Armchair Dining on DP

Wow, I have never heard of any of these great foods! The pizza looks terrific and, while a bit pricey, would definitely be on my list to try. I have heard of toasted ravioli, but have never tried them. It is absolutely going on my list of foods to try and I will keep an eye out around here for them. The pork steak looks great. What seasoning is on it? I have seen similar-looking cuts of pork in our grocery store, but have not looked closely. I will have to investigate further!

But, you definitely saved the best for last (for me, anyway) with the Provel cheese. I love cheese and this combination sounds wonderful! Have never seen it before and will definitely keep an eye out for it. Too bad I could not have it shipped here, but I will be trying to get my hands on some, anyway.

Great post and keep them coming. It is mid-morning but your post has already made me hungry and looking for lunch!

 

I am not sure what's on that particular image, but I use Montreal Steak Seasoning when I make them.

Actually, I think you can!

http://www.amazon.com/Roped-Provel-Deli-Container-Pound/dp/B00BBGGQYQ

The roped is actually my favorite, but I buy a block for sandwiches (French Dip!).

What part of Rhode Island are you from?

I miss The Mooring's Scallop Chowder and The Newport Creamery the most.

 

We use Montreal steak seasoning all the time. Just had it tonight on a burger.

Checked out the cheese on Amazon. It looks like you could eat the rope version like string cheese and I would like that! I am on a bit of a diet right now and cheese is a big no-no (which kills me) so it may be a while before I can get to it.

I live in NE Rhode Island, about 15 minutes above Providence. I plan to do a post on Awful-Awfuls made at the Newport Creamery sometime soon.

 

You HAD to say the word, didn't you?!

I want one SO bad!

 

LOL...I had a suspicion that you might be a fan. I had a neighbor (who has since moved) that did not feel that her day was complete unless she had one at our local Newport Creamery. That location eventually closed and she had to go much further for her daily fix but it did not phase her in the least.

Since the topic is already broached, let me explain to everyone else what @Matthew Sayle and I are talking about. The Newport Creamery is a local ice cream/sandwich shop. They have a special drink that is a form of milkshake (a.k.a. a Frappe or a Cabinet around these parts) that is a blend of flavored syrup, milk, and a secret frozen ice milk mix. The ice milk differentiates it from other such drinks. It is so delicious and sinful that it was first promoted it as "They're 'Awful big, Awful good,' and if you can drink three at a sitting, the fourth one is free!" The name was eventually reduced to Awful Awful. Not sure if the offer still stands, but I cannot imagine anyone being able to drink three of these in one sitting to win the fourth.



Another regional ice cream/sandwich shop chain, Friendly's, has a competitive offering called a Fribble, but the Awful Awful is much better, in my opinion. If you combine an Awful Awful with a cheeseburger and fries, you cannot find a better summer lunch offering. And you will be filled for the rest of the day! Were I not on a diet right now, I would be headed there today!

 

I remember a rumor about 5 or so years ago that they were closing all of the Newport Creameries - however when I returned the next couple years - there she was, in all her glory.

Maybe they decided just to close a few?

I am not sure why they would need to close, they are always packed when I am there.

On a side note, did you know that several parts of Me, Myself and Irene (Jim Carrey) were filmed in Jamestown?

My house shares it's front yard with the Narraganset Bay, we can walk to "town" via the beach or road - it's about a ten minute walk.

Speaking of good eats (Alton Brown pun), I have my own registered lobster pots - I will boat out to them and find dinner a couple times per week.

This is if the local fisherman didn't steal them (had a few run-ins).

I will bring the lobsters back into the house and use fresh seawater from the bay to boil them in.

You can't get any fresher than that!

Here are a couple images from our beach - does the bridge look familiar to you?

 

Yes, they did close quite a few Newport Creameries about 15 years ago, but many are still open. There really is not one fairly close to us these, days. The Farrelly brothers, who produced that Jim Carrey film and quite a few other comedies (including the Three Stooges, I believe) are from the town that I live in. In one of their films, they used a town firetruck with the town logo on it as a shoutout to the community.

I cannot imagine better lobster than one that you catch and cook within hours in fresh seawater. My wife is allergic to shellfish, so lobsters are only on the agenda for me at restaurants and in a restaurant, I don't want the mess and bother, so I only do Lazy Man's lobster or Lobster Mac and Cheese, etc.

I traverse the bridge fairly frequently. I used to go to Newport A LOT when they still had live Jai Alai. A friend and I would go down there to gamble on the games once or twice per week some years. However, Jai Alai was displaced by slots 8 or 10 years ago, so I only go over those bridges now for business or summer-related activities. You have a gorgeous view!

 

Sheesh, this is what I get for not having enough time to visit for a few days - a heap of things to catch up with. Let me tackle them real quick from the last point I was here:

- Kettle Corn...still not sure what makes it different than regular popcorn...is it because of the sugar coating only? Because here we have many kinds of popcorn that include some kind of coating - caramel, bbq, BACON!
- Pizza looks ok but the price is a big No-No. I am absolutely 100% sure that whatever the taste I can find someone here that will make it just as good (nothing really fancy in the preparation judging by the looks in the picture). If I add a salad and wings with all their approximate prices AND add some money on top (say, for the perfect quality), convert it all in USD and I'd still be looking at nothing more than $18-$20
- Toasted ravioli look absolutely smashing...so much that I want some like RIGHT NOW (5:37am)
- Same goes for the Provel cheese. I do tend to often eat toasters in the office, so this might be a perfect substitute to my yellow Gouda-like cheese.
- Awful, Awful sounds like a great tease and I do love such milk drinks. Looks like an ordinary milkshake but would sure to love to find out more about the secret milk ice mix.

Darnit, thread is getting bigger and I am more and more facing the inevitable adventure of ordering food products online. If someone told me, even 2 years ago, that one day I will be ordering food from abroad like I order apparel, I would've surely laughed

 

Kettle corn may very well be duplicated all over. It is simply normally popped corn (in oil) but with a sugary coating. It makes the popcorn a sweet and salty treat. We also have flavored popcorn, such as caramel coated, but it generally is not salty, too. Bacon popcorn sounds great and I have never seen it here!

An Awful Awful is a milkshake that is better than the "average" milkshake. Hard to describe why, but it is a combination of better flavor and a great texture (not too thick like a McDonald's milkshake, but thick and enjoyable.)

This thread makes me hungry all of the time and I suppose that was its intent, originally. And, unlike most other threads, I can start all over from the beginning, reading posts that are quite old, and they STILL are interesting and make me hungry!

 

I haven't dropped by this thread for awhile. I just saw a milkshake, which happens to be my favorite! I want y'all to meet "How Cow":



It tastes so damn good! and I make it a point that I have at least 1 grande glass a week I bet it can give Awful Awful a run for it's money!

 

The How Cow looks fantastic! Honestly, it is hard to go wrong when a drink includes ice cream, chocolate, and whipped cream.

I think that, in fairness, the only way to decide which is better, Awful Awful or How Cow, is to have a travelling tour to both of their places of origin and experience them together!

 

Next on the list is a locally produced snack food that was the early leader in its niche. I recall first being exposed to them at a business meeting in the Boston area back in the mid-1990's, so they have been at it at least twenty years. I am talking about Cape Cod Potato Chips which were the first potato chip snacks (as far as I am aware) to make "kettle fried chips" that use a different oil and are cooked at a higher temperature. Makes for a crispier (and slightly greasier, IMO) chip:



Nowadays, there are a ton of potato chip makers who offer this type of chip, but I believe that Cape Cod (which is about 1.5 hours from my town) was the first to push the concept.



They are very good and worth trying when you come to New England, but there are other great salty snacks out there, I am sure. What is your favorite, locally produced salty snack?

 

Shoot! Not only it looks marvellous but it also has COW in its name...
To elaborate on this, I do have a strange "fetish" with cows. Started collecting cow-related products since I was 11 and so far my items are close to 200. Whenever I hear COW I always get alarms ringing in my head

So yeah, let me know when you will do the Milkshake Shakedown (pun intended!). Might wanna throw some airplane tickets from Bulgaria to the US too

 

The How Cow is @Vitarank 's drink. These airplane tickets may have several legs, but will be absolutely worth it.

 

By the way, I have a niece who also collects anything "cow." Makes it easy for my wife to get her birthday and Christmas presents. She collected "cow" items since she was a teenager and is now a 20-something adult and still gets a lot of enjoyment from any such trinket. But, she is a vegetarian, so she does not truly enjoy a cow as it should be enjoyed.

I collect conehead Santa Clauses, but that is a discussion for another thread...

 

Vermont is not just known for maple syrup. Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream is based in Vermont and uses the Vermont dairy industry as suppliers, for the most part. They make/made the best chocolate chip ice cream I have ever had and since that is my absolutely favorite ice cream flavor, their Vanilla Chocolate Chunk ice cream is my first choice. Unfortunately, they stopped volume production of that flavor and I can only find it occasionally at their ice cream stand in the Providence Place Mall in Rhode Island. It looks a lot like this, with the key being large, dark chocolate chips in plentiful amounts in the creamy white ice cream.



My second favorite B&J ice cream is their Cherry Garcia, which, of course, include the same wonderful chocolate chips:



Perhaps about ten years ago, my wife and I spent a few days in northern Vermont and took a tour of their ice cream factory. It was fun and ended with a whole bunch of ice cream samples. Good day!

 

If you have not yet discerned lately, the diet I have been on is getting tiresome and I am thinking more and more about snacks, sweets, etc.

Anyway, I thought that is would be a good thing to post a Rhode Island bakery treat that, unfortunately, is mostly available in the month of March because they are made to celebrate St. Joseph's day for those of Italian descent. Here in RI, it seems to be a way for the Italians to have a holiday alongside the better known Irish St. Patrick's Day celebrations which also take place in March (see my previous post in this thread about Corned Beef and Cabbage!) The traditional sweet for St. Joseph's Day are zeppole, which are baked rings of the same dough used to make eclairs and filled or topped with custard-like pastry cream flavored with rum or vanilla. These wonderful pastries are typically garnished with powdered sugar and a maraschino cherry.



The pastry is very light while the topping is rich and creamy. The LaSalle Bakery in Providence is the acknowledged place to buy them if you are lucky enough to be in the area a month before and a few weeks after St. Joseph's Day in March. There are other flavors or cream used, but pictured above is the traditional rum/vanilla flavored pastry.

The good news is that the family and I are taking a quick vacation later this week and diets are not allowed on vacation. While I will not have any zeppele during my diet hiatus, I will be having the moon pie, the Awful Awful, the fried clams, and a few other delights from some of my previous posts on this thread. I plan to "walk the walk" of culinary delights instead of just talking the talk!

 

You hit me twice in the soft spot with those two last posts - I do love any kind of sugary delight (and eat sweets every single day) but eclairs and ice cream (especially chocolate chipped one) are my absolute favorites. I have a local bakery nearby which bakes mini eclairs on Wednesday and by Thursday afternoon the batch is over and its a waiting game until next Wednesday. So timing is of the essence
Don't really have a picture of those puffy delights but they look something in the lines of this:



And while still on the "desserts" mood, here is one from me. Its not really Bulgarian, it was Turkish as far as I remember...well, let's call it oriental as I've heard it in the Arab world as well - Revane.


Its a very simple cake-like dessert which is very easy to make. Apart from the standard products for a cake, this one has a lot of syrup in it...like soaked in syrup. That's its thing - very soft, very sweet, very sugary-like. Syrup is made from water and sugar only, but if you really want to go beyond expectations there are variations depending on your taste - I've seen it with added vanilla, or lemon juice, or cinnamon... Personally like the fresh, lemony version of it, goes really well with the morning coffee

 

LOL, another sweet-toothed DP-er like me! I also love eclairs, but it is rare that I get them as fresh as you do on Wednesdays. Usually, we get them in the grocery store and have no idea as to when they were baked.

Revane sounds like another great dessert! The thicker, moisture that a cake is, the better that I like it. The three flavors that you mention all sound like great complements.

It is clear that when we finally buy tickets for our big DP Food Shakedown, we will have to plan to be in Bulgaria on a Wednesday for the eclairs, of course. The logistics are getting more and more complicated, but will definitely be worth it!

 

Haha, it is shaping out to be an epic event indeed. Good thing I still have a lot of days off work so I can spend them travelling around and eating as much as I can