Photos: yogurt on my mind

I’ve been on a bit of a yogurt kick lately. It’s a simple breakfast to make at home, it breaks up the monotony of cereal and toast, and depending on how you dress it up, it can pretty healthy. I generally enjoy a base of Greek yogurt topped with granola, maybe some fruit, and honey. I prefer using Greek yogurt as a base, because it provides more of a blank slate. Flavored yogurts are good, but I prefer something that’s not as loaded with sugar, etc. But yogurt is one of those simple dishes that doesn’t even require a recipe; you can accidentally make a breakfast parfait by spilling the contents in a bowl.

In the midst of this kick, I was sent some samples of Müller yogurt to try. Müller is a European company making their way into the American market via Quaker. They sent me samples of four different types: three of the Corner yogurts, which are plain or Greek yogurt with additions like blueberries, caramelized almonds, and chocolate malt balls, plus a cup of fruit mix-in.

In general, I liked all four, with a preference toward the Greek Corner. It’s hard not to like the sweet toppings in particular, between the almonds and the chocolate balls, and the fruit mix-in was as good as any fruit yogurt I’ve tried. But again, I love the blank slate of Greek yogurt, and the Müller brand provides some interesting alternatives to blend in.

What about you? Any favorite brands or mixings of yogurt you make at home? Give me some combinations to try!

(Disclosure: Müller provided the samples of their yogurt. Opinions are my own.)

Photos: a burrito named for Yours Truly

It’s been a blog-long dream of mine to get breakfast dishes named after me. And I’ve had a couple temporary wins: Nick’s wings and waffles at The Best Breakfast & Sandwiches, for instance, or Pancakes With Nick at Sunny Street Cafe during National Pancake Week. And now there’s the perfect marriage between my work at Ohio State and my love of breakfast: the breakfast burrito at Sloopy’s Diner in the Ohio Union will be named after yours truly next year!

Yup, that’s the face of a guy excited about having a burrito named after him. Life achievement: unlocked! The dish is assigned during the 2013-2014 academic year. It was revealed at a small Wizard of Oz-themed ceremony in the Ohio Union. Hence the Dorothy.

The face of victory. The burrito is doused in salsa, cheese, and the tears of my enemies.

After the ceremony they held a small reception at Sloopy’s where everyone got to taste the Sandwich Club entries. There’s a great line-up overall! The named burrito will officially be on the menu at the start of the next school year. If you want to visit Sloopy’s (which offers a good breakfast for a day wandering around campus), here are their stats:

Sloopy’s Diner
Inside the Ohio Union
1739 N. High St.
http://ohiounion.osu.edu/dine_and_shop/sloopys

Photos: The Cuisine of Eastern Pennsylvania

Over my recent spring break we headed east to visit Mrs. Bfast w/Nick’s family. Most of her family hails from Pennsylvania, with one whole contingent from the southeast corner of the state in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania Dutch territory. This region, like every region with a good identity, sports some very unique eating. First up: pickled beet eggs. My wife’s grammie has always made them, and I never knew or loved them until I had hers. The beets and eggs (hard-boiled) are pickled together in the beet juice, vinegar, and sugar. They’re a little sweet and they stain your fingers.

At a family dinner we also had a dish called corn pie.

This is a very basic mixture of corn, hard-boiled eggs, milk, and butter in a pie crust, flavored with salt and pepper. It’s simple, easy-to-like comfort food.

Pizza is pizza, but it always tastes better when it’s a little sentimental. This is a slice of the meat lovers from P&J Pizza in Womelsdorf. P&J was my wife’s grandfathers favorite pizza place; the family that owned the place always called him “Charlie,” even though that’s not his name. When Pop passed away a couple years ago, we actually had to make the call to P&J to let them know that Charlie had passed, and they were genuinely disappointed to lose a friend.

We spent a morning in the adorable and vibrant small town of Lititz, including breakfast at a home-cooking buffet (blog post coming soon!). Lititz was just voted Coolest Small Town in America by Budget Travel, and from what I’ve seen that’s a worthy title. Storefronts are not only occupied by small businesses, but they’re busy, too. There’s a healthy mix of history and some modern invention, and the town overall is very well-kept. We visited two food-related places that are steeped in history.

The first stop was the Julius Sturgis pretzel factory, first pretzel bakery in the U.S. The small stone building still houses the old equipment and ovens, although they only make soft pretzels on site. The twice-baked pretzels are made at a larger factory nearby.

On the tour you learn to roll and twist your own pretzel.

And then there’s the obligatory sampling of the fresh soft pretzels.

Around the corner from Julius Sturgis is Wilbur Chocolate Company, still making chocolate in their original production space. The lower level is a shop and museum, but on the floors above you can hear the equipment thumping away.

Part of the gift shop serves as a small museum, with displays of old packaging, equipment, and photos.

Out of sheer curiosity, I picked up a bag of Wilbur’s coffee. The package noted that the beans are dusted with cocoa, and they seriously weren’t kidding.

If you’re eating in eastern Pennsylvania, you’ve got to have some scrapple! Scrapple is made from the butcher’s meat scraps, mixed with cornmeal and seasonings, then sliced and fried. When it’s done well, it’s good. When it’s not done well… it’s hard to forget what goes into it. This was the version served at our buffet breakfast in Lititz, and it was quite good. Crispy and well-seasoned.

We finished the weekend with breakfast at a local diner called Risser’s Family Restaurant. You have to love small town diners and their placemats with local advertising.

At Risser’s I tried their eggs benedict with a couple hash brown patties. All very good – the hollandaise was a little on the thick side – but all in all it was a fitting end to a weekend of comfort food.

Photos: North Market Coffee Roast 2013

Saturday was the second North Market Coffee Roast. Last year’s event was an overwhelming success, and with a few additions and re-organizations, this year saw sold-out crowds lining up to taste the fares of Columbus’ amazing coffee culture.

It’s always hard to fault an event for being popular – especially those events at North Market like the Microbrew and the Ohio Wine Festivals. North Market is a central location, and their continued role as an incubator of small businesses makes them ideal for showcasing a cross-section of Columbus specialties. I arrived about fifteen minutes after the event started and found pretty long lines already. But I think the key to going with the flow is to have good company with you. That way you can chat and enjoy each other while waiting to sample everyone’s roasts.

I started in the southwest corner and sampled a decent amount of the coffees available.

I got to start with one of my favorites: One Line Coffee. I first discovered them at last year’s festival, and I look for any excuse to stop by their Short North shop.

You can almost think of One Line as coffee scientists, with their bubbling, steaming glassware and Kyoto-style cold drip towers. Soon enough they’ll begin selling the cold brew in bottles. They had it at the event, too – I enjoyed a small mug of it over ice. The Kyoto-style is a 12-hour process that results in rich and concentrated cold coffee, usually served on the rocks almost like a coffee cocktail.

Next to One Line was Upper Cup Coffee with a smaller (but no less impactful) setup. I still have not been to their shop, but my chat with owner Michael and his sister reminded me that I’ve been missing out.

The Impero table was swamped with eager coffee drinkers.

Most of the roasters had whole beans available, too.

Jason from Thunderkiss was busy, as you might expect. One of the best parts of the event was experiencing the passion of all of these roasters and brewers. They wanted you to like their coffee, of course, but even more importantly they wanted you to like coffee.

I got sample LTown Coffee out of London, Ohio. They were keeping the pour-overs rolling.

Another of my favorite roasters, Hemisphere, had a table, too. It was hard to get a picture of Hans and Joelle, as they never stopped moving!

One of the busier corners included Backroom Coffee Roasters and Silver Bridge.

The main event space of the Market was split in two. One end was dedicated to different talks, presentations, and demos about coffee. Here’s Jeff Davis of Cafe Brioso and Mark Swanson from Stauf’s/Cup O’ Joe discussing coffee sourcing.

The other end of the room featured two carts pulling shots of espresso and making lattes and cappuccinos. This showcased the work of Columbus’ great baristas. It seemed like a collaborative effort, although I saw coffee evangelist J.J. (seriously, that’s what his business card says) from Brioso overseeing things. They also had a table with self-serve coffee from Boston Stoker. This was a smart addition: if someone just wanted a cup of coffee without having to wait in line, they could help themselves.

Overall, another great event. It demonstrated again how awesomely well Columbus does coffee. I’ll be there next year. I think what’s most telling is that when I went home I was craving even more coffee (despite having more than enough at the Market), so I brewed up a French press of Hemisphere beans. That’s the point of the Coffee Roast: you’ve discovered these new places, now go visit them for a cup of coffee or a bag of beans.

Photos: The Hills Market Downtown opens today!

The day has finally arrived! It’s the official full opening of the Hills Market Downtown. After months of preparation and renovation, downtown Columbus has a grocery store. It’s especially exciting that the Hills building adjoins the Grass Skirt Tiki Room.

The space is smaller than the original Worthington store – as befitting a downtown grocery – but it’s still packed with all you need.

Beautiful displays of fresh fruit and veggies.

And, oh look – a section of Ohio goods. Including someone’s breakfast book! Hmm…

The store also includes a lot of prepared foods, so it will work for grab-and-go customers downtown as well.

Fully stocked beer and wine section.

Let’s hear it for the continued development of downtown Columbus! I can’t imagine a better addition. Knowing that this is the Hills Market, too, so expect a lot of great events and collaborations.

Photos: Dutch babies

My boys are early risers like their father, so when I find myself suddenly awake and active at 6:45am on a Saturday, I’ve got the time to fix something more than just a bowl of cereal. Just recently Sam over at Pie Are Round (which I just got, Sam: pie are round, as opposed to pi ‘r’ squared – ha!) posted a recipe for Dutch babies. I haven’t had a Dutch baby since we visited Helser’s in Portland a couple years ago. But the simplicity of Sam’s recipe was tempting, since you make it with ingredients you’re likely to have around like flour, eggs, milk, sugar, salt, etc., and with the extra time I decided to give it a go. I’ll let you look up the specifics of the recipe on Sam’s blog, but here’s the end result. I was amazed at how much it puffed up, starting from a small pour of batter in the skillet.

Following Sam’s lead, we filled the pancake with apples (canned apples, boo – next time we’ll use homemade ones), plus a sprinkling of cinnamon and powdered sugar, and a slight drizzle of syrup.

Look at how high it expands. I’m adding this recipe to the repertoire, although I might drop the cooking time from 20 minutes to 18, and I’ll lower the pan to the bottom rack of the oven, as the top edges were a little crispy. Still, this is an easy and tasty recipe that’s versatile: you could dress it simply with sugar, lemon juice, or syrup, or choose a variety of fruit toppings (the apples are very good), or even with savory bites like scrambled eggs and sausage.

And I had to look up the origins, given my Dutch background. Dutch babies are also frequently called German pancakes, but the “Dutch” name comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch; they were mistakenly called “Dutch” upon immigration because of their speaking of “Deutsch.”

Photos: a Jack & Benny’s revisit

One of the challenges of food blogging, especially when talking about restaurants, is to keep discovering and writing about something new, while simultaneously wanting to revisit old favorites. I know, I know… poor me. But the real joy of a good breakfast place is becoming a regular there, getting to know the owners and even some returning customers.

Case in point: Jack & Benny’s. I reviewed J&B’s way back in 2007, when the blog was just starting. So the description is inexperienced and the photos are less-than-great. I still stand by my assessment, but I think I could represent the restaurant better. So, of course, when my boys and I had a free Saturday morning on a OSU football gameday, we swung by for some grub and to snap a couple more photos.

Two important things to know about Jack & Benny’s. 1.) They’re a classic diner. Big wooden floor. Old counter and stools (you can tell they’re old because they’re a little smaller – my legs are crammed when I sit there). The owner Geno works the grill. Cheap coffee and generous breakfasts. 2.) J&B’s is an Ohio State institution. Even if they’re not technically on campus, they’re close enough that the decor is like a museum of OSU football history. The main wall is lined with photos of past coaches and players, famous diners, and the owners posed with other notables. Then there’s the case of bobblehead dolls: everyone’s represented, from Woody Hayes to Archie Griffin to Jim Tressel to the brand new Urban Meyer.

Jack & Benny’s is also home of the busters. I will admit, without shame, that I rarely order anything other than the Gutbuster. It’s everything I love about breakfast: eggs, hash browns, sausage, cheese, ham, gravy, and toast. All in one indistinguishable pile.

Look at that: layers of breakfast goodness. And while the portions are big, I’ve never experienced the actual gut-busting that the name promises. (But does that say something about the dish or about me? Hmmm…) Nevertheless, Jack & Benny’s is one of my neighborhood diners, and it’s worth a visit or two or three. Goodness knows I’m always looking for the excuse to go back.

An English Second Breakfast

Today – September 21st, 2012 – marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, prequel to his Lord of the Rings trilogy. In case you haven’t noticed, these books have been getting increased world-wide attention in recent years because of the Lord of the Rings movies, and the upcoming definitely-going-to-be-amazing trilogy of films of The Hobbit. In honor of the book’s publication, the official fan club has organized a world-wide second breakfast (one of several meals that hobbits eat throughout the day) at 11 a.m. sharp. We decided to celebrate our first breakfast by making a traditional English breakfast together as a family.

We replicated the ingredients as best as we could: baked beans, mushrooms, fried eggs, English sausage, grilled tomatoes, and toast. It’s a delicious, calorie-packed breakfast.

We purchased the eggs, beans, and mushrooms from the store. The tomatoes came from our garden – we grilled them face-down on our George Foreman grill, with mixed results. The English sausage we found at a butcher’s shop in western Pennsylvania. It’s not truly authentic, as it’s not imported from the UK, but it’s made in a similar style. We didn’t have any back bacon (bacon cut from the back of the pig, as opposed to the belly), but we did cook the eggs in the sausage drippings. We served the toast in a caddy that we bought on Portobello Road years ago! If you’re not used to making a full prepared breakfast, this one takes a little longer, but it’s well worth it.

In a little under an hour, I’ll be eating second breakfast in honor of the book, using some of the leftovers from this morning. What about you?

And if you want to take your celebration a step further, don’t forget that tomorrow – September 22nd – is Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’ birthday in the books. So maybe another English breakfast is in order?

Photos: new brunch menu at Due Amici

One of my favorite brunch spots in town, Due Amici, recently updated their brunch menu, and they invited me to try a few of the new items. The new menu has introduced some completely new dishes while revamping a couple of favorites. Their overall goal was to make it more “authentically Italian,” which includes changing up some ingredients, renaming a few things, and adding some new eats. Notable additions include the crispella del giorno (crepe of the day), which may be savory or sweet, depending on seasonal and locally available ingredients. There’s also a new margherita pizza, soups and pasta, and a salmon eggs benedict (which I need to try on a return visit).

One thing that didn’t change: they’re still serving coffee from Cafe Brioso, just down the street. Due uses a special espresso blend. Always good.

When it comes to beverages, most folks are there for Due Amici’s popular Bloody Mary cart. Judging by how busy they were at the cart, customers are ordering quite a few!

They typically roll up the cart tableside, which lets you customize your Bloody Mary. Ours was very good. Crisp and refreshing, just right for a beautiful August morning.

One of our favorites from the old menu was the breakfast pizza, and it’s returned in a new, “more breakfasty” form. The previous version was essentially a standard pizza topped with some sausage and a fried egg. This edition substitutes a white sausage gravy for the red sauce, and adds potatoes, bacon, and keeps the fried egg. Suggestion: break that yolk and dip a slice in it.

One new addition – and our favorite of the morning – was the Greek yogurt parfait. The yogurt is made in-house, and is layered with granola and fresh berries, and served with filo dough crisps.

Our server explained to us that you’re supposed to pile the yogurt mixture on the crisps. We wouldn’t have known that if she hadn’t told us, but we’re glad she did. Overall, a very well-balanced and delicious dish.

Our final meal was the French toast stuffed with berries, cream cheese, and a berry sauce (coulis) drizzled on top. Again, the actual choice of fruit will vary depending on the season.

The brunch was busier than I remember it being, so word seems to be getting out. With the combined power of Due Amici, Tip Top Kitchen & Cocktails, and now the new Zen Cha Tea Salon location, Gay Street is becoming a hotspot for weekend brunching! Has anyone else tried the new Due Amici menu?

If you want to visit:
Due Amici
67 E. Gay St. downtown
due-amici.com
Serving brunch 11a-4p Saturdays and Sundays

Photos: pancakes on the Hills Market veranda!

Who wants pancakes? Okay, better question: who doesn’t? Saturdays and Sundays on the Hills Market veranda, you can eat your fill of delicious blueberry pancakes. With the weather taking a chillier turn (for now, at least), a plate of pancakes, sausage, and a cup of hot coffee is just the ticket!

This past Saturday I hosted (read: ate pancakes and annoyed Kate, the pancake maker) the pancake breakfast as part of the Hills’ farmers market and Foodie Fair, their kick-off for Local Foods Week.

It didn’t take long for the veranda to fill up!

The pancake breakfasts are served Saturdays and Sundays, but the bonus of going Saturday is that you get to hang with Kate. She makes some wicked awesome pancakes.

The normal serving is a stack of three pancakes, which is a steal for $5. And I love some sausage links with my pancakes. You can help yourself to Silver Bridge coffee, too, and for an extra dollar you can get real Ohio maple syrup.

For an added bonus, I wandered over to the Jeni’s Ice Cream truck and picked up scoops of their Honey Vanilla Bean and Salty Caramel. And what do you know? They taste pretty amazing on blueberry pancakes. Now, how do I convince Jeni to do a Breakfast With Nick ice cream flavor?