Monday, April 23, 2012

#17: Try a new food

I love food. Love it. Love cooking.  Love eating.  Love dining out.  Love dining in.  Have takeout delivered a couple times a month (yay for living in a one square mile city where every restaurant is willing to deliver!)

So this one is a challenge for me.  Try a food that I've never eaten before.  My local grocery store is pretty good about stocking interesting fruits (star fruit, lychees, gooseberries), as well as Mexican veggies (jicama, chayote).  I recently tried oysters (SO YUMMY!).  I took a bunch of cooking classes, and not only did I learn how to butcher a rabbit and make gnocchi (two different classes, FYI), but I ate pate for the first time!!  For further proof that this is a challenge for me... for my 29th birthday I had an entire lamb, followed by a Vegan chocolate cake (get it? HA!), including a taste of the lamb's brain (eww, mushy!)... so... suffice it to say, I'm adventurous when it comes to food.

Which makes this item hard, at least for me.  What new food could I possibly find?

Enter my good friend Elizabeth.  We work together.  We sometimes dress alike (unintentionally, although we joke about "getting the memo"). We workout after work together.  We think the same people are annoying.  We're besties. We also enjoy food, and the Hunger Games trilogy.  So we went to the local theatre, which was sold out for the Hunger Games, and then decided to go to a wine and tapas bar and just eat and drink.  (Tough life, huh?)  This amazing establishment also has a really interesting "foodie" type of menu, and one of things I noticed is that it offered BONE MARROW.

Elizabeth is amazing in that she's tried bone marrow before, so I can trust her.  So we order it, along with almost half a dozen other dishes (two different types of bruschetta, beet salad, brussel sprouts, AND giant meatballs), and then comes the bone marrow.

Thank god Elizabeth can teach me, otherwise I'd pick up the entire bone and start gnawing on it.  Don't do that.  

So what you do is take your fork (or a teeny spoon if they give one to you), and dig the stuff out of the bone, and then scoop it on to the little piece of toast that they give you.  And then you take a bite.

And it's delicious.  It tastes kinda like pate.  It's definitely rich in that it has some fat in it (like pate or liver), but it's light and airy, kinda like whipped cream is light and airy.  And it has a delicious meaty flavor, not like steak, but like pate.  Regardless, it was delicious, and a perfect way to end the meal.

So I challenge you.  Try bone marrow if any restaurant dares to offer it.  It's actually quite good.  And a tip for you: don't think "Ew I'm eating bone marrow!", think "Mmm, I'm trying something new!" and then dive in.  Let your taste buds flourish.  And be super cute like me when you have a friend take a pic of you devouring it:

Don't forget the glass (or three) of wine! ;)

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Week Two Update

This week was another packed week, but unfortunately, not packed with many things on my "30 before 30" list...

I did get to see family this week =), even if it was for a semi-sad reason...

The perfect Manhattan, in memory of Aunt Margy
Number of items complete: 2 out of 30 (6.67%)

#7: Training for the Gran Fondo: 52 mile bike ride completed!  Up next.... 55ish, 60ish and 65ish... then the big 100!
#9: 30 new recipes: 3 new recipes cooked: total 3 out of 30 (10%)
#10: Blog each of these post: 2 out of 30 (6.67%)

#12: 30 hours of community service:  0 hours out of 30 (0%)

#24: Quit something I do a lot of for 30 days: Decided I would stop pressing the snooze button... I attempted to start this past week, but was unsuccessful... we'll see how this week goes!
#29: Read 30 books: 1 of 30 books read! (3.33%)  This past week I finished reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi.  Sad book... thankful for freedom.  Currently reading "Game of Thrones".  I should probably NOT pick 700 page books to read for this challenge!!!
11 weeks left... Any good book recommendations?  Any fabulous recipes I should try?