Food

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Coming Home

 

Happy Sunday! Are you all having a good weekend so far? I just returned from a 6 hour drive from New Jersey after spending the weekend with my mom, my sister and brother in law, and my niece and nephew.

We had dinner out, a turkey dinner in (which resulted in the turkey stock bubbling away on the stove right now!), a girls-only sleepover, and even a little chilly beach time at the Jersey Shore! I love going home.

 

Point Pleasant

 

And then I love coming home. Smile I arrived back in Boston after a stressful drive. I absolutely hate driving. I used to commute from Dorchester to Waltham every day and was fine with it, but since I don’t drive much anymore, it has started to terrify me. I am still uncurling my fingers from their steering-wheel shaped grasp.

I came home to a newly cleaned house, groceries, and a house that smelled amazing. My husband had done it all while I was away, and we got to sit down to an early dinner that he whipped up.

image

 

In this healthy, comfy late summer meal:

chicken breasts

low fat mushroom soup

mushrooms

carrots

onions

broccoli

cauliflower

orzo

He just tossed it all into the slow cooker, got to cleaning the house, and was ready to welcome me about five hours later. How sweet.

As hard as it is to bounce back and forth between Boston and New Jersey (and Ireland!), I feel so lucky to have so many places I automatically refer to as home, and so many people in those homes who welcome me.

I’m a lucky girl.

I have to work for a few hours this evening; this week is already looking pretty crazy with work, a Stonyfield lunch, a friend’s birthday dinner, a meeting for a new project, and hopefully a hair cut. I desperately need a hair cut. I hope you are all having an incredible, relaxing Sunday!

Tags: family, Food, recipe, Travel

Working from home means I don’t get out much these days. . . really. In the past few weeks I have ended up starting work days at 7 am and ending them when I go to bed, and I still have so much to do that I can’t even fathom running errands. Thankfully, events like the Langham Brunch and Chocolate Bar Preview give me the once-in-awhile opportunity to both get out and do some sort of work, at least on the blog side of things.

After the event at the Langham, as I walked to South Station, I really enjoyed taking in the warm night, the sights and sounds of the city, and snapped this photo of the moon, which reminded me of how the moon looks before it’s about to snow. Shudder.

Boston

While I was walking, I also received a phone call from my husband who was just finishing up a meeting at our boat club. He hadn’t had dinner and wanted to know if I wanted to grab a bite. I was definitely eager to extend the night out, and after he picked me up in South Boston, we proceeded to dbar, a neighborhood favorite.

Even after 8:00, dbar was pretty full of people having dinner and enjoying their fantastic cocktails at the bar. It always makes me happy to see Dorchester businesses full, and this was a good sign.

We had a hard time deciding what to order, as always. Chef Christopher Coombs has designed a menu full of fresh and innovative dishes that are comforting and satisfying. Our waitress recommended the tomato soup, so my husband decided to have that first. She brought two spoons, like she knew who she was dealing with. My poor husband never gets anything without me having “just a bite”. Smile

This soup, which featured rooftop grown ingredients, had a touch of crème fraiche in it, making it silky and smooth. It tasted amazing and had a texture that felt amazing. It would be the perfect winter night food and the cure for a sore throat. I hope this becomes a regular part of dbar’s menu.

tomato soup

While we had our soup, we also sipped on cocktails. My husband had a classic Dark and Stormy while I had the Grapes of Wrath white grape martini. I loved the flavors in this drink, and it was not sweet, perfect for me and for pairing with food.

dbar cocktails

For dinner I decided to mix it up and have something semi-healthy,  Asparagus, Farm Egg, Prosciutto  with Roasted Asparagus, Crispy egg, Laquercia Prosciutto Americano, arugula, & Wild Mushroom-Sherry vinaigrette. As you can see, they definitely didn’t hold back on the prosciutto! I shared most of the salty goodness with my husband and melted over the beautiful, soft in the middle farm egg. This plate was absolutely delightful, so earthy and filling.

 

dbar Boston

I don’t think I ever go to dbar without ordering their rosemary fries because they are so incredibly good. Crispy, salty, and with a hint of rosemary flavor, they are the perfect appetizer  or side, or even on their own if you just head to dbar for drinks.

dbar Boston

We lingered over our meal in this cozy neighborhood spot before heading home, totally relaxed after a crazy day.

I have written about dbar before, but I can’t help sharing another meal there. The service is always so friendly, the ambiance is comfortable, dimly lit, and laid back, and every single bite of food I have ever eaten there has been delicious. It is definitely worth the drive or T ride to head down to Dorchester to check it out. And, as I have mentioned in the past, their brunch is phenomenal, one of my favorite brunches in Boston, for sure.

I am loving Dorchester cuisine these days. In addition to dbar, we also ate at Savin Bar and Kitchen three times last week. I guess I didn’t do much cooking. . .

Savin is also very much worth the trip down here, and their menu just switched over to fall. Check it out if you get the chance!

 

Do you have any new or old neighborhood favorites?

Tags: Boston, cocktails, dbar, Dining out, dinner, Dorchester, Food

My blog is fixed! The below post was meant to post last Friday after a truly dreary week. Over the weekend, with lots of crazy work stuff and the anniversary of 9/11 happening, along with my blog being down, I got to take some time to let go, not really by choice, but it was kind of nice and reminded me how great my life is. It’s something I am trying to remember every day, and I am really happy to be back blogging.

I am loving the below recipe, which will be perfect for these chillier nights.

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Well, despite my best efforts to ignore the change, summer seemed to slip away this week, bringing unnecessary rain and cold. The downside? Rain and cold. The upside? It was a perfect time to do some slow-cooking of something I had a major craving for, pulled pork. The vegetarian in me is always surprised, but I do love well-spiced pork, cooked for a day, falling apart in a spicy sauce.

I picked up a pork roast at Market Basket over the weekend and put the rub on over 24 hours before cooking. My rub was a mix of all sorts of things: cinnamon, cayenne pepper, Tyler Florence’s brown sugar pork rub, garlic powder (lots!), My Spice Sage BBQ seasoning, black pepper, salt, and red pepper flakes.

dry rub

Once the spices were mixed, I gave the roast a good rub, liberally coating it with the mix. It smelled amazing.

dry rub

On cooking day, I pulled out the pork, already hanging out in the slow cooker bowl. To the slow cooker I added a can of Gosling’s ginger beer (also perfect for cocktails) and a whole can of tomato paste.

ginger beer

I also chopped up a small handful of the beautiful local peppers I bought for my cod dish. I’d done a quick pickle to preserve them, and they added a bright, spicy, and vinegar-y touch to the pork. I also poured in about 1/2 cup white vinegar.

pickled peppers

The ginger beer and tomato paste broke down into a rich, spicy sauce with a hint of sweet and made for some of the most tender pulled pork I have ever had.

pulled pork

We ate it atop salads with a homemade peach salsa, mountains of cilantro, and Greek yogurt, and again the next day in Tortilla Land tortillas with the same toppings. It was the stuff that chilly fall Sundays are made of, and I will definitely be repeating this recipe.

pulled pork

Annnnd I am glad that the weekend is going to be warm and sunny. I refuse to acknowledge the end of summer until the boat is in winter storage.

Are you still with me in summer, have you moved to fall or are you feeling somewhere in between?

Tags: cooking, Food, pork, recipe, salad

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