episode 21: tuna, mocktails, and table grapes
in this episode, we talk canned tuna, mocktail ideas for your Dry January, and good luck grapes!
how long is it acceptable to say Happy New Year?! who cares i’m saying it! Happy New Year and welcome to the first newsletter of 2024. 🎉
its EANAB season 🍹
my friend introduced me to the term EANAB, which stands for Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverage. dry January, the month where everyone decides to go sober-curious for a month (or just a few days) is the perfect time to try out an EANAB for yourself! I’m loving all the mocktail recipe content - I firmly believe there is skill and talent that goes into crafting mocktails, as there is for way as alcoholic drinks, so I have loved seeing people’s creativity here. I pinned a couple ideas from this Bon Appétit roundup, and I made the beet-sumac soda this week (grating beets sucks but the soda was good!). Voraciously did a list as well, as did Eater DC and Washingtonian for restaurant/bar drinks in the area. I’ve also been enjoyed the mocktail content from some of my fav creators: join jules, drinks by evie, bevs by beverly, to name a few.
its Restaurant Week! (again) 🍴
It’s Restaurant Week again… y’all know how I feel about RAMW and their website, but it’s happening! they seem to have done a slightly better job of uploading menu information this year, which you can see here. inflation has totally caught up with the prices - the structure is now $25 or $35 brunch/lunch, and either $40, $55, or $65 dinner menus. the deals run January 15-21 for most restaurants.
new spots on the list that I want to try: Any Day Now, Hiraya, La Collina, Les Desales, the new Moon Rabbit location, Petit Cerise, and Stable. there’s a lot of other participating restaurants that are usually great during restaurant week, like Chiko, Makan, and Taqueria Xochi. Washingtonian also has some recommendations here for brunch and dinner here.
tuuuuna time 🐠
i’ve been on a big kick of eating canned tuna lately, especially on salads and fish tuna melts. however, I do just buy whichever packaging looks cute-ish for the best price, and I know nothing about the differences between the different types of canned tuna. BA taste tests to the rescue! their staff tried a bunch of different canned tunas, from Starkist to Trader Joe’s, and a brand I hadn’t heard of, Sea Tales, was the winner. the article also explained that common types of tuna that get canned are albacore, yellowfin, skipjack and can be packaged in water or olive oil - which compliments the tuna with its peppery flavor. I also learned the tuna lingo - “white tuna” is 100% albacore, “light tuna” can have different types but is often skipjack, and “chunk light” means that the can contains different types of tuna in smaller pieces.
twelve grapes under the table at midnight
I did not know this was a New Years Eve tradition until I started seeing Tiktoks of shocked girls upon discovering the grapes aisle to be empty at the grocery store on January 1st. apparently there is a Spanish tradition to eat 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight on New Years to bring good fortune and prosperity. this tradition was popularized in the early 1900s when farmers needed a way to increase grape sales after an overabundant harvest. seems fitting with recent news of wine overproduction in much of Europe! get me some grapes!
goodbye zebra gum 🦓
i’ve never wanted to try something more than after i’ve learned that a product is discontinued lol. Fruit Stripe is a stick gum with fruit-inspired flavors and a zebra-striped pattern - and each pack came with a temporary tattoo of its mascot, Yipes the Zebra!! you get to chew gum and get tatted??? sign me up! the gum seemed to be controversial, with some people lamenting its loss and others saying good riddance over its sickly sweet flavor. guess I gotta buy this gum before it hits TJMaxx shelves (the land of discontinued weird food) to try it!
restaurant fees + tech 💻
a hot topic in the DC restaurant scene has been the advent of service fees. sometimes these fees cover staff tips, sometimes they don’t, and there is ongoing legal guidance over how fee disclosures should be presented to customers. some DC-area Redditors made a handy dandy spreadsheet with crowdsourced information about the amount of service charges, categories of charges, and how those fees interact with tips. this article also highlights a tech consultant who made a Chrome extension called TransparentFee DMV that displays a pop-up message alerting you of relevant service fees when you visit a restaurant’s website. while its impossible to constantly maintain the most up-to-date information for every restaurant, having some information to be prepared is always a plus!
a peanut butter pumpkin scandal 🎃
and of course, this story starts with “a woman from Florida!” lol! but actually - a woman in Florida has brought a lawsuit against the Hershey Company over its Peanut Butter Pumpkin Reese’s. she alleges that she brought the jack-o-lantern-shaped Reese’s cup believing that the candy would match the picture, which features a pumpkin-shaped peanut butter cup with a Jack-O-Lantern style carved face. instead, she was disappointed when it looked more like a blob than a chocolate pumpkin. the packaging essentially was much more detailed than the actual product. she is now leading a class action lawsuit that not only alleges this false marketing issue for the pumpkins, but also for Reese’s bats and ghosts as well. justice for the Halloween candy!!!
the great Stanley addiction 💦
if you noticed on last episode’s 2024 In and Out list, I am declaring that water bottle hoarding is sooo out. the #watertok trend last year brought the rise of water bottle collections, leading the pack is the Stanley quencher, a stainless steel water bottle with a straw. now, water bottle trends are not novel, (remember when it was cool to have a Camelback?) but this time it’s being exacerbated by the overconsumption tendencies of Tiktok and has led to people amassing huge collections of water bottles (for example, this crazy collection here). buying a few water bottles is totally normal and perhaps good consumer behavior! but a collection of water containers that are allegedly meant for sustainability and the elimination of single-use containers is ironic indeed.
banana sticker collectors 🍌
for years, Chiquita has sold cute their bananas with cute little stickers on them. often these stickers just have a simple oval logo, but many have extra tabs that feature fun artwork. one common design is the breast cancer awareness sticker, and they also do collectors edition stickers, like a Frida Kahlo-inspired set. they even have a template for a sticker collector sheet on the Chiquita website. I found out about this from a Tiktoker, tallneil, who talks about brand marketing, and his take was that because there isn’t an incentive for collecting these stickers, the schtick won’t work. when I turned to the comments, it turns out there’s a whole Chiquita banana stickers club and tons of people do have collections for fun! if only I actually regularly ate bananas…
your virtual recipe box 📦
as you may guess, I come across a lot of recipes on the internet and I tend to save many of them for cooking inspiration. but, all these saved recipes are scattered across multiple apps: Tiktok collections, Instagram folders, the NYT cooking app, and various bookmarks in Chrome. well, I finally found an app to serve as central ground for all recipes, called Spillt. this app is fantastic, you can save recipes from any internet link, or you can take pictures of cookbook pages, or manually input a recipe you wrote yourself. you can then save those recipes into folders called collections, make meal plans from those recipes, and even generate grocery lists! i’m loving this app so far, it’s easy to save links and organize by meal types or whatever works for you. it even has social media features so you can see what your friends are saving too. give it a try!
restaurant review: Spicy Moon Vegan Szechuan
in my last New York trip of 2023, I got to revisit a favorite restaurant, the all-vegan Szechuan spot, Spicy Moon! every dish is a hit here, and will definitely satisfy your whole group’s dietary needs. the ambiance is cool with great service too. on this visit with my family, we got the Kung Pao style vegetables and tofu, the steamed dumplings, the Dan Dan noodles, and some desserts, plus a ginger lychee drink! see more below - and if you’re planning on visiting, I have some more ideas here from my first visit too.
f*cked up food
new year, new furniture!!
d.c. happenings
AdMo Foxtrot opened Jan 3
Baja Tap in AdMo closed
Indique in Cleveland Park closed
Raising Cane’s opened on Jan 9 in Union Station!
Bammys reopening in Navy Yard
Trini Vybez in Columbia Heights opening
Bold Dumpling opening in Bryant Street Market
Moon Rabbit’s new Penn Quarter location opening Monday
2fifty Texas BBQ opening in Mt. Vernon Triangle
Peking Garden closed in AdMo
Someone is impersonating Haydees on UberEats…
Duck Duck Goose in Dupont becoming Good Ducking Burger
Mita on V St opened
Turning Natural Juice Bar in Shaw closed
Gursha Ethiopian in West End opened
Dolce Vita in Logan Circle closed
home cooking: dip dip dip!
the winter of dips!! made a bruschetta dip for our New Year’s Eve spread, though I crisped up the garlic a little too much, and one could argue that using fresh tomatoes in the dead of winter is criminal. sorry!! I also found this recipe for a buffalo chicken dip which my friends made, and was the perfect afternoon snack! lastly, I made this really fun dirty martini dip - a cream cheese dip with blue cheese, vodka (!) and tons of castelvetrano olives. I was skeptical of this one but it was so yummy with some salty potato chips!
thats all for today, folks! Happy January!
Like your piece on Peanut Butter Pumpkin Scandal. I undersatnd the truth in marketing. Creative (?) people and more creative lawyers find ways to sue big companies, knowing there will be a guaranteed settlement to avod unnecessary bad publicity.
Ahh thanks for the tuna tips. My go to is the Genova yellowfin tuna in olive oil; if I can't eat that I like the Trader Joe's canned salmon - never thought I would like canned salmon but it's great in a pinch.
Have you never had the zebra gum?!?! Omg I used to love them. They'd run out of flavor so fast though; although arguably that's about how long i would chew gum anyway.
The banana stickers! I have the minion ones stuck on a folder somewhere.
I've been looking for a good recipe app! Will check that out.