the project

I would like to introduce you to a new project I have started that benefits me greatly and may also be interesting for you to read.  I live in Frederick, Maryland, and for those of you who have never been, I’ll try to sum up the place as simply as possible.  Frederick is a little bit country because of the surrounding mountains and farmland; it’s not uncommon to be stopped on a major roadway because of a tractor.  However, Frederick is also a little bit rock and roll, thanks to a thriving downtown that I have dubbed “Little Brooklyn.”  There are more hipsters per square mile than probably anywhere else in the world, which helps to contribute to downtown Frederick’s expansive art and music scene that is most impressive because downtown is only 22 square miles of shops, restaurants, bars, and historic homes.  If you’re thinking you have heard of us before, it might be because Top Chef alum Bryan Voltaggio owns three restaurants in Frederick, the longest-running spot being Volt, located on Market Street, downtown’s main strip.  His appearance on the show brought some attention our way, and it definitely made an impression on the food downtown.  This is where my project begins; I love downtown Frederick, but I have hardly experienced it. I love good food, but I never go out to find the best.  So, I have embarked on a mission to go to every single restaurant in downtown Frederick and to tell you all about it right here.  I am not a food critic and I know absolutely nothing about the culinary arts.  I’m not attempting to review anything, and there are no stars, thumbs, points, ratings, etc.  The point is to have an experience and then to share it.  And, if in the end, it makes you want to come downtown and experience an adventure, well, you can totally crash on my couch.

To begin, Tyler and I decided that we were going to go to the restaurants in alphabetical order because, if we didn’t, we’d just end up going to the same four places that we know and love first before we tried anything else.  So, first on the list was Acacia.  Luckily, both of us had never been there, although I had heard a million things about how great it is.  It is the place where our friends got engaged, so in my mind, Acacia was this magically romantic venue where Tyler would turn into Isaac Hanson and I would live out all my fantasies.  Although that didn’t happen, it was the spot where Tyler and I had an opportunity to recalibrate and find each other again without having to dodge flying Matchbox cars and argue over whose turn it is to change the poopy diaper.  I guess that would happen anywhere our toddler wasn’t, but in this case, it happened at Acacia.  The lighting was dim enough for me to feel attractive (those bright lights can do a number on your self-esteem,) but still brilliant enough that I could see where the silverware was in front of me.  The room we were in looked like somebody’s finished basement, cozy and well-decorated with wood cabinets and conservative flower arrangements.  When you’re accustomed to going to places like TGI Friday’s with ten thousand souvenirs plastered on the walls all around you, a room with a pretty candle and not much else is like a breath of fresh air.  The tables were a little close together, but it seemed to me as if we were all friends dining there, hanging out, and we were all going to play a riveting game of Scattergories in just a few minutes.  It felt like a place college English professors go to have dinner with their wives and the friendly couple one of them works with – is there a place like that?  I don’t know for sure, but if there is an opening for such a place to exist, Acacia should take the title.

We ordered from the specials because it made the meal more momentous – these are the “special” things to eat tonight! From the appetizer, to the soup, to the main course, to the dessert, it was a meal that would end all meals.  I will never enjoy food from a freezer ever again (and I had the ultimate affection for frozen pizza before this date.) I ordered the butternut squash soup and it was as if I was eating a bowl of candy.  Tyler ordered the tomato soup and almost started clapping, it was the best soup he had ever had (after explaining to me that he didn’t like soup. That’ll teach him to ever question soup again.)  Dessert was the greatest of all (as it usually is) – bread pudding with maple syrup and bacon.  Not bacon that is salty and greasy and takes your taste buds hostage, making it impossible to taste anything else; no, this was subtle and sophisticated.  I have never been so satisfied after a meal, although I was a little disappointed we didn’t actually get to play Scattergories after dinner.  Apparently, our neighboring diners were not interested in bonding.  

Despite that, Tyler and I connected in that room, over that meal.  It’s easy to find the beauty in each other when all your senses are being entertained.  We made plans, we made jokes, we made googly eyes across the candle Tyler burned his hand on – just as any date night should be.  A couple glasses of wine, a couple bottles of locally brewed beer, four courses of deliciousness, and one crisp, winter night totaled a change of thinking about what happiness is and how we were going to find it, grab it, and bask in it.  We decided over smooth and creamy panna cotta that we were going to be better to each other, be better to our bodies and be better to our hearts.  Acacia turned out to be the romantic paradise I was looking for in my little village of downtown Frederick, and a great start to a new journey of appreciating everything I haven’t met yet, just around the corner.

opening arguments

I haven't posted anything in a long time because I often run into this problem where I cannot, for the life of me, think of anything to say that hasn't already been said.  It will start to feel to me as if all the greatest ideas and the best writers and the most original thinkers have either come and gone, or are people who are much more obviously better than me, like they have chips inside their palms that designate them as "Creative" or "Worth It."  Actually, the only reason I'm writing anything right now is because I took this part-time job with the intention of blogging and using my time more wisely in my quest to live an actualized life, and how embarrassing if I just sit on the couch and watch The People's Court and How I Met Your Mother all day instead.  Who could possibly be interested in anything I have to say, anyway?  I haven't gained an exceptional insight on parenting or life just from being a mother, I haven't tried to cook through Julia Child's cookbook, I'm not spending a year living like Jesus or like Oprah (are these basically the same thing?) so, really, what in the heck could I write that would make any difference to anybody?  My generation and the generations following mine are so self-absorbed, it's sickening to me that I could even be participating in the act of telling strangers about my day and then expecting them to read it, like it, comment on it, and share it.  We have Facebook to tell everybody that we're tired, we have Twitter to tell everybody that we're hungry, we have Instagram to show everybody the food we're eating because we are hungry (with the 1977 filter because then it's not just a picture of a taco, it's art,) we have Pinterest to show everybody that, yes, we like curly hair for our wedding and a really big bookshelf in our house and this easy, fun craft project that I'll never have the time to do because I can't stop pinning everything I see!  We are all on information overload, how can my blog ever make an impact on a world that already knows way too much about me??  In college, I read "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot and it became my favorite piece of literature -- so much so that I named my son Eliot.  Anyway, the reason that I loved it was because I believed Eliot was saying that all of this art and literature and music and culture meant nothing.  Like they are all shells on the beach; each one could be beautiful or ugly or special or typical, but even though there were so many of them covering the sand, making the beach look populated and full, the shells themselves do not constitute a beach.  They are a piece of, an accessory to; many of them contribute to the picture, but many more are washed away and are never seen and, so what?  What does any of that mean to the beach?  The beach will be the beach no matter what -- if 10,000 shells are littering the shore or if only 10 are scattered in the sand.  How nice it is to find a great one, and yet, finding a magnificent shell does not extinguish the truth that life is lived and then it is not.  At any rate, this was not a popular opinion with anybody in my class, and even my professor toyed with the idea and then ultimately dismissed it, and I wasn't surprised -- of course, paying $30,000 a semester to discuss literature and poetry and then discover that it's meaningless to discuss it is a real kick in the nuts.  Nonetheless, it didn't change my theory that sometimes there is no metaphor, no allegory, no deeper meaning.  Sometimes words are just words and sometimes they are worth reading and sometimes they are not.

My point (and there wasn't a point to this before I started writing, it just came to me a minute ago) is that I'm just going to write (type?) down words.  I'm just going to put them here and then tell you that I put them there.  I'm no T.S. Eliot, I know this, and I'm no Virginia Woolf, but I'd like to be.  Maybe I'll find a purpose for this (FASHION!?...no...CELEBRITIES!?...no,) and maybe I won't, but fuck it, I'm going to ride this wave.