‘food/wine’ Category
Good news for popcorn lovers
A little over two years ago I blogged about our favorite brand of microwave popcorn being discontinued. B.K. Heuermann’s was a small popcorn company that had bred a unique popcorn that had almost no hull—the hard crunchy part—resulting in a really soft fluffy popcorn. They were bought out by ConAgra and shut down.
Fast forward two years, and we’ve just come across Orville Redenbacher’s “Natural 100% Whole Grain” microwave popping corn. This stuff tastes and feels almost the same as the old B.K.H. popcorn (and Orville’s is owned by ConAgra, so who knows?). As for the name of the popcorn, maybe I’m crazy but I figured all corn was 100% whole grain. All I care about is that it’s good! It comes in a few flavors, though we’ve only tried the “butter” flavor.
Summer cycling
Kat and I bought bicycles last weekend, and are hoping to use them to get outdoors a bit more than we usually do. So far it’s been quite fun, and we’re looking forward to exploring lots of the W&OD trail and other areas. I took off work Thursday and we had our first test-ride with Scott, going around 12 miles on the trail, from the Rt 28 / AOL entrance, to the LuckStone Quarry overlook and back. Of course we had to finish it off with a chocolate malt and food at Cheeburger Cheeburger!
Today we left the car in the garage and rode from the house to my office in Herndon. I’d been toying with the idea of biking to work occasionally, but Kathie had the good idea of trying it together during a weekend first. It was 7.1 miles each way, and surprisingly almost all of it was on residential roads, the Fairfax County Parkway Trail (really just a wide sidewalk along the parkway), and the W&OD. There’s also a short jaunt through the woods at the end of our street, a 100-yard path that saves 1.5 miles and eliminates “roads you’d be crazy to bike on” like Seneca Road, Georgetown Pike, and Rt. 7.
The last mile of the trip, on Van Buren St. was more of a challenge, since we had to choose between the sidewalk or the road with no shoulder. We tried both, and while the road was fine on a Saturday morning at 9am, I’m not sure if I want to do that during rush hour on a weekday. Fortunately the speed limit on the road is 25mph and it’s aggressively enforced (don’t speed in Herndon!). Bicycles are allowed on sidewalks in Virginia (yield to pedestrians) so I’ll have to try both. It was a fun morning, and we’re both looking forward to a lot more biking!
PET Scan #7
Went for PET scan #7 last week, and my doctor this week said it was completely clean, as expected. I’m now switching to twice a year for future scans. It was a little over two years ago that I had my Crohn’s surgery and started chemo, but it feels like forever — which is fine by me!
Fortunately, my Crohn’s has also been completely gone since the surgery, so for the last 18 months I’ve been healthier than any time in the last 20 years. The only undesirable side-effect of having working intestines is that actually digesting my food has caused me to gain considerable weight — 30 pounds compared to where I’ve been the last 10 years or so. This year I’m making some lifestyle changes… I’m not calling it a diet since diets tend to be temporary things. We’ll see how it goes, but the goal is to exercise more and eat healthier in general. It’s only been 1-2 weeks so far, but by writing it down here, I’m creating more incentive to continue.
Bad news for popcorn lovers
About a year ago, I wrote about B.K. Heuermann’s microwave popcorn. This stuff is good. Check out the link for a little more detail. We’ve been mail ordering this stuff by the case for a few years, and storing the bags in our freezer until needed. Best… popcorn… ever.
I learned today that earlier this year, the company (small, privately owned) was bought by ConAgra, one of the largest packaged food companies in the U.S., and the popcorn is no longer available. I’m assuming ConAgra plans to mass-produce the stuff, which could be good (cheaper, more easily available), or could be really bad (lower quality). Either way, today the popcorn isn’t available at all, so we’re going to start rationing what we have in the freezer.
Bagels
Since I recently posted about my search for good Pizza after moving here from New York, I also need to post about Bagels.
There are a lot of bagel shops around here, and they’re all quite different. Many are good, but don’t serve what I would call bagels. For example, Einstein Bros. serves round baked doughy things with holes in the middle that they call bagels, but they’re not (in my book anyway). Bagels need to be boiled, which gives them the hard, shiny outer shell. If they’re baked or steamed, they come out quite differently.
In any case, here’s where to find good bagels around home:
- KSB Bagel Cafe in South Reston. Best bagels around. Quite a hike from our house though, so we only go there once every few weeks, and we buy a half dozen or so.
- Manhattan Bagel chain. Very good. There was one really close to us in Reston until a couple years ago when it closed. Very sad.
- Panera Bread chain. Pretty good.
- Einstein Bros. chain. Taste good, but very different from bagels… very doughy. Unfortunately they put carroway seeds on their everything bagels.
- Bagel Cafe, nearby in Herndon, Kathie likes them but I find their bagels to be too bready.