Category: Food

We walk by the cute ‘Delectable Egg’ breakfast restaurant every day on the way to work here in Denver, and it always seems to be packed.  Since we stay in the Sheraton is right across from it this week, we decided to give it a shot.  Of course the menu has a Denver omelette on  : omelette filled with ham, cheese, green peppers,  onions.  One legend has it that the name was given by cooks working on the transcontinental railroad (although no mention of ‘Denver omelette’ appears in documents of the time).    Anyway  : our verdict is that the eggs served up are quite ordinary.  One more criticism : the coffee was too weak. So we will not go back frequently as regulars.

We had dinner tonight at the Watercourse restaurant : a place that serves up tasty vegetarian & vegan food on 17th Ave in Denver.  I had a stir-fried Thai pasta with tofu .. quite good, actually.

 

I went to dinner tonight with some directors and a partner from my firm.  We went to a swank new steakhouse here in downtown Denver called Guard and Grace.  The offering of steak on the menu is extensive.  I have to confess I did not really know there was another grill option below rare : blue rare or simply ‘blue’.    Even so, with all these options, I opted for the Alaskan black cod – and it was delicious.

We stopped by our friend Paul’s house tonight for cake and ice cream.  Paul is celebrating a nice round number tomorrow.  Happy Big Birthday, Paul !

What is an arepa? I wanted to know when we walked by a food truck selling them here in Denver.  Well, it’s the Venezuelans’ daily bread.  The little round bread is made of corn (somewhat similar to an English muffin).  It can be eaten as is, with butter, or really with anything that can act as a filling.   The ones from the food truck had mozzarella, salmon, baked beans, and many other fillings.

Here’s my little reward for Tuesday, the smallest serving of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, barely a big scoop packaged in a tiny tub.   Even so, it still packs 45% of one’s daily saturated fat allowance! And I learned today that Häagen-Dazs was actually established by Reuben and Rose Mattus in the Bronx, New York, in 1961.  Coffee was one of the three original flavors (vanilla and chocolate the others).

For some reason I have always assumed it’s a German brand .. but here is a full explanation from Wikipedia : Mattus invented the “Danish-sounding” “Häagen-Dazs” as a tribute to Denmark’s exemplary treatment of its Jews during the Second World War, and included an outline map of Denmark on early labels. The name, however, is not Danish, which has neither an umlaut nor a digraph zs – ä is used in Finnish, Swedish and German, but Danish uses æ for the corresponding sound (both of these are contractions of “ae”), and zs is used in Hungarian – nor does it have any meaning in any language or etymology before its creation. Mattus felt that Denmark was known for its dairy products and had a positive image in the U.S.  His daughter Doris Hurley reported in the PBS documentary, An Ice Cream Show (1999), that her father sat at the kitchen table for hours saying nonsensical words until he came up with a combination he liked. The reason he chose this method was so that the name would be unique and original.

I stopped at the liquor store on Monday to buy some wine, and spotted some Cape Velvet cream on the shelf as well.  A brandy-based creamy aperitif, the stuff has been around a long time, at least since I was a student.  I believe the label shows the landing of Jan van Riebeeck’s three ships (Dromedaris; Reijger and Goede Hoop) at the future Cape Town on 6 April 1652.   Van Riebeeck volunteered to undertake the command of the initial Dutch settlement in the future South Africa. He oversaw a sustained, systematic effort to establish an impressive range of useful plants in the novel conditions on the Cape Peninsula – in the process changing the natural environment forever. Some of these, including grapes, cereals, ground nuts, potatoes, apples and citrus, had an important and lasting influence on the societies and economies of the region. [Information from Wikipedia’s post for ‘Jan van Riebeeck’].

My friends Dave and Michael and I were at the Coastal Kitchen here on 15th Avenue on Saturday night.   The ‘special’ menu item is ono, said the waitress. Ono? Is that a white fish? I wanted to know. (Yes).  And so I ordered it, but had to look up the fish at home.   Ono is its Hawaiian name; it is also called a wahoo. (Not to be confused with Yahoo, of course).

The days are so short this time of year! – the sun sets shortly after at 4 pm.  So when there is a long holiday weekend just ahead as well, it adds a sense of urgency to get things done before night has fallen and everyone is settled in, and you are not.  So I write two e-mails for work, and then took some old clothes to Goodwill, dropped old electronics and light bulbs at a recycler and also made a stop at the Asian grocery store Uwajimaya.  I cannot claim that I am a foodie, but I do like to ogle all the fresh and outlandish food that is on offer there.  I came away with more mundane items like green tea from Japan, and a six pack of Asahi beer.

I’m playing with words in the heading .. it asks ‘more egg nog?’.  (The Afrikaans word ‘nog’ loosely translates to ‘more’).  Well, I have my new iPhone, and the two pictures below were taken with it.  Amazing how crisp the pictures are.

I bought this ‘chia pod’ to snack on at work, partly because I liked the container and the stubby little spoon.  (The spoon reminds me of the wooden ‘spoons’ that used to come in the rum-and-raisin ice creams we bought on the street from the ice cream man as kids). So what is chia? It’s a flowering plant in the mint family, native to Mexico and Guatemala, cultivated by the Aztec in pre-Columbian times. (Source : Wikipedia).  The seeds have lots of good stuff in : omega-3 fatty acids among others, hence its availability in fancy packaging in city food stores.

I need to get up earlier in the morning so that I don’t miss my breakfast at the hotel .. but my problem is that they take too long! First I get seated, then a second person comes and pours me my coffee, and then a third person comes and takes my order.  Then I have to wait for it, even if it’s just oatmeal.  Oatmeal and cereal should be out as a buffet item and ready to go.

Our project manager treated us to a dinner at a French restaurant in lower downtown Denver at Coohills Restaurant.  The dinner was wonderful, but the service was oh, so slow.   I had apple tart and rum &raisin ice cream for dessert.  We started at 7 pm and was finally done by 10 pm (dessert was served shortly before 10).  Then when we walked back to the hotel, I noticed we crossed a street called Wynkoop Avenue.   It turns out the street is named after Edward Wanshear Wynkoop (1836-1891), a founder of the city of Denver, Colorado.  Wynkoop served as an officer in the First Colorado Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War, attaining the rank of major of volunteers, and was brevetted a lieutenant colonel in May 1865.  The Wikipedia entry does not say as much, but he must have been a Dutchman with a last name of Wynkoop.

My friend and colleague Gus arrived in Seattle for a few days of work here this week, and invited me out to lunch today. Since it was a blue sky sunny day, we picked the Seattle downtown waterfront to go to and ended up at Elliot’s Oyster House on Pier 56.  Hey! We can order Oyster Rockefeller, said Gus.  I did not know that’s a baked (or broiled) oyster.  It’s quite good. (I’m too squeamish to eat raw oyster).  We also ordered Dungeness crab cakes.  I learned something new about the Dungeness crab as well. They are named after Dungeness, a small coastal community right here in Washington State.

Mondays start very early for me with the travel out to Denver – so I don’t want to spend too much time waiting for my food at a restaurant on Monday nights.  So that’s where the Vietnamese noodle (phở) place here on 16th Ave in downtown Denver comes in.  They serve up a quick, hearty bowl of noodle soup and I have already been there three or four times.

 

I like to go to Trader Joe every now and again even though I really cannot claim that I am a foodie. You go .. hey, what’s this? Ooh, let me try it. And this? Got to have some of that as well. They have all the stuff that’s in a regular grocery store, but just not with the mega brand names. So they have their own style of Oreo cookies, or potato chips, and never ever Starbucks coffee or Lipton tea. Those are corporate ‘evil empires’ that will never get their products on the shelves of Trader Joe.

Monday is probably the worst day of the week for a birthday.  But even though I left it very late to check in with my compadres, we did go out to a restaurant for a bite and a beer. The place is in the Madrona neighborhood, called St Cloud and bills itself as ‘contemporary comfort food in an urban neighborhood setting’.  On the way in we spotted a distinguished guest inside the restaurant : our congressman Jim McDermott.  We sat outside on a deck in what looked like a house’s back yard.  I had the garlic-fried chicken with mashed potato and broccoli (very good) and a white Belgian beer.

 

What the heck is quinoa? I wondered, but nevertheless bought a bag of rice with quinoa at the grocery store. I cooked it Thursday night for dinner. It’s good! and so I had to read all about it on Wikipedia. The plant was first domesticated by the Andean people some 3,000 years ago. It’s becoming very popular in the USA, China and Japan. In its natural state it has saponins, a mild eye and respiratory irritant.  Most of that is removed for consumption outside of its indigenous countries, though.  And finally, The United Nations declared 2013 is the International Year of Quinoa, in recognition of the ancestral practices of the Andean people.

Check out my fancy pants green tea that I bought on Monday, along with some black tea.  I’m trying to revive my liking and taste for green tea that I acquired in China.   The green tea is up against serious competition as my favorite hot beverage : black English Breakfast tea and Starbucks’ medium-roast coffee.  The green tea needs to be steeped for only a minute (or even for only 30 seconds).  It’s fun to let it cool down, and then swallow it in three or four big gulps. Its roasted rice/ green tea after-taste sits on your tongue for a while.

Uinta Brewing is named after an east-west mountain range located in northeastern Utah. I spotted their beers in the local grocery store.  ‘Earth, Wind and Beer’, says the 12 packs of Cutthroat Pale Ale and Golden Spike Heffeweisen.  The wind refers to their claim that Uinta Brewing has been 100% wind-powered since 2001 (according to their web-site).  I didn’t buy any; hopefully we will go out to eat some time, and then I will ask for one.