In the end I decided on mushrooms. Yes, mushrooms. The very food I recoiled in horror from as a child, thanks to the unique texture and the fact that it is technically a fungus. Tonight, while making my deliciously cheesy and taco-y pasta, I am going to willingly add mushrooms to the mix to try and sneak in a little nutrition in the dish.

And no one, not even my mother or my boyfriend, had to prompt me to do so.

I guarantee that ten, fifteen years ago, my mother never thought this day would come.

Now I have breakfast and snacks covered for the next few days, woo!

My menu this week has a heavy dependency on pasta and cookies. For example:

• Pesto pasta with chicken and sundried tomatoes
• Pumpkin curry penne
• Pumpkin cookies
• Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

Because really, is there anything better than digging into a bowl of pasta when putting off writing a paper? Or biting into a delicious cookie while doing readings for class?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. Especially when the cookies are impossibly light and fluffy, almost like air, such as the pumpkin ones. Yum.

But even if I could photograph well, it still wouldn’t capture what the best parts of the meal were, the ones that will stay in my memory long after I’ve forgotten what the actual meal tasted like. How I creamed the eggs, butter and sugar for the cupcakes by hand as I didn’t have an electric mixer. The smell of my apartment in the early afternoon as the decadent aroma of delicious baked goods almost ready to be devoured wafted from the oven. The sizzling of bacon as I dropped each slice into the pan. The stickiness of the garlic cloves I minced on my warped chopping board. The coarse texture of the breadcrumbs I used to cover the gratin before baking. The tingle of Prosecco on my tongue every time I took a sip. The crispness of the vividly bright green beans, so nicely contrasted with the dense gnocchi. The bright burst of raspberry jam in the middle of each Victorian sponge cupcake, an unexpected surprise. The way my boyfriend’s face lit up when he saw what I had prepared for our dinner and dessert. How I curled up next to him on the couch as we watched our TV show together, long after every morsel of dinner had been demolished, happy and content.

Photography can’t even come close to capturing these memories. But at least words can.

Not pictured: asparagus and mushroom risotto.

Rumor has it that you were supposed to open this past summer in July. Then the opening date became sometime in early September. Then it became Tuesday, November 1. Then, for whatever reason, that date got pushed back to today, November 3. Rumor has it that you are opening at 6p.m. today. I don’t know if the exact time of day is true, but I sure hope you are actually opening today. Having a ready-to-open Panera sitting in Tenleytown for weeks with its doors closed to the public has been a sad, sad sight. All I want is a French onion soup bread bowl! Or maybe a side of white cheddar mac and cheese…

Anyway, I hope you are definitely opening today like you said you would in the tweet I received from you on Monday. Because my friends and I have plans to go to dinner there tomorrow and we will be very upset if it hasn’t opened. We’ve been waiting to eat at Panera in Tenleytown for months!!

Sincerely,
Amanda Osborn

(Some of the few that remain look a little funny because the baking tray didn’t fit properly into the oven. The tray was tilted slightly so some of the cookies squished together. Either way, they still taste awesome.)

I’m happy to report that my dinner was a success (the stir fry was served with a side of steamed white rice). However, it still didn’t taste as good as my mom’s. I guess nothing will ever beat my mom’s cooking – not even my own!

We ordered three courses each for $35.11USD thanks to Restaurant Week prices (not including drinks and tax). I ordered goat cheese stuffed fried green tomatoes, pan seared scallops with basil risotto, and peach mousse with raspberry sorbet. To say that my tastebuds died and went to food heaven is a severe understatement. The food was all so good!! We both ate so much delicious food that we were afraid we would have more than a little trouble walking home. (Luckily, we made it back without any trouble.)

I’m not sure if I’ll make it out to any other restaurants participating in Restaurant Week this week, but I am really glad that we made it to Chef Geoff’s. I’ve been wanting to eat there ever since freshman year but just never got round to it for whatever reason. And once I turn 21 (in 6 days!!) I’ll be able to join my friends at Chef Geoff’s Happy Hours

This morning, my mother offered to make me 饺子 for breakfast. Since we’ve all been out of town for the majority of the summer, the 饺子 she was offering was the frozen kind, purchased from a supermarket – all one had to do was heat them up and they’d be good to go. I knew that it wouldn’t be the greatest 饺子 in the world, but I still craved 饺子 so I had some. And… oh my. I knew they would be bad, at least in comparison to the 饺子 I had in China, but I just wasn’t aware of how much I would dislike them. After eating freshly steamed 饺子 all year, frozen, prepackaged 饺子 were hard to stomach! And to think – I used to actually like the frozen kind my mom buys!

Even before I went to China, I knew I was spoiled with Chinese food because my mom makes delicious homemade Chinese food all the time. But after a year in China, I’m going to be hard to find Chinese food up to my standards outside of my mother’s kitchen or a Chinatown!