Baltimore, hon

I promised you stories about Baltimore, and so far I have been derelict in my duties. So let's tackle that straight away.

I visited Baltimore last weekend for a college alumni reunion. I had debated long and hard about going. I was feeling uncomfortable trying to answer the question, “so what have you been up to lately?” It's easy when you have a straight forward answer to that question, because you're a nurse or a teacher or you just spent two years saving the world in the Peace Corps. But in my case, I felt my answer would be unforgivably lame: “Um, well, I haven't been working for a few months now, so I read books and watch TV? And I cook dinner? Oh, and, uh, I write a food blog?” It's funny; though I will say all of these things online for the world to see, I wasn't sure I could handle telling my peers.

Finally I did decide to go, and then, the day before heading down there, I got a job offer, so my story didn't seem nearly as unfortunate as I had feared. That was a relief, because it freed up my attention to focus on the more important things, like tulips, and dinner.

Of course, I went to see old friends, but I also went to see my old haunts.  Those familiar streets are as much old friends as any of my former classmates.  I was a week or two too late to see the trees blanketed in pink and white blossoms; by now, the sidewalks and streets were littered in their fallen petals.

I was just in time, though, for the height of tulip season.  About a fifteen minute walk from where I used to live, the "tulip garden," as we called it, was in the height of its glory.

What a joy it was to walk barefoot through the lush grass, soaking in the rays of evening sunshine and admiring the stunning beds of thousands upon thousands of tulips of all colors, shapes, and sizes.

Of course, I couldn't spend my whole weekend in the garden.  Sometimes, I had to leave, and then I got to eat.  Some meals were more memorable for the company than the food: lunch from the library coffee shop or at the dining hall featured great conversation and mediocre eating.  But other times, the food was every bit as good as the company.  Freshly baked bread, goat cheese, and juicy red grapes made a perfect light dinner my first night in town, especially when paired with a margarita, courtesy of Kayla and her sisters with their Chipotle burritos.  Blue corn cakes from One World Cafe, the local eclectic nearly-vegan eatery, were nearly crunchy from the blue corn meal, and delicious when drowned in syrup, served in an Absolut vodka bottle.  Ripe, succulent Virginia strawberries bought at the farmer's market Saturday morning were dripping with juice, ready at a moment's notice to jump out of the crepes I made and onto my shirt, leaving a legacy of bright red stains. 

But most of all, I want to tell you about dinner on Friday and Saturday night.  Friday, I cooked with my friend Victoria.  We met my second day on campus, when we were both involved with a pre-orientation Habitat for Humanity project.  At some point during the first semester, we started cooking dinner together once weekly.  In February of my freshman year, when I got hooked on Grey's Anatomy with the episode that followed the Super Bowl (how could they leave us hanging with Meredith's hand on a bomb inside a patient???), we started cooking our dinners on Sunday nights before we watched Grey's.  When, a couple years later, Grey's got moved to its current Thursday evening slot, so did our dinners.

For the better part of five years, nearly every week we got together to cook dinner and watch Grey's and, when it came along, Private Practice.  Since I moved back to Michigan last fall, we hadn't had the chance to cook together for about eight months - not since we happened to overlap on visits to Paris last September.  Clearly, we were long overdue.  We whipped up a salad and some herb-and-goat cheese stuffed chicken breasts, sopping up the juices with hunks of baguette.  We chased everything down with glasses of a mediocre rosé, and finished with slices of leftover chili-chocolate birthday cake, soaked in chocolatey evaporated milk, just for good measure.  It felt so right to be there, eating dinner and watching Grey's together, almost as if no time had passed at all.  Watching Grey's by myself at home the next week, I was struck by just how sad that felt.

Saturday evening, I went out to dinner to a spot I've been meaning to get to for over a year: Iggie's Pizza.  It's a fun place, friendly, informal, BYOB, in the heart of the Mount Vernon neighborhood.  But most importantly, I had heard some terrific things about their pies, and I wasn't disappointed. 

I went to dinner with Annie, with whom I was staying for the weekend, and the inestimable Kate.  Between us, we ordered two large pizzas: the Cipolla, topped with onions confit, fresh mozzerella, fresh ricotta, and pancetta, and the Alice, covered with pesto, fresh mozzarella, fresh tomatoes, garlic-sauteed spinach, goat cheese, and a little parmigiana.  The Cipolla was good: the onions preserved onions nearly winey, a perfect tart foil to the rich, creamy, luscious ricotta.  The pancetta brought a new dimension with its salty bite in contrast to the sweeter elements.  The Alice, however, was fantastic.

The pesto was rich and fresh, the spinach perfectly sauteed.  The three cheeses played off each other nicely.  The tomato wasn't great, but then it wasn't in season, so that's no surprise.  The layers of fresh and bright and savory flavors played off each other perfectly, and the thin, crisp crust brought a satisfying crunch to the bite.

There are a number of great spots to eat in Baltimore, and Iggie's certainly makes the cut.  Highly recommended.

After dinner, I went to Kate's apartment for the night and didn't end up leaving until nearly 10 pm the next evening.  But unfortunately, that story will have to wait for another day.  In the meantime, I'll leave you as I am: dreaming of tulips: