles work so well and have worked astoundingly well for over 200 years. I submit that, although it comes from a different source, the threat of tyranny is as real today as it was at our founding.

If you haven’t read the Constitution lately I urge you to do so now! It – and we the people – are all that stand between liberty and tyranny.

Carol Williams

Blue Ash

the russians are coming! the russians are coming!

We need more executions

I can’t take it anymore! People are so closed-minded, have they just crawled out from under their rocks about all executions and the science of DNA? We are lucky to have DNA testing today, to prove without a doubt that you are the killer!

So there are a (few) that fell between the cracks, nothing is perfect. Do you have any idea how many are guilty, come on let’s get real here. We don’t execute enough of them. Why can’t we follow other countries in if you are found guilty of murder, you are dead and very soon. There is no tough issue here, the only loss of confidence in the system is that it doesn’t follow through.

Andrea Browne

West Chester

let's just all commit suicide, that would solve this pesky murder problem once and for all. no? god, people are so closed minded.

Juvenile offenders should be revealed

I am impressed with the first page coverage of the story by reporter Krista Ramsey (“Mothers of alleged bully, victim both suffer after attack,” Feb. 13) and would like to have pictures of the alleged assailants on the first page as well. If the victim of the attack can be featured as the hero he is, why not have the alleged perpetrators on the first page?

As a property manager in Cincinnati, these kinds of cases are often committed by juveniles. The problem with these kinds of juvenile records is that the criminal histories remain concealed by juvenile court. Those who rent to the public often are unaware of a juvenile criminal history and never know that someone applying for a rental may have had violent offenses. When a rental applicant has a criminal background that is concealed by juvenile court records, a property manager may not know the individual histories and this kind of case goes undetected when screening. Refusing to identify the convicted juvenile offender and concealing juvenile case histories puts other residents and their families at risk.

Mary Clark

Delhi Township

good plan mary. let's make juvenile court records public. the landlords need to know!

We can't afford the streetcar, Mallory!

Regarding the article (“Mallory: Scrapping streetcar a waste of money,” Feb. 9): Whenever groups such as the Cincinnati tea party, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the local NAACP coalesce for a united cause, it would be wise to sit up and take notice. These groups, and other concerned citizens (read “taxpayers”), have come together to vehemently oppose the boondoggle known as the streetcar. Now the mayor says he will go ahead with groundbreaking, despite this strong opposition. Mr. Mayor, what part of “no” don’t you understand? Is it the city of Cincinnati has no money to pay for this project, the state of Ohio has no money to pay for this project, or the federal government has no money to pay for this project.

I will pass along to Mayor Mallory the same as I pass along to my two young daughters when they want to go to the toy store. “You cannot spend what you don’t have. If you see something you like, but don’t have the money today, then earn money and save up until you have enough.” If my 9-year-old and 5-year-old children can understand that concept, surely the mayor can.

Sara Solis

Pleasant Ridge

yes, mayor mallory. please make all decisions from now on based on the views of the cincinnati tea party.

Casino design reviews unnecessary

I would hope the negative or critical comments from the five top local architects are disregarded by the casino developer. The architects say the design may not fit the city’s urban fabric, whatever that is. Sounds like obstruction.

Rock Gaming should keep in mind that, after many years of voters rejecting casinos, most citizens are pleased that the project has begun. They will enjoy the casino regardless of its design or theme. In Vegas, people have been known to enter a circus, a pirate ship, a pyramid, a sphinx and a venetian palace. Further design reviews are not needed or wanted. Full speed ahead!

Dick Rensing

Edgewood

clearly the top five local architects are all worthless morons. what we really need is a mythical fantasy land where masses of gullible suburbanites open their wallets and throw their children's college funds away while fantasizing about dinosaurs roaming the earth with adam and eve. oh wait, we already have that.

limited run return engagement... back to new orleans

2011-02-02T22:38:00.013-05:00

because posting them all up on facebook hasn't fully satisfied my urge to smother the internet with new orleans food pictures, here are some snapshots from last week which i spent there. (read about my first trip there here). i went down there for training and ended up having one of the most awesome weeks i have had in a long time... good weather, amazing food, way too much alcohol, awesome friends, unexpected adventures, and on top of all that the training turned out to be one of the best i've ever been to.

i'm nostalgic and depressed over the gray monotony that is cincinnati and i am trying to take my mind off of worrying about a custody trial i have tomorrow* so let's relive last week in food.

shrimp and crawfish poboys at johnny's

beignets at cafe du monde

praline bacon at elizabeth's

literally, not shitting you, the absolute best biscuit in the entire world, also at elizabeth's

gumbo at stanley

muffaletta at napoleon house

turtle soup at commander's palace

cochon at cochon

not pictured: some of the best fried chicken in the entire world at coop's place and an oh my god i fucking died and went to beef heaven burger at yo mama's, and probably a bunch of other things i'm forgetting.

*yes i'm a lawyer. fuck it, i don't give a shit about anonymity anymore. have at me stalkers.

new blog

2010-10-04T18:54:00.004-04:00

thank you readers for your support. i am still scrapping the food blog thing but i have found a new calling. that's right, i have started a new blog... an online advice column. get your liz fix at ask liz enfuego. and please send some questions my way.

because i no longer care about alienating my readers

2010-10-03T22:32:00.007-04:00

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "montgomery inn":

Is it possible that you have let your blogging go to your head? We always get great service and great food. Try something else on the menu like a steak or seafood. The roasted duck is amazing. Open mah mind. I guess the ribs just arent your style.....

dear anonymous,

their ribs taste like hell. go fuck yourself.

thanks,

liz

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "anchor grill":

"nobody i know hangs out in covington to drink."

Srsly? Have you not heard of Mainstrasse? It has like 20 pubs, restaurants, and bars within a few blocks. One of the best night-life areas in Cincinnati. Anchor Grill is a few blocks south of it.

dear anonymous,

srsly? i'm 30 years old. nobody i know hangs out in mainstrasse. go fuck yourself.

thanks,

liz

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "and the worst restaurant in cincinnati award goes ...":

Liz: I have a new found respect for you!! Anyone who thinks CR sucks the big one is alright in my book. It's amazing the kind of culinary cretins that place attracts, but, hey, the Olive Garden gets best Italian restaurant of Cincinnati awards many years in a row. This place ain't New Orleans.

I'll never dis you again

dear anonymous,

i'm so thrilled that you will never dis me again. go fuck yourself.

thanks,

liz

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "...crickets chirping...":

In all reality, you should ALL stop dogging on Balboa's. It is NOT bad in the least bit and I'm so over people not taking the time to realize when everything isn't perfect there's usually a good reason. It hasn't even been open a full year and can't be expected to be perfect. It's really grown in the past few months and CAN be expected to be great.

dear anonymous,

in all reality, you are an idiot. go fuck yourself.

thanks,

liz

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "izen":

I read your review and have to say that you are very off with all your comments. Not sure if you have had Korean food from other places. I happen to be Korean and have actually had most of the over priced god awful Korean food in this city and I actually frequent Izen. Not because it has the best Korean food but that it has the best for the money in Cincinnati. Cincinnati in general is extremely over priced for Asian food and in particular Korean food. I dont know why. Maybe because white people in this city don't know better. But its pretty obvious that you had a mindset to not enjoy the food at Izen.
Again the food is actually pretty decent as well as the price. which is why I keep going. Certainly everything there is pre made and that takes away from the quality of the food but it still tastes pretty good overall. You can actually tell by the number of Korean people that actually frequent the establishment which is more than I can say for places like Riverside Korean restaurant or that Sung's Bistro place. Two of the worst Korean restaurants known to man. But you wouldnt know that judging by how many white people are in there at any one time.

dear anonymous,

i had a mindset to not enjoy the food at izen because it was crappy food. go fuck yourself.

thanks,

liz

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "taste of the nfl":

I have to say, I can't believe I spent the time to read this crap. I am one of the restaurants that participate each year in this event. Our restaurants pay for 100% of the food that is served that evening, and most of us our independently owned and operated. Are you as naive as to say that we want to throw our money away. Have you ever prepared for an event like this? 1000 guest are invited, 28 restaurants are involved, placement of the booth are all factors to how much we prepare. Now, predict on who's going to stop by your booth once, who's going to stop by twice and who's not going to stop by at all. My restaurant takes pride in supporting the community and the enviroment and I think your thoughts and comments are completely rude and green.

dear anonymous,

i think leaving bitchy anonymous comments on my blog is completely rude and green. go fuck yourself.

thanks,

liz

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "chinese imperial inn":

Your temper brings dishonor to my Happy Mu-Shu Palace.

dear anonymous,

you are funny. go fuck yourself, but in a way that brings pleasure to your happy mu-shu palace.

thanks,

liz

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "take the cake is now open for sunday brunch!":

Here we go again. Decided to whack out about writing a blog regularly???. Why don't you stick to lame posts about your insipid downtown job and fake posts about foods you know nothing about???

dear anonymous,

why don't you stick to reading blogs that you actually enjoy? go fuck yourself.

thanks,

liz

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "if it wasn't already clear...":

I find most bloggers to be self-absorbed and whiny. You have proven my observation perfectly.

dear anonymous,

i find that most anonymous commenters need to go fuck themselves. go fuck yourself.

thanks,

liz

intermission, or maybe the end

2010-09-19T14:19:00.011-04:00

thanks to the concerned readers who have been checking on where i'm at. i'm not dead or sick or anything, i just have been really busy with other things going on in my life and i also haven't felt like blogging.

some thoughts on food blogging in cincinnati... i initially started my blog when i lived in new york and i couldn't really get into it because there were so many other people already out there who said, or were saying, everything i could think of to say. when i started blogging here in cincinnati, i don't think there were any other dedicated food blogs so it was fun to be able to put my opinion out there. now, the landscape has totally changed... there are more food blogs than i can even count and i am bored with almost all of them.

in addition, it feels like there is some sort of unspoken competition to see who can review the new places the fastest (case in point: joe's diner, which received multiple reviews and criticisms before they even had an official opening) and who can get the most urbanspoon points. yawn. i think it's great to have a lot of variety in viewpoints, and it's awesome that other people get as excited about food as i do, but the way i feel is that if 30+ other people are out there giving their opinions about places, there's just nothing interesting that i am going to be able to add to the internet clamor. i like doing things that feel new and dynamic and food blogging just isn't that for me anymore.

in addition to becoming bored with food blogging, i am also feeling a need for increased privacy in my life. i have had a number of situations over the course of the past couple of years in which i have felt overexposed, both on this blog and in other places on the internet. this is due to having more than my fair share of internet stalkers and/or people who felt that they had a real connection with me just from reading some shit i wrote about food, and reacted negatively (and occasionally creepily) when i made it clear that i did not feel the same way about them.

add to that the equally creepy basket cases who start either spewing venom or plotting revenge the minute i say something they don't like (it's a FOOD BLOG people) and it's just become less and less fun to put my opinions out there.

anyway, that's the story on the lack of posts and i don't know if or when anything will change. more food bloggers are going to keep popping up and people are not going to get any less creepy. but who knows, maybe i will miss it at some point and come back. i am not good at predicting the future. at any rate, thanks for reading.

green eats

2010-07-29T22:20:00.013-04:00

i saw krishna tonight and i realized that i still have not written a post about green eats... there is no excuse for this because she has had her awesome green/local/delicious catering business for almost a year now and my readers need to know about it.

stuffed mushrooms

a year ago krishna had a regular boring 9 to 5 office job and dreamed of one day opening her own catering business. she took cooking classes night to hone her skills and graduated from the midwest culinary institute last year. all her friends who had ever eaten her food (including me) were like "you can do it, your food is delicious, people will want it." she was not sure. finally she decided to take the plunge and quit her job and she has been going nonstop ever since.

arroz al horno with blood sausage

she cooks for people in their homes, does dinner parties and weddings, and she also does fun stuff like cooking demonstrations at park + vine and wine tastings at market wines. i have never been able to get her to nail down prices for me but that is because she will work with each of her clients' budgets to make food that is both delicious and within their price range.

gambas al ajillo

most the pictures in this blog are photos of a spanish meal that krishna made for maggie's birthday back in january. it was delicious and muy autentico. maggie used to live in spain back in high school and had very specific recipe and ingredient requests, and krishna was able to give her exactly what she wanted.

salad with potatoes, oranges, and red peppers and i have no clue what it is called in spanish

there are so many catering businesses popping up all over cincinnati right now. even if you are specifically looking for a caterer who focuses on fresh, local ingredients, you have your choice. of course i think you should choose krishna for all your food preparation needs because she is my friend. but also she is just a damn good cook. over the past few years i have tried all different kinds of things she has made... brunches, indian food, appetizers, this extravagant spanish meal, salads, soups, desserts. it is all ridiculously good.

red velvet trifle... totally not spanish but it's what maggie wanted

i remember one time krishna prepared an afternoon tapas-style cocktail party for her birthday. one of the things she made was this fig and caramelized onion spread with rosemary. i was obsessed with it. i loved it so much that the next time she made it she gave me her extras and i ate it on everything i could think of for days. and the thing is i don't even really like figs that much (i know that's crazy). it's like she just understood the flavor, texture, and qualities of the figs so well that she knew how to make them into something even better than they started off as (suck it, grammar nazis).

here is krishna serving up her awesome turkey chili at the findlay market chili cookoff

krishna just knows what she is doing with every ingredient in the kitchen, and spends pretty much every free moment learning about and working with local and sustainable food sources. she is always traveling to different farms to find out where to get the best of whatever specific food product she wants, she belongs to vegetable and meat CSAs, and she is very active in the cincinnati slow food movement. there is nothing she puts in her recipes that doesn't belong, and at the same time she comes up with totally unique flavor and ingredient combinations. her food is clean and fresh. the flavors and ingredients are distinct, bold, and thoughtfully created. everything always looks amazing and tastes just as good as it looks.

eat this now: salted rye at skirtz & johnston

2010-07-25T23:42:00.006-04:00

like everyone else i have been peeping in the windows at skirtz & johnston every time i have been to findlay market for the past few months, only to pass it up for gelato or rib tips or a waffle or all of the above. today my friend christine was visiting and we were feeling adventurous (and we had to go to the bathroom) so we went in.

mr. t says, "low carb diet? i pity the fool!"

on the counter they had big plates of fat, tempting slices of bread, including this salted rye. i have been obsessed with salted rye ever since the first time jesus brought it into my life at the st. john white oak fish fry last year. well that salted rye was nothing compared to this. soft, chewy, salty, caraway seedy... YUM. we also tried the roasted garlic asiago bread (delicious) and ogled the desserts (beautiful) but this salted rye stole my heart. you must eat this bread.

anchor grill

2010-07-21T23:32:00.018-04:00

people have been telling me that i need to go to the anchor grill* since like the first day i moved to cincinnati. i distinctly remember having beers with people i haven't talked to in years now very soon after i arrived fresh off the east coast boat and a guy was telling me some convoluted story about a place with a jukebox and "this weird barbie doll dance thing" where people would go to eat "but only if it's like 3 am and you are really drunk." everyone who ever talked about the place instructed me that "you have to get the goetta omelet" but admonished me to remember that "you're not going there for the food."

good food

obviously i had to go to this place, but somehow i could never make it happen. nobody ever wants to drive to covington after they are already drunk, and nobody i know hangs out in covington to drink. i would occasionally throw it out there as a brunch suggestion but people would laugh at me. "go to the anchor grill SOBER?!?!" they would exclaim in pure and utter shock. "you can't go to the anchor grill SOBER! and you can't go NOW! you have to go at THREE AM!!!"

i would protest that at this rate, i was never going to make it there. i got no sympathy. "you CAN'T go to the anchor grill if you're not DRUNK and it's not THREE AM," people kept telling me. "NOBODY does that. NOBODY!!!" nobody, it turns out, but kieran.

the only person in cincinnati who will go to the anchor grill sober at 6 pm on a weeknight

i don't have anything really to say about the food. i ordered the goetta omelet and it was fine. it was fried goetta with american cheese melted on top all rolled into eggs. i think i would have preferred cheddar cheese, but on the other hand i enjoyed the super thin crispy goetta. overall it was just straight up middle american greasy spoon food, which is exactly what it is supposed to be.

the ambience however was everything i hoped it would be and more. i am going to let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

i don't think we're in kansas anymore

sorry it's blurry but i couldn't ruin this moment with a flash. fyi, that table ordered steaks for dinner. steaks. at the anchor grill.

they were as confused as i was

i think this meal may have taken a year off my life

i wonder what this mural looks like to really drunk people

until next time, anchor grill. because i am sure i will be back. i just might not remember it.

* yes, their website is a myspace page.

huevos rancheros

2010-07-18T21:35:00.009-04:00

to thank brian for being such an awesome roommate i decided to make him breakfast today. i told him he had his choice of omelettes, scrambled eggs with chicken mango sausage, or huevos rancheros. he chose huevos rancheros so that is what he got.

i had never made huevos rancheros before so i used a combination of the mark bittman and smitten kitchen recipes. mainly i used mark bittman's method but i embellished them a la smitten kitchen by using black beans instead of refried and adding in some fresh salsa and some guacamole.

i won't make you wait to ogle the deliciousness

for the salsa i used herdez salsa taquera which is one of my absolute favorite jarred salsas. i can make my own salsa but i am lazy and herdez is good and cheap. you can find it at pretty much any of the stores around here. if you feel like a more tomatoey salsa, go for the herdez salsa casera. i am a big fan of herdez in general.

as for the beans i got a can of black beans and threw them into some onions and garlic and thyme which i had been cooking until the onions got soft. then i softened them up a bit and added a bay leaf and some lime juice and salt and pepper. they simmered for a while.

then i just put it all together the way mark bittman says and they came out delicious and we put the fresh salsa and guacamole on top. i don't have a specific recipe for fresh salsa but it is really easy, you just chop up some tomatoes (i had some delicious ones from my uncle's garden and the farmer's market) and a hot pepper (from my garden this time) and some onion and garlic and cilantro and then mix it all together with some lime juice, a little white vinegar, and plenty of salt.

this is approximately what your fresh salsa should look like

you may as well make these huevos rancheros yourself because the only place you are going to find any that are even close to this good around here are at tucker's and they are only going to give you a tiny little speck of their fresh salsa. actually i am maybe lying, i bet take the cake does huevos rancheros that are even better than this. i don't know that for sure but it just seems likely.

westside adventure

2010-07-17T15:53:00.014-04:00

i love my roommate. i know i gush about him all the time but he really is the best. as tempting as it is however i am not allowed to pimp him out over this blog. sorry boys.

anyway, so yesterday i was feeling super crabby and cabin fevery because i have been sick with this weird virus that gave me fevers and "temporary arthritis" of the knees. temporary arthritis. i have never heard of this before but apparently it is something you can get with viruses. yes, i am officially a grandma. so i was really ornery because i had been sitting around the house for days watching way too much shitty tv and i was starting to lose my ability to socially interact in a normal way.

brian saw only one solution to this problem... let me loose on the westside. he grew up in... western hills? cheviot? i don't really know. somewhere far. so into the car we went to check out the one (that we know of) japanese restaurant on the westside, sakura.

on the drive i started dreaming about ramen and tempura and bento boxes. brian had never heard of a bento box before so i got him all fired up about it. well then we pull into the parking lot and i realized that maybe my dream was going to remain a dream. "are you sure we're in the right place?" i asked. "yes," said brian. "i told you it was in a hotel."

yes, this is what it really looked like

brian had told me that he used to work at sakura when it was another restaurant back in high school and he was excited to see how it looked now. well it turns out nothing had changed since 2000, or since 1978 for that matter.

damn, i forgot my quaaludes

"we can go somewhere else if you want," said brian. "no," i said, "it's cool. we're here now. let's see what this is all about." i snapped photos of people in cowboy hats while we waited for a table.

brian comes face to face with what could have been his destiny

when we sat down and looked at the menu i got confused. "where are the bento boxes?" i wondered. then it dawned on me. there were no bento boxes. this was some benihana spinoff. we asked for a sushi menu and after giving us a crazy look and announcing that she had a "pen fetish," our waitress wandered off, never to return.

this is the actual menu. those are the actual prices. also, is it just me or is this the first time chateaubriand has appeared on a menu since 1978?

another waitress, who was actually japanese, brought us sushi menus. i had gotten all fired up about drinking mai tais and living it up 70s style but after facing some definitively non-70s prices, we ended up just sticking to water. long wait times were not a problem however because there was lots of great people watching to be had.

dude: so do you know why these people are so skinny?

girl: no, why?

dude: because they eat rice with those sticks and they can only pick it up a little bit at a time and they get tired so they never eat that much.

girl: ohhh.

we did finally get our sushi and it was ok. i give them points for presentation because it did look pretty cool. however the quality of the fish was mediocre... it's not that it had gone bad, it was just flavorless. and almost every sushi option involved a generous dousing of mayo, or something cooked, neither of which are my preferred sushi roll preparations.

pretty...

...but not that good

finally we got our bill and got the hell out of there. we paid $50 including tax and tip which i thought was a lot. i know i am probably preaching to the choir here, but for god's sake do not drive a half hour into the west side to try to get good sushi. for the people watching however, it is definitely worth it.

people watching aside, i needed some kind of gustatory redemption so i asked for my westside guide to take me to one of those west side whippy dip places i keep hearing about. brian knew just the place... zip dip. he made me branch out from my usual boring twist cone so i got a butterscotch sundae and it was delicious.

confucius say... when on the westside, eat as the westsiders eat

i want blue!!!

i want some creamy whip in my mouth!!!

every time i go to the west side i feel like i am in some crazy bizarro sequel to napoleon dynamite where everyone is kind of living in a different time, and yet there is still internet and energy drinks and cell phones. i love it though and a trip to the west side is always the perfect distraction from whatever normal everyday problems i might be having. thanks brian!

oh all right dave le, you win

2010-07-11T18:57:00.005-04:00

i have been all worked up about the impending arrival of pho lang thang ever since i met dave le, one of the guys behind the operation, a couple months ago at arnold's. i am absolutely obsessed with vietnamese food and i have always wanted more of it in cincinnati. so when dave told me that he and some friends were going to be opening a place up in findlay market, i could not wait.

pho lang thent

today dave and friends had prepared a sneak peek of their food for second sundays on main. they didn't have their whole future menu available, and all i tried were spring rolls and the vietnamese coffee. but damn was it good. the spring rolls were perfect... chewy and crunchy and the shrimp was juicy and not overcooked. the vietnamese coffee was refreshing and cool and not too sweet. i am sold and i can't wait to spend all my free time stalking them when they open at findlay (which dave says should be sometime in july... hurry it up boys).

burger madness

2010-06-29T23:06:00.007-04:00

i went to arthur's tonight with my running friends and i was like damn, this is a good burger. now i know they don't always get it right... how many times have i ordered an arthur's burger medium rare only to find my burger cooked all the way through? or maybe the bacon is overcooked, or the onions are undercooked, or whatever. but overall if you hit up burger madness ($7 for a burger with all the toppings you want and fries, sun-tues), you are getting some serious bang for your buck. also they are nice there and i like that. it makes my food taste better.

everybody has been talking to me about the cincinnati magazine 40 best burgers issue for the past week. i suppose it may seem worthwhile to try to rank 40 burgers, but i have a major beef (get it? beef? hahaha) with it because i mean come on, how can you really rank 40 different burgers? (side note: 365 things to do in cincinnati is doing a best burger quest that i think seems a lot more reasonable and reliable).

and apparently (i don't really know for sure because i haven't bothered to read the article since everyone just tells me about it all the time) it wasn't one person trying all the burgers. it was several people. and who knows what their personal ranking system is, and how they like their burger, and all the other variables. and that is the only way i can figure that the arthur's burger landed squarely at #37 or whatever. i am totally making that number up, it might be #23 or #15 or #31, i have no clue. all i know is that it is not high enough.

my favorite burger in cincinnati is terry's. i know i am a burger whore and on the bandwagon and blah blah blah but i'm sorry, that is a fucking good burger. somebody told me once that it tasted "livery" and i guess they went on a bad night. once i had a less than stellar burger there but every other time it is the best. now i agree, the wait is a pain in the ass and that germ infested knife that everybody passes around and touches and licks and whatever freaks me out, but the burger itself is delicious.

my #2 burger in cincinnati is my own. i'm not being full of myself, i just make a really good burger. very high up there on my list also are mayberry which serves a ridiculous burger which you should never eat for lunch if you want to try to get anything done that afternoon, and cafe de wheels because you can get their burger animal style, and gordo's because they put bacon in their meat, and zip's and paula's because they are cheap and good.

i have by no means tried every potentially good burger in cincinnati. places that people talk about all the time that i haven't been include:

quatman's
five guys
wildflower, which serves #1 according to the cincinnati magazine article (i think)
cricket lounge
zola
virgil's (do they have burgers? maybe i am making that up)
lots of other places

anyway, the point of all this burger rambling is that we all have our own tastes and i feel like to say that one burger is superlatively the best, or to pretend that you can rank them in some sort of objective way (especially if the tasters and/or tasting methods are inconsistent), is silly. we do not need some magazine telling us which ones we should like and in which order. cincinnati has a lot of good burgers and we should all just be happy about that.

taste of the nfl... yawn

2010-06-24T22:51:00.014-04:00

one of the great things about blogging is that you can really learn a lot about yourself. you do new things so that you can blog about them and in the process you expose yourself to experiences you may never have had, and are forced to come up with opinions on them so you have something to write about.

my name is liz and i have learned that i do not like the taste of the nfl. (read my post from last year for a full breakdown of the event).

i can't blame the freestore foodbank. after i met with them, i was really inspired about all the efforts they put into the event and the hard work they do to make it both fun and significant. when i went this year, i noticed they had made a number of changes such as making the freestore foodbank theme more prominent, doing away with the donation table, and the restaurants seemed to have quite a bit less food on hand so much less was thrown away. in fact, i didn't actually see any food get thrown away. i observed the green dog table packing away their leftovers. and if anyone else threw food away, it happened discreetly. that was great.

my one moment of joy was getting the last miller high life. it is the champagne of beers after all.

and it's really a worthwhile event. it raises a shit ton of money for hungry people. bengals fans get to meet their favorite players. lots of good food is available and the alcohol is free flowing. it's just not for me. it's too crowded. loud music is thumping in the background. a lot of the food is cold-ish or warm-ish or dried out or over or underseasoned. jean robert's chicken was a dry, bland waste of food. i love jean robert normally so this is not to knock him... it's just the nature of this kind of event where you prepare food ahead of time and leave it out. the scallop prepared at the midwest culinary institute table was so chewy and gummy that i had to spit it out (and i'm not a food spitter outer).

dojo was excellent but it's an ice cream cart so there's not a lot to mess up. the green dog blt was yummy. pretty much everything else was somewhere on a scale from unmemorable to kind of gross. i will not take the time to individually insult restaurants that i know can make much better food on their home turf.

this is how kieran feels about taste of the nfl

on top of that you have unnecessarily loud, thumping music... crowds of oblivious, geeked up bengals fans (and i don't give a shit about the bengals)... piles of uneaten food and plates and cups and silverware everywhere. there is nowhere to sit and your eardrums are screaming for a break. fluorescent lights beat down on your pupils. the decor is mid-90s convention center chic. do you enjoy a modicum of personal space? too bad. people are spilling drinks on you and shoving things in your face and jostling you. they ran out of anything but miller lite 2 hours ago. the cocktails taste like kool aid. you can't even get drunk enough to pretend to have fun because the line for the bar is so long.

the taste of the nfl is a fun night for a lot of people that raises a significant amount of money for a great cause. i totally support it. however, i never want to go to it ever again. yes, i know i am a complete asshole. i don't know what to say. it's just not for me.

what i did this weekend... i pickled

2010-06-20T18:57:00.016-04:00

i don't really have a recipe, i just kind of loosely followed the recipes in the link in my previous posts on the topic of pickling (especially sierra's). you are just boiling up some brine + spices, throwing the veggies in a jar, pouring hot brine on top, letting them cool, then putting on lids and popping them in the fridge. my general proportions were as follows:

1 part salt
2 parts sugar
2 parts water
4 parts vinegar (i used a variety including white, rice wine, white wine, and tarragon)
various combinations of the following herbs/spices: fresh dill, dill seed, turmeric, mustard seed, celery seed, coriander seed, black peppercorns, dried onions, fresh garlic. i just threw it in and did not measure how much.
i used the following vegetables: carrots (blanched), cucumbers, green beans

first i made pickled carrots because i had a bunch of carrots laying around. i made way too much brine so i knew i was going to be making more pickles very soon...

oops

next i decided to do cucumbers, because it is traditional (and i love them), and green beans, because i love them.

pretty!

as if that was not enough pickles i had to go out to jungle jim's to get cucumber kimchee because i was seriously craving it after that post the other day. yes i bought it today and i have already eaten a quarter of the jar. yes that is a 32 oz. jar.

i have zero self control so i have already gotten into the pickled carrots even though i just made them yesterday. they are so delicious. right now i am cooking up a huge pot of rice in my rice cooker and i am going to eat all these pickles with the rice all week for lunch, with probably some beef bulgogi or grilled chicken or something. i am going to try to save a couple jars for more than a week so i can see what they taste like after that long but i don't know if i will make it.

food safety note: these are all refrigerator pickles. that means they only last for a few weeks and must stay in the fridge. you can make pickles that will keep in your cupboard if you know proper canning procedures, but i don't so just fyi.

eat this now: geeta's mango chutney and ning chi chili with garlic

2010-06-19T13:31:00.007-04:00

i always seem to do my best cooking for myself, and cousin brian now that he lives with me. i think it is because i feel more comfortable just throwing a bunch of shit together and seeing how it comes out without worrying if it will be good. that usually leads to something really interesting and delicious. if i know i am cooking for other people, i tend to be less creative because i am concerned that things won't work and they will not enjoy their meal.

when i went to jungle jim's with my mom last month, i picked up lots of different delicious ingredients which i have been throwing into all kinds of dishes. today i had some leftover rotisserie chicken and wanted some curry chicken salad.

do not try to live one more minute without these condiments

let me just stop and talk about rotisserie chicken for a second because i have some strong opinions on the issue. first of all the only place in my opinion in cincinnati to buy rotisserie chickens is the fresh market. yes i know it is expensive to shop there but this is one thing that is worth buying there. their rotisserie chickens are usually $7-8 and i can get at least four meals out of them. unlike pretty much every rotisserie chicken i have had, which starts out tasting ok but gets a weird flavor and texture after being in the fridge, their rotisserie chickens still taste like normal chicken a few days later. also they are just more delicious from the start, and the skin is not all gooey and weird.

anyway so i had some leftover rotisserie chicken in the fridge. i was poking around and found geeta's mango chutney which i thought would be perfect with the curry. i am a big fan of mango chutney of any type but geeta's is just the shit. the flavors are bold and the spices in it are whole and potent. big chunks of mango and you can taste everything separately (the flavors do not all just blend together like other jarred chutneys). it is spicy and sweet and salty. so good.

i also wanted a little kick so i pulled out the ning chi chili with garlic. i have been absolutely obsessed with this condiment since opening it last week. i already liked the various chili with garlic variants that you can get (all those little plastic bottles with green lids and roosters on them or whatever) but this is just a completely different thing. first of all it has no vinegar or preservatives. it is literally just big ass chunks of garlic and super spicy chilis in oil with a little salt and sugar. it is so absurdly garlicky that really no one should ever eat it if they are going to be around other people but i do it all the time and make people suffer and it is so worth it.

here is my damn good curry chicken salad

anyway so i threw these in with the chicken and some madras curry and then some mayo and colman's mustard, and some chopped up pecans and dried apricots and shredded carrots. then i stirred it all up and put it on bread and it was delicious.

eat this now: korea kimchee

2010-06-14T11:21:00.004-04:00

korea kimchee is by far the best jarred kimchee you can buy, at least in cincinnati. the only place around here that i know of that sells it is jungle jim's. the best part is that not only do they do the standard pickled cabbage but they do all kinds of other things (my other favorite is the cucumbers). it is super spicy and delicious. the flavors are bold and authentic and far better than anything else available locally (especially that nasty fabulous ferments crap... bleah).

crappy cell phone pic so you know what it looks like

i really want to make my own pickled things. i am too lazy to learn how to do canning so i am going to try to do fridge pickles like sierra does on forkheartknife. i am absolutely obsessed with pickled green beans so i have to do that. i also want to try making pickled garlic.

does anybody know how to make kimchee? is it hard? this might be one of those things that i am better off just buying.

florida vacation

2010-06-11T23:02:00.018-04:00

cousin brian* and i took a trip to ft. lauderdale where we laid on the beach or at the pool all week. it was nice and relaxing. we also ate some good food. here are pictures.

we went grocery shopping so we would not eat out too much

i tried to make grilled cheeses but i was drunk and burned them. we put easy cheese on it to mask the burned taste. not my most shining culinary moment but damn that tasted good after 2 bottles of wine...

here is a picture of a meal that turned out a little better

we went to miami to see andy and diego and we ate at a brazilian place where i had moqueca de peixe... yummy

apparently the oil leak has not yet hit ft. lauderdale

coconut panna cotta with orange and pineapple sauce... this was the most refreshing and delicious dessert

we found some good new york style pizza

fresh, simple, amazing peruvian ceviche

i finally got some more lusted-after oysters

some hot meat... and two steaks

we had sushi on our last night in florida and it was damn good

oh yeah we also went to the beach

i know i am really from cincinnati now because the first thing we ate when we got home was skyline

*not actually my cousin

actual headlines from the cincinnati enquirer

2010-05-27T10:06:00.011-04:00

Police: Bank robber strikes again

shocking!

Local Jews at White House today

breaking news: there are jews in the white house. there are JEWS in the white house.

Ohio House, Senate pass dueling casino bills

however, legislators remain deadlocked on the dueling piano bills.

Boy suspected in sexual assaults on two girls on Monroe school bus

the girls stated that they are "pretty sure" it was a boy, although they "couldn't really tell" because "it was so small."

Butler County parks may put half-mill levy on ballot

or they may not. stay tuned.

Council divided on Club Ritz approach

some council members believe there should be a $20 cover for wristbands, with all you can drink bar access all night. others argued for a $10 cover, with an open bar only until 11 pm. also up for debate: should ladies drink free?

newport pizza company

2010-05-23T21:58:00.018-04:00

it seems that everyone likes newport pizza company. i don't. to be fair, i have only been there once (today), but i was totally unimpressed. my list of complaints is as follows.

1. it is overpriced. a thin, 12 inch pizza ranges from about $10-13. are you serious?

2. the crust is bland and cracker-ish.

it's not delivery, it's not digiorno... it's disappointing

3. the toppings are meager. pictured above (sorry for the crappy cell phone pic) is the pizza i ordered, the "lotsa mozza and roma." please note that there is lotsa nothing. i actually took this picture to illustrate how little cheese and toppings i got. most of the slices were lucky if they had cheese on 2/3 of the slice. that might be ok if the crust was delicious but see #2. alternately, that might be ok if the pizza was cheap but see #1.

4. service is mediocre at best. the waitress did not check on us after bringing our food so i went up to the counter to ask for pizza sauce (because my pizza was so bland) and waited there staring at her for several minutes before i caught her attention. dude, one of your customers has hunted you down at the bar... you might want to see what i want. i asked her for sauce because the pizza was bland. she acted unsurprised (so umm... you already knew the pizza was bland?) but did not offer to bring me something else. she did promptly bring me a tiny cup of sauce... and it was ice cold. gee, thanks for the dollop of prego (i mean, if it was fresh, wouldn't it be warm?). sorry, i know i am being super bitchy, but there were like 4 tables and i was paying a lot (i thought) for a small, tasteless, disappointing pizza and it felt like a kick in the pants to not even get warm sauce. then, when we paid, she came back and took the tips off the table while we were still sitting there. isn't that waitressing 101? ok, i will stop being an asshole.

5. there was no flavor. my pizza was mozzarella, tomatoes, and a few tiny shreds of dried out basil. that's it. no garlic. no sauce. no nothing. for that i paid $11.25 plus tax and tip. i was with barry and bri and they got pizzas with more toppings that looked better, the meatball lasagna ($13.25) and the garden of eden ($12.25), and i tasted the lasagna one and it was better than mine anyway, but they were definitely not worth the price.

6. i ate at 5 pm and it's 10 pm and i'm hungry.

i know everyone loves this place but i don't get it. i suppose i should give it another chance but with all the other really good pizza options around (ahem dewey's ahem) i don't really see the point.

eat this now: wicked 'wich

2010-05-21T08:29:00.001-04:00

ok i know it is a stupid name but wicked 'wich serves... you heard it here first (or well actually probably more like fifth or sixth)... the best deli sandwiches in cincinnati.

roast beef and cheddar on brioche

i cannot do justice to these sandwiches. the meats are roasted with care and sliced to order. the spreads are handcrafted. the side items are innovative and delicious. read what they say about it on their website:

Our interest in Wicked ‘wich stemmed from a desire to create a great sandwich and to share it with others. A great sandwich begins and ends with great ingredients. Certain things are a must in assembling a great sandwich. The butter toasted bread, slow pressure roasted meats, fresh produce prepared daily, and condiments and relishes that are well crafted. We like to refer to it as ‘wich crafted.

this is ALL TRUE. i know that seems unlikely. believe it, skeptical readers.

roast chicken and provolone (?) on salted rye

so far i have had the roast beef with cheddar on brioche (awesome) and the corned beef with swiss and coleslaw on salted rye (amazing). the corned beef is truly a marvel. you will never go to izzy's again (sorry izzy's). well except maybe for the potato pancake.

here is their menu. everything on the menu actually tastes even better than it sounds. you should eat there asap.

forkheartknife

2010-05-17T08:41:00.006-04:00

it has been a long time since i have been this excited about a place and a post. i am so excited i don't even know where to start. we have a lot of things coming together here. i will break it down.

forkheartknife

forkheartknife is a new catering kitchen and occasionally a casual restaurant on main street just south of liberty. i first heard about it from this soapbox article via wine me, dine me.

the kitchen

the minute i finished reading the article i was totally excited. fresh, interesting, cheap food in over the rhine = awesome. the story of how co-owners sierra and leah decided to start their kitchen = emotional. the innovative, dynamic style of the kitchen = intriguing. i had to know more.

sierra's blog

my next stop from the article was the forkheartknife blog. i read the entire blog in a couple of hours. i was so fascinated that i started in on the clean plate club blog, sierra's former blog. yes, i am a stalker. i was just totally into the awesome photographs and even more so, sierra's writing style. here, i will give you some examples:

i flipped through my recipes and found this tart recipe (bon appetit?). they are beautiful and when leah and i did our taste testing i was jumping around yelling YUM with my mouth full and the chills on my arms. a sure sign that we had struck gold. this one is vegetarian with asparagus, piquillo peppers and goat cheese baked in an egg custard with a sprinkle of spanish paprika.

i make a lazy pickle, or “quickle” (because i like making combo words, too). i don’t have a granny to teach me the fine nuances of canning, and so i get stuff in a jar with a tight lid and keep everything in the fridge for safety. for veggies like cukes, peppers, okra, onions, green beans, softer veggies: pack a jar with the vegetable, heat the pickling brine on the stove and pour it over the jar after it comes to a boil, making sure that the seasonings are equally distributed in each jar. the lids go on while things are still really hot and that usually leaves me hearing the POP of the jars sealing. things cool down and they go in the fridge for up to a month. i love them in the first week, usually still nice and crunchy and fresh tasting. not that they get less crunchy, but its fun to taste how things change while they are hanging around longer…

little known fact: long ago, before i even started culinary school, i lived in providence, rhode island for 6 months. while i was there, i worked at a bakery, as a barista and counter person. i would have to go in at 4 in the morn and dust all the flour off the glass display shelves, arrange the bread, scones, muffins, cookies, etc. and i fell in love with food then. that is when it happened. walking in there on a cold morning when it was almost impossible to get out of bed, and having it be hot and steamy from the ovens.. the glass fogged up… the smell… romantic as hell. i gained about 20 pounds in those 6 months, eating that bread and marveling at its perfection.

i swear i got the chills when i put this bite in my mouth. i wanted to do something bacon wrapped for this party (how is it ever wrong?). and i remembered jenna raving about this bacon wrapped date thing she’d had at a wine dinner at dunham cellars.. stuffed with manchego made for the perfect combo! manchego cheese is my favorite, its spanish and its got a great, smooth, nutty flavor. with the sweet date, the nuttiness grounds the bite, the crispness and saltiness and fat of the bacon adding everything else you would ever want! EATING FOOD IS SO AMAZING!!

the combination of straightforward, to the point descriptions plus the uncontainable excitement for food itself and feeding other people that comes through in every sentence just got me. that plus she makes pickles!

pizza night

a quick segue into pizza night. one final reason i became fully obsessed with forkheartknife. pizza night is a thing that used to happen last summer. a group of guys who are all amazing cooks would get together and make this amazing pizza (homemade everything... dough, pizza sauce, sausage, you name it they made it) on thursday nights in the take the cake space.

the pizzas were an absolute revelation. i could not get enough of them. they would make seven kinds of pizza, plus two appetizers (usually some variations on bruschetta... my favorite was the tuna paste mashed up with fresh garlic... yum). occasionally there was a sorbet which i never seemed to be able to get my hands on.

you would show up at like 7, pay $10, bring all the wine and beer of your own you wanted, and just hang out and chat and eat. the appetizers came out first and then one by one, the pizzas. it was just one pizza at a time so you would kind of snack all evening while you drank and met new friends. the food was amazing, straight up skilled kitchen creativity, and it was also just such an experience going there and eating awesome food and talking to people who loved food and relaxing and having fun, all while knowing it could not last forever or probably even much longer.

pizza night was so good that i vowed to myself i would never breathe a word about it on this blog. i only told maybe five or six of my friends about it. i never even took pictures of it (and i always take pictures). it was so awesome and felt so tenuous and fleeting that i was scared it might get overrun with people and disappear forever. and then at the end of the summer it was over. now it is just a memory for the people who were able to experience it. however, rumor has it that the pizza night guys are hard at work developing their new idea of opening a full on restaurant. i am very excited about this but i know it will not be the same.

here is the point of me talking about pizza night: on one of sierra's blogs, i found this post. she had been to pizza night! and then i found this post. and this post. and this post. and this post. she had made the sorbet at pizza night!!!

after that i was officially obsessed. i had to meet this girl and eat her food.

sunday brunch

a bit more internet stalking and i learned that forkheartknife was open last week for thursday dinner and sunday brunch. they are just getting started and don't know until that week when they will be open. so they post it on facebook and twitter. if that is too hard for you then fine, more food for me.

anyway i had to go asap so i rounded up erin and we went for brunch. we sipped coffee outside while waiting a few short minutes for a table and then we decided we had to try one of everything on the menu. it was wonderful and everything i hoped it could be. we ate some delicious things:

fruit gazpacho and lemon bread pudding with raspberry sauce

bacon and collard green frittata and spiced roasted potatoes with chimichurri and red pepper romesco

if those photos don't sell you then there is nothing i can say that will. the food was awesome. fresh, simple, to the point, and very flavorful. the bread pudding especially impressed me. i am not a big sweet breakfast person and it was perfect. the lemon custard (was it custard?) was tart and rich without being too sweet. the raspberry sauce was deeply flavored and balanced the lemon perfectly. the bread itself was thick and chewy and totally able to handle the strong flavors of the lemon and raspberry. so. damn. good.

on top of all that we got to meet sierra and leah who are just as awesome in person as they seem on the internet. sierra even gave us a couple of muffins which we munched on later that afternoon. they were moist, tasty carrot muffins with big fat juicy raisins and pineapple chunks inside. delicious.

thank you forkheartknife for living up to all my wildest internet stalker dreams! i am excited to see how this place develops. you should get there as soon as humanly possible, but don't forget to make sure they are open first.

return to taste of the nfl

2010-05-15T13:18:00.011-04:00

long time readers will remember that last year, i got invited to attend taste of the nfl. those readers will also remember that after the event, i wrote a post about it that stirred up some controversy. in a nutshell, i thought it was a good event in concept (raising money for the freestore foodbank while allowing bengals fans to eat good food and meet the team), but in practice it was kind of disturbing for the following reasons: a) there was very little emphasis on the fact that the event was actually for the freestore foodbank, b) a shit ton of food was being thrown away at an event that was meant to benefit hungry people, and c) nobody seemed to be the least bit bothered by those things.

so i wrote my post and put my opinion out there and got a lot of feedback, both in comments and in personal emails. some people agreed with me and others thought i was being obnoxious. it was one of the most interesting debates we have had on this blog so even if i came across as an asshole i felt like it was worth it. and at any rate, i was sharing my opinion which is what this blog is all about. if you don't like it, don't read it.

i was sure after that post that i would stop getting invites to free events (most of which i don't attend anyway) and sure enough, the invites slowed to a trickle. nobody likes a blogger who bites the hand that feeds her. i figured my taste of the nfl post probably annoyed and/or offended a lot of people who might have previously thought of my blog as a potential marketing opportunity for them and they probably would not be reaching out to me anymore. and that was fine with me.

so imagine my surprise when i received the following email:

Hi Liz-
Taste of the NFL is coming up soon and we remember your post from last year’s event. You made several good points that we’ve wrestled with ourselves. Food waste has always been a difficult issue as is our attempt to balance our identity with the Bengals connection. This is actually an event that happens in many NFL cities with the cooperation of the league, so NFL and Bengals ID is not only valuable but dictated to some extent. However, maybe it’s possible to raise our ID.

The reason for the e-mail: Would you be willing to get together with me and the folks here who plan the event so we can get some of your ideas about these issues? We always want to do things better if we can. Please let me know.

Best regards,
Brian M.
Vice President of Communications & Strategic Planning
Freestore Foodbank

i could not believe it. here i wrote this fairly negative critique of the event, and i am sure people at the freestore foodbank were offended by it (this was after getting past my shock that they had even read it... i am always a little taken aback when i find out that people actually read this blog). but instead of writing me off, they wanted to talk to me. of course i said yes.

the meeting took place a few days ago. i was invited to tour the new freestore foodbank facilities on central parkway, which are beautiful. i also got to see the cincinnati cooks kitchen, which is awesome. here is a description of cincinnati cooks in case you have not heard of it:

Cincinnati COOKS! is a free, ten-week culinary training program that prepares low income, at-risk individuals for employment in the food service industry as well as teaches life and job skills components to ensure the graduates success. Currently operating from the Rosenthal Community Kitchen, Cincinnati COOKS! uses donated and rescued food to prepare meals and snacks, much of which is used to feed children in our Kids Café Program.

i learned that not only are people enrolling and getting important job skills from the program, but they actually have an 80% graduation rate, and even more importantly a 75% hiring rate. that is awesome.

brian and a couple of his colleagues took me to lunch at enzo's (which is awesome and deserves its own post and i can't believe i hadn't been there yet) and we had a really open, honest, and interesting conversation about the taste of the nfl event. i learned that they make as a profit approximately $160k-$200k at the event. all the food is donated to the restaurants by their vendors, and the restaurants donate staff time to prepare food for and work at the event. the alcohol is donated. the bengals items are donated. the serving items (dishes/napkins/silverware/etc.) are not donated, and are the cheapest items possible (which is why they are not recyclable). the bengals are contractually required to be there for at least an hour, and do not get any extra pay for it since it is during their spring mini-camp. the use of the space is donated.

the freestore foodbank gives restaurants guidelines for how much food to prepare so that there is limited waste. they recommend about 200 servings, and absolutely no more than 300. over 1000 people attend the event but the organizers are aware that no one can try everything, hence the limit. some restaurants listen to these guidelines and some don't. also, it's impossible to predict which dishes will be a hit at the event and which will be ignored. sometimes restaurants make less food than they are supposed to so that they can appear to be popular.

another thing i learned (which i guess i sort of knew but did not really think about) is that the taste of the nfl is a national event. all (maybe? maybe it is just some) of the nfl teams do a similar event. the cincinnati event raises the most money of all of them except for the taste of the superbowl event (which i think is just on a whole other scale). it is the second highest grossing event that the freestore foodbank does (the highest grossing event is the rubber duck regatta).

we talked a lot about how to raise awareness of the freestore foodbank at the event. my view is that most of the people who go to the event are there for the bengals and don't know (or maybe don't care) that they are actually also raising money for hungry people. it's very much a party atmosphere and showing a slideshow of starving babies or something would not be appropriate or effective. but we discussed different ideas of how to bring the freestore foodbank more to the forefront of the event.

we also talked about the food waste. i'm not sure there is much that they can do to resolve this problem. i was really impressed at how much thought the freestore foodbank has given this issue. they have investigated programs like second helpings in indianapolis as an option. but there are a few problems. first, any food that is prepared at the event is no longer re-servable by law. second, much of the food is prepared a day or several days in advance, making it even less likely to be safe to eat after the event. finally, transportation of the food is a big problem since only recently did the freestore foodbank acquire a refrigerated truck, and it's not big enough to hold all the food. plus, even if they were able to transport it, they would not have a place to store it that late at night. and then what would they do with it?

they don't like throwing it away, and maybe there are other solutions that they have not thought of, but i was really impressed with how much thought had gone into this issue. they are very aware of the problem and want to do things differently but can't think of a feasible solution. i'm not saying this should be the end of the road on this discussion, but they are actively seeking solutions, and just haven't found any yet, and i respect that.

this was one of the most interesting and refreshing conversations on the needs of our community and what a very dedicated organization is doing to resolve them that i have had in a long time. and i have a lot of those conversations believe it or not. a lot of my concerns about the taste of the nfl event were assuaged and the freestore foodbank was open to my ideas about how they could make some changes.

continue to suspend your disbelief for a second: they have invited me back to the taste of the nfl. so i will be at the event and will give you a full report on how things measure up as compared to last year, and with a new perspective on what goes into it. if you would like to join me, mark your calendar for june 16 and don't forget to buy your tickets.

and the worst restaurant in cincinnati award goes to... cadillac ranch

2010-05-01T15:10:00.017-04:00

before i begin this post, in the interest of full disclosure, i would like to let you all know that i am 15 hours, 18 minutes, and 32... 31... 30... seconds away from running in the flying pig half marathon. this is the first time i have ever run in any race other than middle school track meets, let alone a long race, and that combined with the weekend's forecast of all rain, all the time, kind of has me on edge. add in an extra level of personal and work stresses which i have had going on and you have super crabby liz just itching for a fight.

so it is with total bitchy relish, to a degree that is slightly undeserved (if i am being totally honest), that i am about to tear cadillac ranch a new one. but i figured you guys would enjoy going along for the ride. and it's not like anyone is going to feel sorry for them.

most of my awesome running group at the entrance to the flying pig expo

i do not eat at cadillac ranch. i went there once when it first opened and ate the blandest, most boring deep fried array of overpriced crap you can imagine. the patio was nice but the service sucked and the food tasted like deep fried cardboard. the drinks were overpriced and the crowd (juiced up meat heads and orange colored anorexics) freaked me out. i didn't swear it off completely until the whole midpoint fiasco back in september (recap: cadillac ranch backed out of midpoint music festival on the day of the festival and refused to allow bands to play at the very last minute, with no apology or explanation other than that it wasn't bringing in enough people as their usual crotch grinding, beer spilling type dj music).

i already thought the place sucked and although i'm definitely not the world's biggest music fan, i just thought that was bullshit and swore i would never spend another penny there.

fast forward to last night. i was with some of my running friends and we were planning to have dinner at rock bottom after the flying pig expo. we got there and the wait was an hour and 15 minutes for eight of us. we were starving and we considered our options. cadillac ranch was suggested. i voiced my dissent but i didn't want to be That Girl Who Ruins It For Everyone so i agreed to just go there when it seemed that is what the group wanted to do.

things started off promisingly. we were seated immediately when we arrived at about 7:00 and our server brought us the drinks we requested. we put in our food orders (several appetizers and entrees for everyone). the appetizers came after about a half hour or so and were large and tasty. we chatted and enjoyed ourselves in the slowly cooling spring evening weather.

then everything went to shit.

it got to be about 8:15 and we began wondering where our food was. up to that point, we hadn't minded waiting because it was a nice night and we had good company. however, we were really hungry and we all planned to go to bed early to start resting up for the race on sunday. we had all had it drilled into our heads that friday night was the most important night for sleep (since we would be too excited and stressed to sleep well on saturday). our waitress came by right then and let us know that she had messed up and forgotten to take a requested item off of julie's pizza. julie said that was fine. the waitress said, "your order will be right up."

this is how i look when i get really hungry

about ten minutes later, some food appeared. what came was one salad and one burger with fries. we should have had six more meals coming. after about another ten minutes, we encouraged the lucky recipients to eat their food and we began looking for our waitress. she was nowhere to be seen. jenny went looking for her.

at about 8:45 the waitress reappeared and announced some bad news. "the kitchen forgot to make the rest of your food. i had to put the burger and salad on a different ticket but for some reason they don't have your other order." she was unable to tell us when, or even if, we were going to get the rest of our food and she disappeared again.

at this point things were getting bad. we were extremely hungry and thirsty (she was no longer bringing us water regularly). on top of that, the sun had set and we were really cold. soon the waitress came back with the manager. the manager explained that our order had gotten messed up but that they were making our food right now. "how long will it take? 10 or 15 minutes?" asked steve. "oh, less than that, and it is all on me," assured the manager.

at 9:00 a waiter arrived with three things: the two appetizers we had already had, and the burger and fries that had been eaten. "where is the rest of it?" we demanded. "i don't know," said the waiter. when he realized that this food was not what we were waiting for, he began walking away with the food. "wait, wait," we begged. "we will eat it. we don't care. we're starving."

a couple at another table was looking on hungrily. we found out they had been waiting for their food just as long and had not even gotten appetizers. we pleaded with the waiter to give the food to them. instead of giving any of us the food, the waiter walked away with it.

by this point we were starting to go a little crazy. a homeless woman walked up and asked for money. "no, sorry," we said. "please?" she asked. "look we're hungry too!" moaned nathalie. the poor woman slinked away. it was horrible but hilarious. nathalie felt so bad that she later gave the woman money.

just before nathalie bitched out an innocent homeless woman

at about 9:15 no food had appeared. we could not wait any longer. we were famished and we had to eat and go to bed. our success in sunday's race depended on us eating and then getting to bed as soon as possible. i went to the bathroom, where the poor bathroom attendant (who i refused to tip) made the mistake of asking me how my evening was going and got an angry tirade in return.

as we were leaving the manager reappeared. he tried to get us to stay but we refused. at this point, in a show of grandiosity, he urged us to take two $50 gift cards. yes. two $50 gift cards are supposed to appease eight ravenous, parched, exhausted, anxiety ridden people who have been waiting for shitty food for two hours and fifteen minutes.

i reached my breaking point. i was really proud of myself for keeping my cool for so long but it was more than i could take. $12.50 worth of shitty food at your joke of a restaurant at some future date is supposed to compensate me for two hours and fifteen minutes of hell??? that is not even enough to cover the cost of an entree. insult to injury. go fuck yourself, cadillac ranch.

i stormed up to him as he pleaded for forgiveness. "stop talking," i said. "just stop talking. we do not want your gift certificates. we want food. we are starving and freezing and we are running a half marathon on sunday and the longer you keep talking, the longer it is going to take for us to get some food. we are tired and hungry and we just want you to leave us alone." i turned my back and stormed towards chipotle. he kept rambling but i have no idea what he was saying.

thank you chipotle for not fucking me in the ass

within ten minutes i was enjoying a delicious and satisfying steak burrito bowl at chipotle. my rage had not subsided but at least my hunger was abating. and it was time to put the whole cadillac ranch nightmare behind me and focus on my race. i consoled myself by thinking that, despite spending over 2 hours hating my life in cadillac ranch hell, i still had managed not to waste a penny there.

readers: avoid this place at all costs. and if we have a nuclear holocaust and cadillac ranch is the last place on earth left to eat, i suggest that you also avoid me because i am going to try cannibalism before i set foot in that hell hole ever again.

(all photos courtesy of julie)

taqueria mercado downtown

2010-04-28T14:15:00.008-04:00

as everyone and their cousin knows by now judging by a) the internet buzz and b) the crowds, taqueria mercado has opened a location downtown in the old javier's spot. i am a loyal taqueria mercado fan but rarely get the chance to eat there since it's all the way out in fairfield. although lately i have been eating there a lot because for various reasons i have had to be in fairfield way more than anyone should ever have to be in fairfield, unless you live in fairfield i guess.

enough about fairfield. taqueria mercado kicks ass. yes readers, you are going to have to cut them a little slack right now. they just opened and were not prepared for the mobs of people that would be descending upon them. especially the bitchy mobs who are pissed that javier is no longer around to serve them their precious antioxidant salad with fat free southwest ranch dressing on the side. sorry whiners, this is real mexican food and yes there is fat in it. not that i didn't like javier's (sorry javier if you are reading this but you know what i am saying).

you also have to order the right things to get the full delicious experience. do not waste your money or stomach space on anything involving a side of rice and beans. just get some tacos or a burrito or some goat soup or whatever. my personal recommendation is to get just straight up carnitas tacos. carnitas is the best meat and the tacos are delicious (yummy homemade corn tortillas + cilantro + onion + lime). the guacamole is also delicious. portions are big and you get free chips and salsa, and the chips are hot and crisp out of the fryer.

we had to wait a while to get the server's attention (actually i had to flag them down) and rickell ended up leaving because her food didn't come with the rest of ours and she didn't have time to keep waiting. i saw other tables where people sat for a while waiting for service and then left without ordering, and then there was one table where the people got their food, took one bite, and then stormed out. we saw quite a bit of eye rolling, foot stomping, and chin thrusting from anxiety ridden high maintenance downtown lunchers on a very. tight. schedule. i think it's fair to say that taqueria mercado is not the right place for those people.

however, once i got my food, i was not disappointed. it is the same quality as the fairfield location that i love so much. if you like authentic mexican food, this is the place to get it downtown. yes, the service is slow and clumsy right now but i think there is no way they could have imagined they would be so busy right when they opened, and i think they also were totally unprepared for the downtown lunch mob scene. service in fairfield is always fast and accurate so i expect the same will be true downtown.

this place is good and i think they are going to work out the issues. and even if they don't, then at least they will scare off the high maintenance crowd so there's less of a wait for the rest of us.

eat this now: galbi jhim at riverside korean

2010-04-26T16:08:00.005-04:00

drop whatever you are doing, run to riverside korean, and order the galbi jhim. i am not kidding you, this is seriously one of the most amazing meals available in the cincinnati area (sorry vegetarians).

just try to resist me

here is the description from the menu: "Steamed tender short ribs with vegetables and pine nuts in a sizzling pot." maybe it does not sound that exciting (it didn't to me, since i didn't order it) but it is over the top delicious. so delicious that i kept tasting more and more until my friends hid their bowls from me. it is rich, deeply flavored, salty-sweet, and full of umami. indescribably good. but i don't have to try to describe it because by now you are on your way to riverside to experience it for yourself.

bitch bitch bitch

2010-04-23T09:52:00.007-04:00

apparently i have not been blogging enough for people who have nothing better to do than a) stalk my blog on the internet and b) bitch. ok, that was rude. i should not insult my loyal readers. sorry loyal readers.

i am busy though and have not had time. i have still been eating a lot. i hear that people like posts where i just put up pictures of food. here is a picture of chirashi i had at mr. sushi a couple weeks ago.

i am sure this picture will shake drew out of the woodwork

it was really good. i read some mixed reviews of that place but i am a fan. you can get this huge chirashi at lunch for $13. the fish is super fresh and delicious and the service was good. awesome.

i (and all of my friends) continue to eat at shaan a lot. some of them go once a week. it is awesome and i love the owner, darminder. if you go there he will remember you and what you ate and where you live and work and everything. it seems kind of stalkerish but he is just a nice person who loves customer service. i also found out that he has a secret chart where he keeps all this information and does not have a photographic memory like he pretends. hopefully he does not read my blog or he will kick my ass for posting this. also one time beth f. asked him to make us a special goat meal because goat is not on the menu and he did. we all came and ate goat curry and it was delicious.

besides the excellent customer service, shaan has the best indian food in cincinnati. yes, i said it. it is fresh, flavorful, and not dripping in oil or butter. the lamb is the tenderest you can find. the chicken is juicy. the vegetables are fresh and crisp and not overcooked. if you are not eating there you are wasting your money.

special for t.j. jackson: i have been eating at bangkok express. this is the former location of tan thai which i hated. t.j., you are right. bangkok express is delicious and a huge improvement. rickell will not eat there because once when we first went after it became bangkok express, we saw a roach running up the wall. one roach is not enough to scare me off and i have never seen another one so i think it is fine and they dealt with the problem. service is great. if you want delicious, cheap, authentic thai food you should go there.

a good place you should go if you are up in westchester: aladdin's eatery. so yummy. creative menu, excellent ingredients, informed and super friendly staff. also it is definitely authentic. i heard a rumor that they are going to be opening a location in clifton so that is really exciting for us non-suburbanites.

that is all i have to say for now. i will leave you waiting anxiously at your computer screens until the next time.

foods i ate while my mom was here

2010-04-16T00:00:00.011-04:00

in lieu of an actual blog post (which i am too busy/lazy to write), i offer you these photos of foods my mom and i ate while she visited me last weekend.

tomato bisque and salad at lavomatic

tacos at taqueria mercado

random appetizer dinner mostly from jungle jim's and also leftover steak from honey

turkey muffaletta and ginger slaw at melt

my mom and me just before spending half our day wandering around jungle jim's

hidden gems on the free section of craigslist

2010-03-25T09:16:00.001-04:00

Free hamster food (Deer Park)
Date: 2010-03-19, 7:43AM EDT
Reply to: sale-tmdhj-1650314059@craigslist.org

I have a bottle of hamster food - only used one bowl out of it and then the hamster died.
Free for the taking
Kim

my pet ate this food and then it died. not exactly a ringing endorsement.

honey bees (Anderson/New Richmond)
Date: 2010-03-24, 4:04PM EDT
Reply to: sale-ts2h3-1659509201@craigslist.org

I have 5 or 6 honey combs ready for your removal. Easy access. Get them now while their docile.

ummm... what happens when they are no longer docile?

RE:Size 11 womens sketchers flipflops (Lebanon)
Date: 2010-03-20, 9:48AM EDT
Reply to: sale-u3dww-1652677187@craigslist.org

Do you still have these? Dont want to waste gas if they are gone. Please reply if u have them and I would like to get them. Thank you :)

i have an idea, why don't you take that gas money and use it to buy yourself a brand new pair of flip flops.

Free reptile food (Goshen )
Date: 2010-03-23, 6:09PM EDT
Reply to: sale-guf9h-1658114101@craigslist.org

I have a can sitting around of food for reptiles. i don't need it and no longer have a turtle so it's free to whoever wants to come and get it. still almost full. it says "Wardley Reptile Sticks - fortified with calcium - great for amphibians" the back says "this is a nutritionally balanced, floating stick ideal for all aquatic reptiles (e.g. turtles, frogs, newts).

Email if interested.

ok seriously?

Free Horse Manure (Brooksville, KY)
Date: 2010-03-17, 9:59PM EDT
Reply to: sale-4ts6p-1649168668@craigslist.org

Free aged horse manure. Come with a pickup and I will load. Must schedule by appointment only! Email me and I will call you!

great! aged horse manure, just what i need!

and no it is not from the free section, but in case anyone missed seeing this when it was all over facebook...

MILF needs a photographer (West Chester, OH)
Date: 2010-03-01, 10:06AM EST
Reply to: gigs-nd93s-1622951490@craigslist.org

Hot Mom needing a photographer to take explicit photos.

Most of the photos will be sexy and seductive, partially nude and nude.

No pay is involved. Need/Want to take take explicit photos for boyfriend

Serious inquiries only!

Email with your credentials or a photo of you.

Enter EXPLICIT PHOTS in subject line.

new(ish) cinci food blog roundup + some of my non-cinci favorites

2010-03-24T21:29:00.012-04:00

in an effort to avoid packing i decided to poke around on urbanspoon and what do you know, a whole slew of new cincinnati food blogs have popped up! very exciting. i have added them to my blog list to the right, but in case you don't check it or are reading this on your google reader, here they are with their descriptions:

amateur foodies: "Amateur Foodies will have restaurant reviews and photos and recipes from our home cooking, but we are hoping to really add to the "blog landscape" by consistently discussing ingredients, sources, food politics, and more. We have found the CinciLocavore Yahoo Group listserv to be fantastic. And there are a number of great local foodie blogs. But, we'd like more crossover where "average" readers looking for information on restaurants or recipes also get exposed to the kinds of issues and questions that are common place on CinciLocavore - including the importance of local foods, sustainability, policy, and more...We also really wanted a personal outlet for what we care about, so a blog was a pretty straightforward choice..."
hold the mustard: this blog does not have a description but it appears to be a dude who hates mustard and likes sports bars, burgers, pizza, and other casual food
epi-ventures: "Epi-ventures is written by me, Courtney Tsitouris, a graphic designer, writer and cook in Cincinnati, Ohio... Food plays an important role in my life and though I spend my days toiling away in the marketing profession, cooking and eating make my heart go pitter-patter. My free time is spent attending culinary school at the Midwest Culinary Institute, cooking lavish meals at home and eating in restaurants all over town. I take the business of dining out seriously, and much of what I have to say comes from an earnest attempt to observe, taste, smell, and feel every nuance in each restaurant that I visit... I also take the business of dining in seriously. The recipes on this site are the result of many hours in the kitchen — trying to master technique, experimenting and setting occasional fires..."
hyde park foodie: "...I am a passionate consumer of food, beer and wine, and the venues that bring them to me. I like to cook, but I am no chef. I like to eat out, but I am not a snob. There are people who get paid for this, people who are trained for this, people who make their career writing reviews, and that is not me. Who am I as an eater? Am I like you? I love a good meal. I enjoy a good burger, a thick ribeye steak, a hearty burrito with extra spice, a fiery indian curry, a sweet thai curry, an oozing chocolate fondant, and most importantly, sharing it all with friends... And I love drinks as much as food. I love a nice cold beer on a hot day, or a cold day, or a Spring day. I am spoiled by 5 years in London's vibrant pub culture where the imperial pint was born. I also love a hearty red wine in a proper big glass. What types, grapes, regions? I don't know, I like to try them all..."
adventures in dining with kids in cincinnati: "We are a family of four that lives in Blue Ash...We have no culinary experience at all, other than eating in restaurants... We are not foodies. At ALL... We are going to try to stay away from chains like Outback and O’Charlie’s but we might go and we might review them. Our reviews will be fairly short and to the point following a basic format with a funny stories added in here and there for your amusement. Bathrooms: The bathrooms, I know it is a little odd to review the bathrooms. However how clean the bathrooms appear and the amenities become important when potty training and diapering. One of our biggest issues are baby changing stations, when they are not in the men’s bathrooms it makes it difficult for dads to change the baby’s diaper..."
the cincy gobbler: "Follow The Gobbler as it reviews local restaurants and events in Cincinnati. It'll give you the inside scoop on all the great spots to check out and award "Turkeys" to each that it visits. For those cooking aficionados out there check out the recipes Ms. Minno attempts!"

welcome, new bloggers! i love food blogs and i am really excited to see more popping up here in cincinnati.

in case you want to check out some awesome non-cincinnati food blogs, here are a few of my favorites:

we are never full: "This blog covers the border-line food and drink obsession of two Brooklynites (Amy’s American, Jonny’s English) with anecdotes and recipes from our weeknight meals at home, special occasion dinners out, and vacations studiously built around the search for the authentic, the fresh, and the delicious."
momofuku for 2: "I’m just your average girl who loves to cook and who loves noodles... In 2007, I visited New York, and one of the places I wanted to eat at most was Momofuku Noodle Bar, but it almost didn’t happen. My first visit to Momofuku seemed like fate, it never would have happened without a lucky string of delayed flights, flukey taxi drop-offs, and the willingness to wait 45 minutes for the restaurant to open... A couple of years later I had my wedding and honeymoon in New York City. Instead of taking care of wedding details such as flowers or hair and makeup, I hit up all 4 Momofukus. (There happen to be 5 ‘fukus now, but it’s a good excuse to go back.) It was absolutely delicious: a fried chicken feast..., the Ko lunch menu, watching the chicken wing chef lovingly caress each wing before plating, these are memories that last a lifetime, my friends!"
go ramen!: "I'm just a ramen addict that can slurp 24-7. I created this blog to promote ramen eating. I hate seeing all the good ramen shops disappear when they don't deserve to. Let's try to keep them all in business. GO RAMEN!"
the wednesday chef: "The Wednesday Chef is written by me, Luisa Weiss, a writer and home cook in Berlin, Germany... I grew up in Berlin with an American father and an Italian mother. This gives me all kinds of questionable authority on food, and the ability to speak several languages. It also means I like all kinds of things: Leberwurst sandwiches and Pflaumenkuchen when I'm in Berlin; pizza al taglio and roasted rabbit in Urbino; dan dan noodles and char siu bao in New York. I am perpetually homesick, so I cook to anchor myself and find joy in the small things: a perfect apricot, the texture of sea urchin, the smell of bread baking in my kitchen. And writing about food, well, it seems to go hand-in-hand with cooking for me. This website was started in August 2005 as a way of working through a mountain of recipe clippings from The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Five years later, that pile doesn't seem to have gotten any smaller..."
the hungry mouse: "The Hungry Mouse is a visual guide to food and cooking, and does just the opposite, relying more on pictures than words to demonstrate a recipe. Jessie’s signature, step-by-step photo recipes are designed to show you what each stage of cooking looks like. So you know just what you’re in for before you step into the kitchen as well as when you’re in front of the stove... Jessie is not a trained chef. She just loves to cook and write. (It’s really that simple.)..."
fried wontons for you: "Hello, my name is Shao and welcome to my recipe keeper, travel log, and food diary. Born in Guangzhou, China, I have been living around the Center City area of Philadelphia for over twenty years. I started this blog to combine two of my favorite interests: photography and cooking. I believe we eat with our eyes first, but we should never judge a dish simply by its appearances and even smell. For me food is meant to nourish, a vehicle for storytelling, and a way for me to say “Thanks for always being there.”, “You’re the best.”, and “Never give up.”"

happy reading!

...crickets chirping...

2010-03-23T11:25:00.017-04:00

sorry for the blog silence, oh dedicated readers. i am in the process of moving right now, and work is insane, and i am training for a half marathon. all of that leaves me with little to no time to blog. however, i am of course still eating. here are a few mini reports of foods i have eaten lately:

senor roy's taco patrol: disappointing. i got really excited about this one but found the tacos to be really bland and the service to be slow and inconsistent (they messed up my order twice, the first time by giving it to someone else who walked away with it, while i was standing there waiting). the tacos are filled with mostly rice (which is supposed to be cilantro-lime rice but tastes like just overcooked plain rice) and the meats are bland (i tried all three). the salsas are used too sparingly and there was not a corn tortilla in sight. i had asked for corn but got flour tortillas and since i had waited so long for my order i was too hungry to ask them to fix it. i will give them another shot since i only went once but they need to get it together, especially with other promising taco options looming on the horizon downtown (including taco truck azul and taqueria mercado, which is setting up shop in the old javier's space).

lunch on main: interesting sandwich combinations, but it's overpriced for what it is. it's like $6-7 for a sandwich, drink and chips not included. and the meats are just boring boar's head. i feel like they need to step it up a little in order to make it downtown.

taco casa: ok, the furthest thing ever from authentic mexican but damn that taco salad is addictive. you guys are going to laugh at me for even liking this but i love it. it is just shredded iceberg covered with ground beef seasoned with taco seasoning from a packet, pinto beans, tomatoes, shredded cheese, and a shit ton of ranch dressing. all of this is served with old el paso style taco sauce and cheap tortilla chips from a bag. i don't know what it is about this (well yes i do... it is the insane amount of ranch sauce) but i could not stop eating it. plus the guys who work there are really nice. absolutely in no way even remotely real mexican food, but i am craving it even as i type this.

bouchard's on main: surprisingly good. the menu does not look particularly inspired but they really use good ingredients and prepare the food well. i got a mediterranean wrap that had delicious, zesty greek dressing and fresh, ripe vegetables. i have also tasted the cuban and it is really good (although not particularly authentic) and comes with a really addictive cumin-lime dipping sauce. yum.

balboa's: totally disappointing. this place has the atmosphere of a chain hotel lobby and the waitstaff expresses their annoyance at having to stop gossiping in order to serve you in a very obvious way. on top of that, the food is a total waste of time. i have never had a more poorly prepared nathan's hot dog (on a stale bun) and the fries were cold and chewy. my friend ordered ravioli which was a small portion of gummy, overcooked squares drowning in bland sauce and it was $12. i heard the pizzas were better but there is absolutely no reason to eat here since you can get much better everything for cheaper pretty much anywhere else, and without the attitude.

cafe de wheels: readers, it lives up to the hype. thus far i have tried their burger (big, flavorful, cooked to a perfect medium as requested, and interesting with a caramelized onion marmalade and melty cheese) and their cuban (about as close to authentic as you can get around here), as well as the sweet potato fries and i have loved everything. the price is right and they seem to love what they do. eat there as soon as you can.

habits cafe: i have eaten there before but last night i just tried the ostrich burger for the first time. it was... ok. not amazing. it was just whatever. i would eat it again but would rather go somewhere else. i don't know why people love this so much, except maybe people who don't eat beef i guess. also their appetizers are insanely overpriced. we ordered bruschetta, which was four small pieces of french bread with tomatoes on top for $4.95, and chicken fingers, which was five medium sized fingers with celery (and no ranch dip) for $7.25. it was good in terms of flavor and ingredient quality but come on, $1.25 for a little slice of bread with some tomatoes and garlic on top?

el toro mexican restaurant: i was told by the girl who cuts my hair that this is the best mexican food in cincinnati. she usually has pretty good food taste so i gave it a shot despite hearing bad things from other people. it was disappointing. now to be fair, she is a vegetarian and i can see how vegetarians would like this place. they have lots of menu options, the portions are big, and you can request the smoky and spicy house salsa to give your food some flavor. i ordered the chicken fajitas which were the special that night and found them to be pretty bland and dry as hell. also, it's not particularly cheap. i guess it is better than don pablo's or something like that but i would not go back.

all right, that is all i have time for right now. soon enough i will write about my fish fry experiences so please remain at the edge of your seats.

cincinnati gelato drama!

2010-03-11T16:38:00.007-05:00

as many readers know by now i am a huge fan of dojo gelato. i think it is the best gelato i have had outside of italy. and i have tried many excellent gelatos in places like new york, miami, chicago, san francisco, etc. very food minded places. i just love dojo the best.

well it seems that madisono's is kind of jealous of the success dojo has had. if you ever go to the madison's store in findlay market, you will see a sign in the window advertising how their gelato is only $2, not $3.75 like dojo's. they don't say "like dojo's" but it is implied.

so today i got this press release from madisono's advertising how they have honey lavender gelato which they are going to be serving at the flower show. i remembered honey lavender as a flavor that dojo had before. i checked their blog and in fact they did have it back in december, and maybe other times too but i am too lazy to look back any further.

so then i searched the madisono's blog (because he lists his new flavors there as he comes up with them) and found no mention of honey lavender. hmmm... so where did they get that flavor idea? i don't know but i am definitely sensing some drama here. scandalous!

fish fry fridays... facing the fear

2010-03-01T13:46:00.014-05:00

as long time readers know, i have a serious fear of organized religion which normally does not affect my day-to-day life, food-related or otherwise, very much. however during this season of amazingly delicious church fish fries, my fear gets in the way of my need to consume tasty food at a low cost.

last year, i faced my fear head on and went for some god and cod. while the fish was crazy good and i was proud of myself for facing my fear, i remain terrified of fish fries at churches. it is bad.

i am not one to shy away from a challenge so i have decided that this year, i will be eating at a fish fry every friday from now until the end of lent. i have no idea when that is but it can't be that far off from now since i feel like people have been avoiding meat for a while now. ok i just looked it up and it is april 3.

every friday from now until then (well except maybe this friday since i will be wasted off my ass at bockfest), i am here on this blog publicly committing to go to a fish fry.

here is my calendar so far:

march 12: st. francis de sales in east walnut hills for lauren's birthday
march 19: st. boniface in northside with the dojo gelato crowd
march 26: mary queen of heaven in erlanger
april 2: TBD

now i need your help. first, i need suggestions for the best fish fries. also, i need company because i am seriously too scared to do this on my own. friends and readers who are not stalkers, please comment here if you either a) know of good fish fries or b) will join me on my quest. i will update the calendar as i decide on locations.

tuna taco nirvana

2010-02-21T19:02:00.008-05:00

i have a lot of different things that i make with varying degrees of success, but the one thing that i am really amazing at making is tuna tacos. what i do is make grilled tuna, put it on some corn tortillas, throw on some salsa and red cabbage slaw and maybe guacamole, and then die of happiness.

here is my recipe for grilled tuna (scroll down). you can also find my guacamole recipe there too. for the corn tortillas, what you want to do is heat up a skillet really hot and put them in for about 1 minute per side to soften them up and cook the corn a bit. don't just eat them out of the bag, they will depress you. cooking them makes all the difference. you could also throw them on the grill with the tuna if you want.

a belated photo of the tacos

here is my red cabbage slaw recipe. this changes every time i make it. for example, today i added pomelo and shredded carrots and i used all lime juice (no lemon) and a little seasoned rice wine vinegar. other fun substitutions/additions are using orange juice or lemonade, adding raisins or chopped dried apricots or fresh pineapple or whatever you think sounds good.

so you just grill the tuna, heat up the tortillas, and then put a little salsa on the tortillas (today i went for herdez salsa taquera) and then the tuna and then the slaw. they are amazingly delicious. i like them so much that i hardly ever make them for other people. i feel like if you eat my tuna tacos then everything else i make for you will be disappointing. i make them for myself all the time though, especially on random days like today when the opportunity to grill unexpectedly falls out of the sky and lands in my lap. sorry i don't have a picture, i ate them too quickly and forgot until it was too late.

blue elephant

2010-02-18T21:30:00.014-05:00

cousin brian* and i went paint color shopping for our new apartment and we decided that we needed sustenance after exhausting all our energy on trying to choose between wheatgrass, kiwi splash, and little sprout. but we did not know where we wanted to eat.

cousin brian: what about that new place in hyde park?

liz: what new place?

cousin brian: elephant.

liz: what?

cousin brian: i have no idea. i think it's thai and italian.

liz: what???

pad khee mao

i was skeptical but i am always up for trying a new place so we went. it turns out it is actually called blue elephant and it is located in a new building next to r.p. mcmurphy's on wasson. i have no idea when the place opened but it couldn't have been that long ago and it was jam packed.

the ambience is pretty nice, lots of reds and wheatgrasses which gave us inspiration for decorating our new place. service was average. we had to wait forever to get our order taken, but the food came quickly once we did. our waitress kind of harassed us about how little we ordered (we both got $10.95 noodle dishes so she might have been trying to boost her tip) but when we kept saying no she was friendly about it.

pad thai

the food was good but nothing outstanding. i had the pad khee mao with beef and brian got the pad thai with chicken. we both ordered a 3 (the spiciest you could get) and it was hot but not too hot. i could have done a little hotter but i was satisfied.

i did think the portions were a little small, but the vegetables were fresh, the meats were tender and juicy, and the noodles were chewy and properly cooked. mine had lots of yummy thai basil and cousin brian's was sweet and smoky. the food was flavorful and i had no complaints, it just wasn't memorable at all.

the color scheme

we did not try the italian food. when i was in thailand i ate at italian restaurants a couple of times and it was the worst italian food of my life. to be fair, i will add that the thai restaurant i ate at in italy was the worst thai food of my life.

blue elephant is a solid if unremarkable addition to the ever expanding selection of hyde park/oakley thai restaurants. i'm not complaining but it would be nice to mix it up with maybe some vietnamese or malaysian or something like that. or else, you know... some thaitalian.

*note: cousin brian is not actually my cousin

chinese new year dinner

2010-02-17T20:52:00.011-05:00

on sunday my friend ben, who is an awesome cook (although reportedly not as good as his sister, who has won a james beard award... but still you can see what kind of cooking genes we are dealing with here. these people have cooking competitions when the family gets together), invited some friends over for a chinese new year dinner.

we had authentic japanese ramen with a 9 hour broth (ramen = not traditional for a chinese new year party but i am obviously not complaining), momofuku pork buns, a moosewood cookbook recipe for tofu with bok choy, lots of dumplings, wine, and dojo gelato (vietnamese coffee, coconut curry, and chocolate diavolo). it was awesome.

i did not take any pictures during the meal but here is a picture of leftovers which i ate for lunch the next day

ben did all sorts of interesting things for this meal including roasting pork belly, poaching eggs in the shell (it's so cool... you crack the egg and a poached egg slides out), and making his own pickled shiitake mushrooms (which are addictive as hell). obviously i had to get recipes so here they are from ben, via david chang, in ben's words:

pork belly

3 lbs of pork belly (skinless)
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar

yep. that's it. CAM's only has skin-on pork belly, so you'll need a sharp knife, a steady hand (remember why I had to wear that glove?) and a mental resolve that is comfortable with cutting a piece of meat that may have a nipple on it. (not. kidding). you can leave the skin on if you want a built in pork rind on top (that can be pretty tasty) but there are a couple of (in my opinion, potentially gross) pitfalls to watch out for. 1 is nipples - I'd cut them off. (ugh. i hate even TYPING that). The other is bristles, which can be apparently burned off by waving a blowtorch over the skin very lightly. (what do you mean you don't have a cooking blowtorch?!?)

If you got a nipple-less, bristleless piece of pork belly and have a hankering for some crackling, then I'd say full steam ahead. Otherwise, I'm afraid you'll need to slice the skin off on one end to make a flap you can grab with your hand, and then using a sawing motion cut the skin from the fat, being careful keep your hand outside the path of the blade. otherwise, you might cut through the skin and into, say , the knuckle on the middle finger of your left hand.

you could, also use the skin for crackling, but it requires boiling the skin in water to boil off the excess fat so your apt will smell like a pork sauna, putting the skin in a food dehydrator for 12 hours, and THEN deep frying it.

ok, so using the salt/sugar mixture, cover the meat with the sugar/salt mixture. you don't have to the entire 1/2 cup of seasoning, just enough to coat the top & bottom. put them in a baking dish, cover it with cling wrap and park it in the fridge for at least 6 hours, no more than 24 (otherwise you'll have bacon on your hands. which...is still pretty much OK.) That last step is important, otherwise you'll never dry out the outside enough to get a good crust and the meat won't be seasoned throughout.

Then, blast the belly, fat side up, in a roasting pan in a 450 oven for an hour, basting it with the fat at the halfway point. It should have a nice, brown crust.

then take the heat way down to 250 and roast for about an hour- 1:15. the meat should be pillow soft to the touch. reserve the fat for soups & meat juices as a kind of meat jelly if you're really into adding pork flavor to something.

If you want to cut it into neat slices for the ramen or for the pork buns, like I did, it's best to make sure the pork belly is completely cool (otherwise it will flake on you). then warm it in a pan before serving.

momofuku-style pork buns

To make the pork buns (i think you could call them "chinese white castles") I made, buy the steamed buns at CAMs (they didn't have the folded ones when I was there, but those are preferred). Steam the buns, cut some cucumbers really thin, coat the cucumbers to taste with the remaining salt/sugar mixture and wait 10 mins. put cucumbers on the bun with a smear of hoisin sauce and pork belly and eat. take it easy with the hoisin - a little goes a long way.

shiitake pickles

4 loosely packed cups (1/3 oz, or 1 bag) of shiitake mushrooms

1 cup sugar

1 cup usukuchi (light soy sauce)
1 cup sherry vinegar (I can't find this anywhere, so I just used rice vinegar)

2 3-inch knobs of fresh ginger, peeled.

Usukuchi is important for this one - just because normal soy sauce would be wayy too salty (usukuchi is the soy sauce on the right with the yellow cap). Since you're probably going to cam's to pick up the dried mushrooms, i'd pick up a bottle of the usukuchi as well.

put the mushrooms in a bowl. boil some water and pour over the shiitakes, enough to immerse them in water. cover the bowl with a plate & let steep for 10-15 min, until they are soft.

get the mushrooms out of the liquid, reserving 2 cups of the liquid for the brine. Chop the mushrooms into strips and set aside.

in a pot, combine the mushrooms, mushroom liquid, sugar, soy sauce, ginger and vinegar. bring to a gentle simmer for 30 mins. then dump the pickles into a jar or other container, using enough brining liquid to coat. store in the fridge & don't forget to check your blood pressure regularly.

the most hilarious craigslist ad i have seen in a really long time

2010-02-16T00:05:00.003-05:00

this craigslist ad is so funny that i am giving it its own post. i have not see one this hilarious in a long time. i actually lol-ed, and i hate saying lol. go here and vote for it for best of. no, i did not write it myself.

Tony Soprano Lookalike Wants Elizabeth Taylor for Sextravaganza - 25 (CEENCY, NEW JERSEY)

Date: 2010-02-08, 2:18PM EST

I was just watching Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and smearing prosciutto all over my face because it's too salty to actually eat and I saw Elizabeth Taylor jiggling around with breasts roughly the size of entire hams. And though I look like Tony Soprano, my fat gut and manic depression hasn't left me impotent...yet. Then when she started harassing her man...well I can't say it wasn't every bit as big a tingle inducer as her jumbly-wumblies.

And in reference to the crude euphemisms I use to describe the breasts, yes I'm in fourth grade (mentally) and I'm very proud of it. I'm much more committed to juvenile humor about breasts than actually touching them. After all, eventually a woman will make you stop touching them. Sometimes (usually) it only takes two seconds (when they realize the person who snuck up behind them isn't their husband returning from the bathroom). In other instances it can be up to several minutes (when she's sleeping).

But dammit I'm a quarter of a century old now and maybe it's time to find something more. Someone to hold me close. Someone to connect to in new, exciting, meaningful ways. Someone to let me do the lobster claw on their tittays for (potentially) eternity. Even out in public.

I hope that you will write me, as I am getting tired of wrapping prosciutto around my measley-peasley and getting "whacked". And bonus points if you respond as a Sopranos supporting cast.

homemade mayonnaise, and a recipe to use it in

2010-02-09T22:46:00.016-05:00

as you guys know i got all obsessed with making butter a while back. well then liberal foodie told me she made homemade mayonnaise and i knew one day i was going to have to make that. then i also saw this recipe and the photo along with it in saveur and my fate was sealed.

i have been drooling over this photo for months

here is the recipe i used to make mayonnaise (modified from this julia child-inspired recipe):

homemade mayonnaise

Ingredients

Round-bottomed, 2½ to 3-quart glazed pottery, glass or stainless steel mixing bowl. Set it in a heavy casserole or saucepan to keep it from slipping.
hand mixer with either whisk or thin beaters attached
3 large egg yolks
Large wire whisk
2-3 T. lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon dry or prepared mustard (i used colman's)
1 c. olive oil mixed with 1 c. canola oil (room temperature)
2 tablespoons boiling water

Directions

Warm the bowl in hot water; dry it.
Add the egg yolks and beat for 1 to 2 minutes until they are thick and sticky.
Add 1 T. of lemon juice and the salt and mustard powder. Beat for 30 seconds more. The egg yolks are now ready to receive the oil.
start adding the oil a little at a time, you must not stop beating until the sauce has thickened. Add the drops of oil with a teaspoon, or rest the lip of the bottle on the edge of the bowl. Keep your eye on the oil rather than on the sauce.
Stop pouring and continue beating every 10 seconds or so, to be sure the egg yolks are absorbing the oil.
After 1/3 to 1/2 cup of oil has been incorporated, the sauce will thicken into a very heavy cream and the crisis of potential curdling is over.
Then, beat in the remaining oil by 1 to 2 tablespoon dollops, blending it thoroughly after each addition.
When the sauce becomes too thick and stiff, beat in drops of lemon juice to thin it out. Then continue with the oil. Beat the boiling water into the sauce. This is an anti-curdling insurance. Season to taste.
If the sauce is not used immediately, scrape it into a small bowl and cover it tightly so a skin will not form on its surface.

like buttah

so this mayonnaise came out delicious. i licked the beaters and the spatula, and i am not really a big mayonnaise person. avani tasted it and wanted to dip fries in it.

i caught you a delicious salmon

so then after i made the mayo i made the vladivostokian (is that a word) baked salmon, pretty much exactly like the saveur recipe:

Keta Zapechenaya pod Mayonezom (baked salmon with mayonnaise)

1 tsp. canola oil
8 2" × 3" skin-on boneless salmon filets (about 2 lbs.)
1 tbsp. plus 2 tsp. soy sauce
3⁄4 cup mayonnaise

1. Grease an 8" × 8" baking dish with the oil. Rub the salmon filets with 1 tbsp. of the soy sauce, then arrange them snugly in the prepared dish, skin side up. Rub the salmon skin with the remaining soy sauce; cover dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

chillaxin in the soy sauce

all greased up

2. Heat oven to 425°. Remove baking dish from refrigerator and set aside to let come to room temperature for 15 minutes. Spread the mayonnaise evenly over the salmon, spreading it out to the edges of the baking dish. Bake, rotating once, until skin is golden brown and salmon is cooked through, about 20-25 minutes. Remove the salmon from the oven and set aside to let rest for 5 minutes before serving.

the finished product... i can't believe how yellow my mayonnaise is

i know it may seem weird to make salmon with mayonnaise and soy sauce, but it was damn tasty. the picture from the magazine is what really sold me on this. it looked so brown and juicy and delicious. and it came out exactly that way. it was super easy to make and i got some really nice fresh, red salmon from findlay market. that plus the homemade mayonnaise really made the difference, but i think this would also be good with mayo from the jar.

the meal

avani came over and helped me eat the salmon and she brought roasted asparagus and a squash and chickpea salad with tahini dressing. i also made some brown rice. none of these things seem like they should go together but it worked. of course this is coming from the person who has been known to eat sushi rolls, caesar salad, and skyline dip in the same sitting. anyway we enjoyed our meal so that is what counts.

so i normally don't post press releases but...

2010-02-08T17:07:00.006-05:00

...obviously i could not resist this time. this is awesome.

Chick-fil-A at Houston Road to Host Romantic Valentine’s Day Dinner

Special Valentine’s Day Dinner on Saturday, Feb. 13 to benefit the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky

WHAT: Roses are red, violets are blue and Chick-fil-A® Chicken for Valentine’s Day says “I love you!” Show the one you love most how important they are this Valentine’s Day and support an important local charity, by treating your special someone to dinner at the Chick-fil-A restaurant located at 4980 Houston Road on Saturday, Feb. 13 from 5 – 8 p.m.

The restaurant will host a candlelit dinner with a special menu including soup or salad, an entrée, drink and dessert for $20 per couple – with all proceeds from the dinner being donated to the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky. Guests will enjoy music from a live violinist, tableside service and each lady will each receive a red rose.

Reservations for the Valentine’s Dinner are required and can be made by calling Kimberly at (859) 393-5282.

The Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky is a treatment facility for abused and neglected boys, between the ages of 7 and 17, with severe emotional, behavioral and social issues. The Home also provides community based services designed to provide therapeutic interventions and case management services to families with children who are at imminent risk for out-of-home placement. For more information please visit www.chnk.org.

WHEN: Saturday, Feb. 13, 5 - 8 p.m.

WHERE: Chick-fil-A at Houston Road, 4980 Houston Road, Florence, KY 41042 (859) 594-4600

suzie wong's on madison

2010-02-08T11:12:00.009-05:00

yum, suzie wong's is so good! i have to admit, i was skeptical about a "pan asian" restaurant run by the former owner of shanghai mama's (yes, i still hate that place and i have eaten there several more times since the last time i bitched about it so please no admonitions to give it another try. everything is bland and tastes like soy sauce and makes me sad. ok shanghai mama's rant over).

anyway, suzie wong's is excellent. i went with erin last week and since it is currently byob and prices are good ($2-12 for appetizers, $8-16 for entrees) we felt that we could splurge and get a feast. we had the following items:

cambodian beef carpaccio: beef filet with fresh herb marinade, lime, extra virgin olive oil, and garnished with fresh basil and chili peppers. amazing! my favorite thing we had all night.
thai green lip mussels: sauteed mussels in a tangy thai seafood broth. sooo good. the broth tasted like tom yum soup. we were eating it with spoons.
malaysian chicken in a clay pot: chicken breast, sweet onion, green and red pepper, seasonal vegetables sauteed in a malaysian yellow curry and served in a country clay pot. awesome. so delicious. the curry was complex and savory and rich. erin said it reminded her of japanese curry, and she just got back from a trip to japan so i believe her.
korean jap chae noodles: glass noodles sauteed with sesame oil, korean chili paste, and kimchi. eh. the only one i was not crazy about. not bad, just kind of bland. our waiter had to bring me some chili sauce to spice it up and it still wasn't that great. i've had much better at riverside and korea house. however, not bad. just not exciting.
chinese broccoli in oyster sauce. wonderful. of course, i am a chinese broccoli freak so maybe not everyone would love this as much as i did. it was perfectly prepared, crunchy and delicate at the same time. yum.

the service on the whole was very good. there was one waitress we weren't really crazy about (she kind of got off on the wrong foot with us when we asked for recommendations from the fascinating menu and she told us to get egg rolls and calamari... boring... and she seemed to keep having conflicts with other staff). but everyone else definitely made up for it. they checked in with us regularly and really seemed to care whether we liked the food, and always made sure we had a fresh beer open.

the space is pretty similar to what it looked like when seny was in there... very red with christmas lights around, and a few asian touches now. it looks nice, and parking is easy. sorry i don't have any photos but it's pretty dark in there and i didn't want to use the flash.

i would definitely try to get there soon, not because it's going to close (i don't think it is) but because the current byob situation makes it such a good deal. we heard that they have applied for a liquor license so i am sure it is coming soon.

overall this place is awesome and an excellent addition to the neighborhood. they also deliver to a pretty wide area so if you are not in the mood to leave your house, you can maybe still enjoy their delicious food.

raya's lebanese restaurant

2010-02-02T13:49:00.005-05:00

great news, downtown eaters... there is finally some good falafel available! the space on court street that has seen a parade of mediocre middle eastern restaurants is now owned by a family who knows their shit. we went for lunch today and it was awesome. eric and i had the vegetarian combo platter, with hot tasty falafel (perfectly crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside), smoky delicious baba ghannouj, crunchy garlicky tabbouli, and soft flavorful bread. there was also hummus that i found to be average but i was so happy that it did not bother me.

beth had a falafel sandwich which she enjoyed and she got the baklava, which in true lebanese style was not drowning in honey (that is how greeks do it). she liked it a lot. they also offer other lebanese dishes like shawarma, beef kufta, kabobs, etc., and they have a gyro spit. don't forget to ask for some of their tasty hot sauce.

eric's iphone to the rescue

service is awesome, they are super nice. and the prices are good. the combo platter was $7.50 and the sandwiches are $3.50-5, or $1.25 more if you want to add fries. all the food is really fresh and flavorful and it comes out fast and hot.

i love this place and i am so excited to welcome it to downtown! hopefully it sticks around. and if you live downtown, guess what... they are open until 8 pm so it's not just for the lunch crowd.

areti's gyros

2010-01-31T13:58:00.005-05:00

yesterday maggie texted me because she needed her weekly dojo gelato fix and she knew i would be up for joining her. our current favorite thing is the fior di latte gelato with amarena cherry topping. i decided i needed something other than ice cream in my stomach to soak up all the beer i would be consuming at beerfest later in the day so i also picked up a gyro from areti's. i had been craving one ever since seeing how delicious they looked a few weeks before when beth and jim got them after the chili cook off.

eat me

areti's gyros are the shit. the meat is really juicy and well seasoned (and they give you a ton of it) and the sauce is thick and flavorful, and they give you lots of onions and tomatoes. the bread is also really yummy. this is definitely in the running for best gyro in cincinnati (other possible contenders: mediterranean foods and mythos). they are huge and tasty and at $4.75 it is a great deal.

they also have a selection of really yummy looking salads and desserts, and greek specialties like moussaka, pastichio, and dolmades. i did not try anything else because i had just had gelato but everything looked really fresh and tasty. areti's has been open a few months i think and it is definitely a good addition to the food options at findlay market.

help me readers... i need a good bloody mary

2010-01-26T11:08:00.003-05:00

when i was in new orleans i became addicted to the bloody mary. it's not that i had never tried one before but i had never had a good one. the one i had at acme oyster was amazing and ever since i returned to cincinnati, i have been regularly craving them but have not found a good one.

my worst mistake was ordering one at the claddagh in newport about a month ago... oh my god it was so horrible i thought i was going to vomit. it tasted like cheap vodka mixed with tobasco sauce and spit. i made them give me a whole glass of extra tomato juice to try to drown out the nastiness but it was so bad i could not drink it (which really never happens with me and alcohol). i am still having nightmares over it and i haven't ordered another bloody mary anywhere since then.

obviously i need your help... where can i get a really good bloody mary in this city?

cincy winter beerfest

2010-01-20T10:43:00.008-05:00

i just wanted to give a shout out to beerfest in case any readers out there have not heard about it. this is an awesome event if you like beer and actually even if you don't. i volunteered at it last year and had so much fun. basically what you do is get a cup and go around and taste all kinds of beers from various breweries. this year there are going to be over 125 beers so start getting your liver ready now. there will also be food (skyline and pizza last year i think) and music.

once again i am stealing images but i think the beerfest people will be ok with that

everyone gets drunk and ridiculous but the beer drinking crowd is very laid back so it is really fun. it is going to be on saturday, 1/30 at the hyatt downtown. tickets are available on the website and i think they are $30. all profits go to the big joe duskin music education foundation. i absolutely love this event and i think it is one of the most fun things to do in cincinnati, well besides all the other beer festivals i guess.

findlay market chili cook off this sunday

2010-01-12T22:56:00.004-05:00

today i received an email from some findlay market fans asking me to come out to the chili cook off this sunday at 1:30 and blog about it. i'm lazy so i don't think i'm going to blog about it again but here is a link to my post about it last year. you should definitely go, it is really fun and you get lots of free delicious (and some not so delicious) chili.

i did not ask their permission but i am pretty sure the findlay market people are going to be cool with me stealing this image

i will be there again this year so here is your opportunity to stalk me, stalkers (you know who you are). feel free to ogle me from afar and/or come up and say hi, but please refrain from touching me or i will cut you. thanks.

delicious kibby made by my beautiful sister

2010-01-09T12:19:00.016-05:00

kibby is a lebanese dish that sitty makes. it is basically lebanese meatloaf... ground beef (or lamb) with bulgur wheat and spices. you can eat it raw (my absolute favorite... you pour melted butter on top and then eat it with slices of raw onion wrapped in syrian bread) or baked or fried. nobody ever made this as good as sitty until my sister annette decided to take on the challenge. readers, you heard it here first... annette's kibby is better than sitty's (don't tell sitty). she made it for me over christmas and it was the best gift anyone could have given me. here are some pictures.

annette is going to hate me for posting pics of her without makeup all over the internet

raw kibby

this is the filling (ground beef + onions + pine nuts) that goes between two layers of baked kibby

preparing the kibby for baking

it's almost ready to go in the oven

raw kibby (kibby nayye)

1 lb. very lean round steak (95% lean ground beef), ground 2-3 times (your butcher will do this for you)

3/4 c. fine cracked wheat (bulgur)

1 small - medium onion, ground or grated finely

1.5 t. salt

1/2 t. black pepper

1/2 T. ground cinnamon

1/4 t. allspice

soak wheat for 10-15 min in cold water. mix onions and meat together, add spices, mix (you are doing all this mixing with your hands, which you need to regularly dip into icy water to keep them cold). add wheat, mix (with a little cold water if necessary).

annette demonstrates what i want to do with that big lump of raw kibby

kibby stuffing (hashwah)

1 lb. ground lean beef

1 med. onion, finely chopped

2-3 T. butter (i think annette told me that this is too much so maybe less)

1/4 c. pine nuts

1/3 t. black pepper

1 t. salt

fry everything together except pine nuts. add 1/2 c. water if it's too dry and then drain it. add pine nuts.

baked kibby

grease 16 x 10 x 2 pan with 1 T. oil. spread a layer of kibby and then a layer of stuffing over the kibby, and then another layer of kibby (annette says that second layer of kibby is hard to do over the stuffing).

cut the kibby into 5 equal parts lenghtwise and 8 equal parts crosswise, then cut diagonally. pass a knife around the sides of the baking pan to release the kibby. put some little chunks of butter on the top (2 T.). bake for one hour at 350-375. put in the broiler for a few minutes if it's not brown on top.

the finished product

i like to eat my baked kibby with syrian bread and dip it into yogurt. but like i said my favorite is raw kibby. as long as you get the meat freshly ground from a butcher you can trust and make it right away, you will be fine.

boeuf bourguignon

2010-01-07T21:35:00.020-05:00

a couple weeks ago, on the exact same day, two of my friends who do not know each other and live in different parts of the country decided to make julia childs' boeuf bourguignon (aka beef burgundy) and then posted about it on facebook. it was too much for me... i had to have it. but when was i going to find the time to make it? well due to the snow terror that hit cincinnati today, i got let out of work at noon. an afternoon free and nobody at the grocery store meant that the stars had aligned for me and the boeuf. the recipe is here in case you, like me, are too poor to invest in your own copy of mastering the art of french cooking.

the recipe is perfect and if it were not for my own personal issues (unreliable oven, lack of a deep enough casserole dish, being dumb enough to not realize that you can't put a plastic lid on top of a pyrex dish while it is in the oven) the dish would have been flawless. as it is, even with the overcooked onions and the disproportionate wine to beef stock ratio, my boeuf was the shit. i made garlic mashed potatoes to go along with it and it is the best meal i have made in a long time.

i don't have much else to add so here is the whole 5 hour ordeal in photos...

it came out delicious. it took forever but it was definitely worth it. and now i will have tasty boeuf for days.

red coat tavern

2010-01-04T20:43:00.014-05:00

while i was in michigan over the holidays, my sister made a pretty serious proclamation. "i know a place that has the best burger in michigan." clearly i could not just let that one slide and demanded that she take me there. a short ride on 275 and there we were... red coat tavern.

the place was hilarious and... red. i read some reviews online and one angsty eater claimed it was "too red" for him to enjoy his meal. i found it to be a high, but acceptable, degree of red.

enough about the lighting... let's get to the food. they have an impressive menu that includes a scotch egg, a cuban sandwich, and two different seafood chowders. but we were there for the burger. you get your pick of toppings including onions which can be raw, grilled, burned, or caramelized.

there are about 10 cheese options and gruyere is one of them. smoked gouda is another. you can get "zip sauce" which is a reduction of au jus and butter. hi, my name is liz and i have died and gone to sauce heaven. and what about the bun? do you prefer brioche, an onion roll, grilled rye? or maybe something else? they have it. don't like lettuce? well how about watercress instead? the options were out of control.

we all got the burgers and we shared sides of onion rings and fries. the burger was everything it was supposed to be. huge (1/2 lb.), perfectly cooked (i asked for, and got, medium rare), delicious. the ingredients and toppings were top quality. there was a long wait but once i got my food i found myself completely unable to care.

another point worth mentioning is the beer selection. the back of the huge menu has a ridiculously long list of beers from all over the world. you could go there for a year and not try every beer (well maybe you could).

service was friendly. bellies were stuffed. taste buds were sated. best burger promises were fulfilled.

chinese imperial inn

2010-01-03T19:17:00.006-05:00

i am on a dim sum quest lately. when i lived in new york, i ate dim sum practically every sunday at the best (and cheapest) places in chinatown and flushing. cart after cart of glistening dumplings and wobbly buns and wiggly jellyfish rolled by and you could eat to your heart's content for like $10. it was awesome.

here in cincinnati good dim sum is hard to find. i have tried grand oriental, king wok, and casual wok and found them all acceptable but nothing amazing, and also more expensive than i would like. today i went out to chinese imperial inn in sharonville with some friends and we tried our luck there.

here is a crappy cell phone pic of just a portion of our feast

the dim sum was good. not awesome but good. no carts so if that is what you need for a satisfying dim sum experience, you might be a little disappointed. however, it was better than a lot of other local dim sum and the best part was that it was cheap as hell. there were six of us and we ordered about 20 dishes to start, plus 2 kinds of tea (they have chrysanthemum tea which i love) and then 5 more dishes, and the total bill including tax was only $52. that is dirt cheap.

service was very friendly and helpful (they explained certain dishes to us and also brought us lots of water, which can be hard to get at dim sum). parking is easy. the place is basic but clean. i definitely recommend it.

hello, 2010. goodbye... 2007?

2009-12-28T21:02:00.003-05:00

2007 is the year anthony bourdain focuses on in this op-ed in the nytimes. according to him, it was the year food really took off as a hobby and as a subject of pop culture fascination. it was also the year that i really started blogging for real. "Blogs about food became more important. Few writers of books, magazines or newspaper columns could compete with, say, a lonely, Vietnam-based food nerd who’d spent the last 10 years eating at every food stall in Ho Chi Minh City, exhaustively documenting every mouthful." this cincinnati-based food nerd agrees.

here's to much more good food reading in years to come. not that i am really carrying my weight on that one lately... oh well. happy new year!

mayberry

2009-12-21T20:38:00.008-05:00

i know everybody else has already blogged about it, but mayberry is fucking good. i took a break from my insipid downtown job and went last week with my coworkers. we tried pretty much the whole menu (except sadly the sloppy josh which they were already out of by the time we got there) and there was not a miss in the bunch. i personally had the burger... a 3/4 mass of juicy delicious angus beef cooked to a perfect medium rare sent over the top by a sweet and tangy onion compote, ridiculously thick and awesome bacon, and a poached egg. damn.

maggie's cobb salad, as seen through my crappy cell phone camera

it's tiny inside but the decor is cute and the service is friendly. the best part though is the prices. my insanely huge/awesome/artery clogging burger was only $8, and that included a small side salad. i was so full from this meal that i did not eat dinner and that. never. happens. i am serious, so much food. it's byob so if you want to make a nicer meal of it, you can. can't possibly get any better, right? well yes it can... they do brunch.

shaan indian cuisine

2009-12-19T11:33:00.007-05:00

although i hardly ever blog about them (like i blog about anything anymore), i eat at cincinnati's various indian restaurants pretty regularly. in my opinion, baba is best for lamb saag, dusmesh is best for tikka masala and for overall spicing, amol is best for eggplant (bharta? i forget what it is called) and apna is best for other vegetarian dishes (but only if you order off the menu... the buffet is just blah). i like ambar for the atmosphere but the food generally is just average in my opinion. and akash has a good lunch buffet (and by "good" i mean "located within walking distance of my insipid downtown job") but nothing really stands out there for me.

i was suspicious of shaan when it first showed up in hyde park plaza because india hyde park used to be there and that place was gross. but i was out with some friends in the area one night and we decided to stop by. they are indian (and would prefer to remain anonymous) so i figured they could tell me if it was really authentic or not.

here is a picture of my leftovers

well readers we were very pleasantly surprised. shaan offers a great deal on their dinner menu which is that you can get a sampler platter of 3-4 dishes, either vegetarian or meat, along with garlic naan, rice, and dessert for only about $14. this was a ridiculous amount of food and between the three of us we had a ton of food with enough for each of us to have another whole meal. everything was delicious. one problem i have with some indian places is that the dishes can be so rich and/or creamy that it gives me a horrible stomach ache. i did get a stomach ache at shaan but that was because i ate too much, not because the dishes were too rich.

the spices were really good and even the shrimp curry, which i usually find to be kind of boring, was awesome. the garlic naan was super garlicky and soft. i actually liked the vegetarian dishes better than the meats, which is surprising because a lot of times i think that they can be kind of boring and bland. but not at shaan.

service was excellent, they were very attentive and even brought us extra rice to take home with our food. and the prices were good. on average the menu items were $9-12, and to get the sampler platters with way more food and selection it was only a few dollars more. the atmosphere is very much strip mall indian, but who the hell cares. they were pretty empty when we went so get your ass over there and give them some business. if they close i am going to be crabby.

get in mah craigslist

2009-12-15T22:24:00.004-05:00

i have gotten a few demands, i mean requests, for craigslist ads lately so here you go.

Want a REAL MAN? - 24 (westwood)
Date: 2009-12-13, 12:52PM EST

I consider myself a real man because I don't give in to all the social conditioning bullshit you all are used to in guys, for example I don't care what you do. I don't get jealous; in fact there's nothing you could do to make me angry, if you find another man I'd be fine with that, you just wont see me again. Now on the other hand if I find someone "better" I won't leave you for her, because to me there is no "better", all are perfect in my eyes. I won't try to see her behind your back, instead I'll introduce you and her, and go from there. I believe there is a double standard when it comes to dating. If a women cheats on her man she is limiting his potential to have children. But if a man "cheats" he is not limiting either women, if I really wanted I can have 2 or 3 kids a day, the most any women could have is like one a year. For me, to have to be with one women is a form of oppression on the women's part, greed almost. Also, if the women work together to raise their children instead of living separate, it is more productive and more green for the planet.

what a catch.

cut the shit ladies - 44 (ohio)
Date: 2009-12-13, 6:56PM EST

please no more replies that go tolinks to shit i dont care about al iwaNt is to meet a nice girl l/ady who likes
the samething s that idido do pu i amral inthe subjt or ianot even going tobohter withti ssly shit no more
Figured I would try it again looking for a good stable woman please no more nut jobs that likes movies and cuddling up wamt to get married again.I AM DONE PLAYING GAMES DONT HAVE TIME FOR TEM OK I AM NOT THE CLIST KILER OR A WIERDO JUST A REGULAR GUY I WLL MEET YOU IN APUBLIC PLACE LIKE THE OUTBACK STEAKHUSE IN SPRINGALE ON RT 4 IF INTERESTED MY TREAT OF COURSE DROP ME A LINE IF NOT HAVE A NICE DAY SPAM SOME OTHER POOR SLOB AND LEAVE ME ALONE PLEASEhey yo dumnb bitches leave me alone if yuoa re noit ealm ok i amtired of spam LOL

i would comment but i have to go run to the outback steakhouse on route 4 in springdale really quick.

StrapOn Relationship - 29 (East Cincinnati)
Date: 2009-12-14, 3:19PM EST

Hi, I am a swm In search of a strap on relationship with a lady. Age and Race are not important. I am a total bottom for a Strap On Girl. I am looking for an on going thing. I am 5/7, Thin build, clean and shaved and very clean down stairs. I have a nice little apt and love to have fun. I always take good care of the women with me. I do not like guys so guys dont waist your time, no I do not want the real thing, lol. Can it really be this hard to find a lady that wants this? So if you are a strap on girl or just want to try being the man in bed, I hope to hear from you. Please send a pic and please put strap on girl as the title so I know you are real or I will not reaspond

i really have nothing to add here.

I am so lonesome I could die - 44 (glendale)
Date: 2009-12-11, 6:09PM EST

hello I am a disabled man who is in dire straights for companioniship so please write me back please have a heart I dont want to go through another holiday alone

if you don't respond to this posting he is going to kill himself and you are going to fry in hell for all eternity. i hope you are ok with that.

Looking for A WHITE Goddess - 19 (Hamilton)
Date: 2009-12-10, 6:10PM EST

I'll jump right to the point, I am a WHITE & CHRISTIAN man looking for a WHITE & CHRISTIAN girl between the ages of 18-20, I have been in a alot of failed relationships that were either not worth hanging on or just didn't work altogether, I have 2 dog named Abby whom is a poodle and a mutt named Maverick, I have been around the block a few times had some experiences I would like to forget, and some I can't bear to loose (hasn't everybody?). I live with my mother until my college career starts at which time I will be heading to Miami University Hamilton. I love country music and outdoor activites cookouts, fishing, boating (when I have the resources) I am also a probationary member of the United Northern & Southern Knight's of the Ku Klux Klan and plan on continuing until the day I am laid to rest, even then going out in a "klanish" way surrounded by fellow white klansfolk...let me tell you now the Klan is nothing that HOLLYWOOD portrayed it to be, well at least this klan, the same as any other race, cookouts, christian fellowship and of course trying to dig the Tennesee mud out from under your nails, our national meetings/rallys are usually held in Tennesee and include white men and women from all over the US, Europe, Germany, Italy,Belgium, we even have a guy from Africa (yeah hes white). let me leave you with this befor you think this klan is another fly by night attempt to scare minorites into conforming to "white supremacy" its not. I will give you the website URL only after you can prove your not going to go do things to drag us down, and NO this is not a recrutment attempt, and before you send a hateful email, there is a man who is a member of our organization who was at a store and he saw this young black girl looking lost so he asked what was wrong and she said her mom and her boyfriend left her...this man went out of his way to let the store emplyees know and after a time the mom and boyfriend got locked up...if you would like to speak with me more please email me Have a blessed day :-)

and I am NOT looking for sex!!!

i could not make this shit up if i tried.

get in mah belly

it's good to know that some things never change

where to go in cincinnati if you want sashimi

green dog cafe

jean robert's table can lick my asshole

ode to picnic and pantry (apologies to pablo neruda)

christmas gifts i don't want

the cake i have been fantasizing about for 15 years

the worst places you should never eat at in cincinnati

this post is not about food, but i promise to still bitch a lot

the way more than top 10 best things you can eat in cincinnati

cincinnati cocktail quest: the blood and sand

sacred heart church ravioli dinner

600 miles for some brown rice and vegetables... well sort of

cincinnati bloody mary rankings

orchids served me a meal so good that it dragged me out of blog retirement

cincinnati is going down the toilet

enquirer letters to the editor

limited run return engagement... back to new orleans

new blog

because i no longer care about alienating my readers

intermission, or maybe the end

green eats

eat this now: salted rye at skirtz & johnston

anchor grill

huevos rancheros

westside adventure

oh all right dave le, you win

burger madness

taste of the nfl... yawn

what i did this weekend... i pickled

eat this now: geeta's mango chutney and ning chi chili with garlic

eat this now: korea kimchee

florida vacation

actual headlines from the cincinnati enquirer

newport pizza company

eat this now: wicked 'wich

forkheartknife

return to taste of the nfl

and the worst restaurant in cincinnati award goes to... cadillac ranch

taqueria mercado downtown

eat this now: galbi jhim at riverside korean

bitch bitch bitch

foods i ate while my mom was here

hidden gems on the free section of craigslist

Free hamster food (Deer Park)Date: 2010-03-19, 7:43AM EDTReply to: sale-tmdhj-1650314059@craigslist.orgI have a bottle of hamster food - only used one bowl out of it and then the hamster died.Free for the takingKim

Free hamster food (Deer Park)

honey bees (Anderson/New Richmond)

RE:Size 11 womens sketchers flipflops (Lebanon)

Free reptile food (Goshen )

Free Horse Manure (Brooksville, KY)

MILF needs a photographer (West Chester, OH)

new(ish) cinci food blog roundup + some of my non-cinci favorites

...crickets chirping...

cincinnati gelato drama!

fish fry fridays... facing the fear

tuna taco nirvana

blue elephant

chinese new year dinner

the most hilarious craigslist ad i have seen in a really long time

Tony Soprano Lookalike Wants Elizabeth Taylor for Sextravaganza - 25 (CEENCY, NEW JERSEY)

homemade mayonnaise, and a recipe to use it in

so i normally don't post press releases but...

suzie wong's on madison

raya's lebanese restaurant

areti's gyros

help me readers... i need a good bloody mary

cincy winter beerfest

findlay market chili cook off this sunday

delicious kibby made by my beautiful sister

boeuf bourguignon

red coat tavern

chinese imperial inn

hello, 2010. goodbye... 2007?

mayberry

shaan indian cuisine

get in mah craigslist

Want a REAL MAN? - 24 (westwood)

cut the shit ladies - 44 (ohio)

StrapOn Relationship - 29 (East Cincinnati)

Free hamster food (Deer Park)
Date: 2010-03-19, 7:43AM EDT
Reply to: sale-tmdhj-1650314059@craigslist.org

I have a bottle of hamster food - only used one bowl out of it and then the hamster died.
Free for the taking
Kim