Rustic Grilled Cheese and Asparagus Sandwich

It's been raining all day, and spring is definitely in the air around our nation's capitol. There was a plethora of fresh asparagus (Spargle auf Deutsch) at the market over the weekend, so I picked some up. I cooked most of it for Sunday Supper with Andrea, but I left a single serving for myself for this week. When I decided that I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, I concluded that the only way to do it was to really do it. If I want to fancy myself an epicurian, I need to cook like one, right?

So, after my trip to the gym, I went straight to the cheese section at whole foods. I grabbed two cheeses: a sweet, nutty Parrano, and the firm, sharp Gruyere. I decided that between those two flavors, by adding the mildy bitter and sweet taste of the Spargle, it would be a perfect combination. Then, I realized that the sandwich wouldn't be complete without a nice, crusty bread to go with it.

Off to the bakery!

In the bakery section, I found a hunk of the whole foods' brand harvest bread that they called Pain de Champagne. Gooey, chewy, and soft on the inside, the bread was also hard and crusty on the outside. Excellent!

I got it home and hacked the hunk of bread into slices, and buttered it. While I steamed my prepared asparagus, I sliced up the cheese. Once the asparagus was done, I placed it on top of the Parrano, and put the Gruyere on top of that, and then topped it with the other piece of bread. Now, with all of the slivers of cheese, I knew that I couldn't just grill the sandwich on the stove top.

Presto! I pulled out my handy dandy George Foreman grill and slapped that baby right on there. I heard the butter start to sizzle when I pushed the top down. My rustic, American grilled cheese was now an Italian Panino. Yum!

And my instincts were spot on. In picking the asparagus to go with these two cheeses (Parrano and Gruyere) I picked the trifecta.

Pi (e) Day!

To celebrate Pi day (3.14159), I made a lemon meringue pie! This one used my Grandma Cleo's recipe, and YUM! it's awesome!

Greetings From Serbia - Ciao for Now

It is my last night in Belgrade. I've been back since Tuesday but have been so crazy busy that I haven't been able to blog. Actually I may write a back blog or two when I get home. Especially since I discovered snacks and junk food on this trip and they deserve a blog.

My friends took me to a lovely restaurant in the Center tonight. Little Bay has this location in Belgrade and five in London. Check out the gallery page on the London site. The menu was lovely, the food excellent, the prices really (really really) low, and the venue was brilliant. I think this is my new favorite restaurant of all restaurants.

Not that you could tell from the name of the place, but Little Bay is an opera-themed restaurant. It has two levels, the bottom levels regualr tables, but teh top level, which actually only rims the restaurant, is all opera-style boxes! Frescoes, gilding, red velvet curtains, it's an absolute scream. They play a very pleasing variety of classical music and opera arias, and have live musicians and roving opera singers. Seriously, check out the gallery on the London site. If you like opera, fancy theatres, good food, and ever happen to be in either Belgrade or London, this restaurant is totally worth the trip.

So thank you to my friends, new and old, for making this yet another wonderful experience. I know I'll get to come back to Belgrade at least once, if not twice this year and I'm already looking forward to it.

The Playboy Mansion, Chicago

Hey everyone! I have good news.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email asking me to authorize one of my photos for possible use in a travel guide featuring Chicago. I was in Chicago visiting family a few months back, and my cousins and I went on a bike tour of the city. One of our stops was the Playboy Mansion on the north side of the city, where I took this picture:

It's by far not one of my best photos, and the resolution could be better, but I don't care. Because this morning, I opened my email to find a notice that my photo was chosen for the guide!

Check it out at Schmap!! Chicago.

Royal Barbados Cigars

Part two of our tour took us to the Royal Barbados Cigar Company. Here, they make cigars completely by hand.

When we arrived, we were greeted with yards and yards of hanging, dried tobacco leaves. As someone who has almost always been repulsed by the smell of tobacco (unless of course we're talking about sweet, sticky, molasses-y hookah smoke), to the smell outside the factory here wasn't exactly pleasant to my precarious nose. But, if you like that sort of thing, the drying Cuban tobacco probably would have been pleasant.

Once inside the factory, we met with the Swiss woman that ran the place with what appeared to be an iron fist. I didn't get a picture of her, but Brian does a great impression of her that I wish I could share with you. Anyhow, Some of the women didn't like to have their pictures taken, but they did allow me to take pictures of their work. In this shot, the woman is unraveling Cuban tobacco to be sorted.
Once the leaves are flattened out and orderly, they're sorted into small, medium, and large. These are the leaves that will determine the size (re: 'number') of the cigar. These leaves were from Ecuador and Cameroon. For those of you too anxious to wait for the embargo on Cuba to disappear, she did tell us that even though the cigars are Cuban tobacco, they are importable to the US because they are a product of Barbados.

At the next station, we watched one woman stuff the tobacco leaves into the wedge on the rubber roller, while the whole leaf was stationary on the top.

She adjusts it and then rolls all of the filler into the larger leaf wrapping. I couldn't believe how many times our Swiss 'guide' said the word nice in describing how this is done. I think she must've said it 30 times. Nice!

Once the filler is done and the cigar is first rolled up, they're placed in these blocks. The block ensures that the cigars are a uniform shape and size for the number that they are producing that day.

In the next step they take an extra large tobacco leaf that has been stripped until it is thin and extremely pliable. She cuts it down to a size that is relative to the size of the cigar. Then, the cigar is rolled inside the final wrapping until it appears flawless. The woman who rolls the cigar then cuts the leaf again and seals the ends with a natural, vegetable-based glue like guar gum. They don't want you to fire up your cigar and burn chemical glue and poison yourself. So a vegetable gum it is. Follow the pictures of the process below:






After the cigars are glued and dry, they move on to the next step in the process, were they receive their pedigree.

The cigars are labeled by hand and each label gets a small dab of Elmer's glue. The glue is not supposed to ever touch the cigar skin, otherwise the cigar is rubbish and has to be thrown out.

After they're labeled, the cigars still have one more step of QC. They must be matched perfectly by color. At this point, the woman working on the cigars held up two of "differing" colors to the light. I thought to myself, I'd be fired from this job, because I can't tell the difference. They all look like they're the same color to me. If you look at the picture above, can you tell the difference?

Finally, the cigars receive individual cellophane wrappings. They are boxed and ready for presentation. For more information about Royal Barbados Cigars, go here.