This weekend I decided to take advantage of BoltBus's ridiculous prices and wifi-laden busses and abscond to Boston to visit a friend and hopefully force some productivity out of myself while trapped in a tin can for four hours on either end of the trip. I am actually writing this post on the return journey. For those of you in major cities on the east coast, you should check out www.boltbus.com I don't have ad banners for them or anything, but they let me change my departure times twice and I've been very happy with the whole experience so far.
But this is about food, and I ate somethings yesterday that I am obligated by law to describe to you in writing.
You may think that when traveling to Boston one is obligated to eat beans, cream pies, and the fists of Red Socks fans who can smell the dust of Shea Stadium on your sneakers. I am all to happy to disappoint you, dear reader. I did not eat any of these things this weekend.
The morning started with a bowl of Golden Grahams and a few cups of coffee. I'm not much of a cereal guy, but in the ridiculous debacle that was the night before, we failed to procure fixin's for biscuits and gravy. We managed to stifle the disappointment enough to enjoy our coffee and beat down any lingering shadows of hangover.
The coffee was a Kona bean from Oren's Roast in Station Square Market. The beans were roasted on Wednesday and we ground them fresh just before brewing the coffee in a French press. As much as I love my French press, my friend is a bit obsessive about his brewing process, even controlling the temperature of the water at infusion to make sure his brew timing is as consistent as possible. I often forget that I've started my press brewing and come back after 15 minutes to depress the plunger. I'm not such a connaisieur as much as I just like interesting coffee that doesn't taste like urine steeped with burnt cardboard, or at least doesn't have a flavor that makes me imagine urine steeped with burnt cardboard, not that I've ever actually tried such things. This was good coffee, even black, although I did take my second cup with a liberal splash of heavy cream and a touch of sugar.
Then we went shopping for lunch fixin's. The coffee really had my digestive system going, though and so before we even got home to prepare lunch I had eaten a fried chicken thigh and a stick of celery with peanut butter while walking home with our groceries. This involved digging directly from the peanut butter jar with an unwashed stick of celery while also carrying a bag of groceries, but it was worth it. Seriously, try it, eat it everyday.
Lunch was two bowls of a sausage and cannellini soup that we made. I stared by browning a pound of sweet Italian sausage in the bottom of the pot. Then I reserved the sausage and added 5 cloves of sliced garlic and half a Vidalia onion, finely diced to the rendered juices with a little olive oil. Next came 3 stalks of celery and 2 carrots, all sliced. I seasoned it with about 2 tsp. each of thyme and dill, 1 tsp oregano and a touch of basil, then I covered it and let everybody get to know each other better.
After a few minutes I introduced a dash of balsamic vinegar, two big cans of cannellini and a big can of chicken broth. I don't know the actual measurements, but if you try this at home, add as many beans as you want and enough chicken broth to cover plus an inch or two over the top. I brought this to a boil, reduced it to a simmer, then added the sausage, now sliced into 1/2" pieces and a green and a red pepper, chopped. We let the whole thing simmer while we made a sculpture of my friend's right hand out of plastic wrap and packing tape as part of a larger project to create a full-sized sculpture of himself with plastic wrap and packing tape.
Over the course of the afternoon I also had three Reese's peanut butter cups and a snack-sized Butterfinger bar. You leave these things around and I'm going to eat them. I could have restrained myself, but why bother, really?
Dinner was thoroughly satisfying as only a pulled pork sandwich and a pint of beer can be. I had these things at Redbones, a barbecue joint in Davis, the town north of Boston that cradles the Tuft's campus. The pulled pork was one of the best I've ever had. It was almost impossible to pick up for all the grease and barbecue sauce the bread was sopping up. I ate it much faster than I thought I would, since I was only slightly hungry, but the structural integrity of the sandwich demanded decisive action with every bite. A liberal piling of onions, slaw and pickles right in the sandwich were a perfect touch. Great barbecue, especially considering it's in a preppy suburb of Boston.
The beer for the night was originally going to be Six-Point Brewery's Rye Ale, but the sample glass I had proved a little too sweet for my first drink of the night so I went instead with Offshore's Amber Ale, which provided a simple yet sturdy solvent for the pork grease. My first beer also proved to be my last as the prior evening's liver damage and sleep deprivation started to catch up with me very quickly. I had few sips of Sam Adam's unremarkable summer ale just to say that it was indeed unremarkable with some modicum of authentic judgment, but otherwise it was off to crash on my friend's couch in anticipation of my early morning rise to get on my bus in downtown Boston before 7:30 the next morning.
Ah, yes, fear not. The gap in my writing for this blog, I have not forgotten how to churn out unwieldy run-on sentences.
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2 comments:
I hear the Chinatown bus is even cheaper.
Do you get anything good out of cooking with vidalia onions? Isn't all the flavor they have lost in the cooking process? Spanish onions are my cooking onion of choice lately.
BoltBus, when booked in advance, can be as much as 90% cheaper than any available Chinatown buses.
I don't cook vidalias often, but my friend is not a big onion fan and they do provide some onion kick and layers without as much of the stink.
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