Food!

I had every intention of writing a foodie Friday post to talk about all of the tasty things we ate this week, but I went to see Moonrise Kingdom instead (totally worth it, will probably be my favorite movie for the rest of forever). It also might have been fortuitous that I held off on the food post since I was trolling around on Craigslist today and found a listing for a batch of '50-100 cookbooks, recipes' for $15. I could tell by the two books on the top of the stacks in the photo that I wanted the lot even if those were the only two keepers. Dustin drove me out to Oshtemo to pick them up, and it turned out to be an insane treasure trove of cookbooks and pamphlets from 1930-1970, with essentially all of them in mint condition! Check it out:

Totally excited about the Polish recipes from the 1930's!

Our road trip honeymoon turned out to be pretty much an eating tour of the East coast, and we ended up eating several things that I couldn't wait to try recreating at home. The first few days home it was too hot to use the oven or grill outside, so I started us off with a curried chicken salad in romaine heart boats.

I started by boiling and shredding chicken breasts then added curry powder, sea salt and black pepper, dill, and the smallest amount of mayo possible to make it all stick together.

When we were in Cleveland we went to one of our favorite places EVER, Yeleseyevski deli in Lyndhurst. They stock Ukranian, Russian, Polish, etc. imported and novelty foods, and I bought a box of these really fantastic fat and juicy golden raisins with wonderful flavor. So I tossed in a handful of those, and about a 1/4 cup of slivered almonds for some crunch.

So fat! So juicy!

All mixed up

And then spread it into the romaine heart leaves and served it up to Mr. Mammoth, who was totally impressed with his new wife's cooking prowess! :-)

Delish!

Our favorite stop of the Honeymoon was our last night, which we spent in Bethesda, Maryland. In case you haven't been there its a super rad town, that's easy to walk around with lots of fantastic restaurants and cool little shops (I will post soon about a cool little boutique I found there as well). We specifically went to Bethesda so I could take Mr. Mammoth to a restaurant owned by the son of one of my dad's business associates. It's called Redwood, and both times I've been there the food I ate surpassed any other meal I've had, along with great atmosphere (most of the inside is made of redwood wood, along with stylish modern stone).

One of the appetizers we had at Redwood was an amazing cold corn soup. It appeared to be pureed raw sweet corn, and was topped with an amazing salsa of sorts made of tomatoes, cucumbers, and WATERMELON. I swear to you, it is totally worth it to drive to Maryland just so you can eat this soup.  We also ate a roasted beet and goat cheese salad that I had last time I ate at Redwood, and our entrees were a grilled steak on baby spinach salad with blue cheese and chestnuts, and the most amazing piece of salmon I have ever tasted atop a lush bed of fresh pea puree. I am really sad to say we didn't take any pictures of our meal, we were too busy trying to look classy.

The first day we were home I attempted to re-create the soup by pureeing fresh corn in our fancy new belle blender, adding a little bit of 2% milk, and then topping it with Michigan made Garden Fresh salsa. It was delicious  and refreshing since it was 106 degrees outside that day, but it still made me long for another bowl of the Redwood version. I am fairly certain they must have strained their soup, as it was smooth and silky while mine had a grainy texture from the hulls on the corn kernels, and I wish I had made my own salsa with watermelon.