Slovakia

My paternal grandmother and grandfather emigrated (separately) from Slovakia to the US as children at the turn of the last century. My aunts have been to visit but until I saw this video (on facebook, I have a friend who lives there) I had no idea how the country looked!

Meyer Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

Our friends Yaacov and Erin have a Meyer lemon tree and generously shared a bag of lemons with us. Here is a great recipe we found to use some of them. When T tasted these, he said, "Mom, you're a genius!"

Ingredients

Strawberry coulis:
1quart strawberries, topped and quartered
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup orange juice
Pancakes:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus a pinch for egg whites
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs, separated
1 heaping cup ricotta cheese
3/4 cup milk
2 Meyer lemons, zested and juiced
Butter, for cooking the pancakes
Powdered sugar, for dusting

Directions

strawberry coulis

Strawberries:
Toss the strawberries with the sugar and orange juice. Cover and let sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. [We used about a third of the sugar and orange juice since we had nice sweet and juicy ripe strawberries.]

After the berries and sugar have macerated and become very juicy, remove 1/2 of the berry mixture, put it in a food processor and puree until smooth. Return it to the rest of the berries and reserve until ready to use. [We cheated and mashed the strawberries instead of processing. The sauce was amazing, you could eat it on pretty much anything - ice cream, pancakes, waffles, yogurt...]

Pancakes:
Sift together all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In another bowl, combine the egg yolks, ricotta, milk and lemon zest and juice, and mix until it becomes homogeneous. Make a well in the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients to the well and whisk until combined.

Preheat a griddle.

In another bowl, using a whisk or electric mixer, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt to stiff peaks. Fold the egg whites into the flour mixture in thirds. Do this quickly and gently so the pancakes will be light and fluffy.

Melt small pats of butter onto the preheated griddle, and spread it around with a paper towel to remove any excess butter. Spoon or ladle the pancake batter onto the prepared griddle to desired size of the pancake. When the top of the pancake is full of holes, like bubbles have risen to the surface and burst, the pancake is ready to flip. Flip the cakes and cook until the bottom is golden brown.

Remove the pancakes from the grill to serving plates. Top with the macerated strawberry coulis and garnish with powdered sugar.

Tremont Tap House

We had a delicious dinner with my brother and sister-in-law at Tremont Tap House in June.

photo source

Clearly I haven't visited Tremont in a long long time because I found it to be a shockingly safe-looking neighborhood. We drove under a bridge that had no graffiti anywhere on it. Spooky. (In a good way of course.) We sat at the bar while waiting for John and Gayle to arrive and loved it when they opened the big garage door type window behind the bar so we could see the patio!

photo from flickr (click on it to see original)

A view of the window to the bar from the patio - from flickr, click to see original

What a great beer list. I had a sampler of 4 beers they had on tap that I hadn't tried before (rarely does that happen, and I love to try new things!).

Also a fan of the chalkboard sampler tray!

Sample of our dinners: the Green Chili burger with a fresh egg on top. "It was amazing." 

Two of us had the mac and cheese, his pictured here with chorizo added. It was delicious but a little heavy for the beautiful summer weather we were enjoying.

Finally, the pan-roasted chicken with wild mushrooms.

I'd definitely recommend it - service was good, food impressive and inexpensive, beer list stellar.

Tremont Tap House

2572 Scranton Rd, Cleveland 

Fun with Cousins

We had good times with my cousins Andy and Karen and their kids Quinn and Helen who stopped at Mom's on their trip across the country last June. Here are some pictures from the day we spent with them and my brother and his family.

Mom is the pied piper of children!

Helen is 3 going on 30. Love her excellent questions.

It wouldn't be summer at Mom's without a fire by the pond.

Quinn and Ethan

Elliot still loves s'mores.

Trevor the Toad

Trevor the toad has his close-up.
He was released into the wild not long after when chasing fireflies became more exciting!

Quote of the Week

from 320 Sycamore via pinterest

Pumpkin Beer Tasting

Hubs and I had a blinded taste test of 7 pumpkin themed beers available here in Tallahassee. Here's a quick synopsis of the winners and losers.

In order to make our tasting as blind as possible, I poured the beers into the glasses and wrote a number on each square of paper in front of them. I kept a record of which beer each number corresponded to. Hubs (who was in the other room for the pouring) then reorganized all the glasses, keeping each number with its glass. Then he turned each number over and wrote a letter on the back (in case I remembered which one was number 1, 2, etc.). We took notes on each beer based on the letter and then used our list of numbers to translate back to which beer was which after the tasting.

Pumking from Southern Tier Brewing Company was the favorite by far!

photo source

It takes like pumpkin pie. Yum.

Others we enjoyed included the Hoppin Frog Brewery's Frog's Hollow Double Pumpkin Ale (very good, low hop, can taste cinnamon; nice aroma, full-bodied); and Dogfish Punkin Ale (which I thought had a similar taste to Great Lakes Brewing Company's iconic Christmas Ale).

We thought these were decent: Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale (not as good a mouth feel as the others, also heavily spiced); Terrapin Pumpkin Fest (nice flavor, on the strong side, heavy on cloves; slightly creamy, just a little too hoppy).

We weren't impressed with Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale or Tommyknocker Small Patch Pumpkin Harvest Ale (we described them as ok and boring).

Happy Veterans Day

Thomas and I plan to pay our respects by going to the parade downtown today.