Archive for the ‘Under The Table’ Category

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Friday Five: Reasons Why I Haven’t Been Writing.

May 4, 2012

Talk about the elephant in the room. There are no two ways around it: I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately. My top five rationalizations/ excuses/reasons follow, accompanied by—fair warning—a healthy dose of whining and self-pity. Read on at your own risk.

1. I’m broke.

I recently moved, as you may recall, and as a result, my living expenses have nearly doubled. I’m working fewer hours at a lower rate than I have in the past couple of years, even though I’m juggling multiple gigs—and one of my (former) primary clients is declining to pay me without some major teeth-pulling. All of that means that I’m eating out a lot less than I have been—my splurges these days are crappy Chinese takeout and the $5 lunch special (below) from the Jamaican place on my corner—and I’m cooking a lot more pantry-based, clean-out-the-fridge style meals.

How often can one write about bean soup, or dal, or various grain-based salads? And how often does anyone else want to read about these things? There’s a limit, right?

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Posted in Friday Five, Under The Table | 6 Comments »

Great American Upgrade.

May 4, 2012

There is exactly one San Francisco Giants game in the 2012 baseball season within driving distance of Columbus, Ohio (Cincinnati or Pittsburgh) that does not happen at the same time as a Columbus Clippers game. These facts are not relevant unless you work for the Clippers and are, strangely enough, a lifelong fan of the California baseball team. That one game happened last Wednesday evening.  And a road trip was in order. Ben and I cut out of work early and journeyed south, with hopes of bypassing rush hour traffic to get to Cincinnati in time for a non-ballpark dinner. Ben, who’s much better at following all the foodies on Twitter than I am these days (I’ve been a little addicted to Instagram), suggested our pre-game culinary destination in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood: Senate.

My Cincinnati experience, prior to this short visit, had been limited to several reception hall weddings, Mt. Adams and the Great American Ballpark. At first glance, Over-the-Rhine was adorable. I quickly made a mental note to return, without the pressure of catching a view of the opening pitch. (We didn’t, by the way. I never make it to baseball games on time. Never.) We missed the beginning of the game for good reason. Senate’s wares and beverages were grand enough to distract Ben from his beloved Giants for at least one inning.

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Posted in Cincinnati, Destination: Appetite, The Fifty, Under The Table | Leave a Comment »

Eight Ways To Die.

April 12, 2012

You may have noticed that IF-OH has been silent of late. That’s because I’ve been preparing for a new trip: Nicaragua and Costa Rica. I’ve developed a method for my travels that truly honors the “itinerant” part of Itinerant Foodies. This method heavily involves the use of Google Docs and wikitravel. Basically, I write a middle school report on the country I’m visiting. My many anxieties are somewhat quelled when I fight them with knowledge. So I research every possible thing there is to know about a place in hopes that a) I don’t miss something good while I’m there, b) I don’t get stuck someplace awful and c) I don’t die. Vacations with Jill are so fun!

Bethany (of Tanzania and Philippines fame) will be joining me on this new adventure, and I’m hoping that her complete understanding of “island time” will balance out my we-need-to-be-there-four-days-early-to-catch-the-bus mentality. We’ve been working for months on the trip, interviewing friends who have been before, scouring the backpacking message boards and trying to learn some last-minute Spanish. (Thanks to two years of Spanish in 1995 and 1996, the burden of language is on my shoulders for this trip. In the past, I’ve had the luxury of Bethany pre-learning the local dialect prior to my arrival. There will be a lot of grunting and pointing, I fear.)

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Posted in Behind The Scenes, Costa Rica, Destination: Appetite, Nicaragua, Passport Required, Under The Table | 2 Comments »

Hell.

April 11, 2012

Day three of yogurt, carrots, and salads.

20120411-115016.jpg

I’m hungry.

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Posted in Under The Table | 3 Comments »

Of God and Salads.

April 3, 2012

My interest in food that originates from the ground (and not, let’s say, the teet or the slaughterhouse) is relatively new. I remember interviewing a coworker about her favorite types of food and typing, with disgust, that she loves Spring and Summer because of the wares from her garden. She was team veggie. I was team butter-rosemary-garlic-chicken-pork. Especially pork.

Two things changed. First, this damn locavore movement. I’d made some recent life decisions that propelled me from everything I’d known for three years. (I left a church.) Somehow I knew that my next step in life would involve community and food. I whimpered a few blocks over to my friend Susan (a master of both) who thrust that Pollan book into my hands. I’d be studying a new gospel.

Second, a prescription. Over the years, my experimentation with fresh produce brought me to an understanding with the Lord that heartburn and itchy lips were a sign from above that I should not veer from my butter-rosemary-garlic-chicken-pork diet. In an act of defiance, I stumbled from my faith in pork and tried modern science. And my doctor giveth me Prilosec. And I was happy. (And fatter; not only could I consume tomatoes without pain, but also white wine: an entire food group I’d been fasting from for years.)

And guess what? Now I like salads! (And butter-rosemary-garlic-chicken-pork. You can like both! There’s a gray area in life, a concept that I’ve paid many a shrink to help me discover.)

There’s also a pink area. And a gooey and awesome bright yellow area, once you break open that heavenly soft poached egg (that somehow went straight from one of God’s creatures and directly into the kitchen at Sage American Bistro). This, friends, is my favorite salad in Columbus. It combines animals and plants. There’s no dilemma here: just eat it in a way that doesn’t involve lifting the plate and dumping it directly into your mouth. Try to use utensils. Each bite magically contains hearty smoky bacon in thick but bite-size pieces, that aforementioned warm egg, soft hidden morsels of goat cheese, pickled onion, freshly cracked peper and a tangy dressing. It’s cool. It’s warm. All salads should be like this. And once Michael Pollan is President of Food, Chef Glover needs to be given some sort of cabinet position involving pork.

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Posted in Columbus, Ohio, In The Neighborhood, Roots, Table Service, Under The Table | 2 Comments »

Happy Birthday to Us.

February 16, 2012

Wondering what to get your favorite foodies for their blogiversary?

Our wish list is short: Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and, pretty please, comment, comment, comment on our posts.

Here’s to another three years.

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Posted in Under The Table | 4 Comments »

Bacon Under Fire.

January 17, 2012

My first cultural food shock came in the form of fish sauce. Cambodian cuisine and I were already on shaky grounds (based on the dubious absence of cheese) when I passed a fish sauce factory. My olfactory senses singed for hours; one simple, clear and well-reasoned thought resonated: There is no possible way that anyone in their right mind would eat the stuff.

It didn’t take long for me to adapt to the cuisine and its beloved fish sauce (which tastes infinitely better than it smells). By the end of the trip, I’d almost forgotten about dairy products. Almost.

While it’s acceptable to (temporarily) question other cuisines, my own American-bred eating habits have never come under fire. Until my recent trip to England, when my choice of ordering bacon, of all things, proved to be somewhat of a cultural snafu.

It’s not like I was in Israel or something. I was in Patisserie Valerie in Leeds. They had bacon on the menu. It turns out that it wasn’t the ordering of a side of bacon that gave my server pause. It was that I ordered it to accompany a scone. Sweet and savory. “Are you sure?” she asked in amazement. In my years of eating (and ordering way too much), I’ve never actually caused the waitstaff to openly question my choices. Both the server and I were equally confused. “Yes, I want the bacon and the scone.” She shrugged and processed my weirdo order.

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Posted in England, London, Passport Required, Under The Table | 2 Comments »

It’s Them, Not Me.

January 9, 2012

You can’t go home. That sounds so final, so bitter. Sometimes, you can’t go home. Or, to be more on point, sometimes home changes to a point where you don’t even recognize it. In this case, home isn’t even home. It is, instead, the place I spent most of my time in my temporary home of London, during the summer of 2000: Mezzo. A restaurant. I’ve written about it before. I’ve waxed poetically about the place to anyone who will listen, and if Facebook could somehow chronicle a Timeline for my mind (a terrifying concept), many Life Events would be connected to the place.

I knew that in the eleven years since I’d worked at the Soho restaurant, things had changed. For one, Mezzo had become Meza, and the place had changed ownership. Despite this knowledge, I couldn’t not visit it in my recent trip to London. On the first night in the city, I showed up on the doorstep of the restaurant, sans reservations and sans club attire. My super-duper fancy dining establishment had turned from the place that introduced me to mis en place and fruits de mer to what was essentially a club, a place that as a civilian, I would never enter. Instead, I was a woman on a mission: to touch base, at least emotionally, with twenty-one year-old me.

Once we walked in and looked at the menu, I had to have a stern conversation with myself: absolutely nothing would be the same and I could either enjoy my dining experience or lament the changes. The former would be way more interesting for my dining companions, so I tried to keep my commentary to a minimum. (This, of course, did not stop me from informing my first-day-on-the-job server that I once was in her shoes, but that on my first day, the building was on fire.) (True story.) (I’m sure that she didn’t care.) (I’ve turned into one of those people, the ones who show you pictures of their pets or grandchildren or announce that in this very building, eleven years ago, I ate a bowl of crème bruûlée in a stall in the server’s restroom so that the security guards wouldn’t see me stealing from the company.)

I seem to be doing it again. Right here.

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Posted in Destination: Appetite, London, Passport Required, Table Service, Under The Table | Leave a Comment »

Starting Fresh.

January 4, 2012

I can’t say I’m sad to see the back of 2011. It was a year of upheaval and major life change—for the most part, the events of the past twelve months are not ones I hope to have repeated anytime soon. There were positives, too, of course, but my personal drama (and, to be honest, my tendency to wallow in the negative) obscured much of that: The bust-up of a nine-year relationship isn’t easy, no matter how you cut it. It was tough to think straight through the fallout, let alone write through it. Jill picked up the slack admirably, but our little blog here still suffered for my lack of focus.

But a new year, a new start, and all that nonsense.

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Posted in Under The Table | 3 Comments »

The Road To Peas.

December 7, 2011

I’m cursed. Every time I’ve traveled outside of Ohio in the past few years, I break my camera lens. The first time it happened, I was in the Philippines. Maya and I had to take a side trip to a mall in Manila for me to “barter” for a new lens. I dropped said lens in Asheville, North Carolina a year and a half later when trying to carry too much Indian food. For this most recent trip, I prepared myself. No longer would I schlep my camera around in a knapsack; if I want nice things, I have to take care of them. A blog post from Columbus photographer and design house, Genre Creative inspired me to look into carrying my beloved camera in a protective bag. Robin even lent me hers to try out for the trip.

I honestly don’t know what happened. Perhaps I opened the bag at a table to grab my journal to write something down, and failed to close it properly. Perhaps, after a little too many large glasses of wine (alcohol is legally required to be measured in England; as a result – large and small glasses of wine) I stood a little too close to a fellow bus rider who helped themselves to the contents on my back. Either way, my heart stopped when, while walking back to our friend’s place in Shoreditch, I heard my camera crash to the concrete, lens breaking away from the body. Again.

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Posted in Destination: Appetite, England, London, Passport Required, Table Service, Under The Table | 2 Comments »

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