dining out: ted's bulletin

When Ofelia and Nathan were in town for the inauguration, we ate dinner at one of my favorite places on Barracks Row, Ted's Bulletin. The restaurant is a modern take on a retro diner/soda fountain. The decor and furnishings are all beautiful and well-made. Gone With the Wind was playing on a large TV screen on the back wall.

It was build-your-own-burger Tuesday, and the deal includes an alcoholic "adult" milkshake. Here's Tony's Bananas Foster shake, which he says is the best one on the menu. The waitress said it's the restaurant's most popular shake.

The build-your-own burger schtick has the potential to go awry when you have an adventurous eater like Tony. This is the monstrosity that he created:

That's a chicken breast topped with fried green tomatoes, coleslaw, bacon and Boursin cheese. He raved about it, though.

Yours truly got the veggie burger (obvi) with spinach and mushrooms. I love Ted's veggie burger, although it falls apart, so I ate about half of it with a fork.

And we couldn't leave Ted's without homemade Pop-Tarts. I got a strawberry, and Ofelia ordered the peanut butter and bacon.

Hello, Wednesday morning breakfast.

recipe: triple-chocolate cookies

The other week, Tony and I stopped in the library to pick up about a dozen books on DIY patio-building that I had requested. (I still am convinced that it's a project we can tackle.) And then I started wandering the aisles, greedily grabbing even more random books and adding them to my pile. Free books! I'd forgotten how fun it is to go to the library and just take whatever you want.

One of the cookbooks I checked out is the Cook's Illustrated cookbook, which, as far as I can tell, has a recipe for every single thing you would ever want to eat. Our Phoenix friends Ofelia and Nathan were coming into town to stay with us for the inauguration, and I thought it'd be nice to have cookies in the house, so Tony and I tried a recipe from the cookbook.

I know Tony's usually the one to speak in superlatives, but I'm going to acknowledge that I have never made a better chocolate cookie before. In fact, I can't even recall eating a better chocolate cookie that someone else has made. (Sorry, Mom.) They're that good.

Triple-Chocolate Cookies

Adapted from Cook's Illustrated

• 1 pound semisweet chocolate, broken into pieces
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons instant coffee
• 10 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 bag chocolate chips

Microwave chocolate at 50 percent power for 2 minutes. Stir. Heat for an additional minute on 50 percent power until melted. Set aside to cool slightly.

Whisk flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a bowl.

In separate bowl, whisk eggs and vanilla. Sprinkle instant coffee on top.

In stand mixer with the paddle, beat butter, brown sugar and sugar until just combined. On low speed, add egg mixture until just incorporated. Add chocolate until just combined. Add dry ingredients until just combined. Be careful not to overbeat the dough. With a spoon, stir in chocolate chips.

Cover dough with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes until dough is fudge-like.

For each cookie, roll 2 tablespoons of dough into a ball. Place cookies 1-1/2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets.

Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Edges should set, but centers will be soft. Let cookies cool on baking sheets for 10 minutes, and they will continue to firm up. Let cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes about 40 cookies.

home improvement: fix a sticky lock

Since we bought our house, the locks on our front security door have been really sticky. It took a lot of wiggling and jiggling to unlock the door. It'd always been kind of annoying, but things came to a head a couple of weeks ago when Tony and I came back from a run and the door wasn't opening. It was cold, we had no cell phones, and our neighbors weren't home. After about 15 minutes of wiggling and jiggling, the lock finally gave way.

But it prompted Tony to finally fix the lock. He Googled the phrase, "key sticks in lock fix." And guess what we found out? Fixing a sticky lock is very, very, very easy. Very easy.

Tony picked up a tube of powdered graphite for a few dollars at Frager's. He puffed a little bit into the keyhole and turned the key a few times.

Voila. Unsticky lock.

So now we know. Unstick a lock with powdered graphite.

And sincere apologies to all of our friends who have ever cat sat and had to fight the sticky door. Shouldn't have taken us this long to fix it.

things to do: alice's adventures in wonderland

If you're looking for something to do this weekend and you have a little scratch to splurge with (and you love the ballet!), let me advise that you get yourself to the Kennedy Center to see the National Ballet of Canada's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Valerie scored free tickets through a MyTix giveaway, and I was her date. Andrew and Tony, meanwhile, parked themselves at Froggy Bottom Pub for two and a half hours. The stereotypical gender division was agreeable to all parties.

I told Tony afterwards, though, that it's a shame he's sat through so many ballets over the years, and THIS is the one he missed. He would've really liked it. It was as if the set designers and costume designers had no limits to their imagination.

I was skeptical that the set folks would be able to make Alice shrink when she drank the potion and grow into a giant when she ate the cookie in a believable way, as this is a live stage show and all. But they did it! Thanks to video projections of doorways that got really, really big when Alice drank the potion. And the doors got really, really tiny when Alice ate the cookie.

And the caterpillar! That was my favorite costume. He paraded across the stage with his long body trailing him. His legs were those of eight ballerinas walking en pointe. The ballerinas' heads and bodies were hidden by the long body costume, so only their legs showed.

The duchess and the cook's bloody costumes and kitchen were disturbing and wonderful. The cook's sausage-making operation included the hindquarters of a pig sticking out of her meat grinder. *Shutters.* Disgusting.

The ballet is full of surprising, interesting moments like that. Highly recommend Alice before the show closes this weekend. (P.S. You can see a video with some of the costumes and sets here.)

<3

In other news, how neat was it to have a little bit of snow this morning? I hope my bulbs survive, though.

recipe: rosemary bread

I've been making a lot of bread this winter because (a) it makes the house smell amazing; (b) the oven keeps the house warm; and (c) homemade bread is far tastier than the store-bought kind. I've been making a lot of white bread, but a couple of weeks ago, I switched things up and made rosemary bread. Rosemary grows well all year round here, so I have a ton of it in my garden. This bread is amazing.

Rosemary Bread

Adapted from Martha Stewart

• 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 3/4 cup water
• 5 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 3/4 cups flour
• 3 tablespoons chopped rosemary, divided

Heat oven to 200 degrees and turn off when it comes to temperature.

Combine yeast and 1/4 cup warm water in mixer bowl. Let stand about 7 minutes.

Add 3/4 cup water, olive oil, sugar, salt, flour, and 2 tablespoons rosemary.

Attach the dough hook, and mix on speed 2 until dough is smooth.

Place dough ball into an oiled bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel and place in warm oven for 1 hour.

Punch down dough and let rest for 15 minutes, covered.

Divide dough in half. Roll each half into a large rectangle with smallest side about 9 inches wide. With your hands, roll up the dough into a 9-inch-long loaf. Fold the ends over, so the end spirals aren't showing.

Grease two loaf pans, and place dough in them, seam-side down.

Press remaining 1 tablespoon rosemary into the loaves.

Cover and let rise 1 hour.

Dust loaves with a small amount of flour.

Bake 30 minutes at 400 degrees.

<3

By the way, I got this oven thermometer as a Christmas present from my parents. Holy guacamole, was this thing an eye opener. Turns out, "400" is more like 350, so I've had to make some adjustments when I'm preheating the oven.

decor: bedroom corner

A couple of months ago, I added some art to the corner in my bedroom above the brown trunk that I fixed up. Then last week, Tony looked over to my side of the room and asked when that painting went up. You can call him Eagle-Eye Tony, folks. But it made me realize I never blogged about how I finished this little corner.

I like the unevenness of the large framed painting on the left with the tiny cross on the right. But it's balanced down below by the bulky plant on the right and the small planter on the left.

Most of the furniture in the bedroom (dresser, wardrobe, two nightstands) are Hemnes pieces from Ikea in the black-brown finish, so the trunk and now the frame add some natural wood texture to break things up.

Here's a closeup of the cross, which I've had since I lived in Arizona.

I bought it in Nogales, which is a border town that we would visit sometimes. We'd park on the American side and walk across the border and do shopping. The cross is painted blue on the sides with tin on its face, and it has little saints under green glass orbs.

The planter is functional, too. I use it as a jewelry dish.

I keep pieces there that I wear a lot, so I don't have to put them away every night and get them back out in the morning.

The purple and green in the painting and the green in the cross, planter and plant go with the other purples and greens I have in the bedroom. So after living with a blank wall for a year, I'm happy to have it jazzed up a bit.

dining out: amsterdam falafelshop

On a Friday earlier this month, Tony picked me up from work, and we made our way to Adams Morgan for some dinner at Amsterdam Falafelshop. This commute, by the way, involved driving northbound on Rock Creek Parkway during rush hour ... and holy moly. No drivers ed class in the world could prepare you for that. Both the northbound and southbound lanes funnel only northbound traffic in the evenings, which would be fine except the exits are not labeled clearly at all and drivers zoom by at extremely high rates of speed around the curves, and the whole thing resembles a real-life Mario Kart race.

Anyway, we got to the restaurant safely. Adams Morgan in general and Amsterdam Falafelshop specifically are teeming with young people. When we got inside, there were not one, but two, foursomes of young women who could be right out of HBO's Girls. Have you seen it? Tony and I just finished watching the first season on Netflix. (He was very vocal in his complaints for about half of the season ... and then he admitted that he actually enjoys complaining about watching it, haha.) The show is about four 24-year-old-ish women who live in Brooklyn and are starting careers and sustaining friendships and working on relationships and all of that. Someone said it's like Sex and the City, only Carrie and her friends were all older and established in their careers and apartments and lives, while Lena Dunham et al are just figuring that stuff out.

Watching Girls -- and then walking into Amsterdam Falafelshop -- got me thinking about that time in my life, when I was 24. I was in a new city (Phoenix), working at my first job, spending nights and weekends with some of the best friends I've ever had. And we had so much fun. All the time. This is how Tony and I spent our nearly 100 percent of our free time: bars, restaurants, used book sales, street fairs, dancing at clubs, lounging by the pool, house parties, reading magazines, wine bars, happy hour, playing video games, barbecues ... and more bars.

I mean, 24 and 29 don't sound that different. But it's so clear that chapter in my life is over. Free time these days occasionally includes things like happy hours and house parties and video games, although more infrequently. (And in the case of clubs ... nuh-uh, not in several years). These days, you're more likely to find us doing: home improvement, brunch, dinner parties, DVDs, games nights ... and more brunch. (And for the record, I'm having just as much fun these days as I was having five years ago.)

Bars vs. brunch. When you boil it down, that's the difference between 24 and 29, isn't it?

So, Amsterdam Falafelshop. I told Tony I was ruining my street cred by being seen with him in the restaurant. (He's 31!)

There's a very Cool Kids/In Crowd feel to the restaurant. There are signs instructing you how to properly order, assemble and eat your falafel sandwich, lest your stupidity be filmed and put on You Tube for the world to see.

The food itself was very good. Loved it. I'm big on falafel, and it was the perfect indulgence to end the week.

You finish your own sandwiches from the toppings bar. Tony, who is generally a more adventurous eater than I am, chose only colorful toppings (like pickled beets). Ha!

Falafel for the main course. Introspection on the side.

recipe: vegetable barley soup

As Tony was eating this vegetable barley soup, he said, "This soup has made me re-think my anti-soup stance." Apparently he doesn't like soup. Who knew? And now I'm thinking about all of the times I've made soup before ... apparently he didn't like it ... but he never said anything ...

You think you know everything there is to know about your spouse, and then you learn something new. Like earlier this week, in the car, All Star by Smash Mouth came on the radio, and I sang every word. Tony seemed to be equal parts impressed and bewildered.

Anyway, back to the soup.

This baby is good. It's got some spice to it. And it was my first-ever foray into barley soup making.

(Pictured above with rosemary bread, which I mentioned before. I've really got to post that recipe soon.)

Vegetable Barley Soup

Adapted from allrecipes.com

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3/4 onion
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 6 cups vegetable stock
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup pearl barley, uncooked
• 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes
• 1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 large carrots, chopped
• 1 zucchini, chopped

Heat olive oil in a dutch oven. Add onion and cook over medium-low heat until browned, about 10 minutes.

Add garlic and cook a couple of minutes until browned.

Add curry powder, paprika and pepper and cook 1 minutes.

Add vegetable stock and water and bring to a boil.

Add barley, tomatoes, garbanzos, sugar, salt, carrots and zucchini. Reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes.

<3

Note: The vegetables will be very tender. If you want crispier veggies, wait to add the carrots and zucchini until about 15 minutes from the end of the cooking time.

decor: hot pink frame

A few weeks ago, I came across this picture, and I really liked the idea of a thin, hot pink picture frame. I have a lot of teal and orange in our living room, and hot pink seemed like it would be complementary.

I decided to conduct my experiment on this frame, which I bought at an auction last fall for next to nothing.

Those gold foil decals are stuck on the frame with little pins, and I removed them before painting. And I used hot pink craft acrylic paint to paint the thing.

Ta-da!

I pinned the foil decals back in, and I love the way they look against the pink. Much more modern than the black frame.

I have the pink frame on the mantel with some other gold frames I've had around the house.

The images in the frames, by the way, are wallpaper samples that I've come across. Maybe someday I'll find real art to fill the frames, but for now, at least I've got some pretty placeholders.

things to do: arboretum picnic

This weekend, we got a little bit of a break from our winter weather. (Although this winter has been admittedly mild.) So Tony and I took advantage of the nice temps with a picnic at the National Arboretum with Ben, Mandy, Valerie and Andrew. It's one of my favorite places to be outside in D.C.

It's striking in the wintertime with the bare trees.

After lunch, Ben busted out his bocce ball set. And I have to say, I did pretty well, considering I thought we were playing croquet at first and was wondering where the mallets were. (Bocce novice here.)

See? That's my red one.

Here's hoping spring arrives quickly, so we get more of these lovely weekends.

recipe: quinoa and vegetable stew

Tony tends to compliment my cooking in superlatives. The deep dish pizza I made the other week was his "favorite pizza ever." I made rosemary bread last weekend that was "the best bread you've ever made." (Recipe coming up.) And this quinoa and vegetable stew is his "new favorite food." Haha.

But it really is good. I usually do not eat leftovers, but I ate these leftovers for lunch the next two days.

Quinoa and Vegetable Stew

Adapted from America's Test Kitchen via USA Today

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3/4 onion, chopped fine
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2 hot banana peppers, minced
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 2 teaspoons coriander
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
• 6 cups vegetable stock
• 1 pound red potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces (about 1/2-inch pieces)
• 1 cup quinoa
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, minced

Heat olive oil in a dutch oven. Add onion and salt and cook over medium-low heat until onion is browned, about 10 minutes.

Add banana peppers and cook a few minutes until beginning to brown.

Add garlic and cook a few minutes.

Add paprika, coriander and cumin and cook about 1 minute.

Add vegetable stock and potatoes and bring to boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook 10 minutes.

Add quinoa and simmer 8 minutes.

Add corn and simmer 7 minutes.

Add tomatoes and peas and cook 5 minutes.

Off heat, stir in cilantro.

Makes 6 servings.

<3

Cute cat bonus picture!

In making this recipe, Tony and I learned that Victor likes cilantro. Here he is, eating one of the stems after I pulled the leaves off.

home improvement: electrical box disguise

I blogged earlier this week about adding a kitchen cabinet door, and this is a blog post about an electrical box door. This is the week of doors! Tony and I have a long, long queue of home improvement projects in our house. And the projects we move up in the queue are the things that are annoying me at the time, haha. Once we fix one thing, something else always pops up as a glaring annoyance. And what had been annoying me lately was the industrial gray electrical box in our living room.

I needed to soften the color, so it wasn't such an eyesore. I decided to paint the electrical box glossy white to match the trim, outlets and vents.

I unscrewed the door from the wall. I roughed it up with steel wool, and then I wiped it clean. I propped the door open with a spare can of spray paint and used two pieces of scrap paper to protect the labels on the inside. And then I taped off the handle and the hinges.

The thing got about 15 light coats of spray paint with several minutes of drying time between coats. Tony and I were doing some work in our backyard that day, so every 5 minutes or so, I'd walk over to the door and give it another light coat.

And the electrical door is no longer a glaring annoyance. Mission accomplished. And if you have a gray utility box in your house, know it's an easy project to tone down the color. It's the little things that are making me love this house even more.

recipe: pierogies

I'm not ashamed to admit that there are Mrs. T's pierogies in my freezer. Mrs. T gets the credit for many a weeknight dinner in my house. But, I have to say, that Mrs. T's ain't got nothin' on Ms. Z's homemade pierogies.

Homemade pierogies are kind of involved to make, but they are worth it. I made a batch when Camille and Matt came over for dinner before Christmas. This recipe makes a bunch of pierogies, so I was able to freeze a lot for weeknight dinners.

Pierogies

Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Dough

• 4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup butter at room temperature

Filling

• 2 medium potatoes
• milk, butter and/or sour cream
• salt and pepper to taste

Extras

• 1/2 onion
• butter or olive oil for sauteing

In a stand mixer bowl, combine flour and salt. Add eggs, sour cream and butter. Knead until dough is smooth. Divide dough and half and wrap each ball in plastic wrap and store in fridge for at least an hour.

For filling, boil potatoes until tender. Mash with milk, butter and/or sour cream to create thick mashed potatoes. Season with salt and pepper.

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough balls out, one at a time. Use a large glass to cut the dough into circles.

Place a spoonful of potatoes into the dough circle.

Fold the pierogie in half.

Pinch the pirogue closed with your fingers.

Lay the pierogie on the counter and use a fork to seal it. Flip it over and seal the other side.

Boil a large pot of water. Place the pierogies in the water and cook until they float.

Meanwhile, in a large frying pan, melt the butter or heat the olive oil. Add the onions and cook until they start to brown. When the pierogies are boiled, use a slotted spoon to transfer them to the frying pan. Fry until the pieroges are golden.

home improvement: new cabinet door

When you come into our house through the front door, the downstairs is all one open space. The living room, spiral staircase, dining room and kitchen. On the end of the kitchen counter are display shelves, which you can see as soon as you walk into the house. They're probably intended for cookbooks and whatnot, but storage space is at a premium around here, folks, and I've always found these shelves to be a missed opportunity. But this problem was not insurmountable.

I didn't take a "before" photo, so, uh, just pretend there's no door in this photo. (Spoiler alert! We added a door!)

Here is how I created the door in four easy steps.

1. Call Dad.

2. Ask Dad to make a door for you.

3. Allow a few months to pass.

4. Install your door!

Haha! Didn't he do a great job? When my parents were in D.C. last fall, he took one of our other cabinet doors home with him, and he modeled the new door off of it. It's really impressive. He even matched the stain. Tony and I picked it up when we were in Ohio for Christmas and installed it when we got back.

So now the booze is behind a closed door, and I have room to store all of those extra pantry items that don't fit in our cabinets and previously were housed on top of the cabinets. So much better.

Problem, you've been surmounted.

recipe: sesame seed burger buns

I made these buns before, but I was disappointed in how they turned out. The original recipe called for brushing melted butter on the buns before baking, which ended up making them too hard for my taste. This time, I skipped the melted butter topping and ended up with fluffy burger buns. Much better.

Sesame Seed Burger Buns

Adapted from King Arthur Flour

• 1 cup warm water
• 1 tablespoon yeast
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. When oven comes to temperature, turn off.

Dissolve yeast in warm water.

In mixer bowl with a dough hook, combine flour, sugar, salt, butter and egg. Add yeast mixture. Knead until dough is smooth.

Put dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in warm oven for 1 hour.

Punch down the dough and divide into 8 pieces. Shape into balls, and flatten. Place buns on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and let rise 30 minutes.

Brush a small amount of water on each of the buns, which will help the sesame seeds stick. Sprinkle 1/4 teaspoon sesame seeds on each of the buns.

Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.