truths

I’d say I have a current issue with sandwiches, but it’s really a long, long campaign in my head. It’s not really the sandwiches that are the problem, it’s the makers. I think the two greatest sandwiches of all time, in order, are the Reuben and egg salad. I haven’t had a good Rueben in forever; I had a great egg salad sandwich in Indianapolis in November 2014.

There’s some debate on the origin of the Rueben, but I still hold to the idea that it was first created Omaha (shout out!). Rueben: corned beef, Swiss, sauerkraut, Russian dressing, rye bread. I’m guilty of ordering the portobello Rueben, in hopes of just finding any Rueben worth its weight, and have regretted it every single time. Generally, it wasn’t the mushroom-in-place-of-corned beef thing, it was either the lack of quality of the remainder of ingredients, or hateful construction ignorance. You cannot call anything a Reuben that doesn’t have a good half inch of quality sauerkraut – the main issue that is most likely to be missing. Actual construction is often pathetic and that combined with some weak spread of ‘kraut damns these sandwiches to hell. Hell. If I get up to no good this weekend I may finally gather the forces and do a proper Reuben. Dare to dream.

I’ll leave egg salad for later chat.

l'oeuf

We crossed the border last night for a big birthday dinner. We do it every summer and have done the last two years at Hen of the Wood in Burlington - a fantastic place that makes a mushroom toast you dream of. This year there was a request to find a French place somewhere nearby (Quebec, as it turns out) for the festivities. X sleuth-ed out L'Oeuf in Mystic, Quebec, a short 25-minute drive from our summer locale. (As an aside, we ended up crossing into Quebec via the the same border patrol agent who'd seen the boys earlier in the week.). Southern Quebec is very Midwestern in layout: corn, soy beans, flat, barns. Mystic is a very small village hidden in the trees and made up of 30-40 fabulously maintained Quebecoise homes; and. L'Oeuf. The shop, inn, and restaurant are run by a couple who've somehow put together the best little place in the World. The shop is full of chocolate (that they make), mustards (some of which they make), marmalades, and assorted French stuff that sucks me in like me wandering into a high-end NYC papier. Before dinner we were three digits of money into our stash of chocolate, mustard, chestnut paste, and Opinel knives.

Dinner on a lovely screened in porch near the garden was a chef's selection for two of us and some a la carte on the other half. Everything was perfectly done with the beaujolais, confit de canard, terrine, and desserts. The terrine gave us insight into the handmade mustard half Canadian, half French seeds) that was a perfect piquant. On the way out we grabbed yet another jar that the waiter told us came with the terrine, but we were stopped short by the owner/mustardeer who directed to his unlabel home cache of jars - of which he gave us one free. It's gold. You'll never taste it because it's too precious. There was nothing in the entire event that wasn't perfect. Seriously. One of the best meals, ever. If you're up that way, and you never know, get a reservation.

Maybe we need a cross-border home.

to the finish

On Wednesday night I headed up to Hagerstown, MD with my friend Brian for a meeting (the sixth of ten nights) of the Pennsylvania Sprint CarSpeedweek. Don’t know what you know about racing, but the 410 sprint cars are what they run in the World of Outlaws – 410 cubic inch, 6.7 liter engine, 900 horsepower/9000 rpm, triple-winged, open cockpit cars that turn 15-18 second ½ mile laps on dirt. Huge dual wings on the top, big wing on the front. Well, just look at the opening picture – that’s easier.

When I was young we often enough went out west of Omaha (at least west at the time) to Sunset Speedway for Sunday night late model modified racing. These were the days when everyone seems to be driving a modified Camaro, and the period when Bob Kosiski and family dominated the circuits in Nebraska. It probably cost us $5 to get in, $1 for a soda, and I’m pretty sure my Mom would drop us off and pick us up after racing in her Pontiac Executive. Those summer nights were my first exposure to racing and they carried me through Bill Elliot in the 80s and early 90s, Mark Martin in the 90s and early 2000s, and Michael Schumacher from the mid-90s to the mid-00s. Truthfully, I’ll watch just about anybody race anything – circles or circuits. Over the last eight months I’ve taken to following Kyle Larson (#42 Target car / Chip Ganassi owned) after the Brian scored us some pit lane tickets for his team at last year’s autumn race at Richmond International Speedway. Larson finished second that night and qualified for his first Chase. Larson, from California, looks about 16 years-old, and seems to really shine on restarts – I think he went from about eighth to second in Richmond on a green/white/checkered restart at the end. He’s leading the NASCAR standings right now.

(If you want to know about his restarts, here at the final two laps from the race we were at in Richmond last year. Larson is the red #42 Target car that opens the two-lap shootout way on the outside behind the white car, and then runs on the outside all the way to the finish two laps later.)

This brings us to Hagerstown. Kyle Larson started in sprint cars out West and apparently at 24 years-old he feels the need to race every night, if possible. They ran NASCAR in Daytona last Saturday night and they’ll be in Kentucky this Saturday night, but he still up racing sprints in Pennsylvania on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights (they were rained out last night). It’s purely happenstance that we ended up on Hagerstown because of last year’s race and the fact that Brian now follows Kyle Larson on Twitter so we knew he’d be up there. (By the way, Kasey Kahne and Dave Blaney of NASCAR were also running Speedweek.) Larson had won six straight sprint car features, three in the Midwest and three in Speedweek, so there was some excitement to see if the streak would continue*. Just for some math-y background, the fastest lap during the free practice was 15.3 seconds for the ½-mile lap. In qualifying, the fastest ran in the low 15.8s. Each heat is over in about 3 minutes, the feature in about 10-11 minutes. It’s loud, it’s fast, there’s loads of counter-steering in turns, and lots of acceleration over the 900-foot straightaways. Larson didn’t qualify well and ended up pretty deep in the pack for his heat, but he moved to the feature, where he started 18^th out of 24 cars. He finished 11th,with local Lance Dewease killing it from 10th to win – that dude can drive. As I pointed out to Brian before heading up, there’s nothing like dirt track racing and this was the first time I’d seen the sprint cars live. Great stuff. By the end of the night I was ready to plan for next year’s events – with an RV and racing all week. I’m sure I can save up five days of leave and traipse around southeast Pennsylvania drinking beer and watching them turn laps.

If you’re wondering, “where did they eat?” the answer is that we ate a Nick’s Airport Inn. Classic. I mean classic – restaurant AND lounge. We choose the lounge where we probably should have been drinking bourbon with the half-dozen locals at the bar, but stuck with beer and Millionaire burgers (sans foie gras). By the way, one of the two or three best burgers I’ve ever had.

*Each meeting has about 30-36 cars that run timed qualifying laps, 4 x 9-car heats (10 laps) with the top five through the A feature, a B feature (12 laps) that has the #6-#9 cars from the heats and puts the top four back into the A feature, and the final 24-car A feature (30 laps). There is some inverting within the starting positions for the heats and features, but we don’t need to talk about that now.

wilmington, redux

X thinks that the return to Wilmington was for the sole purpose of righting the dining wrong from our last visit. Sure, we did have reservations at La Fia this time - and yes, it was very good - but there was an interlude for music (Brett Dennen), and a return to the overly comfortable Hotel du Pont.

La Fia turned out to be exactly what I'd hoped: great atmosphere, excellent food, hip views of Market St. We opened with an order of scallops and the tart/quiche special, mains were gnocchi for both, desserts were the caramel pudding and the pumpkin creme brulee. Here's a great tip for restaurants out there that serve gnocchi - don't overdo it, especially with butter. I know that it's easy to think you'll get some taste with butter, but it simply drowns out whatever fresh tastes you're hoping to blend. Across our entire meal there was a welcome lack of butter, oversalting, and trickery used to hid mediocre cooking. After all, sauces were invented way back when to cover up bad product - stay away from it. Everything was excellent and they hit the killer in/out points perfectly: good bread, good coffee. Hey, it's the first and last impression you'll give me so why give me crappy dohack on the way out the door. I will never understand crap coffee. If you are even in Wilmington, I can hook you with where to say, where to eat (dinner and breakfast), and cool places to hang out.

The show was an acoustic shindig by Brett Dennen at Wilmington's World Cafe Live. We've been the WCL in Phlly, and the Wilmington venue is quite similar - at both places we had front row balcony seats, and at both shows the digs were good. I've gotten to the point where nice seats are more important that the great rock n' roll lifestyle. Well, unless Slobberbone is playing a bar near me. The show was great once Brett coyly put the 'talking' crowd in shape via some humorous ju-jitsu. Anyway, he's a much better guitar player than I expected, and as great a singer as I knew:


 

fare thee well...

We all have a few things in our lives that hold the center; you know, your favorite music, favorite lines of code, and favorites sandwiches. The Eleven swung by Song Que today - on a lark - to grab a #9 sandwich, one of the great sandwiches of the day. It's actually a banh mi, the #9 being a barbecued tofu version. They also have the best taro bubble tea around, and that's saying something considering it's located in Eden Center, the midst of the Vietnamese community. I guess something called us there on a Monday afternoon, and what luck, since they are closing after today. The deli is owned by a relative (I think a brother) of the same family that runs Four Sisters in Falls Church. It has long been a favorite deli not only for the sandwiches and bubble tea, but myriad fruits and offerings that you don't see anywhere else. Sad to see them pull up stakes, but glad we had dozens of great sandwiches there.

Off to quiz for the evening. We are three-member team these days so we've tumbled back to our lower top ten position when we make it out. I'm drinking a mug of Brain Food tea...this may work out.

L. is back from Victoria. Maybe I'll have her guest blog since she won't blog on her blog. Blog on your own blog! Here are some shots of her and the birds of prey she was hanging around with in Victoria.

tap tap tapas

Last week the 51 ventured out to the pastoral wilds of northern Virginia. It was planned, no worries. We were destined for a morning visit to Red Truck Bakery – our second visit – in order stock up on whatever might be on offer. Last visit it was the rum cake; this visit it ended up being a lovely lemon cake, two focaccia loaves for dinner, and a few snacks. Even though the bakery was pre-planned, what drove us outside the Beltway was strawberry season, particularly the pick-your-own operations. We targeted Hollin Farms for the mid-week visit. The farm sits in an amazingly beautiful valley surrounded by some early Shenandoah low mountains; a valley full of orchards and vegetables. We ended up with eight-and-half pounds of berries that primarily served the house as strawberry shortcake. We’ll certainly be back out later in the season for peaches and pears.

Mid-week took the 61 to Woolly Mammoth for The Totalitarians – a pretty hilarious yarn about politics based in Nebraska. When one of the leads points out that it has the only unicameral statehouse it harkened back to my youth. Well, that and the huge state capitol prop, mentions of Broken Bow and Blair, and what was a general Nebraska vibe. Since we also marry up activities we were forced to down tapas and awesome drinks at Jaleo. It’s not hard to spend two-and-a-half hours eating and gabbing in a place like that; probably our most reliable destination in D.C.

Moving toward Vermont….only ten days.

Oh, there they are…