a wolf angel is not a good angel

Strong recommendation for chocolates if you are in NH: Mainely Gourmet, in Portsmouth. I believe that, in my time buying chocolates there, I have been given more free chocolate than I have bought. And everything they make is so delicious, too.

Yesterday, since it was rainy, we decided to go to Portsmouth. I phoned the store to see when they were open. Until six! Great! Do you have any goat cheese truffles left? Sure, wait, no, sorry, we’re out. Oh no! But she agreed to make me some to pick up the next day, and I went there anyways for other truffles. (Though the hazelnut was *milk* chocolate. What heresy!)

I went back today, and sure enough there were my truffles. She had made exactly 12 for me. Then, as my father was chatting with the other woman who owns the store, she offered us each a chocolate-covered biscotti. (It was very good.) Then we discussed why they were out of those wonderful truffles (wine tasting in the finger lakes area), and what the most popular truffle was (chevre) and the next most popular (kosher sea salt) and lo and behold she gave us three sea salt truffles (I have yet to taste mine, but I am looking forward to it). I will show pictures and a review when I eat them, but I strongly recommend this place. (Just off I-95/Rte 1.)

While you are there, go and have a meal at Friendly Toast. Their home fries are better than either their regular or sweet potato fries.

So, my friend and I have come up with a goal. Goals are good. But this one is particularly good: we intend to try all the ice cream places in the city. (Ignoring things like Baskin Robbins or — ugh — Dairy Queen.) We found an article listing lots of ice cream places[1], and today we started with the Gelati Comme Il Faut one (my choice), which had good coconut (a little sweet for me), very disappointing chocolate, and the best hazelnut ever. (Note: I love hazelnut more than almost any other flavour.) And reasonably priced!

They left off lots of other artisanal ice cream places, but this should probably do us for the summer anyhow. It is a plan, a plan which has a specific goal. Updates as I eat more ice cream.

[1] We’re skipping Bilboquet, since we’ve both been there before. Their sorbets are great; their ice creams are not so much. I have — somehow — never been to Ripples.

I now have much less crap that I had hanging around, replaced with an ice cream maker! Oh, the joys I will have, if the weather here ever merits ice-cream-makery. Possibly only once, because I can get bored easily, but so what: it was free!

But I made coffee, heard it beep, then *forgot about it* for a while! Forgot coffee!

Do you know what this means? This means I am no longer addicted to caffeine, for possibly the first time since I was 13. (I drank coffee really early. It was the one time in high school I was, vaguely, cool.)

Normally I leave somewhere between 15-20% as a tip (for average service). Sometimes this drives me nuts — just pay the servers more — but usually it’s fine because you just use the total tax and round up.

Last night, though: get seated in the back, a little low on the light. Okay — we’re not really dressed that nicely, and sure it’s just bistroish, but we’re under-cool for this place. Get the menus immediately, get our orders taken quickly, get the food as soon as it’s ready. (The food is very good.) And then we never see our waitress again.[1] Refills on our water (to go with the spicy meals we both ordered)? No. Bills, when we want to go? No. We walk to the door, where someone else says we need to pay the waitress. So we wait, as she tries to open a bottle of wine, fails, walks right by us without even saying ‘Sorry, it’ll just be a moment’, spends 5 minutes (I checked) doing who knows what, 4 feet away from us, then finally passes us our bills (also without saying a word, just puts them in front of us and walks off).

So, on an 11$ bill, what would you have left as tip? For the record, minimum wage is 7.75, minimum wage for people who get tips is 7.00, and there’s some presumption of a minimum %age you get in tips (for tax purposes) but I am unsure about the exact details.

(And actually, there was no bad mood, because we’d had ice cream before dinner! Ice cream means no bad mood!)

[1] Question: why does waiter seem to be male-only in a way that poet and actor are not? Is it just me? Should I make the switch?

I am having about a dozen people over on Sunday, for my much delayed (and sunny but *cold*) housewarming. What should I serve? I am going to make something flourless with chocolate, for my friend who cannot eat gluten (probably a chocolate cake), and I am going to make apricot mini pie dumpling things on my grandmother’s suggestion (half a canned apricot in a piece of pie shaped like a dumpling), and . . . what? Cookies? What kind(s)? I’ll also get some fruit for those weirdos who like to eat healthy foods instead of desserts. But I need ideas for the desserts. Chocolate chip cookies? Chocolate orange cookies? Oatmeal cookies? Peanut butter cookies? Sugar cookies?

I am considering what I would like as birthday gifts[1]. My parents are getting me patio furniture. I am still unable to find the barbecue I am looking for, but I will persevere: a small barbecue must exist. Would I like an espresso maker? If so, which one? It must be small. Would I like a plain coffee maker?

I am also trying to tell myself that I do not actually want an ice cream maker. This isn’t true.

[1] My birthday is this Sunday. Wish me a happy birthday on Sunday.

You know, as much as I dislike Passover food[1], I really love the seder, and it’s probably my favourite holiday (with Yom Kippur second — yes, I like holidays that focus on a bunch of people eating a big meal together). I was incredibly lucky in the seating arrangement this year, getting to sit near people I like to talk with. It was altogether wonderful fun. In some things I am so very lucky.

[1] You can tell who was raised Jewish: anyone who claims to really like matza was not.

(Hebrew! Ooooh.)

It’s fairly warm today — on and off sunny, on and off windy. But warm enough to wear a skirt (I wore one yesterday too, but only to go to my parents’ house to watch House with them), and so I am getting to wear my absolute most favourite skirt in the entire world, and it is making me happy. (I have a few skirts I love, and a bunch of skirts which I like, but this is my favourite of the skirts I love, though only just a little better than my second place skirt.)

Last year during the seder, though, someone spilled wine on it — no stain! — and I am a little wary of the same thing happening again. Especially as I do not have other clothes there to change into.

I could grump about seder food, but honestly, all I ever eat during the seder is matza and charoset. I love charoset. It’s so delicious. I could eat just matza and charoset for the week and be happy (probably I will break Passover — after all, I fasted this year, isn’t that enough?). Mmmm, charoset.

Yes, I *am* this excited about something that’s supposed to look like mortar, and rather does.

I have had, for quite some time, all the needed ingredients to make my beloved apple-cheese quiche.[1] But I have been afraid, so afraid. But for the first time in I cannot recall how long, I made a pie crust that didn’t tear as I tried to roll it out, or flake itself into flakey oblivion. (Tasty oblivion — the pie was always edible after, but the crust was so sad.

No more! I made a pie crust, and it was *perfect*. The curse — whatever the curse was, who’d curse someone’s ability to make pie crust? Isn’t that a weirdly specific and not particularly evil curse? Well, in any case — the curse is lifted! It is quiche day today!

[1] Well, not flour, oddly.