Snider's Super Foods

In a grocery round up of Silver Spring, I hit up another local grocer this weekend: Snider's Super Foods.

(photo from yelp.com)

Tip: do your grocery shopping where old people shop, because they're the ones who have been eating longest. This place is swarming with people who want to pinch your cheeks and get a pound of potato salad on sale. I thinking I subconsciously started humming the tune from "Driving Miss Daisy" while I was in here. The aisles are tiny and cart bumps make neighbors out of strangers. It's a meet-cute waiting to happen. I can only conclude with: 88 CENT AVOCADOS!

On a related note, check out: Old Jews Telling Jokes

Thai market and the Tamarind

Thai Market of Silver Spring is a wonderful little grocery store tucked into one of Georgia Ave's side streets.

(image from davidrehunt.com)

I went to Thai Market for the first time on Saturday. While no great marvel if you've ever been to any other asian market or superstore, it suits me just fine. There you can find authentic versions of many asian ingredients for cheap, like monster bags of rice, spices in enormous jars, and huge blocks of tamarind:




Making tamarind paste for pad thai is just about as from scratch as it gets. Yep I 'discovered' this which is a nice way of saying it took way too long. It kind of looks like a cross between poop and a fruitcake when you start out. You have to boil the stuff then force it through a sieve. I am sure there is some nifty as-seen-on-TV gadget for this, but as I myself am not in that target demographic by about 50 years, there I was on Sunday evening, using the bottom end of a measuring cup to push boiled tamarind pulp through a sieve. You end up with a tangy rust-colored paste that is the base of the pad thai noodle sauce. About 20 more steps later, the delicious pad thai is complete...

For the recipe, check out Vegetarian Pad Thai.

Dim sum

Super cheap lunch. Get to oriental east at 1030 am to get all the plates of dumplings and sweet buns you can grab from the circulating carts. As you can see, they line up early...



I will scold you if you don't go.

Best of Silver Spring

Via the South Silver Spring Neighborhood Association, I found a list of the Washingtonian's "Best of Silver Spring." It's a good rundown of local restaurants and shops in the area. There are a fair amount of chain places around here  - but one thing I do like about Silver Spring is that the local mom and pops can hold their own. Despite the recent demise of Mayorga Coffee (which had the best darn turkey melt of all time, until they took it off the menu a few months prior to closing, and yes, I am still bitter about that), we've still got plenty of other locally run shops. The local hardware chain, Strosnider's, for example, is much more convenient than trekking out to Home Depot out in the 'burbs, and the service is always friendly and helpful. Nothing beats being able to chat up an employee about what's really the best deal on paint or Christmas lights. (Finding a good hardware shop really is a bit like finding a good mechanic, don't you think?) Anyway, I've been in DTSS for about a year and a half now, but I haven't had the time to try all of these places on the Washingtonian list. Since I'll probably be moving sooner rather than later it seems, I'll be looking forward to checking out some of the restaurants on the list before I relocate.

Other favorites of mine that didn't make it on the list:
TPSS co-op (for organic and non-overwhelming grocery shopping)
Addis Ababa (Ethiopian)
Bombay Gaylord (Indian)
Sabroso (I've heard it rivals El Pollo Rico, which is on the list, and which also means I should taste test this to find out)

Travel Updates and Local Festivals

I traveled a bit during the end of the summer, and got out of the habit of my weekly blogging, I must admit. Here's a rundown of my trips:

Weekend trip to Philly: Walked around the City Center, saw an amazing rainbow after a freak rainstorm, and spent 5 hours in the East Coast's largest mall helping my friend find The Perfect Formal Dress. Thanks, H, for showing me around!

Labor Day weekend in Miami: Went to South Beach, ate dinner at a couple of amazing restaurants, and took a snorkeling day trip in Key Largo. The fish and coral are incredible.

Since I've been staying local since then (gotta save up for the next excursion - a trip down to Charlottesville to visit my alma mater), I've been checking out the best of DC and Silver Spring's weekend festivals and farmer's markets this fall. Here are the highlights:

Adams Morgan day festival in DC - It doesn't get any more vibrant than this. There were hundreds of food vendors, and enough local artists to rival a day at Eastern Market. I'm very excited about my new purple knitted handwarmers from one of the local artists, De Nada Designs. Now I just need it to get colder so I have a reason to wear them. You won't hear me say that often! Mayor Fenty also made an appearance, and all the local bars on 18th had happy hour specials.

Silver Spring Farmers market - Downtown Silver Spring (or just DTSS) has a small offering of local-ish farmers on Saturday mornings. I got some fresh apples, potatoes, apple cider, and my favorite purchase of all, sunflower seed bread. It was the kind of good that makes you want to learn how to make your own. There was also a lady who tried valiantly to talk me into buying a pound of goat meat sausage.

Fenton Street market - I made it out to the last of the 1st annual Fenton Street Market series. It was an eclectic mash-up of artists, handmade clothing designers, photographers, and used bike sellers. I found some colorful photo prints from Latin America for only $10 from http://www.erikacogliani.com/ (she loves to tell the stories behind her pictures), and a couple of postcards of historic Silver Spring (from http://silverspringhistory.homestead.com/). I even found one of my own apartment building. It's fascinating to see all the changes that have been made over the years, and how all the historic buildings have been restored in the process. To paraphrase the guy at the booth, "I like a recession because it means they stop tearing down old buildings to build new ones!"

South Silver Spring festival - In comparison to the rowdy Adams Morgan Festival, SSS put on a very laidback, lazy Sunday festival. There was more of the same with artists and food. Hook & Ladder (the local brewers) had a beer tent, but I got there too late to sample the goods. We did grab some free swag, and I chatted up some local knitters about where to find the best yarn in town (The Tangled Skein in Hyattsville gets their vote for affordability, so I will be checking that out soon).

weekend adventures

Weekend adventure no. 1:

Friday happy hour at Mayorga. It's a coffee house in downtown Silver Spring (DTSS) that also happens to have a bar. You wouldn't even know it from the outside, but they do. And this is important because of the scarcity OF decent bars in the immediate vicinity. 

Weekend adventure no. 2:

I'm about 3 hours from Ocean City, MD, so it makes for a good day trip when you want to get away from the DC area. The drive out there is pretty nice, it's mostly on rural roads going through corn fields. Perfect beach day this time, the weather was warm, the waves were great, and the wind didn't steal my towel away.

New loft in the Sprung

I've been busy for the past month getting settled into my new apartment. It's a loft in sunny downtown Silver Spring, which is just across the DC-MD line. It's awesome because it has a huge ceiling, two stories, and a balcony overlooking the pool. Here's my living room:

Featuring... the Compromise Couch! Party (microsuede) on the top, business (leather) on the bottom. Slouch out with your couch out?

The dining chairs were ones that my boyfriend found in his former basement for free. I painted them and put new fabric on the cushions. That was a whopping total of $35. Just for comparison purposes, this is the "Before" picture:

Now I'm just looking for some artwork/interesting piece to put over the sofa, and a new entertainment center. Any ideas?

In DC events, I went to Screen on the Green this past week. It's an annual free movie event on the national Mall on Mondays during the summer. There's a huge movie screen and people gather on the grass to watch. They generally play older movies. This week, they were showing Dog Day Afternoon (a bank robbery movie with Al Pacino), which I unfortunately could not really get into. But, it continues for two more showings this summer.