Reason for Not Eating Out #18: When you do eat out, things are different…

Here's a moment where I really wish that a friend of mine had executed her idea to write a parallel blog to mine called, "Not Having Sex in New York." The plan was, we would be able to compare and contrast the relative advantages or disadvantages of both plights and the unique revelations we each discovered. I still have much to wonder about what it would be like only having sex in a strange city, country or town, where one found oneself for various reasons -- work or pleasure. Alas, I can only offer you my side of the story, the only-eating-out-when-out-of-town one. Ho-hum.

Girl in a Chocolate Coma

Let me tell you, it’s serious. After my prize weekend trip to the Copia center’s annual Death by Chocolate festival and private tour of Charles Chocolates factory thanks to Culinate, I estimate my blood is 72% cacao right now. I may not have died by chocolate, per se, but I think I consumed enough of it to experience the old wives’ tale that chocolate can actually give you a caffeine high (stomachache notwithstanding). And I couldn’t have planned a grander finale for the weekend than for my entire body, and all the clothing I brought on the trip, to be covered with a fine, powdery layer of deep brown cocoa due to a wee little accident involving a canister of cocoa.

“Peasant” Turnip Soup

This was the challenge I faced growing up with learning to cook anything too rustic and simple: Time and again, I'd be taken aback by something that my mom had just thrown together. Wow, this is really good, I would say, tasting an eggdrop soup with crunchy scallion bits floating about. Or a stir-fry of julienned potatoes with a dash of white pepper, the starch suspending the sticks in a light, opaque sauce. Or, most recently, this clear soup with soft cubes of turnip and a background smokiness of sparerib bones.

Winter Vegetable Couscous

The first thing you're probably wondering is why there is a big picture of broth instead of a completed, beautifully presented plate of winter vegetable couscous before us right now. That's because when I made this at home, I erred on the side of caution and prepared the mostly winter dish with the addition of zucchini, just as I'd seen it done throughout my visit to Morocco. After eating mushy, limp zucchini several times there and then making it at home, however, I've concluded that this might not actually be necessary; the zucchini lends little to the savory vegetable broth that steams and flavors the couscous. It's also not a winter vegetable -- not here at least. And, like I said, it was soggy, mushy, limp and all but disappeared in your mouth.

Stormy Weather Food

There’s a silver lining to every cloud. Rainy, stormy, freezing days are cooking days for me, spent tending a fragrant simmer, in the warmth of a oven breaking blisters onto the crusts of bread. There's an acute feeling of physical and emotional nourishment that comes with even the simplest of meals, in the worst of weather.

And the icing on this ‘pain’…

Is more chocolate! Because thanks to all of you who voted and the esteemed chocolate experts who judged the top ten entries, I've won Culinate's Death by Chocolate blogging contest, hence a weekend trip for two to Napa to attend Copia Center's chocolate festival and a private tour of Charles Chocolates' factory. What?! I'm still getting used to this hallucination. I hope I didn't pull a Hillary on you guys by doing the blogging equivalent of crying on camera to get your votes! But it is personal. This contest is very personal to me.

Rats!

My friend Karol agreed to come to my impromptu Chinese New Year's Eve dinner last night only on the condition that there would be no utterance of the words "rat" or "mouse," so just getting it out of my system. Ringing in the Year of the Rat is understandably awkward when trodding the sodden confetti and firecracker papered streets of a New Year’s aftermath-stricken Mott St., kicking the occasional half-eaten bun. I'm not sure the ancient Chinese had counted on the uneasy relationship today between rats and food when they honored the animal with a year in their twelve-year calendar. Maybe they were much more docile creatures back then, a companion almost. Or maybe they had a sense of humor about them, like the makers of Ratatouille. Whatever the case, we're stuck with the critters, be they infesting our holidays or apartments.

Pain with Chocolate (and that’s not in French)

Gee, I'm single. I don't know the way it is with you, but Valentine's Day traditionally falls on a romantically awkward time for me (except for the last two years). This year, it's pretty bad. I'll spare you the gory details, but I essentially returned from my girlfriend-bonding Moroccan vacation to a live-in who'd decided he wanted out. Home sweet home! Of course, now that it's the first week of February, all the aphrodisiac date menus, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, stuffed bears and stupid cupids bouncing around in attempt to stimulate the love sensors only make me sense a party that I'm not invited to. So, I rather liked the refreshingly morbid title of Culinate's new blogging contest, Death by Chocolate.

Eating Out in Essaouira, and the Road to the Sahara

Leaving Marrakesh, Jordan and I boarded a small bus with ten other travelers from around the world. The destination? The dunes of Erg Chebbi, near the border of Algeria. On the way, we'd be passing through the Atlas Mountains, notably Ouarzazate, with its scenic kasbahs often used for location film shoots. I'd been informed that Berber cuisines of the mountain and desert regions we were crossing were milder and more simple than the rest of Moroccan food. Well, I should tell you that the bar for flavor is quite high in these parts, as evidenced in this savory Berber omelette.