review: georgie’s diner

We used to have this little silver diner. It was good basic diner food, and they’d let me have the kids meal pb&j when I was sick or poor. And then they got bought out by a Greek restaurant, and I hadn’t been back.

I really should have tried sooner.

Because what they did was combine the diner food with the Greek food, and it resulted in this excellent breakfast you see here: Gyro Omelet with Feta. They don’t skimp on the gyro meat, and the egg is nice and fluffy and well-browned, and the feta is creamy and strong, but not overpowering. The hashbrowns are excellent (you can judge the quality of a breakfast plate on the quality of their hashbrowns), and the biscuit is light and very buttery and perfectly toasted.

They’ve also got a spanikopita omelet, and the more usual breakfast items and some sandwiches, but I’m glad I picked this one: it was exactly something different, and that’s what I was wanting.

Review: Starswings Jasmine Tea Drink

This is not good. It is the opposite of good. I noted that it’s carbonated, but I’ve had carbonated tea drinks before, and they were fine. This one was just plain gross. It did not taste like jasmine tea at all, but more like watered down beer with a weird sour-floral aftertaste. I gave it the three-sip test (first one to get into it, second to get used to it, third to make a decision) and I just couldn’t go any further.

Ewww.

Review: Nestum

An odd sort of babyfood cereal, but tasty none the less. Very smooth, and it doesn't require any heat-- just add it to milk, milk substitute or even juice or water, stir and eat! It's not too sweet, and it's fairly healthy, but I think maybe I'll use it mostly as a sweetener for actual oatmeal or cream of wheat. The smoothness makes it a little like wheat pudding, and my brain doesn't know what to do with that.

Blood Orange

I've never had a Blood Orange before. I've seen them on the Food Network, and one of the food blogs recently had a sort of freform tart made of layered Blood Orange slices that supposedly cook up like dark marmalade.

According to Wikipedia, Blood Oranges are sometimes labled as a cross between a pomelo and a tangerine, but are generally accepted as a straight-forward mutation of a sweet orange, which allows it to be loaded with anthocyanins, "common in flowers but not in citrus". Anthocyanins are apparently a kind of flavinoid that is either red, purple or blue depending on ph (so, if someone managed to breed one that had very low acidity, could we get purple or blue oranges? That'd be so sweet, both literally and figuratively).

The skin was thick like an orange, but as easy to peel as a tangerine, with that same brittle zipperyness that tangerines and clemetines have. And this one, at least, is loaded with orange oil, soaking my hands enough that it dripped off my fingers, and squirting little sprays of it into the air around my desk.

The taste is very orangey, strong and a sharp mix of sour and sweet, and a little... berryish? Like the juice is mixed with cranberries or mixed berries. It's Lovely. And I can't get over how gorgeous it is. This is definitely a dietary keeper.

I'm sad there's no seeds in them, though. That means I'll have to find one already growing, and I'm sure that'll be a pain, what with no citrus imports to Florida, and the one grown and sold here being so expensive...

Golden Moon Tea No.1: Sugar Caramel Oolong

The website doesn't have a decent picture; I'll come back later with one of my own.

I just discovered Golden Moon Tea through a friend's blog post, I since they have tiny samples for 99c and I am both poor and in search of new tea sources, I ordered a few that sounded good, and I'll be posting the reviews as I work my way through them.

The first I tried (really, the reason I bought enough to make shipping worth it) was Sugar Caramel Oolong. I love oolong. It's my fav of all the ways of oxidizing tea that I've tried, perfectly between green and black, with the best of both flavors without the strangeness of mixing the two, and with far more variety than you'd think. This one was my first ever flavored Oolong. It did not disappoint. The tea bewed up light and fresh, with no bitterness at all and enough assertiveness that the scents of toasted sugar and caramel didn't everpower the fact that it tasted like tea. There wasn't much flavor of either of these scents, but the scents were strong enough to make up for it, and if I were the sort to sugar a light tea (which I'm not), I think it'd take it just fine with the delicious dessertiness of the scent already there. I drank a cup fresh, then put the rest in a bottle and took it to work, and even with the leftover lychee scent of the juice I took to work two days before, it was nice hours later when I drank it. It didn't get bitter as it cooled off, and it blended nicely with the fruit flavor of the bottle.

I'm so buying this on in full size as soon as I get more monies.

Bottled Tea: Inko's Blueberry White

This is a keeper. A little sweetened, but not with High Fructose, and so free of that pervasive too-sweetness that most bottled teas have. The white tea is light and not bitter at all, and the blueberry tastes like blueberry without any of that metallic weirdness blueberry can get if it's too concentrated. The price is pretty good, too, a little over 2$ a bottle at WinnDixie, which is the only place I've seen it in town. I first tired it at my mom's house in Raleigh, and it was about 4$ a bottle at the Harris Teeter, so I'm counting this as a deal. It's fresh, refreshing, and it doesn't taste like vitamin C-- it's in there, as a preservative like all the other bottled teas-- but it's not harshly sour at all, just a teeny bit as would be appropriate to the fruit involved, and somehow manages to simultaneously not taste watery like alot of these new white teas do.

This is a good one. I just wish WinnDixie would carry more of their flavors. Like Cherry Vanilla? Or Honeysuckle? Or, the one I mourn not finding the most, Lychee?

Forelle Pears

This right here is a Forelle Pear. In a shopping trip where I managed to only buy one pre-made item-- a bag of cookies-- I came across this little cutie next to the Seckel Pears I was looking for. It looks like a little baby d'Anjou, as you can see. Curious, I looked them up on the interwebs and found this little snippet: "Forelles are a very old variety, and are thought to have originated sometime in the 1600's in northern Saxony, Germany. The name Forelle translates to mean "trout" in the German language. It is believed that the variety earned this name because of the similarity between the pear's brilliant red lenticles and the colors of a Rainbow trout. Forelles were introduced to the United States by German immigrants in the 1800's, and they are now produced in the Northwestern states of Oregon and Washington."

Yay! An old variety! I'm not sure what makes a vintage variety, but this seems old enough to count.

The interwebs don't say anything about a relationship with d'Anjou Pears, but to me, it seemed very similar, but sweeter. The skin has the same texture and the flesh is the same juicy-but-not-drippy. I got about five bites out of it, but I have a small mouth; normal sized people with jaw hinges that function properly will likely get, like, three. There's about four to a pound, as opposed to seven a pound of the Seckels I also bought (though they aren't yet ripe enough to eat). It's tasty, a little floral, sweet, not tangy at all. I think it would be good carmelized.

In fact, I think so strongly that it would be good carmelized that I bought more and have plans to try doing just that, and eating them with plain yogurt. Or maybe in a pear upside-down cake. Mmmm, cake...

Experimental Halloween Candy Flavors

Also known as 'seasonal'.

I love experimental candy. The fact that it's out of the norm, the fact that it's limited-time-only and I may never see it again... I look forward to the candy holidays because of this one simple thing. I just finally got my hands on a tiny bit of un-spoken-for money, and C and I indulged in some sampling of the standard brands pushing new flavors at us for Halloween.

Snickers Rocky Road: Meh. The marshmallow-flavored nougat is really just non-flavored, and almonds are harder than peanuts. And it's almost too sweet. I miss the slight saltiness of the regular Snickers nougat.

Hershey's Pumpkin Spice Kisses: Yum! They taste like the pumpkin spice fudge at Kilwins, only not as dense. Not too sweet, and they're orange with white inside, and distinctly nutmeggy rather than cinnamony, and I like it much better that way.

Hershey's Candycorn Hugs: They're so cute with their yellow bottoms and white tops and orange insides! They smell like butter cupcakes. The taste... I don't know. Not like candycorns, more like butter cream frosting flavor (not like actual butter cream frosting). And the texture was weirdly chalky, not at all like a regular Hug-- but all the ones in this bag seem to have gotten really soft and hardened up again, so it might be that. I'll give it another try when they all go on clearence November 1st and I go binge on cheap candy to hold me over until Easter.

Le Cafe

The other day, before a day of thrifting for Halloween costumes, H, A and I went to Le Cafe right on A1A where Fran and Tam's used to be.

It's a tiny place, only about five or six tables and a three-stool-bar, but it had that old timey charm that seems to be leaking out of St Augustine these days. Most of the people who were there were older, the sort of people you'd see in a Diner, if we had one anymore, and there was a steady stream of customers, so I think they were well-regarded.

I had the turkey and swiss croissant (4.50), A had the ham and swiss croissant (also 4.50) and H had the Croque-Monsieur, which is a fancy sort of grilled cheese (3.99). The food was not huge, but it wasn't tiny, either, and perfect for breakfast. Croissants make dangerously good and remarkably filling sandwiches. Afterward, we got the crepe with nutella, whipped cream and vanilla icecream, and it was devine.

There's a variety of crepes available, but none of them savory like A says were available all over Paris, but the crepes themselves are tender and fluffy and not at all rubbery like alot of small places make them. And nutella makes everything amazing, especially when it's warm.

They have breakfast all day, a small selection of icecream that can be made into milkshakes, smoothies, bagels, paninis, build-your-own sandwiches, belgian waffles, and the most adorable and tasty-looking single-serving quiches that I'm trying next time.

Cash only
Open 7:30 am to 5 pm, closed on Sunday

Review: Blue Dragon Royal Thai Green Curry

This is one of those heat and eat sauces-- this one picked up at the Scratch n Dent Grocery, so who knows which store it originally came from. The instructions say to add chicken or shrimp raw, and let them cook in the sauce to get the best flavor. I added chicken, as well as onions, green peppers and a last left-over potato to make it stretch further, and simmered it until everything was done through. Served it on a heaping pile of lovely Basmati rice.

It's a tasty, sweet-hot sort of curry, with that distinctly Thai smell and flavor-- lemongrass, keffir lime, coconut milk, ginger-- and it's pretty close to the way it tastes at restaurants, though perhaps a bit mellower and uniform of flavor. The heat is there in the first bite, but never got too much (and I'm kind of a sissy when it comes to heat, so that's good, though my room mate who likes heat said it was spicy enough for him, so I guess it's some sort of magic chili that can be mild and spicy at once. or it's the coconut milk and rice.), and went really well with both the veggies and the meat.

I think, until I can figure out how to make my own Thai curry, and when I can't afford to go to a restaurant, this is a good one. Though next time, I'll get two packs to serve five, as it's really only meant for two to three.

Salmon, Rice and Red Miso

Since I'm sick and everyone else is not home for a meal, today's dinner is simple: soy-sauce steamed salmon over white rice with red miso soup. Sounds fancy, but really it's very simple.

It's one serving of frozen salmon, dropped still frozen into a little pan with sweet and regular soy sauce, and heated on low until the sauce as become a glaze and the salmon is cooked through. Meanwhile, short-grain rice is cooked and water is boiled for the instant red miso and genmai-cha.

The miso is one of my favorite finds. Instant misos that dry out the base are always chalky and more salty; this company-- no idea what it's called because, again, it's all in Japanese, which I really should learn to read-- uses wet miso sealed in individual packs just big enough for one bowl. This ones's plain, and comes with chunks of seaweed. The pack they come in also has clam and mushroom, which add those things in addition of the seaweed.

The genmai-cha is from Yamamoto Yama, which can be expensive in American shops, but is only a buck and a half at the Asian Market, and I always buy two or three boxes, since we only visit two or three times a year. (If I didn't have so many other teas, I'd have to buy alot more to last a whole season or two!). It's a perfect balance of roastyiness and a good solid green tea, and even when I forget about my cup for ages, it doesn't get bitter, just more roasted. One teabag is strong enough to make a decent-sized pot, but smooth enough that it's fine just in a cup. The only genmai I've had that's better is the looseleaf that C brought be back from her stay in Japan's tea region.

See, easy. Just have to have the right things around. If I was better, and didn't get dizzy every time I stand for more than five minutes, I would have glazed the salmon better, and maybe put a little butter on it to contrast with the soy more. Probably would have added some veggies, too...

Review: Japanese Green Tea Soup

I have no idea what this says as I don't read Japanese, but I think this is one of the tastiest things I've found in ages. See, there's a tradition we have-- whenever we go to an Asian Market of any sort, we chose one thing that has no English on it at all, and we try it. For one, it expands our horizons and makes up bolder, and for two, it lets us sample things we never would have tried before. This is one of the good things to come out of that little experiment.

It tastes very Japanese; I'm chalking it up to the seaweed and sesame seeds in the broth it forms when you add the hot water. It's savory without being too salty, mild without being bland. Reminds me more of miso than of tea, but has a lovely greenish color like a really perfect cup of green tea. It's easy to make, and it's tasty, and served over a pile of rice like the picture on the back shows, it's remarkably filling.

I had these little packets for a long time before I got up the nerve to try one, and now I'm sad I waited so long, because it really is delicious. My only regret is that I have no idea what it's called in Japanese, so I can't search for it online when I have no access to the Market.