FOOD: Spring Onion and Bacon Bread Pudding

By CLAIRE McCONNELL
May 4, 2012
Special to the Falls Church Times

(Editor’s Note: When I met up with Claire at the last Falls Church Farmers Market chef demo she was so excited about this recipe and I can see why!  She thought this would be a lovely accompaniment to a Mother’s Day dinner or brunch. So come to the Falls Church Farmer’s Market tomorrow to welcome all the new and familiar vendors and pull together your ingredients for next weekend’s Mother Day celebrations.)

When my husband and I lived in the Napa Valley several years ago, I cooked at a very popular Michelin-star restaurant. The summer was the valley’s busiest time of year, and on weekends especially, the restaurant would be bustling with servers, cooks, bussers, dishwashers, you name it. I worked the lunch shift on the weekends and, in addition to prepping my station and cooking for the guests, it was also my responsibility to make family meal for our entire staff.

We were encouraged by our chef to make dishes that fed many but cost little. One of the ingredients we always had plenty of was stale bread, left over from the night before. Obviously, I had used stale bread in the past to make French toast or sweet bread pudding, but as side dishes go that wasn’t going to work. But I thought, why not a savory bread pudding, a creamier stuffing if you will. “Eureka!” Now I know that a savory version of bread pudding was thought up long before my time as a cook, but this recipe is true perfection and so affordable, even with a multitude of farmer’s market ingredients. It also makes a great addition to any Mother’s Day breakfast or brunch or dinner.

Five of the ingredients for this dish are from the Falls Church farmers market. The San Francisco Sourdough bread, made from certified organic flour, is from Atwater’s Bakery in Baltimore, Md., http://atwaters.biz/. The uncured bacon, from grass-fed pork, is from Smith Meadows Farm in Berryville, Va., http://smithmeadows.com/. The spring onions are from Laurel Grove Farms in Oak Grove, Va. The free-range eggs are from Flower of the Forest Farm in Lexington Park, Md. And the milk is from Clear Spring Creamery in Clear Spring, Md., http://www.clearspringcreamery.com/.

Equipment: 1 medium skillet, 1 9 X 13 baking dish, 1 large mixing bowl, 1 medium mixing bowl, 1 medium sauce pan.

6 cups stale bread (I think sourdough works well in this recipe) – cut into a 1-inch dice — $3.50

6 strips of bacon (I used uncured, hormone free)- small dice — $2.89

4 spring onions (not scallions), about 1 cup – sliced thinly into rounds — $1.25

1 cup whole milk — $0.62

1 cup heavy cream — $1.24

2 whole eggs — $0.78

1 egg yolk –  $0.39

½ tsp fresh thyme — $0.03

1 tsp. salt — $0.01

½ tsp. freshly ground pepper — $0.01

½ cup grated pecorino — $0.53

2 Tbsp. softened butter — $0.40

Total cost of dish = $11.65

Begin by cutting the stale bread into a 1-inch dice. The bread should be very stale and hard. If you feel like your bread isn’t stale enough, it can always be popped into a low oven, at about 300 degrees, for about 15 minutes. Once the bread is cubed, place it in a large mixing bowl for later.

Saute bacon in a medium skillet over medium heat. Cook until the bacon is crispy, about 10 minutes. Add crispy bacon to the large mixing bowl with the bread. Remove all but 2 tablespoons of rendered bacon fat from the skillet. Saute spring onions in rendered bacon fat until the onions are tender, about 5 minutes. Add onions to the large mixing bowl.

Whisk whole eggs and the egg yolk in a medium bowl. Set aside. In a separate sauce pan add milk and cream. Cook until scalding (when mixture just begin to boil around the edges).  Slowly stream in the hot milk/cream mixture into the eggs while whisking constantly. If the milk is added to the eggs too quickly, the eggs will scramble, so ADD SLOWLY!  Season the milk/cream mixture with salt, pepper and thyme. When the salt is dissolved, add the milk/cream mixture to the bread. Stir until all of the ingredients are well-combined. Add pecorino and stir to combine. The mixture will look very wet. This is okay. The bread will absorb the liquid as it sits, (reference picture below). Refrigerate the mixture for at least 8 hours, or overnight.

Move the oven rack to the highest setting and preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9 X 13 inch baking dish with softened butter. Add the bread mixture to the greased dish and cover with foil. Bake for 40 minutes covered on the top rack and then uncovered for an additional 15-20 minutes. The bread pudding should be set and all the liquid should be cooked and absorbed into the bread.  Be cautious not to overcook the pudding; it will be very dry.

Makes eight 1-cup portions.

http://clairesculinaryconnection.blogspot.com/

 

 

LETTER: Thanks for Opportunity

May 3, 2012

Thank you to my supporters and to the many citizens of this fine City for sharing their time, ideas and efforts during the recent City Council campaign. I am honored and humbled to have had the opportunity to have met and learned from so many people that make our community great.

I applaud the choice our City has made; Dave Tarter, Nader Baroukh and Phil Duncan are all fine men and each will bring their unique strengths to bare as our representatives on City Council.  Congratulations to our four top notch representatives elected to School Board: Kieran Sharpe, Joan Wodiska, Justin Castillo and Charlotte Hyland.  I tip my hat to all of those who ran in yesterday’s election.  And, I salute the many citizens whose questions and concerns have helped strengthen our city and educate me.  Because of them I am better informed and better able to serve the community I love in the years to come.

Sincerely,

Paul Handly

Art-A-Lot Kicks Off FIRSTfriday Outdoor Season

By FALLS CHURCH TIMES STAFF
May 3, 2012

This Friday, May 4, begins the first of the season’s Art-A-Lot events – the outdoor venue for FIRSTfriday of Falls Church.  Outside in the parking lot at 111 Park Ave, there will be local art on display, a live music concert, and a gathering of classic cars.

Inside at Art and Frame of Falls Church, there will be a reception for Isabelle Babington’s exhibit entitled Blue Notes that she describes as “eclectic notes with a blue paintbrush following an idea, exploring new ways, keeping an open eye and an open mind in no particular order.”  Meet the artist at the opening reception from 6:00 – 8:00 pm. Isabelle will give an artist talk at 7:10 pm. Read more

Gardner Found Guilty on Three Counts

By FALLS CHURCH TIMES STAFF
May 2, 2012

An Arlington County jury deliberated less than about seven hours over two days before finding Falls Church community activist Michael Gardner guilty on three charges of sexual abuse involving young girls.

Mr. Gardner, a former chair of the Falls Church City Democratic Committee and husband of former mayor and current City Councilor Robin Gardner, was taken into custody as soon as the first verdict was read. He was found guilty of two counts of aggravated sexual battery and one count of object penetration. The judge declared a mistrial on the fourth count.

News reports said Robin Gardner and other relatives cried upon the announcement of the verdict. It is not known if Mr. Gardner plans to appeal.

Defense attorney Peter Greenspun had a difficult case to defend, given that three girls were making accusations and that DNA evidence supported those accusations when Mr. Gardner’s DNA was found inside one accuser’s underwear.

Mr. Greenspun argued that was simply the result of the girls being at Mr. Gardner’s house, a contention that prosecutor Nicole Wittman of Loudoun County said was preposterous.

The case began last June after three girls, ages 9 and 10, who were at Mr. Gardner’s Ellison Street home for sleepovers with his daughter, made the explosive accusations. Mr. Gardner initially was barred from his own home, a rule that later was relaxed.

A variety of local television stations and other media are in the court room and have more information on the case.

LETTER: No Harm, No Foul in GOP Candidate Forum

By Mark Rhoads
May 2, 2012

A few weeks ago, an opinion was expressed in the Falls Church Times to the effect that it would not be proper for the Falls Church City Republican Committee to sponsor a non-partisan open forum for candidates for the City Council.   But members of the FCCRC including me argued that there was no inherent taint involved in the choice of an otherwise state partisan-affiliated group to sponsor a non-partisan forum open to all candidates and all citizens of any party who wanted to come to meet candidates in a public forum.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon, April 22, about 73 citizens of Falls Church City affiliated with both state parties or no state party, attended a very lively FCCRC open forum in the Seniors Room at the Community Center to hear all the candidates for City Council including incumbent Mayor Nader Baroukh and candidates Phil Duncan, John Lawrence, David Tarter, William Henneberg, and Paul Handly .   Incumbent Mr. Lawrence Webb could not attend due to a trip to New York but he did speak to the FCCRC meeting on April 19 at the American Legion Hall.   I attended both the FCCRC open forum and the candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters at the City Hall on April 18.   The LWV forum was well organized and timed and all candidates had a good amount of time to speak for about two hours and questions were submitted in writing from the audience.   The LWV event was also televised on local community access TV.

At the FCCRC open forum on Sunday, most questions from the floor were about the newly-announced city plan to ban on-street parking on several streets including Hillwood, Lincoln, and West Street.  The parking lanes would be replaced by bicycle lanes and funded mostly by federal grant money.

When asked for a show of hands on whether they would vote “no” on the plan if they were Council members, only David Tarter did not raise his hand.  When asked whether they would vote to kill the plan and later bring back aspects of the plan that would not inconvenience neighborhoods, only William Henneberg indicated that he would.  Mayor Nader Baroukh protested that such a vote was unfair to him, as a current Council member. He indicated that the bill should be preserved, with approval deferred until problematic issues could be removed and there was more consultation with residents.

John Lawrence said that although he participated in the plan’s development, it was with the Council’s direction and City staff’s guidance on vetting the plan with residents of Falls Church City.  In response to a question about how much development of the plan cost, no estimate of staff time was available but the City may have paid a consulting firm up to $300,000.00 for work done so far.

No candidate responded to a question about whether the plan would require sidewalks in neighborhoods without them, such as Broadmont.

The proposal may already be dividing neighbors.  Apparently, some residents of cul-du-sacs off Lincoln Street say they will ask the City for signs prohibiting parking in their cul-du-sac by anyone who has a Lincoln Avenue address.  It was also reported that some Fairfax Country residents near Hillwood have already warned that they will seek to ban cars with Falls Church City stickers from parking in the area South of Hillwood and north of Arlington Boulevard.

GOP Committee Chair Ken Feltman, who is a resident on Hillwood, observed that regardless of the merits of the plan, the timing of its release and the failure by City staff to actively seek the views of citizens in affected neighborhoods has led to a contentious situation that could have been avoided.   Other questions for candidates from the floor were about the full or part-time safety inspection duties of the fire marshal, recycling rules for apartment buildings, and why only one taxi cab company appears to have a monopoly on radio calls in the city. More than 100 questions from the community were submitted by email to the FCCRC and there was not enough time to ask all of them during two and a half hours so preference was given to calling on citizens in attendance who had their hands up.

While the formats were different and the topic areas very different, I could see no hint of partisanship in either the LWV candidate forum or the FCCRC open forum. The Republican forum even included a short presentation by a candidate for Congress in the upcoming June Democratic primary for the 8th District, Mr. Bruce Shuttleworth, who spoke about how his petitions were able to withstand scrutiny to qualify his name for the ballot.   A Republican candidate for Congress in the same district, retired Army Col. Patrick Murray, had previously spoken to FCCRC members at their February public meeting at the Oakwood Apartments.  Incumbent Congressman Jim Moran (D) is also invited to attend a future FCCRC event at a time of his convenience.

So I believe that fears that the FCCRC could not sponsor a non-partisan forum open to all candidates and all citizens of all parties and independents were not well grounded and that for the local Republican committee, where there is no harm there is no foul.

Mark Rhoads is a member of the Falls Church City Republican Committee

 

 

LETTER: Beyond Wishful Thinking for Commercial Tax Generation – The Case for Streetcars

By DAN MALLER
May 2, 2012

There is broad consensus in the City of Falls Church that realizing greater revenues from the City’s limited commercial property is a key strategic priority. The measurable but limited successes over the past decade have been based largely on allowing special exceptions to include residential development, which is economically required to support the necessary parking. Even supporters of the “mixed use” strategy recognize the limitations of this approach and view mixed use as a step towards creating the critical mass of population density and demand that will help bring additional business investment and tax revenue generation.

Many of us (including many of the candidates in yesterday’s City Council election) have advocated significant public investment in parking to address this more directly, and I believe this has to be on the short list of ideas that go beyond wishful thinking to address the economics of commercial development. However, a far more comprehensive approach, which is well suited to the City’s strip-zoned commercial areas along our major thoroughfares, would be a modern streetcar network allowing far greater foot traffic without a proportional increase in automobile traffic.

A modern streetcar would have stops at no more than half mile intervals, meaning that we would expect at least five stops in the commercial areas, including two in City Center, not to mention an opportunity to integrate an intermodal transit center that would be truly deserving of the name. My own vision would be to link the East and West Falls Church Metro Stations and to consider taking a line from Seven Corners to EFC and then along Washington Street to City Center and then West on Broad to WFC, which would maximize the service to multifamily housing and to our commercial zones, but the purpose of the proposed study is to examine all of these issues, to generate a local and regional feedback, and hopefully consensus, to guide the next steps that would be required.

The discussion of the need and desire for commercial development is another opportunity to refocus our efforts on taking action to help bring about the kind of development that the community will support, without overwhelming our infrastructure such as roads and schools that are essentially at capacity in the near term. There are obvious issues to debate such as the cost, configuration and alignment, alongside the clearly demonstrable benefits, but in my view and given the building regional momentum, this is a wave we need to be prepared to ride.

Dan Maller is a former member of the Falls Church City Council.

Tarter, Duncan Win, Baroukh Re-elected in City Council Race

By FALLS CHURCH TIMES STAFF
May 1, 2012

David Tarter and Phil Duncan won election to the Falls Church City Council while Mayor Nader Baroukh was re-elected on Tuesday following a competitive race that featured a crowded field of seven candidates. Incumbent City Councilor Lawrence Webb was defeated in his bid for another term. Robin Gardner did not seek re-election.

Mr. Tarter, chair of the city’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) and a former interim city attorney, earned the largest number of votes with 1293.  He is a commercial real estate lawyer in Arlington. Mr. Baroukh, an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security, finished a strong second with 1189. Mr. Duncan, also a member of the EDA and the owner of a city-based business called Civicatalyst Communications, gained third place with 1047 votes. Mr. Webb finished fifth with 672 votes.

John Lawrence, who was the leading vote-getter among those who lost during the last Council election in 2010, was the bridesmaid again, finishing fourth with 732 votes. A newcomer and the youngest candidate in the race, William Henneberg, was next with 652 votes, followed by Paul Handly with 514.

Although it’s not known how and why residents made their decisions, it may be instructive that two of the three winners are members of the EDA in a campaign season in which additional commercial development for the city emerged as a key priority for voters and candidates alike.

Mr. Duncan agreed. “The success of two people on the EDA does indicate that voters have a seriousness of purpose about economic revitalization,” he said.

He also congratulated all the candidates for a hard-fought and clean campaign, and said he felt badly for those who lost. “My heart goes out to those who didn’t win. The community was very well served by this campaign.”

Mr. Tarter, the runaway top vote-getter, said he was grateful for the support of so many City residents. “I am humbled and honored by the support of the voters of Falls Church. I appreciate the confidence they have shown in me. I look forward to tackling the many challenges the city faces and helping Falls Church realize its full potential.”

Mr. Baroukh said he is eagerly anticipating serving with the newly elected candidates.

“I thank all the citizens of Falls Church City who came out to vote today. I look forward to working with the new Council on continuing to make our City a great place to live.”

Sitting city councilors Ira Kaylin and Johannah Barry told the Times they were excited for the next Council term to start. Mr. Kaylin, who was elected in 2010, said: “I am truly looking forward to working with the new Council. I believe the upcoming years will be vital for the city.”

Ms. Barry, also elected in 2010, added: “This is a great opportunity to bring new ideas together. This time will be so important to addressing critical issues facing Falls Church.”

Four candidates for School Board were elected unopposed.  Kieran Sharpe, Joan Wodiska, and Justin Castillo were elected to four year terms, and Charlotte Hyland was elected to complete two years of the unexpired term of Patrick Riccards, who resigned to take a job in Connecticut.

The city registrar reports that 26 percent of the 8,758 registered voters in the city went to the polls, besting the 24 percent figure from 2010. Ward 3 had the highest turnout at 26 percent. Wards 1 and 2 reported turnout of 22 and 23 percent, respectively. The rest, 171 votes, were absentee ballots.

This was the last May election in Falls Church City, following a referendum decision by the voters last year to move City Council and School Board elections to November beginning in 2013.

The newly-elected members of both the City Council and School Board will begin their terms in July.

 

Mason Field Hockey Club Gains Experience in Rehoboth

By JOEY PUGH
April 30, 2012

The George Mason High School Girls Field Hockey Club is keeping the excitement alive in the spring.  The team played in the “Beach Bash” tournament in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware last weekend, gaining lots of experience against teams from around the region.

Rising 8th – 11th grade girls and parents interested in the team may send inquiries to gmcfieldhockey@gmail.com for information about the Spring meeting, summer camps, and more.

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