Live-Tweeting Dinner at Topolobampo

First of all--I know, I know. I've been noticeably absent on all forms of social media recently. No blogs, very few tweets, the rare facebook update. This time it's a combination of things. I got totally enthralled with the post-election unrest in Iran and stopped caring about anything for a few weeks. I had a quick stint of gaming where me and Roommate Nirmal sped through Gears of War 1 and 2 and all three Halo games. Virginia State Elections are heating up, so there's been a lot of travel and work on that. And friends have been in from out of town all summer.

I know. Poor excuses all. But I do what I want.

Last night, I attempted to live-tweet a dinner at Topolobampo, one of the most well-renowned Mexican restaurants in the country. Twitter is having a fit, though, so exactly none of my texts came through. Luckily, they're all still in the outbox of my phone, so I can recreate the dinner here.

8:58pm-Tweeps, it migt be time to hit unfollow. About to live-tweet dinner at Rick Bayless' Topolobampo in Chicago. Why? Here alone for work, no one to eat with.

9:10pm-Reservation is for 9:15 on Thursday and this place is packed with no sign of letting up. Decor=decidedly mexican despite prices for entrees in the high 30s.

9:18pm-Btw did this morning's hackerattack break twitterberry? Haven't been able to use it all day.

9:29pm-Packed indeed. 15 min post-reservation and table still isn't ready! I could use a cocktail. But then again, when couldn't I?

9:46pm-Finally sat. Mighttt have lied and said I was in Chicago just to try restaurants. What?? I'm a little salty about the wait, so sue me.

9:48pm-Ordered a nice classic margarita, served in a martini glass. @marksamburg would love this.

9:52pm-A nice treat-some guac brought to the table with cuke and jicama chips. Didn't know guac could be this good. Unbelievable balance of acid, salty, and sweet.

9:55pm-Guac has just a bit of lingering heat and crumbled almonds. First course is already out-suddenly my experience here has gotten much much better.

10:00pm-Ordered trio of ceviches for app. Hawaiian sunfish w/tomatoes, olives, jicama seems most classic. Steamed shrimp and calamari a bit more acidic.

10:03pm-I wish the shrimp were diced. Whole shrimp hard to eat bite by bite. 3rd is ahi tuna w/apricot chimoy salsa. Sweet, bit of spicy kick. All three expertly done

10:04pm-Also, more of the crumbled almond on the ahi tuna. Chips with the ceviche are nice, but taste just a bit.....store brought? No....

10:19pm-This hawaiian sunfish tastes a lot like escolar....what a great combo of flavors. Never would have thought to put crushed almonds on a ceviche.

10:23pm-Also, the manager has now dropped by to chat me up twice, hehe. I should do this more often...

10:27pm-Entree is out. Cochinta pibil-overnight braised big foot fried in croquettes with kohlrabi mashed potato, braised greens, sour organce sauce, habanero salsa.

10:29pm-Served with a tempranillo that is wonderfully fruity-blackberry, oak, very smooth, very round, lots of tannins. Great choice by server.

10:32pm-Habanero salso is hottt. Even for me. Hats off to them for being gutsy enough to serve something with real heat, most restaurants shy away.

10:34pm-They give you option of dish without the salsa. I find woefully underseasoned without, but excellent with. Pork feet are wonderfully tender.

10:35pm-Did I just use "wonderfully" two tweets in a row? (Editor's note--upon review, it appears I did not.) This wine may be getting to me. (Editor's note--upon review, it was.)

10:39pm-Sour orange gets totally lost in all the broth. A shame...it was good.

10:41pm-I've been corrected. I have both pigs feet coated in breadcrumbs and lightly fried or sauteed braised pig shoulder. The shoulder is better. (Editor's note--the flavor of that shoulder stuck with me all night. It was definitely the best thing I ate there, and that's saying something.)

10:50pm-Main Course grew on me as I ate it. Super satisfied at this point. Do I have room for dessert?

10:59pm-Ordered mexican hot chocolate, great nutty, spicy aroma. Nutmeg is freshly ground. Nice...

11:00pm-Wow. Very rich but not overbearing. Not too sweet. Tastes like the red wine of hot chocolate. A great end to the meal.

11:05pm-Tab comes to $75. Special thanks to @taylorkline and @marksamburg for the book the bro code, which kept me occupied between tweets.

11:14pm-Oops, she forgot to charge me for wine. I reminded her but she left it off as a reward for honesty. They also leave me with a strawberry jelly candy and a house made chocolate truffle w/hints of mezcal.

11:15pm--Verdict: A+

That tweeting was rather prolific--as I had more time to think about it on the subway to Lincoln Park, I realized that this had to rank as one of the top three places I've ever been, and a bit more marinating on the meal could push it into the number 1 spot. The pork shoulder, trio of ceviches, and hot chocolate were the best I've ever had in each category. Lots of points for creativity, and the service was excellent after being sat a half hour after my reservation.

10 Bottles of Wine On the Wall...

Isn't that a thing of beauty? A few weeks back, Metrocurean noted that a wine bar in Rosslyn, apparently just minutes from my house, was closing down and offering 40% off of full cases of wine. Nagzah and CLurie were in town, so they got a bottle apiece and I got...ten.  Combined with three bottles of Rosé I got at one of my oft-attended Food Matters wine tastings, I get the feeling I'll be set on wine for a few more days. I kid. ThirteenTwelve bottles of wine should last me at least another week or so.

In any case, I think I'll chronicle my trip through these wines.  There's a wide variety in country, region, grape, and price point here, so it sounds like fun. Let's start with this one.

This is a 2006 Chateau de Lascaux from the Coteaux du Languedoc region of France. It's a big wine, both in aroma and in the mouth, with strong notes of chocolate and cherry, very light acidity, and strong tannins.  It was listed at $18.99, which means I got it for about $12.  A very good wine, but one that pairs better with food than without.  I'd definitely pick it up again.

Dr. Tiller's Murder Was Inevitable

Very few of us are like we were in high school. Growing up in Peachtree City, GA--a bastion of conservatism in a state that is a bastion of conservatism--I always considered myself a Democrat, albeit one that was anti-gay rights and anti-choice.

My journey towards flipping my view on the former happened much more quickly than the latter...and is a great topic for another post.

I recall noting with great pride in those days how I believed a fetus was a child and that abortion was morally wrong and should be illegal (though even then I made exceptions for rape, incest, and a mother's health). It wasn't until well into college that the drip-drip-drip of arguments finally got through to me: I may have that belief, but I must be intellectually honest enough to realize that there is legitimate, honest disagreement. And while that disagreement exists, I have no right to tell a woman what she can do with her body.

But to this day I have remembered my previous position and the honesty and genuine belief that went into that position. And I have advocated for reasonable debate and dialogue on each side, knowing that demonizing the opposition only brings us further away from the real potential middle ground: reducing the need for abortion. In other words, I agree with this guy.

And I couldn't disagree more with this kind of disgusting rhetoric and disingenuous peddling of half-arguments.

Elizabeth Lev strains to draw a continuous line between at least 12 million fully developed, fully sentient slaves, the civil rights movement for tens of millions of African-Americans, and today's anti-choice movement. The logical failures of merely substituting "abortion" for "slavery" aside (and in fact deriding our President as literally morally comparable to enablers to slavery), she claims that African-American women are disproportionately more likely to have abortions (true) and that this is somehow evidence of some sort of conspiracy (not).

From 1700 to 1865 -- the year the 13th Amendment was ratified -- approximately 7 million black slaves were kept on American soil. Abortion kills 400,000 black children a year in America. Do the math: that's more than 15 million African-American children killed since 1973, when Roe v Wade overturned state legislation and imposed abortion as a "constitutional right." Jeremy Corsi in his Rebuilding America offers some chilling statistics. While blacks only comprise some 13 percent of the population, about 1,450 African American children are aborted a day. Which means three out of every five black women will have an abortion.
Hasn't Margaret Sanger's 1939 creation, Planned Parenthood, intentionally opened its family planning clinics in and around predominantly black neighborhoods? Yes, and the de facto result of this policy has been to encourage black women to abort their children. Sanger herself used the term "race hygiene" for what I see as her clearly eugenic ideology of culling the black population and others deemed "unfit," and that legacy is evident in today's staggering statistics.
Thanks to President Obama, taxpayer money will fund more of these clinics than ever, and the further reduction of African American numbers.
What would Uncle Tom, who ministered to the lowliest, hopeless slaves on Legree's plantation, make of Obama's participation in the extinction of so many babies in the name of "choice"?
Abortion practitioners target -- "serve,'' they would say -- poor, single mothers, many of them black women. Often told by those who pretend to know what is best for them that they can't handle a child, that they can't manage the expense or complications or aren't mature enough, these women are left with little "choice" but to abort. Stowe's slave mothers were willing to go to any lengths to keep their children, but abortion robs their modern descendants of the chance to show how much they have to offer.

Indeed, it is Lev that must truly look in the mirror. To her, millions of black women that choose abortions are not adult women making one of the most painful and difficult choices of their lives, often because of an economic system that has failed them and other blacks for decades. No, for her these women are mindless lemmings forced into abortions by the evil white people that work at Planned Parenthood. Mindless lemmings that, mind you, she wants to be raising children.

Of course, it is arguments such as these and those made by extreme groups such as Operation Rescue (well documented by DailyKos and Feministing in too many links to post here) that make Dr. Tiller's murder so inevitable. After all, if a doctor (or the U.S. Government) is actually complicit in the genocide of millions of children, then perhaps the only morally defensible position is to take up arms.

Sounds like something Dr. King would probably not get behind. Oh, by the way Elizabeth? Dr. King was an ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood. He even won their Sanger award. The same Sanger you accuse of eugenics. Likely.

The Ultimate Insider Story

I happen to think that the whole "Rest of the country" vs. "Inside the Beltway" schism is mostly overdrawn. After all, the vast majority of "Inside the Beltway" grew up somewhere else in the country. And most people can't take "Inside the Beltway" for longer than a few years, often retreating back home or to other cities for grad schools, (or in some cases other countries I'm LOOKING AT YOU DSCHAP!!). But all this chitter chatter about the Obama's dining options feels like the ultimate inside the beltway story.

I certainly don't remember hearing about the dining choices of Bill Clinton beyond his love for McDonald's. And I never heard about what local bites Dubya found tempting. But it seems I can't go more than two days without hearing about Obama dropping into Ray's Hellburger or Five Guys or who knows where else.

And then comes word that...and this is a bizarre one even for them...the Republicans are attacking Obama for a weekend getaway trip he took to NYC. Seriously, kids? After George W. Bush spent 1/3 of his Presidency on vacation, you're going to go after Obama for NYC? Let me go out on a limb and say...NO...ONE...CARES.

Are y'all hearing about this story anywhere outside of DC?

Wendy's Explained

The shock in their voice is always completely genuine. Inevitably, we'll have just finished talking about the merits of fleur de sel or why I prefer Malbec to Merlot. Then, "Hey, do you want to pick up some Wendy's?"

For me, grabbing a Spicy Chicken Sandwich from Wendy's is as natural as logging into Facebook or shaving in the morning. It's not even something I think about anymore...just something I do. And yet, what is the source? Of all the foods and all the restaurants to be obsessed over--why this?

I've actually never really known. As other sandwiches and restaurants come and go, I can still remember riding my bike for 45 minutes across Peachtree City at the age of 15 (A DECADE AGO) with part of the $20 I got from mowing the lawn...all to get this unusually delicious sandwich. 10 years of this obsession and it has shown no signs of abating (even though I worked at Wendy's for about six months in high school, partially with the hope that I would tire of the food).

It seems David Kessler has stumbled onto something.

His resulting theory, described in his new book, "The End of Overeating," is startling. Foods high in fat, salt and sugar alter the brain's chemistry in ways that compel people to overeat. "Much of the scientific research around overeating has been physiology -- what's going on in our body," he said. "The real question is what's going on in our brain."

...

The labels showed the foods were bathed in salt, fat and sugars, beyond what a diner might expect by reading the menu, Kessler said. The ingredient list for Southwestern Eggrolls mentioned salt eight different times; sugars showed up five times. The "egg rolls," which are deep-fried in fat, contain chicken that has been chopped up like meatloaf to give it a "melt in the mouth" quality that also makes it faster to eat. By the time a diner has finished this appetizer, she has consumed 910 calories, 57 grams of fat and 1,960 milligrams of sodium.

Instead of satisfying hunger, the salt-fat-sugar combination will stimulate that diner's brain to crave more, Kessler said. For many, the come-on offered by Lay's Potato Chips -- "Betcha can't eat just one" -- is scientifically accurate. And the food industry manipulates this neurological response, designing foods to induce people to eat more than they should or even want, Kessler found.

This shouldn't actually be much of a surprise. After all, foods that taste good can release endorphins (especially sugary foods), and the body is just about always interested in the euphoria they create. But it's at least interesting to see that perhaps science can explain 10 years of Wendy's cravings.

Some time off

You ever get so hungry that you order/make a ton of food/desserts and scarf the whole thing down without breathing?  The kind of scarfing where you don't realize you've eaten so quickly you've outpaced your "full" feeling by quite a bit, leaving your stomach to continue to expand for a half hour after you've finished loading the dishwasher in a misery that can only be relieved in a way that makes me feel like I have an eating disorder?

Anyway, that was all a metaphor for how I feel about my last run of cooking.  It was great, don't get me wrong...but after all that food for weeks on end, I had to get back to my roots (Wendy's and Chick-fil-A...don't hate).  And while there's been plenty to write about in politics, I didn't really feel like anything warranted a full post of my personal commentary.  So just a few notes to get me back into this cooking (and blogging) thing.

• It hasn't JUST been Wendy's and Chick-fil-A.  It's also been chocolate chip cookies!  The New York Times ran an article a while back about the perfect chocolate chip cookie...including recipe.  It calls for chocolate "discs" rather than chips and letting the dough rest for an unreal 18 hours.  Aside from a pretty obvious typo in the amount of chocolate (1.25 POUNDS???) this recipe was just about perfect.  In my second batch I added the sea salt after baking and could find absolutely nothing wrong with these warm, moist, chewy, droooool.

• Speaking of Chick-fil-A. Oh. My. Goodness.
• I'm finally doing this twitter thing.  To pre-empt your arguments, I refuse to update about bathroom habits or what color pen I'm writing with--I'm only going to update things of substance or hilarity.  Tune in if you'd like!
• Watching lots of NBA playoffs and sending tons of love to my hometown Hawks!  By the way, why does Doc Rivers sound like he has emphysema?
• Wolverine was downright RE-DONK-ULOUS.  The critics are haters.  Seriously.
• Arlen Specter switched parties, and promptly voted against everything the Democrats have put to a vote in the last few weeks, went on national TV to claim he wouldn't be loyal, and rooted for the Republican lost cause in the Senate in Minnesota.  Can we send this one back?  I think it's defective.  (Even better, maybe we can upgrade to the Sestak model.)
• Are you reading 2birds1blog?  Start.
• Look what I discovered at The Gibson.  New favorite EVER.

What y'all been up to?

Right now

FML: