Grocery List: July 6, 2014

There are (typically) 22 non-holiday related weekdays in July. In a good year, I’m in the office for about half of that. In 2014, I will work 13 days of this month. This is usually the product of a post-school year trip that trickles into July, an extended vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Del. during the middle of the month, and enough service time at my job that I qualify for a metric ton of paid time off.

This week marks the four-day sprint to my mid-month siesta in The Constitution State The First State. Though I’m not looking forward to the drive through Wilmington this year, it’s the week I live for each year. I believe that I have discussed the significance of this trip in the past, so I’ll simply offer links and leave it at that.

A couple of other thoughts before descending into vacation.

• Attended a wedding for some people that I had never met before. The Wife works with the bride, so it’s not as if I was crashing. I have to say, the food at the Genesee Grande was remarkably good for Syracuse-area banquet fare.
• My MacBook Pro is entering stage III of a terminal illness. It’s turning five this year which, in terms of laptops, means I’ve made my money here. It’s one of the final 17-inch models sold by Apple, packs an Intel 2.66 GHz Core i7, 8 GB of RAM and was purchased when I was earning money from the content farm. I get very attached to my computers, in the way that some become attached to their cars. I’m going to miss her when she finally goes. Until then, I’ll try not to tax her with too many memory or processor intensive projects and keep the ice chips handy.
• For all of the complaining I do about Wegmans (TL;DR: I take them for granted and get mad when they let me down.), one of the things they do particularly well is respond to their customers.Last week, I purchased expired yogurt. It’s not the first time this has happened there, but it was the first time I bitched about it on Twitter…

@jaredpaventi Hello, can you give more information please, which store? do you have a UPC #, expiration date and when you purchased it?

— Wegmans Food Markets (@Wegmans) July 5, 2014

Usually when I complain on Twitter, it’s about United Airlines or Time Warner Cable. Because both of those companies are inept and disinterested at serving their customers, they tend to let my ravings go without response. Wegmans actually responded and notified the store that I would be coming in.

And, sure enough, today when I visited, the front desk was aware of my situation. No questions. No problems.

This Year At Al Dente: Where We Ate

I really only do two of these sorts of year-end posts. This one is the most fun, because it’s a wrap-up of all the places we ate this year. Of the 17 restaurants that I reviewed this year, more than half were in the Greater Syracuse/Central New York area. The rest are in cities that I had the chance to visit either for work — Washington, D.C. and Dallas, Tex. — or during our annual summer trip to Rehoboth Beach, Del.

You can find these, and all of my restaurant visits, under the Dining Out heading.

• Cantina Laredo, Syracuse, N.Y.
• Stampede 66, Dallas, Tex.
• Meso Maya, Dallas, Tex.
• Meddlesome Moth, Dallas, Tex.
• Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant, Syracuse, N.Y.
• Founding Farmers, Washington, D.C.
• Zaytinya, Washington, D.C.
• Open Face, Rochester, N.Y.
• Ironwood, Manlius, N.Y.
• Finbar’s Pub & Grill, Rehoboth Beach, Del.
• The Pig + Fish, Rehoboth Beach, Del.
• Sackets Harbor Brewing Company, Sackets Harbor, N.Y.
• Moro’s Table, Auburn, N.Y.
• Beer Belly Deli, Syracuse, N.Y.
• LoFo, Syracuse, N.Y.
• Parker’s Grille, Auburn, N.Y.
• Zabroso Restaurant and Lounge, Oneida, N.Y.

Garden 2013: Day 79

It’s been a while.

Since we last checked in, the herbs have outgrown their planters and the tomatoes survived our trip to Delaware. This is always dicey because of the heat. When it’s too hot, The Mother-In-Law does not spend a lot of time watering. But, they thrived on the sunshine and The Kid picked the first tomatoes on Monday night.

The Kid has been a huge help. Much like last year, she takes great pride in watering the plants. Of course, most nights she waters herself more than the garden, but what are you going to do, right?

The dill needed a serious cutting back last week. I’m hoping I can regenerate enough to make a batch of pickles at the end of the month. Next year, I’ll skip that. The lemon thyme cannot be stopped. Is thyme a weed? It certainly grows like one.

And my cilantro is still alive! With any luck, it holds out long enough for me to get a good crop of tomatoes for salsa. At the very least, it has served us well at dinner time.

Meatless Monday: Middle Eastern Spinach Salad

For the last few days of vacation, The Wife repeated the phrase “When we get back home, I’m getting back on the food wagon” like it was a chant.

The food wagon is her way of saying that she wants to return to healthier eating. Our trips are a buffet of snacks and cookies. For instance, I made a batch of taco dip that barely lasted three hours. We averaged a loaf of bread, a two bags of (potato or tortilla) chips and a dozen chocolate chip cookies a day. It was stunning.

Anyhow, The Wife wanted to start Sunday with our first dinner home. I got the proclamation of “we’re having salad for dinner” somewhere along Delaware’s Route 1 expressway. That was derailed when The In-Laws joined us for dinner/distracted The Kid while we unpacked. That night we had pizza. Good, greasy pizza.

Soooooooooooo, Monday was the kickoff of the food wagon. And salad she got.

Al Dente Revisited: go fish!, Rehoboth Beach, Del.

NOTE FROM JARED: We actually visited go fish!’s sister restaurant, go brit! in Lewes. It’s the same menu, but with more non-seafood items available. It’s a funny thing, as we tried going here on Tuesday, but a townwide power outage in Lewes thwarted our plans and sent us elsewhere. We returned and were equally as satisfied.

go brit! is located at 18388 Coastal Hwy. (State Route 1) in Lewes.

REHOBOTH BEACH, DELAWARE

About three or four years ago, we visited my sister on Long Island and took a ride out to Montauk. We climbed the lighthouse, wandered around the state park, walked around the town and finally decided that it was time for lunch. And none of the places we walked into took credit cards. Not a one. The fact that any restaurant, let alone a town full of them, turned down plastic in 2009 stunned me.

It was a concern that I had in Rehoboth Beach. Seasonal oceanside businesses may shun the processing charges related to plastic. A few were cash only (Thrasher’s, for one), but they at least posted their policy on the front sign. Luckily for us, since we rarely carry cash, just about everyone accepted credit cards.

Friday marked a quiet day for us. We took the kid to the park and for a walk down Rehoboth Avenue. Lunch beckoned us, as it is known to do, and the Union Jack on the sign out front of go fish! caught our attention.

The Pig + Fish, Rehoboth Beach, Del.

REHOBOTH BEACH, DELAWARE

The restaurant haunted us last year. We tried to order takeout from their — wait for it — takeout menu, only to be told that they no longer did takeout. Sigh. Getting 13 people on the same page for takeout is difficult enough. Doing it twice is just cruel. We decided to visit this year and check whether their sit-down menu actually offered food.

The Pig + Fish started as a restaurant owned by a husband and wife team and has since grown into a pair of storefronts — The Pickled Pig is located on the Coastal Highway near the outlets in Rehoboth Beach — that are now owned by a different couple. Located where Christian Street spurs from Rehoboth Avenue, The Pig & Fish takes reservations on weeknights before 6 p.m. This is good for a group of nine adults, two children and two toddlers in need of high chairs. And, it is very kid friendly.

We arrived a little early and were seated in the back dining room. A converted house, the restaurant has two dining rooms in the back, joined by a hallway to the front of the house, where a large bar and smattering of tables reside.

Grocery list: July 21, 2013 (or Vacation Over)

REHOBOTH BEACH, DELAWARE

More on the end of this vacation at a later time. I’m actually writing this on Saturday, as I am currently driving back from Rehoboth Beach, Del. My hope is that, when this item posts, we will be in Pennsylvania. I’m not particularly hopeful. The Kid’s sleeping has been erratic, at best, this week. She peaked on Tuesday by sleeping past 8 a.m. On Friday, she got back in the early moments of 6 a.m. Saturday? 5:30.

Naturally, this means that The Wife will have to wake her tomorrow. I’d like to get up and go or, at the very least, get up, be impatient, pack the car, pace around nervously, go, get gas and start driving. The six-hour ride will take us seven, easy. There will be frequent potty stops and I’m trying to time one around Trader Joe’s in Media, Pa.

Again, I’m not optimistic.

Today is the last full day of vacation here, which means that it was time to beer shop. As my southbound relatives and friends know, out-of-state travel means out-of-state beer for me. My $167 trip to Atlantic Liquors (tagline: The Greatest Liquor Store In The World) yielded:

• a case and a 12-pack of Shiner Bock…the 12 is for me; the case for the husband of a former co-worker
• a case of New Albion ale for my next door neighbor
• two 30s of Schaefer and two 12s of Schlitz for my brother-in-law
• a mixed case of sixes for me, including some Shiner, Yards Brewing, and 21st Amendment ales

This is about double what I hauled home last year. Got to love tax-free liquor and beer.

There will be content this week, probably starting tomorrow with reviews of some of our restaurant trips. As for the grocery list…oh, who knows? We’ll get some milk and yogurt. That’ll be enough for a day or two.

Al Dente Frozen: Dogfish Head Chicory Stout ice cream

Dogfish Head produces some of the finest beer on the east coast. The craft brewery got its start in Rehoboth Beach, Del. and has since moved its brewing operation to a plant in nearby Milton. What remains is a neat little bar and restaurant with an eclectic menu and killer beer (and homemade spirits) selection. Last summer’s trip to Delaware reacquainted me with Dogfish Head’s offerings and opened my eyes to more of their hard-to-get labels, including the Chicory Stout. It’s great in a bottle and exceptional from the tap. But, if you ever have the chance to drink a cask-conditioned version, like they serve from time to time at the pub in Delaware, I would recommend it. It’s life changing.

Dogfish Head Chicory Stout is the type of beer that you have to want to drink. The flavor is not for everyone, stouts are like that. This is a strong coffee stout and the chicory and licorice roots are evident in each sip. It’s fairly mellow (it rates a 21 on the International Bitterness Unit scale) and not that strong (5.2% ABV).

At a cookout in August, I poured a half-bottle of it over some vanilla ice cream. It was really good. This year when I got the ice cream maker, this was the second flavor I thought of making (coffee was the first).