What's in Scott's Stomach?

Tasty food

2007-12-16T08:29:00.000-05:00

Some tasty places I've been to eat recently:

- Piedmont (Durham)
- Red Dragon (Cary)
- Toro (Boston)

Toro is another one of Ken Oringer's fantastic restaurants, and it's now in my top 5 restaurants in Boston. Maybe top 3.

One of these days I'll write something about the best pizza in the world, which can be found in Praiano, Italy.

Science Debate

2007-12-16T08:24:00.001-05:00

What a great idea. That will never happen. Pity.

http://www.sciencedebate2008.com

Still, go sign up to give your support.

Wrapping Up

2007-07-23T03:04:00.000-04:00

Well, it's time to wrap things up here in Switzerland. We've got a week left, and I'm ready to go. I really miss my bed and comfortable furniture. And my kitchen.

The summer has been fun, though. We just got back from 3 days in Italy and Monaco with Joy's dad. Our hotel was amazing - it was located 5km up this crazy windy road, most of which was only wide enough for one car. But when you got to the top:

What a view, eh? Monaco was predictably over-the-top, with more Ferraris, Maseratis, Aston Martins, and Bentleys than you can shake a stick at. Somewhat surprisingly, we didn't have that much great food, but then, we didn't really research too much. Plus, these are beach towns, not gastronomic hot spots.

All in all, I'm glad we came here. It's been a great experience to be in another country for an extended period of time - you learn a lot more about a place when you start going to the grocery stores and the laundromats. But, it's always really nice to be home, too.

Quick post

2007-06-11T16:37:00.000-04:00

Here's a link to our pictures from last weekend's trip to Basel : http://web.mac.com/sdwr98/iWeb/Geneva.

Awesome food which I'll write about later in the week.

On things that are better in Europe

2007-06-06T12:29:00.000-04:00

In no particular order...

Cheese.
Bread
Public transportation
Museli with chocolate (ask Joy)
House wines at restaurants
Grocery stores (think 4-wheel steering on carts!)
Cell phones

Now, to be fair, there are some things lacking:

Air conditioning
Ice
Inexpensive anything (well, except bread, cheese, wine and apparently Red Bull)

That's pretty much what I've observed over the course of my last few trips.

On another note: tacos with Gruyere cheese? Really tasty. Who would have thought. Bleu d'Auvergne cheese from our local farmer's market on fresh-baked bread from the same farmer's market? Out of this world.

Check out where we're going for my birthday: The Omnia in Zermatt. Whoooo!

Mozzarella Magnifica!

2007-06-03T08:58:00.000-04:00

Holy cow - yesterday we went to the farmer's market that's literally 100 yards from our apartment. It happens on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and it was packed. And my goodness. We got fresh vegetables and fresh bread. Both of which were outstanding - super fresh, super tasty, and full of real vegetable taste. And then there was the mozzarella. I've had a lot of good cheese in my time. But nothing has compared to this - it must have been in the buffalo the day before. Unlike virtually all the mozzarella I've had in the US, this had such flavor - a tangy cheese-ness that was unreal. Man. I don't know how I'm going to go home to Target and Harris Teeter now.

In other news, we went out yesterday to run some errands (after the farmer's market) and we discovered M-Ville. So there's the grocery chain Migros (which I wrote about earlier). Turns out they have this shopping center which is essentially a mini-Ikea, Linens-n-Things, Lowes, Circuit City, and grocery store all rolled into one. We bought a toaster, two pre-paid mobile phones, and a bunch of groceries. All at one place!

Coming soon - all the cool things they have here that they don't have in America.

Cooking again

2007-06-02T05:06:00.000-04:00

Well yesterday was my first attempt at cooking here at Rue Ancienne 15. We went to the Migros store that's a block away and got all our daily groceries for CHF 57, which works out to be about 48 USD. That covered coffee, bread, jam, filled pasta and sauce, and then 2 smallish steaks, new potatoes, and peas for dinner. Not too bad for around here. Apparently everybody here goes to France for their groceries (if they're on a budget) because it's much cheaper. However, that's about a 45 minute bus ride each way, so maybe we'll stick to shopping locally.

Cooking here is interesting - it's nice because we have a 4-burner gas stove. We did have to find instructions on the internet to decipher the strange symbols on the oven - it's a convection/traditional oven, so there are some funny settings, but it roasted potatoes like nobody's business.

Today we're off to explore the neighborhood. There's a bigger Migros about 3 blocks away, so we're going to see how it is in terms of selection and prices. They also sell budget mobile phones, so we may get a couple of those for communicating when Joy's working downtown.

2007-05-30T15:33:00.000-04:00

Tonight was Italian night. We went to Pizzaria de Paolo (sounds Italian!). It was this nice little pizzaria by the lake (on Rue du Lac, in fact) that got good reviews from Frommers and a couple other places. We weren't disappointed.

We started with 3 dl of the house white. It's amazing that every house white here is better than most $10-15 bottles at home. I guess it figures. Then we had prosciutto con melon, with some absolutely amazing melt-in-your-mouth prosciutto and super-fresh cantaloupe. It was even better than the prosciutto that we had for lunch the other day, which was from the supermarket and prepackaged and yet still almost as good as A Southern Season's.

For dinner Joy had tortelloni con panna (cream sauce) and I had the pizza of the day, which had gorgonzola cheese, hot peppers, and spicy salami.

One surprise was the hot pepper-infused olive oil that they had - it was really spicy and really good.

Well chalk up another good meal - this was about as good as the Thai food we had the night before. Good thing we walked almost 4 miles today...

In Geneva

2007-05-28T15:15:00.000-04:00

Well after two days of airport and airline food, it was a welcome relief to eat tonight at Cafe de Paris. What do they serve there? Steak. Steak and pommes frites. Oh, and a token salad.

Actually, the salad was quite nice, well dressed and fresh. But the main attraction was the steak. It comes on a plate surrounded by a sea of garlic butter. It's placed over a sterno can and melts the garlic butter and finishes cooking the steak. You get a plate of pommes frites and it's just a glorious heart-attack-y meal. Just the thing to set you right after one too many airline meals.

Good food across the pond

2007-05-20T18:52:00.000-04:00

So, as requested, I'm updating my blog - I was recently in Serbia for work - Novi Sad, to be precise. I was there for a week working with our development partner company. I had the great fortune to be led around the city by several of the developers over there. We walked all around the city, visited the fortress, ate some really good food, and had a really good time.

Since this is a food blog, I'll touch on the highlights:

All together, I didn't have a bad meal! One thing that I didn't try that I will have to come back for is Karadjordje's steak - apparently it's quite the dish.

Hi to everybody over there!

Dinner - Tuesday, November 7, 2006

2006-11-08T05:51:00.000-05:00

quickie tonight - pork tenderloin with apricot onion sauce. Really good - just saute red onions with curry powder until cooked down, then mix with water and apricot jam. Saute the pork (I cut the tenderloins into medallions then pounded them flat) and then pour the onion mixture over.

Mmm.

Yay Democrats!

AWESOME

2006-10-31T21:14:00.001-05:00

Banana Guard

End of an era

2006-10-31T20:29:00.001-05:00

Bob Barker Retires

Dinner, Sunday October 29, 2006

2006-10-31T20:25:00.000-05:00

Penne with Butternut Squash, Sage and Bresaola

This one came from the Williams-Sonoma Pasta cookbook. There was no sauce to speak of, just diced butternut cubes sauteed in olive oil with shallots, then tossed with bresaola (one of the exceedingly expensive cured meats referenced earlier) and sage. It was pretty tasty, but wasn't a favorite. It also wasn't as good left over as sauce-based pastas. Still, I suppose it's better than mac-and-cheese.

Dinner - Saturday, October 28, 2006

2006-10-29T10:37:00.000-05:00

The Weathervane Cafe

Joy and I were in the mood for something new, so we went to a place that we should have gone a long time ago. A Southern Season is where we buy our ridiculously expensive coffee, cheeses and imported cured meat. They have a cafe, but we'd never gone there. Boy have we been missing out.

We started out with three appetizers: Shrimp Hushpuppies, Chickpea Fritters, and Butternut Squash Soup. The hushpuppies had a Texas Pete aioli, which is a fancy term for spicy mayonnaise. They had a really rich corn flavor and were perfectly crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. Joy, not being a shellfish fan, ate one bite and then let me have the rest. The fritters were an amazing blend of ground chickpeas, spices and chutney. It had an Indian-spiced aioli and fresh apricot chutney. They were a tad dry, but tasted wonderful. The butternut soup, served with cinnamon sour cream, was the best butternut soup Joy or I have ever tasted. It had a thick consistency and tasted like you would expect fall to taste: spicy, warm, soft.

For our main course, we split rack of lamb served with a blue cheese grit cake, roasted vegetables, and a sage jus. Joy was too full by this point to eat much, and to be honest, the appetizers were the star. The dinner was simple but tasty, with the roasted vegetables having been done to perfection.

We skipped dessert because we were stuffed, but we'll surely be heading back there.

Welcome to What's In Scott's Stomach

2006-10-29T10:24:00.001-05:00

Well, I don't seem to post much when I post about life in general. I don't want to spend time posting about computers because I get enough of that at work. So what else is there? Food. Good food.

As those who know me can confirm, I love to eat. My childhood (heck, current) nickname was Hoover. So what better thing to write about. And, since most of my friends and family are not computer-type people, this subject matter might prove more interesting to them.

I'll be sharing meals I've eaten out, meals I've cooked, and some other random things if the mood strikes. Hope you enjoy!