The Immortal Cheesesteak

25 Jul 2018 5 Comments

by scolgin in Eating Out, On the Road, World's Best Sandwiches Tags: , , , , , , ,

Ah, Philadelphia. City of Brotherly Love, home of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, where Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, where Rocky ran up some steps waving his arms in the air. John Coltrane came from Philly. So do Tastykakes.

I’d never had a burning desire to go to Philadelphia. But I was deep in the midst of a David McCullough reading bender — having recently finished “1776” and being more than halfway through “John Adams” — and was going to be driving right past the city en route from Washington D.C. to our pal Jon’s family lake house in the Adirondacks.

Already on our East Coast vacation, we had seen important sights in D.C., would be staying in Brooklyn close to where Washington’s troops got whooped by the British, and lodging within view of Bunker Hill and the Old North Church in Boston. More

Year of the Sandwich Goes to Cuba

21 Apr 2017 5 Comments

by scolgin in On the Road, Pork, Recipes, World's Best Sandwiches Tags: , , , , , , ,

One of my favorite sandwiches ever, the torta Cubana at the Vallarta Mexican grocery store, is a towering affair with ham, beans, bacon, salsa, jalapeños and an egg, all on a soft telera roll. It is delicious, but it is most definitely a Mexican sandwich.

So, in preparing for our recent spring break trip to Havana, I was excited to try the actual Cuban sandwich. According to my research, there would be sandwiches on pretty much every corner. More

Goodbye, Year of the Taco

16 Dec 2016 12 Comments

by scolgin in American Series, Food, Humor, World's Best Sandwiches Tags: , , , , , , , ,

In the first weeks of January, I declared 2016 would be the “Year of the Taco” at Skinny Girls & Mayonnaise. And the year did not disappoint.

The last taco

The last taco

I ate delicious tacos in East L.A., Mexico and Hawaii. I added six new taco recipes — including air-dried pork, Veracruz-style fish and Oaxacan turkey mole — to a blog that already boasted nearly a dozen. It was a good year. More

Quite Possibly the World’s Best Sandwich

23 Sep 2016 9 Comments

by scolgin in Pork, Recipes Tags: , , , , , , ,

I wasn’t much of a bologna — baloney — kid when I was young. While my friends pined for white bread with bologna and mayo, I found it rather bland and uninteresting.

nlsb0169

In my teen years, working at an Italian deli, I would discover that the origins of this pale, flaccid meatstuff was actually a salumi called mortadella (the American version was named after the central-Italian city from whence mortadella originates, Bologna). And my opinion would change. More

Fjord Shrimp with Andreas

02 Oct 2015 2 Comments

by scolgin in Humor, Recipes Tags: , , , , , , , ,

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, I was looking in vain for the Dodgers game on cable, and stumbled across “New Scandinavian Cooking” with Andreas Viestad.

Andreas Viestad fixing to smoke some trout in the mountains of Norway

Andreas Viestad fixing to smoke some trout in the mountains of Norway

It’s one of my favorite PBS cooking shows, and it was just beginning.

“Dad!” 5-year-old Imogen said as we wandered into the bedroom, “Is that a cooking show!??” More

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