somerville

by

What I’ve been eating this year so far

I still dream about this curry breakfast sandwich.  It came from 3 Little Figs.

Sadly, it was a special.  So if I want it again, I need to learn to make it.  Which in turn means that I need to work on my biscuit making skills.  It is going slowly because I am a household of one.  There’s only so much carbs and fats a person should be allowed to eat in a day.

Other works in progress?  Recreating the candy bar of my childhood.

Right now, my favorite ramen place is Tsurumen in Davis Square.

Oh, and I finally made it to Tasting Counter! The food was really excellent. It’s not the kind of place you can go to all the time… or at least, I can’t because I’m not made of money, but I highly recommend hitting it up at least once. It’s the kind of place where the people who opted out of alcohol pairings still got mocktails and other beverages that matched every course.

And like everyone else in Greater Boston with a hankering for good Thai food, I highly recommend Dakzen. I can’t wait to go there again.

I finally made it to a meal at Commonwealth and was not disappointed. The night I was there, deep fried snapper head was the special. Luckily I was with friends who are adventurous and we were all the better for it. The restaurant also makes all its own ice creams and sorbets, which I also recommend.

I finally made it the famed Oleana, and every dish I ate there was amazing. My favorite, though, might have been the duck dish.

And most recently, I got to eat at Littleburg again. Littleburg is a vegan pop-up restaurant that I’m very fond of, but they are often at times/places that doesn’t fit into my schedule. At least, I was able to make it to their noddle bar night.

In all honesty, I don’t eat out that much.  Everything above was over the course of three to four months.  So, it’ll probably be another three to four months before you get another update like this.  lol!

 

Reference Links:

https://www.littleburgveg.com/

https://www.oleanarestaurant.com/

http://commonwealthcambridge.com/

https://www.dakzen.com/restaurant

https://www.facebook.com/TsurumenDavis420/

https://www.3littlefigs.com/

https://tastingcounter.com/

by

Recent food adventures

 

 

:: Did a koji and miso fermentation workshop with OurCookQuest.  I really enjoyed it, and it was fun being around other food nerds.

:: I’ve attended a few of this semesters Science and Cooking lectures, presented by Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.  So far, I’ve seen Margarita Fores, Wylie Dufresne with Ted Russin, and Vicky Lau.  I’ve learned that the nipa palm looks like a torture device, and don’t make donuts unless you’re crazy.  lol!

:: And most recently, I attended a lunch at Juliet in Somerville, MA.  It was a stop on Yvette Van Boven’s Homemade Christmas book tour.  The lunch menu was inspired by the book.  Both Yvette and her husband, Oof Verschuren, are wonderful people, really friendly and down to earth.  I’m so glad I got to meet them both.

by

Meal prep kit from bfresh

Two posts in one week?  After weeks of nothing?  Yeah, I know.  My posting is inconsistent.  What can I say?  I need to feel inspired.

And inspired is definitely the right word here.  I hadn’t planned on doing another meal prep kit post so soon.  However, a new market opened in Davis Square/Somerville called bfresh last Friday.  There are bfresh stores in Allston and Brighton, which I’ve never been to, but I’ve heard that Somerville is their largest location to date.  I was unsure what to expect other than something that would fit the lifestyle of busy urban dwellers.

Quick review of the market – it’s smart looking.  The price tags on many of the shelves were digital.  It’s bright and small, but probably carries a little bit of everything.  Prices were average.  Some items were expensive.  For example, I saw a package of tempeh for about $5.  I usually pay just $3.  There was onigiri!  At $5 a pop.  But I bought a bottle of coconut aminos because it was a $1 less than what I saw while shopping recently.

They have an app to get coupons and I’m not impressed so far.  There were about 6 coupons available, and I only tried to use one.  My one coupon didn’t apply for some reason when I checked out.  Also, their website said something about getting free shopping bag when you download the app and I didn’t see any coupons in the app for said shopping bag.

I’m not sure if I missed something somewhere, or they just aren’t on top of their communications game.

I was also unimpressed that for a market that has literally only been open for a handful of days, there might be some mislabeled prices already.  My coconut aminos checked out fine, but the meal kit I bought was a $1 more than I thought it was.  I could have sworn that all meal kits were $13.  (Ok, technically $12.99 but I always round up that one silly penny.)

Having said all that, bfresh’s strongest points are their ready made items, their cheese selection, and their bulk selection.  And price annoyance aside, I was there primarily for their meal kits.

(Yeah, that price tag under gnocchi kit looks like it says $12.99.  My receipt, though, shows $13.99.  And I really wasn’t about to turn around and head back into a fairly bustling market to argue over my receipt.)

I didn’t even realize that they were selling ready to go meal kits until a friend of my commented on it recently.  There were about 6 different recipes to choose from – pizza, lemon cod, salmon, sweet potato gnocchi, steak tips, and I think one with turkey.  All of the kits are 2 servings.  These kits don’t claim to be 30 minutes of activity like many other meal kits out there, although most of them probably don’t take too long.

I’m masochistic and picked the sweet potato gnocchi to experiment.  This kit took me almost 2 hours to make, because roasting the gigantic sweet potato in my kit took about an hour in the oven.  I made the sauce easily enough, but the gnocchi making took me more  time than I had expected.  I’ve never made ricotta gnocchi before, and it was quite the sticky mess.

Overall impression of the kit?  Everything seemed pretty fresh.  The spinach in my kit hardly had any bad/slimy bits.  There was less packaging than the ready to go Purple Carrot kit I previously bought.  (Or at least that’s how it felt as I carried it home.)  The only potential downside is that you have to be somewhat comfortable with cooking and ingredients in general.  The recipe card isn’t full of photos.  The packaged ingredients had no labels.  But for me, I was still impressed.

Now, remember how I called the Purple Carrot recipe card mildly cheap in my previous post?  It’s because the bfresh recipe card is seems expensive by comparison.  It’s laminated and shows the full ingredient list up front.

OH HEYYYYY!  I JUST REALIZED THAT THE ESTIMATED COOKING TIME IS UNDER THE INGREDIENT LIST!

Anyway.

The recipe came out fine.  I wish there were a bit more flavoring in it though.  But that might be because, after all these years, I’m still not fond of goat cheese.

Yes, you read that right.  The woman who’s not fond of goat cheese intentionally bought a meal kit with goat cheese in it.  I should have subbed it out, but I thought that if I just didn’t use the full amount that I’d be ok.  So, that’s just me being ridiculous and no fault of the meal kit.

I am sorely tempted to try every flavor of the meal kits.  And since it’s affordable compared to shipped meal kits, I may just do so.

(Here, have another badly lit photo.)

Reference Links:

http://www.cambridgeday.com/2017/02/06/davis-square-grocery-eyes-feb-24-opening-testing-bfresh-concept-for-regional-growth/

http://somerville.wickedlocal.com/news/20170227/ribbon-cut-for-bfresh-market-in-davis-square

http://bfresh.com/