Give Me Some Dim Sum!!

Dim Sum is, without a doubt, the highlight of our month. Side story: we've had to regulate our consumption of dim sum by limiting our visits per month, or else we'd be big as houses and dirt poor. I'd be there every weekend, shoving my face with turnip cake and dumplings.  

Back to weekend feasting: this weekend, we were able to fulfill our dim sum craving!  And although we've been eating dim sum together for almost 5 years, we've never taken pictures before. This is probably because I am way too embarassed to do so. I fear that I, who am already judged (as evidenced by the forks I am always given after being seated), will only be more judged and ridiculed for taking pictures. I am not sure my fragile ego could handle it (evidence: see picture below with weird smile).  In any case, we were finally brave enough to take some pictures this weekend, so that we could blog about our awesome dim sum habits. Go team! 

Above is a picture of what we typically order from the steam cart. The steam cart is the best cart of all the dim sum carts. We get (from left to right): lo mai gai (sticky rice stuffed with goodies that can vary- at Silver Fountain, you'll get dried shrimp, chinese sausage, sliced pork/beef, battered chicken, mushroom- all good stuff), steamed pork ribs (with black beans and spicy peppers), siu mai (shrimp and pork dumplin in egg wrapper), har gao (shrimp dumpling in rice wrapper). In my humble opinion, the har gau and the sticky rice are the best- as you can see from my plate in the back. I apparently don't know what it means to wait.

We also always get turnip cake (above). It's best when it's fresh and hot, and just melts in your mouth. It is a steamed daikon radish (with chinese sausage or pork bits mixed in) cake that has then been pan fried. As you can see from this picture, I wasted no time getting my half of the dish to my plate, all the while sweating because I was sure someone was going to say something to us about taking pictures of the food.

  

Eventually, I realized no one was going to kick us out for taking pictures, so I was able to enjoy my meal. It's unfortunate that I didn't reach that point before the picture on the right was taken, though, where I am so nervous I can't smile properly and end up just looking weird. 

 

After Dim Sum, we took a walk around the lake at the Rio. It was a beautiful day, and a very pretty walk!

Don't be so Crabby!!

Crunchy, yummy soft shell crab and oven baked fries

We were going through our freezer recently, and realized that we had two soft shell crabs in there that we hadn't eaten yet. I couldn't believe we had forgotten them- they are so scrumptious! Hopefully one day I'll be able to forgive myself for this horrible transgression. In the meantime, we decided to have them for dinner ASAP.

We dredged the crabs in flour, then dipped them in an egg wash, then breaded them with panko. They were fried in our dutch oven using vegetable oil until golden brown and crispy. They are very messy to fry, since they are so wet and therefore cause splattering, but very very worth it! As a side, we made oven baked fries (potato wedges, skin on, that were dressed in olive oil, garlic powder, salt, black pepper, old bay and red pepper flakes- heavy on the old bay!!).

Pre-fry prep station

Some fried mushrooms (also breaded in panko) as an appetizer

We ate the crabs as sandwiches on just toasted wheat bread. We also used sweet chili sauce to dip our sandwiches in.  They were moist and crunchy and delicious. My favorite part is taking the very crispy legs off and chowing down! What a great dinner. Next time, I won't forget to make it as soon as I come back from the store :-)

Crispy = Good

Spring is in the Air

Our Rita's stash: mango, peeps, peach, tangerine, pina colada and pineapple

This post is a little bit behind the times (seeing as we're halfway through May right now), but on the first day of spring, we celebrated in style with Rita's free ice day!!  We started off the day with dim sum, and then proceeded to visit a few Rita's on our day out :-)  The first one was a Ritas we didn't even know existed in Silver Spring, near a asian supermarket. So we got two ices (one peeps, and one mint chocolate chip) and browsed the supermarket. We were actually hoping to find kaya, since our grocery store no longer sells it, but we were disappointed in that regard. We did notice that the supermarket had a restaurant section where they were doing very good business selling noodles. We'll have to try it the next time we're there.

The peeps flavor was the best!!

It was beautiful weather, and we even went to Brookside Gardens to walk around and enjoy the day.  Other Rita's we visited were the one in Gaithersburg and the one in Germantown. The lines at each one were huge!! All in all, we visited Rita's a total of 4 times, ate 2 whole ones, and took 6 semi-snacked-upon ices home.  A good day all around!

Some pictures from Brookside Gardens:

And back to Rita's:

Ah, to be surrounded by a week long supply of sweet deliciousness!

Can't decide which one to eat first!!!