Pret

Remember the good old days? When I lived in London? Oh those were the days. One of the many things that I fell in love with in England were  baguettes. I remember mostly eating ham and cheese ones--usually a Swiss cheese like emmentaler or something. One place (or maybe the main place, it's hard to recall now) that I enjoyed getting baguettes was at Pret A Manger. They were good. Though thinking back I don't remember them being particularly cheap.

A number of months ago I was walking around in Back Bay and I walked past a store front that had a sign saying something like "coming soon Pret A Manger." I had to cross the street to investigate. A couple of weeks ago I was on my way to class and I decided that what I needed was some lunch and that a baguette would fit the bill nicely. I decided that I'd swing by Pret and see how they compared to London. They are definitely a little pricey (which is what made me think back to the pricing in London--really I think they're comparable). And they wouldn't heat up my sandwich. Apparently Americans are to lawsuit-happy and they ruin things for other people. The sandwich was still tasty, though it could have done with a little English mustard.

Thai food

I had plans to go into Boston today and I thought it'd be a nice treat to have pizza at Ernesto's. But then I discovered that the store I needed to go to has a branch in Cambridge. So I decided to go to that one instead. Of course this ruined my North End plans. Luckily, I am resourceful and it didn't take me too long to track down the name of a good restaurant in Porter Square. So, today I had lunch at Rod Dee's. It's a Thai place. I had the pad thai, it was delicious. This restaurant is a cash only place, so I had to run to the ATM, because my limited amount of cash just wasn't enough. And that got me thinking if there is a correlation between good food and cash only. The best pastry shops in the North End are cash only. I feel like it's the mom and pop shops that don't take cards and they always seem to have such good food. I should eat at more of them.

Ariana Restaurant

Last weekend I went with some friends to check out an Afghan restaurant in Allston. I took the bus to Allston and had the realization that I really stick pretty well to my regular routine. I had kind of forgotten how much bigger the diesel busses are than the electric ones and I had forgotten how the demographics of Allston are radically different than the part of town I live in. I don't think I remember the last time I rode a bus that was crowded with people all about my own age and felt so old. Since I live in the 'burbs with more regular, gainfully employed adults I forget how much of a difference there is from the undergraduate days. wow.

But semi-drunk undergrads aside the outing was superb. We went to Ariana Restaurant. It was fantastic. I had a lamb dish. The lamb was tender and juicy and just fell apart in your mouth. I do love lamb. Maybe someday I'll learn to cook it. And the rice was just like I remember my mom's Afghan friend used to make us. So good! And we had baklava for dessert for which there are no words to describe. I'm already looking forward to the next time I can go...

Sap, what gets out sap?

So on Monday I met a friend for lunch at an awesome restaurant called Veggie Planet.

While I was waiting for the bus to come to take me to Harvard Square the tree I was standing under dripped sap on my head. So I arrived at lunch with a nice sticky patch in my hair. Luckily, the sap was clear, so it wasn't super apparent to other people. I did manage to wash the worst of the stickiness out, but I couldn't get all of it. Some research led me to discover that if you put peanut butter over the sap, and then blow dry it till it's melty the sap combs right out. This worked very well for me. Granted not for about 8 hours till I got home from work, but that's beside the point. Peanut butter removes tree sap from hair.

Back to Veggie Planet. It is a delightful little hole-in-the-wall vegetarian/vegan restaurant in Harvard Square. And their food is pretty cheap! I had a delicious black bean and monterey jack pizza. So good! I'm becoming such a fan of these cheap, fresh, vegetarian places.

Clover Food Lab

One of my classmates introduced me to a delightful food lab in Harvard Square on Friday. It's called Clover. It is a fast food restaurant that makes food using ingredients that are as fresh as they can be, as local as they can be found and as organic as possible (which means a seasonal menu too). It also happens to only serve vegetarian foods, but that's just an added bonus. And it's reasonably cheap. They also have various food trucks around town. When we went on Friday I had the BBQ Seitan pita. It was delicious. Seitan is a kind of wheat-based protein. It has a kind of duck-like consistency to it and it seems to absorb flavor not unlike tofu. And it was one of the first times all week that I'd eaten a meal and not felt disgusting afterwards, or like I needed to go into a coma. In fact, Clover made such an impression on me that after I got off work on Saturday I stopped in and got a chickpea fritter pita. It didn't disappoint.

The chickpea fritter (courtesy of the internet). Doesn't that just make you hungry?

Panera Bread

Ok, so Panera Bread is pretty much one of my new favorite restaurants. One, they have good food; two, they sell their bread as loaves, and they'll slice it for you; and three, they have a fantastic loyalty program. I went in earlier this week to buy my loaf of sourdough bread and the gal at the check out tells me that I've earned a free pastry and wonders if I want it now or later. Now, please. I felt pretty good about having a cherry danish. The next day I stopped by again because I needed something to drink and it was hot and everything and when I ordered I got a frozen lemonade and a roll or something but when the guy rang me up he told me I'd earned a free drink. Two free things in less than 48 hours! Yeah, Panera has earned my loyalty.

Boston Pops

So it has come to my attention that not everyone in the entire world has heard of the Boston Pops. While the Boston Pops are the Pops, I suppose it is acceptable for not everyone to know who they are. I mean, not everybody likes orchestras as much as I do... So. In the words of the conductor, Keith Lockhart: "The Boston Pops Orchestra performs the best music of the past and present, appealing to the widest possible audience with a broad spectrum of styles, from jazz to pop, indie rock to big band, film music to the great American songbook, and Broadway to classical, making it the perfect orchestra for people who don't know they like orchestras!" (from their website) But the Boston Pops are more than just an awesome orchestra, they are one of the most recorded orchestras and sometimes known as "America's Orchestra."

I couldn't really say what it was the introduced me to the Boston Pops, but I feel like I've known of them my entire life (I did grow up watching PBS, maybe that had something to do with it?). But when one of my friends approached me a week or two ago and asked if I wanted to go to a Boston Pops concert with her and some of our other friends it didn't take me long to say yes. And the best part was that she was getting free tickets from work. Not only was going to see the Boston Pops, but I was going for free! Since we came into these free tickets we decided that it would be an awesome thing to make an evening of it and go out to dinner. We went to this restaurant near the Commons called the Parish Cafe. Essentially what happened is that they (the Parish Cafe people) approached a number of well-known local chefs and asked them to create a sandwich for this restaurant. So all the sandwiches list what chef contributed it and their restaurant and they are all pretty amazing. I had a chicken sandwich with bacon, lettuce, and tomato on it, and it was fabulous.

So after dinner we headed over to Northeastern University for the concert. I guess this particular concert was special and was actually a part of the NU's commencement activities and so the Pops weren't playing that their normal venue, but it was still fabulous. The arena they played in had pretty terrible acoustics, but what do you expect from a sports arena? I always forget how much I enjoy going to concerts. I'm really excited for the fall. I discovered a month of two ago that the Boston Symphony Orchestra (of which the Pops are an offshoot) offers a fantastic deal for college students. You can pay $25 and buy a "college card" for the season and that allows you to get a ticket (at no additional cost) to any available show. From what I understand it's basically any show that hasn't sold out (with I'm sure some restrictions). Isn't that FANTASTIC! I am so excited. For practically nothing I can attend concerts to my hearts desire. Now I just have to wait for the regular season to start up again.

Tangents aside...The concert and the dinner and the evening and the company were all fantastic. It was so nice to get out and do something (especially something cultured) and to have people to do it with.

Cafe Rio

So, hardly a month has gone by since I said I wanted to cook every week. Who would have thought that it would be so hard to prepare one meal in an entire week? Well, it is. This past week I was working a class in Palisades, NY, which is a "suburb" of New York that is in the middle of nowhere and isn't really a town at all, but the trees were lovely. So I ate there all week and then I fully intended to cook something (maybe even something new) when I got back to Maryland late last Friday. As luck would have it, it's been a busy weekend and the whole cooking thing flew out the window at the first opportunity.

On Saturday I went apple picking up in Damascus, Maryland (the cutest town ever!), so look for an apple recipe or two in the coming weeks. After picking my fill of apples one of my roommates and I drove up to the newest delicious "mexican" restaurant in Olney. Cafe Rio has finally come to the DC Metro area! There are now two locations--one in Maryland and one Virginia. And I'm pretty sure that it is the place for displaced Utahns to eat. And the food is just as good as it is in Provo.

I say that as if I actually liked Cafe Rio when I lived in Provo--that's not strictly speaking true. The first time I ate there was shortly after I'd moved to Provo, and being from Arizona just couldn't understand why a "Mexican" restaurant would put rice in their burritos; no self-respecting Mexican would ever do that. Somewhere along the way I realized that Cafe Rio falls into a category with Chipotle and Qdoba and all those other very delicious burrito-restaurants: not Mexican food, but delicious. After I made that realization everything changed. You just can't pass up that pork salad. It is definitely worth the half-hour drive each way to buy an $8 salad. Besides, I ate that salad for dinner on Saturday and finished it up for lunch on Sunday (hence why I didn't cook all weekend). So, if you're ever find yourself in the DC area looking for a good 'ole taste of Utah stop in at Cafe Rio. It's worth the drive.