Mrs. Delicious

Throwing Caution to the Wind

It all started on Friday, when I drove up through the Berkshires to a librarian meeting in idyllic Stockbridge, MA. On the way there, I passed two Connecticut companies that are Leaders in Their Fields, as the librarian tenure committee might say. One of those is White Flower Farm, a bulb nursery from which people around the country order their spring flowers. The other is Nodine's Smokehouse, an artisanal bacon smoker whose retail store is located in Goshen, CT. It's a two-hour drive from my house, but it's a completely straight shot. I was tempted to drive back up there on Saturday morning to get a juniper half slab, but stupidly thought better of it, and instead yanked Andy out of bed and down to the Brown Stone House diner in Hamden, where we attempted to sate our bacon craving with the tiny strips that accompanied our eggs. Nothing doing. We then tried to console ourselves with some mocha lace ice cream from Wentworth's -- one of the five best ice cream flavors ever invented -- but our solace was temporary.

And our animal nitrate urge only worsened while we had drinks that night with Tom, who confessed that his food intake that day had consisted entirely of smoked and/or processed pork products: bacon in the morning, ham sandwich for lunch, and sausage pizza from Modern for dinner. We almost started drooling in our beers.

So the next "morning" around 1:00 pm, we decided we needed to do something to scratch the pork itch. We were either having barbeque for breakfast, or hot dogs. We flipped a coin and ended up at the Glenwood Drive-In in Hamden, where I had eaten a few times but somehow had never had the signature dish -- the "well-done" hot dog. We ordered four of them. With American cheese. And a side of onion rings. We had no idea that the hot dogs would be AS LONG AS A HOSE. Creamy meat is one of my favorite things, but these hot dogs were kind of too much. But of course we ate the entire things, two each. Skip the onion rings though, if you go.

Then Christian came into town. He lives in Vermont and does not get to New Haven as much as he'd like to, but he has spent enough time in Southern Connecticut to know what he needs to eat when he does get down here. So we three sat down at Modern and ate an entire fried eggplant pizza in about 15 minutes. It took us longer to drink our beer.

Today, Andy met me for lunch, and we decided that after our perilous weekend of bingeing, we needed to eat something light and healthy. Since he does not get up Yale way very often for lunch, we decided to walk over to Gastronomique -- perhaps my very favorite restaurant in New Haven, and the birthplace of the VERY best non-grilled hamburger I have ever eaten. Everything I have ever eaten there has been the best in its category: the best turkey sandwich. The best frites. The best butternut squash soup. The best iced tea. Seriously, I think Marc Woll is a genius. And he does it all in a space the size of a VW Bus.

Sadly, today seemed to be a day when maybe Marc was not quite at the top of his game. Or he had abdicated all cooking responsibilities, and the delivery guys were in charge. Or something. Here are the ingredients of a spinach salad that Andy attempted to eat for lunch:
- spinach leaves
- vinaigrette
- orange slices
- cranberries
That all sounds fine, right? But keep going:
- cream cheese
- crushed graham crackers
- chocolate chips
- raw onions

I am just going to let that sink in a minute.

My "tomato and parmesan" risotto tasted like Hot Pocket filling. I am so deeply disappointed. I keep thinking that somehow I should have known. Today was such a shit-hit-fan day at work that I really wanted lunch to be sublime. Alas. And still, AND STILL, no juniper-smoked bacon has been consumed by us! Oh, woe.

posted by Mrs. Delicious @ 5:23 PM