Recipe: Pulled Pork Tacos
Although I like to indulge in some of DC’s great restaurants, anyone that knows me knows that Taco Bell is right up there with my favorite restaurants. Every once in a while you want to make it at home. I found this recipe in Real Simple magazine and decided to give it a whirl. The recipe couldn’t be easier so long as you have a crock pot and the simple ingredients that it calls for. Preparing the meal takes about 10 minutes, then just let the crock pot do the work. I went with pork shoulder, cooked it on slow for 8 hours, and it turned out tender, and super easy to pull apart. I highly recommend going heavy on the cilantro and the lime as it gives it a taste closer to El Charrito, one of my favorites in the area.
I followed this recipe exactly. Click through for a large version of the recipe card.
Mardi Gras 2009
In front of a Bacchus float...(with A&A)
I posted my pictures from Mardi Gras a few days ago on Flickr. Check them out here.
Mardi Gras was awesome. More than that, New Orleans was awesome. I didn’t see anything more than the French Quarter, but I already know that I want to go back to visit not during Mardi Gras. That city has a ton of character along with some great places to eat. Since we were only down there for 3 days we only had time to do the typical tourist routine. We hit up Cafe Du Monde for beignets and cafe au lait, Central Grocery for muffaletta sandwiches, drank hurricanes, bought hand grenades from Tropical Isle and caught countless beads from floats at the Bacchus Ball (complete with parade king Val Kilmer!).
Mardi Gras 2009 on Flickr.
New Arlington Eateries: Eventide & Le Pain Quotidien
One of my favorite things to do is try new restaurants. In this area, there are a ton of them – and I feel like I’ve experienced a lot of what Arlington has to offer. It’s a sign of the economic times that many of the mixed use space at the bottom of buildings have been vacant for a while, but I’ve seen a few things start to buck that trend.
I’m most excited for the new restaurant Eventide right in Clarendon. The space looks awesome, complete with one of the few rooftop decks in the area, which I hope will be the host of some awesome HH’s this summer. Not all new restaurants can hit the spot (see Restaurant 3); I just hope it provides another good choice to beef up the selection in the area.
Also opening across the street is Le Pain Quotidien, a bakery, cafe, restaurant of sorts. It’s going into the space under the Gold’s Gym. That spot has been boarded up and unoccupied for years, which is confusing because it’s such a great location.
Terps Under Fire
Bad trend...
washingtonpost.com has a new three part series about the downswing of the Maryland Terps basketball program called Missed Shots. I have been a Terps fan ever since the Joe Smith, Keith Booth, Laron Profit, Johnny Rhodes and Exree Hipp days in the early/mid ’90s. I liked that they were always and still are the underdogs of the ACC. They played scrappy, hustle basketball and usually performed best when not expected to win.
There has been chatter about the Terps losses and Gary Williams’ lack of recruiting (especially local talent). Gary fires back that recruiting is not his only job, but part of his job. His top recruiting coaches have left for other jobs, so that slack has not picked up since those departures. With the Redskins being the other favorite franchise in the area, having similar problems, it is evident that they’re both in need of recruiting and (for the Redskins) drafting help. Coaching and recruiting go hand in hand and each is hopeless without the other. Redskins have the constantly changing variable of a new head coach but pretty terrible drafting skills whereas the Terps have a constant and proven coach in Gary Williams, but lackluster recruiting.
In the past decade, out of the last 10 NCAA champions, the Terps have the worst winning percentage and have missed the most NCAA tourneys. Not a good stat.
Hopefully by the end of the three part series they reveal something positive for Gary and the Terps future, and don’t call for his head as a knee jerk reaction like another flailing franchise.
When can I sign up?
Google just announced a web service that they will be launching called PowerMeter. If you know me, you know I love stats, graphs, charts and visualizing things – so this is right up my alley. They’re currently in a closed beta, but I would love to see the effect on the energy used when I leave a light on all day by accident, when we do laundry, or the benefits of our programmable thermostat.
Monster Jam!!!
I went to this a few weeks ago, but it’s too awesome to only be on my Flickr photostream. Check out the picture set here.
Superman!
Recipe: Lumpia
For years now, my cousins have been making Lumpia for any family gatherings. They bring them over seemingly by the hundreds and usually by the end of the evening or afternoon, they’re gone. For Superbowl this year, I decided to try to make them and risk my friends having a terrible experience with the possibility that they would be awesome and another recipe in my arsenal. I never looked them up online before, but apparently there are a bunch of different versions of Lumpia. My family (and me now) make the Lumpia Shanghai version. It’s surprisingly easy, and doesn’t take much time. Here’s how I made them…
Ingredients:
- 3/4 lb of ground pork
- 3/4 lb of ground beef
- 1 green pepper
- 1 onion
- 1 carrot
- 1 stick of celery
- 3 little boxes of raisins
- 3 eggs
- salt
- pepper
- soy sauce
- spring roll wrappers
Start by putting the onion, green pepper, celery, carrot and raisins into a food processor. After it’s processed, combine with meat, salt, pepper, soy sauce and 2 (out of 3) eggs. Put about a 1/2 in thick line of meat along the spring roll wrapper, roll up and then with the last egg (beaten), paint some onto the wrapper to seal. Repeat until all the filling is gone. After I cut each roll into three for a snack size (also that’s how my cousins told me to do it) with kitchen scissors. Deep fry for about 12-14 minutes until golden brown, or freeze for later. Serve with sweetened chili sauce.
Makes ~125 or so. In my experience, cook about 8-10 per person if it’s a main appetizer. See below for pics…
Deep fry for 12-14 minutes
Cook until golden brown
Inauguration
I didn’t make it downtown but managed to get on the roof to catch a glance from Arlington…
Rooftop Inauguration View
Boxee
Netflix on Boxee
I installed Boxee on my Macbook the other week, and so far, it’s awesome. I think this was the thing I’ve been looking for for a long time. I’ve floated the idea of buying a Roku box to stream Netflix movies, but something felt left out. Boxee adds a extremely easy to use interface that allows me not only to access Watch Instantly on Netflix, but also Hulu, CBS, MTV, CNN, Revision3, Joost, etc…It also adds last.fm support so instead of just playing my iTunes library, I can start a station off of one of my existing songs – complete with lyrics and visulization. Read the rest of this entry »
