I returned home from the gym around 3 o’clock this afternoon, eager for a shower after spending the day sweating. Unfortunately, I returned home and there was no water. Not “no hot water,” mind you. No water.
No matter. Certainly this would get fixed before dinner time, meaning I can make pasta or do dishes or any of those normal Sunday kitchen-centered activities.
6:30 p.m. Still no water.
Time for plan B. Truth be told, making a dinner sans water isn’t really that difficult, particularly if you have a well-stocked pantry. It just adds some urgency to the recipe I want to share with you.
Buffalo Chili: No Water Necessary
1 pkg ground buffalo (thank you, Wegman’s)
An onion, chopped
some garlic, chopped
some red and green bell pepper, chopped
1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
a couple chipotles in adobo sauce, chopped
1 beer, dark (I added about half a beer to the recipe)
1 cup chicken broth
1 can crushed tomatoes
salt
pepper
cumin
chili powder
olive oil
Heat onions and garlic in oil for one minute. Add buffalo – cook until browned. Add peppers – cook briefly.
Throw in everything else, seasoning to taste. Cook on low until sauce is your desired consistency.
Easy enough. Who needs water, anyway? But washing dishes without good old H20? That’s another story. Luckily,
7:20 p.m. Water returns.
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12Mar
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10Mar
Bluestate.
Saturday night.
Drink beer. Listen to good music.
Be there. -
10Mar
I owe MAW a beer. Why should this be? Because last night in a moment of drunken musing I bet him that tea had more caffeine than coffee. So the real question is, why did I believe this odd piece of urban legend? I’m not sure, but it’s wrong wrong wrong.
Depending on where it’s from, tea has between 40 and 60 milligrams of caffeine. Now true, this is more than a coke (34) or a pepsi (37), but it’s less than your average drip coffee which comes in at up to a heart-racing 175 for the same sized cup. A can of Red Bull contains a paltry 80, despite being banned in France for it’s negative effects.
But what of milk, I hear you say. Popular notion says that it bonds with the caffeine and makes it less painful. Well, drinking milk can prevent caffeine-instigated bone loss, especially for the ladies, but I’m not sure where I heard the other stuff.
Anyway, it’s not true, and now I owe MAW a beer. -
09Mar
You can tell we’re just getting caught up on all things DC related, as we neglected to post about this:
Tonight is Dining Out For Life, where your dining dollars will benefit the fantastic Food & Friends organization. Go here for a list of participating restaurants, then go out and have a good diner, knowing you’re lining the pockets of someone other than the restauranteurs. And let us know where you went and how the food was. -
09Mar
It came to my attention yesterday that we’ve been neglecting our list of great places to get coffee with wi-fi. Updates are forthcoming, but before we do so, we’d like to know what other places you know of with wireless (free or pay) in the DC area. Please add any suggestions either in the comments in this post or email us at dcfud.writers@gmail.com. -
09Mar
Somehow, in all our postings, DCFUD has neglected the best place drinking in DC: The Brickskeller. I’d say I’m unsure how we missed posting about The Brickskeller, but I’m fairly certain I know why. Everyone reading DCFUD knows about Brickskeller. In fact, everyone who has ever lived in NW DC knows about Brickskeller. It’s the pub/restaurant (whith a heavy emphasis on pub) up on 22nd that holds the Guinness world record for most beers. And it’s a great place to go when you want to have several very good and very large beers.
Brickskeller is an institution, but it’s not quite like the normal drinking places in D.C. You don’t generally go to Brickskeller for a drink. It’s not akin to Mackey’s or Sign of the Whale. In general, when you go to the Brickskeller, you’re going for a night of drinking. You may say you’re going for just one drink, but in four years of going, I’ve never succeed in ordering just one beer. Once you end up at the Brickskeller, you’re not leaving until a) you’ve tried at least two beers you’ve never had before, b) you’re worried about missing the last metro out, or c) they’re closing the bar and threatening to chuck you next door into the Fireplace unless you pay your very large bar bill. In fact, my three largest bar bills (one of which topped $600, although it was on a company cc and involved 14 of us) have occured at Brickskeller.
So why do you go to Brickskeller? Two reasons:
1) The Beer. They really do have some of the best beer in the city. Check out zaf’s favorite, the Dogfish Head Rasion D’etre, my new favorite, Schneider & Sohn Aventinus, or one of the hundreds of Mexican, Belgian, Chinese, Italian, Russian, or about eighteen other country’s beers. Drink and be merry.
2) The Waitresses. I’m not sure how they do it, and it really can’t be legal, but the Brickskeller has the most attractive waitresses in town. They are all very cute and they all know it, which makes spending $75 for beers for three people siginificantly less painful. Order a Dunkelweiss and you’ll understand why.
So, next time you’re looking for a real night of drinking — no happy hours here — head to the Brickskeller. It’s a place to catch up with friends, have a couple of beers, and wander out at 3 a.m. wondering what the heck the Scandinavians put in their beer to make them worth $8.50 a bottle…and you’ll always go back.
The Brickskeller Dining House and Down Home Saloon
1523 22nd St, NW
Washington, DC 20037
Image blatently borrowed from beerblog.motime.com. -
07Mar
Splenda has long been a mainstay on this blog for its humorous lawsuits and creepy medical effects. But what about Spenda, the Puppy Killer?
A number of sources have published undercover findings on the infamous ‘Huntingdon Life Sciences’ product testing company. If your’re an enviro-type, you might recognize the name from older allegations that staff there were incompetent, unnecessarily cruel, and drunk. Anyway, current rumors are that early testing of Splenda killed 12,800 animals including a whole lot of adorable puppies and monkeys, who apparently weren’t so adorable by the time they’d been force-fed Splenda and then… well, you know.
If you really want some of the gory details, here are a couple hippie sites trafficking in moral outrage. I warn, this really isn’t for anyone who’s just eaten. Or is about to eat. Or ever wants to eat again:
World Vegan News
An anti-Huntingdon page
Inside HLS. They don’t dig it, apparently
So all you people claiming that Splenda should not be used by the public until its effects were fully known, this is all your fault. -
06Mar
Meat! It’s juicy and good! Meat! It’s yummy and thick! Meat! It’s meaty!
But that not withstanding, it is possible for vegetarian food to be great. No really! Otherwise, the entire southern half of India would starve. Alright, poor taste there, but seriously, it exists, and The Vegetable Garden in White Flint proves it. It’s vegan and it’s good
Not only is the menu at this place longer than a really really long line of sausages…all lined up, but the people are so unbelievably friendly that you’ll wish you were related. For appetizers I tried the cilantro roll, a mix of tofu, black mushrooms, and, yes, cilantro, and ex-fudder snh got the crispy black mushrooms. Imagine the crunchiest, sweetest General Tso’s you’ve ever had, but with musky strips of fungus instead of gooey poultry parts.
For mains, there was tofu disguised as duck with crunchy greens, and a hot-pot of silky eggplant with chunks of ginger and basel. I tried the smooth sweet potato pie for desert, snh had rhubarb. Both were perfect, but admittedly it’s a lot easier to make those vegan than the chocolate mousse pie (made with soft tofu).
I practically rolled out of here confident that my culinary karma was at least momentarily safe. The Vegetable Garden advertises as vegetarian, vegan, organic, and macrobiotic. So if macrobiot is on your diet, this is the place for you.
The Vegetable Garden
11618 Rockville Pike
301 468 9301 -
03Mar
Who has not tasted the salty anticlimax of an appetite unfulfilled? General consensus would answer this question with ‘the loyal clients of Lindy’s Red Lion’ in Foggy Bottom. But is it true? I ventured to test the hypothesis with an afternoon burger.
The bar and upstairs has the usual ‘best burger’ propaganda and signed photos that are required by law at all burger joints, and the chairs and tables are reassuringly cramped. In fact, it has all the hallmarks of a great food find: sprawls of yuppies toasting the weekend with cheap beer, tough world-hardened waitresses, and highschoolers from Minnesota who have wandered in by mistake.
What it doesn’t have is good burgers. When my defeated-looking basket arrived, the tiny meat patty reminded me of the Midwestern highschoolers, cold, thin, and greasy. The dusty sponge of a bun flopped limply on the side, and my guacamole had been forgotten by an overworked kitchen.
Now, it’s true that I was hungry as only great expectations can make you. So imagine my unhappiness when on top of taste issue, I then spent the next half hour at a Starbucks table trying not to be ill. Man, I leave the city for one year and look what happens.
