As many of you know, I have a serious Food Network addiction - so I insisted that we start the day with a trip to Charm City Cakes - home to Ace of Cakes, and Duff Goldman. I knew ahead of time that all of the windows would be blacked out and that I wouldn't meet anyone from the show and that it would be rude as hell to knock on the door, so I didn't. But I did make Jeremy take my picture in front of the place!
Then we crossed the street to have lunch at Dizzie Issies - a place that Duff and his friends have mentioned several times on the show as one of their favorite hangouts. It's literally across the street. It's one of those corner bars that typifies everything about a city... except that it no longer exists. It's under new management and is now called The Dizz. Apparently most of the employees remained and the menu is more or less the same, but it's been cleaned up and rennovated to a certain extent. J had a humongous breakfast platter (technically it was breakfast time...) but I had the mussels. Gotta get all the fresh seafood I can while I'm by the sea! It was nice. But not as good as the night before... Jeremy got scrapple with his breakfast, this was the first time either of us had had scrapple - we were both trepedatious, but we liked it!
After lunch we headed to Fell's Point (where we'd hung the night before) to park and hop on the water taxi and make our way around downtown. 
Above is a crappy shot from my blackberry of Baltimore from the water taxi. Here's a better one: 
We hopped off in the InnerHarbor and made our way around. We bought a full ticket to the Baltimore Maritime Museum - which is actually three historical ships that you can tour. They were all really cool. The submarine, USS Torsk, kind of freaked me out a little just to imagine living with 100 people underwater in that tiny little thing. Some of it's former crew were on there and told us about life on the sub. I'll pass.
The lightship Chesapeake was my favorite, it's a sailship and was much roomier than you'd expect. They fired the canon while we were aboard. That was cool.
But the USCGC Taney was the most touching to tour. It is the last surviving warship afloat today from the Dec 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. This ship played an important part in WWII and the entire time we were touring it I was thinking of J's grandfather, Sam. Sam was in the Navy during WWII and served on the USS Woolsey as a Fire Controlman 1st Class. Grandpa Sam has some amazing stories about his time in the Navy. A lot of them are funny and a lot of them bring tears to my eyes - but all of them are amazing. Some day, if it's okay with Sam, I'll have to tell some of his stories on here. But I digress... touring the USCGC Taney made me think of what it must have been like for Sam to be a young man on that ship for so long. He was in Europe most of the time, if I recall correctly, and the USS Woolsey made all of the invasions in Europe except Normandy. There's a great story involving Canne, France I'll have to ouch on another time...
And in the middle of hopping on and off boats, imagine my surprise and joy to discover the Perfect Cupcakes van! For those of you who haven't heard of Perfect Cupcakes in Baltimore - and if you're not a dorky food blog reading foodie you probably haven't - let me fill you in. A cute little truck parks in downtown Baltimore and sells yummy delicious cupcakes out of the back. What an AWESOME idea, huh??? Straight from the why-in-the-hell-didn't-I-think-of-that file.
J is really weird sometimes, so he didn't want a cupcake. I'm not really sure exactly when I wouldn't want a cupcake. Maybe if I were bleeding to death and in a lot of pain from a gunshot wound... but then it might cheer me up so I'd want one. Or maybe if I were all gross and sweaty and dehydrated and exhausted in mile 10 of a 12 mile marathon... but then the sugar would give me a boost of energy so I'd want one. Well maybe if I were totally full of delicious seafood and tasty cocktails from a delicious lunch at The Dizz... no, I still wanted one. Yeah - I don't know what's wrong with J. Anytime is the perfect time for a Perfect Cupakes cupcake. (They didn't pay me for this, but I'm going to tell them they should!)
She had dark chocolate cupcakes, red velvet cupcakes, lemon cupcakes, and vanilla cupcakes. I was really torn between the dark chocolate (because HELLO... dark chocolate is only the best thing ever of all time ever) and the lemon cupcake because it just sounded really refreshing (if a cupcake can be refreshing). So I asked for the Perfect Cupcakes girl's advice and she steered me toward the lemon. And I took her advice.
I'd already taken a bite before it dawned on me that I should take a pic of my perfect cupcake, and I should take it with the cute little truck in the background. So I did. I should totally quit my job and become a photographer for Time Magazine, huh? And that's also the USS Taney in the background, by the way. This was after we toured it. It was cool - but not as cool as my lemon cupcake.
So after a day of walking and boating and eating... it was time to eat! We headed back to Fell's Point on the water taxi and went in search of dinner. There were a lot of wonderful choices - Fell's Point is full of bars and restaurants and shops and I LOVE IT. By the way, I also saw The Horse You Came In On Saloon - the bar outside of which Edgar Allan Poe reportedly died.
We decided on Kali's Mezze. They had great outdoor seating where we could see the bay, we could people watch and the food looked yummy. And it was. Clockwise from left we had duck confit with mashed potatoes, baby lamb chops, beef and lamb meatballs and fried oysters. And wine and beer (duh). Again our food was wonderful. 
Believe it or not - that was a late lunch/early dinner because we had to change our flight and head home earlier than we'd planned to. Why did we have to do that, you might ask... Because my best friend, Mary Beth, was FINALLY going to the hospital to have her baby girl - two and a half weeks late! She'd asked me to be there and there was no way I was going to miss it - even for some of the best fried oysters (outside of New Orleans, of course) in the world!
Believe it or not - that was a late lunch/early dinner because we had to change our flight and head home earlier than we'd planned to. Why did we have to do that, you might ask... Because my best friend, Mary Beth, was FINALLY going to the hospital to have her baby girl - two and a half weeks late! She'd asked me to be there and there was no way I was going to miss it - even for some of the best fried oysters (outside of New Orleans, of course) in the world!
More on the birth of Miss Ryan Elizabeth Neukomm to follow...
1 comment:
Scrapple is the best. If you were born in Maryland, you were raised on Scrapple. You can't get it out here so I stock up when we go home for a visit (or I make my sister send me some.) I have some in the freezer now... :)
As good as it is, don't ever look on the label to see what it's made out of.
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