Park Slope Gastronome #5 - Whatever happened to Lukas Haas?

this past weekend, the psg found themselves in amish country. the plan was to partake in the amazing maize maze, a dizzying 3-D puzzle cut out in five acres of corn. sans the psg, the maze proved to be too daunting last year. after over 3 hours of walking through the stalks of dried corn, the mission was abandoned. call it beginner's luck or what have you, but we finished the maze this year in record time. unfortunately, we didn't pick up all the map pieces along the way so that disqualified us from getting on the white board of fame.

en route to the maze, we stopped at an amish food stand, where heidi was ever so excited to see her pumpkin moonpies. i had nearly the same reaction to dilly beans, which are green and yellow string beans pickled in brine. they are simply delicious. heidi also bought a package of snickerdoodles. as we sampled the cookies in the car, liz provided us with the quote of the day when commented: "these snickerdoodles sure don't taste like a snickers bar." we'd like to think she was kidding, but she was not!

after the maze and a walk around the petting zoo, we were ready for some pennsylvania dutch home cooking. that led us to dienners where heidi and i both opted for the buffet, while liz got a delicious looking blt.

i proceeded to pile the following on my plate: rotisseried chicken drumstick, piece of ham, whipped potatoes, buttered noodles, baked lima beans, beef stew, stewed tomatoes, bread filling aka stuffing, green beans, rice, broccoli, macaroni and cheese, fried shrimp, fish stick, corn and a roll. when i returned to the table, i realized i hadn't gotten any salad so i went back and got a plate of greens, carrots, potato salad, macaroni salad, beets, cucumbers, egg salad, and some apple butter for my roll. oh, i also had a small ladle of chicken corn noodle chowder. all the hot food kind of had that same mushy cooked texture, but i loved it all. everything tasted like it was made with love, especially the apple butter and soup, and a lot of butter! i wish they had bacon in their hot food section. oh, i had some vegetable soup too, but i didn't like it too much because it was a bit sweet. i didn't even have dessert but i got so stuffed.

this was a girls only trip so dan was not allowed. i brought him home a homemade whoopie pie.

Park Slope Gastronome #4

This past week the Park Slope Gastronome had brunch at the restaurant Belleville. Its location made for an easy choice when we were trying to figure out where to have brunch on a glorious Sunday afternoon. The walk to Cousin John's was a bit more than we wanted to flex our legs for. Cocotte stinks. A recent meal at the Mexican Sandwich Company helped me get acquainted with our bathroom and forced us to miss the Atlantic Antic.

Belleville is a French bistro, similar to the ones down the street (Moutarde) and a few neighborhoods over (Patois). There's a sprinkle of quaint, a dollop of shabby chic, a pinch of old-timeyness and steak frites on the menu. We were seated and given our menus immediately. Dan ordered the french toast, only to be told it was sold out. He then ordered the croissants, and was again told it was sold out. "We've had a busy morning" our waitress explained. Finally we both wound up ordering the waffle with eggs and bacon. Along with our meal orders, we requested water, which would not show up until about three-quarters of the way through our meal.

Our dishes arrive and we're both a bit bummed out to see our waffles are pre-syruped. Not only was it imitation maple flavor syrup but the pre-syruping also made the waffle soggy. I like my waffles crisp and I also don't like to drench it in sugar. The eggs on the other hand were really nicely scrambled. They were a golden yellow color without any browning, loose, but firm enough that they didn't have that uncooked, phlegm-like texture to them. The bacon on the other hand was way overcooked. When I bend a bacon strip, I like for it to do just that and not snap in half. Finding good bacon is an impossible mission these days. I'm convinced our meal was to be accompanied by greens and potatoes. Two of the brunch options, the smoked salmon platter and the french toast were above the line that read something along the lines of "the following come with green and potatoes." The waffle was listed under this line and I positive I did not see an asterisk listed next to it saying it was excluded. We asked our waitress about this, not because we were hungry, but because we thought we were missing a part of our meal. She didn't know her menu. She had to check. We still didn't have water by this time. A waiter came by with a pitcher and asked us if we wanted some more water. Then he noticed the lack of water glasses on our table and turned red, apologized and sent someone to get us glasses. We were never offered a refill on coffee.

p.s. The glass of orange juice we ordered was some sort of from-concentrate-crap served with ice cubes. En francais!

Food: C
Service: C-