Thursday, December 31, 2009

Woodlands Indian Vegetarian restaurant

After a shopping spree at Trader Joe's in Nashville, my mom took Stephen and I to the Woodlands Indian restaurant. It's a vegetarian place, specializing in dosas-- long slightly sour crepe burritos, stuffed with potatoes or other fillings. I could do without the dosas (in the lower right corner of the photo above), but I did really like some of the other foods in the buffet.
Stephen was also eager to eat most of what we gave him. A little too eager in this case. He likes to stick big things in his mouth and watch me have a fit. He doesn't gag like he used to, he just maneuvers it around in his mouth until he's whittled it down to chewable and then swallowable size.

I especially liked one of their dessert dishes... it was made of cream of wheat, bright yellow and flavored with sugar or honey, milk, maybe cardomom and possibly orange zest? The consistency was like a soft polenta and it was studded with cashews and soft dried fruit. I've been craving some ever since... but I don't know what it's called and it wasn't on the paper menu I brought home.

This restaurant is hard to find, we overshot it even with the help of GPS. It's on the ground floor of an apartment complex at the intersection of West End Ave. and Highway 440.

Forlorn Appetit

This post is very late... but I received my first copy of Bon Appetit, which was to replace the remainder of my subscription to Gourmet. The little card accompanying this magazine assured me that though Gourmet might be missed, I would love Bon Appetit. They couldn't have been more wrong. I felt that this magazine was geared toward people who don't like to read, as hardly any of the pieces were more than a page. And they used the tiniest ugliest little font for their body text, further discouraging those of us who do like to read. Which could be possibly be forgiven if the photos and recipes were much to look at... but in this case, they weren't. It seemed like all of the art was taken in this sort of movie-theater-lighting, all dark, dramatic and starkly spotlit. Completely unappetizing. My huz enjoyed an article about Sriracha... the rooster-adorned hot sauce that has sat on tables in Argyle restaurants for decades. It did have some interesting information about the owner and the sauce's comparison to authentic srirachas in Vietnam, but I felt like the tone of the article made it sound like the writer thought he was so cutting edge to be discussing the Sriracha craze, which isn't new at all. The writer also used a friend's opinion as his sole bit of information backing his ending conclusion that American Sriracha was just like authentic Vietnamese sriracha sauces. So, lazy journalism to boot. Nothing like the great long-form pieces in Gourmet.

Mostly I'm bent out of shape because Gourmet ended in Novemeber, one month shy of their Christmas cookie issue and Bon Appetit delivered January's issue.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Sous foodie



Guest post from Joe: A pizza pretzel isn't exactly exotic fare but it sure hit the spot while we were hitting the town. Our outing included three hours at Nashville's Adventure Science Center and Green Hills Shopping Center. Walking the mall often puts Emily in the mood for a bite at Auntie Anne's. This time it was me who initiated the snack. I was also the one to document it for Moodie Foodie. Emily called me her sous foodie. There's hope for me yet.