Bar Cento gets rockin reviews and rockin ice creams

Northern Ohio Live has rated one of my favorite late-night spots as the best in Cleveland! I’m excited about this, especially since Cleveland Magazine snubbed Bar Cento in their recent restaurant guide.

And, another sidenote that is completely blogworthy in and of itself…

Jeni's Dark Cocoa Gelato

On their dessert menu, Bar Cento has recently begin offering selections from my favorite ice cream place in the universe, Jeni’s Ice Creams!
A few weeks ago it was just a dessert special, but now it’s made its
way onto the regular dessert menu. They’ve been offering a variety of
flavors, including the Salty Caramel, the Black Coffee and the
Pistachio. Jeni makes creative gourmet ice cream, gelato and sorbet
from fresh, local ingredients. Trust me, it doesn’t get any better than
this. I wonder what it will take for Bar Cento to get my favorite
flavor combo, the Dark Cocoa Gelato and the Gravel Road? Jonathan Sawyer, are you reading this? :)

Since moving to Cleveland, I’ve really missed having a Jeni’s within
walking (and driving) distance from my house, and it’s practically
worth the drive to Columbus to eat Jeni’s. So I’m thrilled that one of
my favorite places in Cleveland has done the right thing by bringing
Jeni’s to Cleveland. Yum!

I love it.

The NY Times made me drool

Click here.

For two days, this chocolate chip cookie recipe was the most emailed story on the New York Times’ website.

Berry Season

According to the Plain Dealer, berries are very good for us!

Best Pasta in Cleveland: Ohio City Pasta

Once you have fresh pasta, there’s no going back.

During an excursion to the West Side Market the other day, I picked up some fresh pasta at the Ohio City Pasta stand, where they make and sell their own pasta. Their display counter showcases a colorful selection of ravoli, gnocchi, sauces, antipasti and more. The herb fettuccine looked particularly colorful and fresh, so I picked up a few servings of that and the saffron linguini. Turns out, good move.

I threw together some simple tomato sauce, with olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and basil and cooked the pasta, no problem. Great idea for making fresh pasta with fresh herbs inside.

Ohio City Pasta doesn’t deprive East siders of excellent fresh pasta – I’ve seen Ohio City Pasta selling pasta at the farmer’s market at Shaker Square! Highly recommended!

Recipe: Peanut Butter Bedlam Ice Cream

A few weeks ago, I got it into my head to figure out how to make good peanut butter ice cream. My first attempt was a disaster. Yesterday I tried a different recipe and the result was declared, by three independent, unbiased taste testers, “the best peanut butter ice cream ever.”

The secret? This book: The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovtiz. This guy rocks. The Perfect Scoop is my favorite type of cookbook: amazing, creative recipes; solid, even scientific explanations of the ingredients and equipment; and just the right amount of mouth-watering close-ups of the finished product.

Peanut Butter Bedlam Ice Cream
Makes 1 quart.

3/4 cup smooth peanut butter
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
2 2/3 cups half and half
pinch of salt
1/8 tsp vanilla

Puree everything in a food processor until smooth. (I just used a whisk for a few minutes.) Chill in the refrigerator, then freeze in your ice cream maker

You can add chopped peanuts at the end to make crunchy, or, I suppose, some make some nice milk chocolate chunks.

I pretty much followed David’s recipe, except that I used Trader Joe’s organic smooth peanut butter instead of regular smooth peanut butter.

If you’re into making ice cream, I highly recommend checking out The Perfect Scoop. Tons of great other flavors, including Guinness-Milk Chocolate Ice Cream, Fresh Ginger Ice Cream, Gianduja Gelato, Goat Cheese Ice Cream, Black Pepper Ice Cream, and a gazillion other extras. Enjoy!

Global Food Chain: Environmental Costs

Those bananas may be 20 cents a pound, but the environmental costs of shipping food around the world are costing us a whole lot more.  

Best Job Ever for Chocoholics

This morning, scientists at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. announced they are recruiting volunteers to eat a bar of chocolate every day for a year. Only post-menopausal women with type 2 diabetes need apply. Specifically, they’re testing whether or not the flavonoids found in cocoa can indeed provide healthy benefits to the heart. Here’s the story.

Cleveland Urban Farmers

A farmer’s market will be coming to the Cleveland Clinic and several inner city locations once a week this summer, according to a very interesting article from the Plain Dealer yesterday.  

I’ve read recently about a number of programs in Cleveland that bring the farmer’s market into neighborhoods that have never had one before, including City Fresh.  City Fresh’s website hasn’t been updated for 2008 – does anyone know if this is happening this year?  City Fresh seems like a great program – I like that they have a variety of memberships available, and that they people to donate a little extra to lower the prices for people who can’t afford it.  I’d go with City Fresh, but they don’t have a stop in Cleveland Heights yet.  So, I’m planning to frequent the North Union Farmer’s Market at Shaker Square this summer!  Can’t wait!

 

Gypsy Beans and Baking Company: Run by Gypsies?

Gypsy Beans and Baking Company
6425 Detroit Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44102
Phone: 216.939.9009

On Monday for lunch, I was determined to find decent takeout, having left my soup on the counter at home. With Dish Global Deli being closed Mondays, and having exhausted the menu selections at Souper Market, I ventured forth into unknown territory: the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood.

I ended up at the Gypsy Beans and Baking Company in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood, west of downtown, near the public theatre. I’ve gone there twice before, and both times my attempts to get there were thwarted by the lack of parking due to the blizzard.

The atmosphere was a really cool local coffee hangout, but I definitely don’t recommend the lunch. The service was a little sketchy, and their menu selections were rather lacking.

The pizza was good until I figured out that the dough wasn’t cooked all the way through. (Do Gypsies eat pizza? Or salad? Or coffee, for that matter?) The lady serving me didn’t seem to know what they had from their menu that was available.

During the ten minutes I was in there, I had several cryptic conversations with her, which went something like this.

Me: “I just like to get something for lunch to go.”
Her: “What?”
Me: “I’d just like to get some lunch for takeout, please.”
Her: “Huh? What?”
Me: “To go. I want to get lunch to go.”
Her: “Oh.”

And then with the salad…
Her: “What kind of salad dressing would you like?”
Me: “I don’t know, Italian?”
Her: “Oh wait, we only ever have one kind.”

They did have an array of indulgent treats in their pastry case, including cookies the size of personal pizzas. All of the pastries were so unnecessarily oversized, however, that they were almost unappetizing.

Also, I might add that on their website, they call themselves a “bistro” with “the freshest seasonal ingredients prepared with worldly influences.” In what universe is marginally cooked, mediocre pizza a good idea? The only thing they had fresh was the iceberg lettuce in my salad. What kind of bistro is this???

Overall disappointing, but I’ll go back to try their coffee!

Paradise of Chicken?

I saw on the 11:00 news last night that a third Chick-Fil-A location is opening up in Cleveland and that they’re giving away a year’s worth of free chicken sandwiches to the first 100 people that show up. I was highly disturbed. People were camping out in line overnight, people had driven from Pennsylvania to go to this thing, their weird cows were dancing around in the parking lot, and a lot of hairy-looking 20-something guys and overweight, middle-aged types were camped out, singing the praises of the Chick-Fil-A.

For me, the most disturbing part of the news story was a brief interview with a woman who had not only camped out overnight, but purchased $50 of stuff, like a tent, blankets, gloves and extra clothes, in order to wait in line. What?!? She paid to wait in line all night so that she could get fattening food for the rest of the year?

Woah! Isn’t this kind of hype part of why the CDC continues to report dramatic increases in obesity every year? And, perhaps more importantly, why do people only get excited about food that no one in their right mind who wanted to avoid obesity would eat more than twice a year? In Ohio, nearly 30 percent of people are considered obese. That’s more than 1 in 4.

I’m not saying that Chick-Fil-A in particular is a bad company. My point is that I wish there were a public outlet for people to get excited about healthy foods. I was sitting there watching the news story thinking, if this were a local food co-op or CSA event, there’s no way it would make the local news! Do we need to brainstorm publicity stunts to get people to eat healthy foods?

I heard an NPR story today about an artist who decided to test his theory that people buy things simply based on the packaging. What did he do? He picked up trash off the streets of New York, labeled it and started selling it. Demand has driven his prices up, and now his exclusive discarded pop cans and other litter are fetching prices up to $60 each.

So maybe if there were a better way to package and market fresh fruits and vegetables, people would eat them more. I’ve seen so many ads lately about the almonds grown in California and of course Florida orange juice. But is there something local farmers could do locally? Is it just the common misconception that fresh foods are more expensive and take longer to prepare?

Maybe there are things we can do to help promote healthy foods. Last summer I worked for a non-profit in Columbus that put on all kinds of nutrition and cooking classes in low-income neighborhoods, designed for a food stamp budget. They’re doing a lot to help people there, in Dayton and also here in Cleveland.

So maybe we just need an association or something for local food growers to market their products. What do you think? Do you have any ideas? Or, is Chick-Fil-A harmless healthy food, as they seem to imply on their website?