Personal – 6 Recipes or Restaurants I Have or Want to Try This Year

July // 6 Recipes/Restaurants/Treats You Have Tried This Year or Want to Try

Have you guys noticed that I like food?  Because it’s true.  I do like it a lot.  I like to make it, I like to eat it, and I could probably talk about it a lot.  So this particular Reverb post is my wheelhouse.  So let’s get cracking on this list.  The fact that it’s short is even better.

1. The Inn at Little Washington – This is a place that I want to try that I have reservations for in less than a month.  When the news about the Michelin ratings came out last fall, I was very excited.  I hadn’t been to any of the restaurants listed.  But much earlier in the year, I had a brilliant idea that for the Boy’s birthday (since it’s a semi-significant number), we should do a special restaurant trip.  The Inn at Little Washington is one of three restaurants with two stars in the DC area – “Excellent cooking, worth a detour” – and I’ve been hearing about it for what feels like my entire life as the special restaurant.  And so months in advance I made reservations.  And it’s starting to feel real.  I am so excited, I could cry!
2. Double Broccoli Buddha Bowl – this was one of those recipes that came across my feed reader where I went, “AHHH – THIS CONTAINS ALL THE THINGS I LIKE” and so immediately had to make it.  Who cares that it was ridiculously complicated?  And that it delayed bedtime by like, 45 minutes, so that the girls could eat dinner with us and their super hipster buddha bowls?  I felt so fancy for making it myself.  It seriously felt like the kind of thing that would come out of the kitchen at a ridiculously pretentious vegetarian restaurant, and the truth is that I made it.  Me, who eats so much meat, and generally lives on pasta.  It was a very proud moment.
3. Arroz – When Tom Sietsema, food critic of the Washington Post writes a glowing review, you pay attention.  Arroz is the newest Mike Isabella restaurant in Washington, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my trips to Graffiato in the past, along with the occasional sandwich from G at Nationals Park, and the times I’ve eaten at Catchfly or Kapnos at the Park.  And I think I would enjoy a Spanish/Moroccan cuisine.  So while I don’t have reservations yet, it’s definitely on my list.
4. Chicken Dip – There are some bloggers you read and sort of go gaga over.  The ladies at A Beautiful Mess are killing it on a regular basis, to the point where it’s hard to believe that they’re real people.  I made this dip (which was billed as being something that Laura’s family just can’t get enough of), thinking it would be fancy.  Turns out that the ABM ladies are real people too, and while this dip was pretty good, it wasn’t the be-all and end-all of dips that I thought it might be.  Which just goes to show that bloggers are people too.
5. Creamy Corn and Basil Orzotto – This is a recipe that came across my feeds recently and has me making hungry eyes.  Pasta in the form of orzo?  Yes!  Corn?  Yes!  Basil?  Yes!  Can apparently be made in less than 30 minutes?  Are you freaking kidding me?  At this point, I need just to gather ingredients and then my motivation to make it.  But when it’s so hot out, it’s easy to just say, “Eh, I’ll wait until it’s cooler, and then boil angel hair pasta for 3 minutes”.  No self – make yourself something you really want to eat.
6. Chocolate Cake and Cloudburst Frosting – you’ll need to scroll through a lot of adorable homey pictures to get to the cake recipe, and the story of the frosting.  But it was so tempting that I promised myself I would make this cake for the boy for his birthday since he loves chocolate so much.  Something else to look forward to in the near future!

BONUS: Fireworks Oreos – We were strolling through Target the other day, exchanging some lamps that were the wrong size and buying snacks for the outdoor screening of Zootopia that we’d be attending that night.  We already had popcorn, and I had determined we needed some kind of cookies.  We turned into the cookie aisle, and there they were – fireworks oreos.  I do enjoy oreos, and I LOVE fireworks, (in this case, pop rocks), and was intrigued.  After a little cajoling on my part, the Boy agreed to buy them, and later when we ate them under the stars, he agreed that they were pretty good.  Vindication!

Details: This post is part of Project Reverb 2017, which sends out monthly (and sometimes daily during a month-long challenge in December) writing prompts for bloggers. If you’re interested in participating, sign up here.