Dish and Sip

Beef and mint stir fry, served with jasmine rice and asparagus. Photo by Chad Morgan Mint Beef Stir Fry It’s been over 1 month since my last blog post. And, frankly, that is far too long.  Forgive me, please.  I must admit that I probably cooked twice the whole month of September. Most due to laziness, but mainly because my mother came to visit and there is truly nothing like food from home! She cooked every day for 2 weeks, multiple times a day. I had so much food in my house. I felt rich.  Normally, I would not let a guest come to my home and cook for me, but my mother is a busy body. She needs something to do constantly. So she cooked and cleaned.   Back to reality now!  I began to notice that I cook a lot for fish, chicken and pasta. Those are my go to items, but I’m much more than that. So this month, I plan to get away from those items and work with some flavors that I don’t normally use at home.  In DC, we call our Chinese food ...

 pulled corned beef, shredded lettuce, onions, honey mustard, swiss cheese on ciabatta rolls Happy Mother’s Day It is said that home is where the heart is. If that is true, then my home is truly Washington, DC. Most of my love is there. The old neighborhood, the brown stoned lined streets, that loud neighbor that you can hear from a block over. My heart lies in the streets of DC, in the home of my mother, and with those that I call family. When my mom first told me that one of her favorite foods to eat was corned beef, my first thought was, “What is that?” I could not recall eating corned beef at ANY period in my life. I had no idea what it looked like. How it tasted, or smelled. Or what was the texture? I had a lot to learn pretty quickly if I was to prepare it. Initially, I can across a picture of corned beef in a can which reminded me of spam.  Truthfully, I was scared. I did not want to prepare a canned meal and disguise it as a tribute to my...