City spots: M.E. Swings Co. Coffee Roasters

Since I have lived in D.C. for three years now, I have definitely found many restaurants, cafes, parks, nooks, and crannies that have come to be my "favorites" for one reason or another. Perhaps every once in awhile I will feature one of these "City Spots" on my blog.

M.E. Swing Co.

flickr/ by tvol

Today's feature? M.E. Swing Co., Coffee Roasters on G Street, not too far from my work or the White House and Eisenhower Executive Office Building. I have always been a fan of discovering local coffee shops, for both their charm and their home-brewed coffee taste. Although I can enjoy coffee from Starbucks, Caribou, Panera, etc., I much prefer supporting a local establishment and find their coffee is often more flavorful.

M.E. Swing Co. has both the quaint historic ambiance, as well as truly amazing coffee. The coffee shop began in 1920, in it's original building on E Street, which at that time, also housed a large German roaster that was used to roast hundreds of pounds of coffee every day.

As M.E. Swing Co.'s website describes their rich history:

"The coffee business boomed in the Roaring 20’s, which saw D.C.’s E Street corridor filled with fashionable stores, soda fountains, restaurants, and clanging streetcars. Throughout the Depression of the 30's, and then the difficult war years, M.E. Swing continued to roast delicious coffee. By the 50's, Swing's Coffee was practically a D.C. institution. Congressman, ambassadors, senators, and the professional and working people of Washington came regularly to buy Swing's fresh-roasted coffee beans. As the decades passed, Swing’s has become a D.C. tradition, passed down from parents to children.

The now legendary Swing’s Coffeehouse was opened in 1994 at 1702 G Street, across from the historic Old Executive Office Building. Swing’s at G Street is filled with the original mahogany and mirrored fixtures, vintage burr grinders, wooden coffee bins, and counter-weight scales that graced the Mesco Building on E Street. Today’s M.E. Swing Coffee Roastery, located in Alexandria, VA, still operates classic German roasters, with the same craft and artistry as before, continuing the Swing’s tradition to this day. "

This coffee shop continues to be a "DC establishment" to this day. When I head there for an afternoon cup of Joe during my lunch hour, the line is often out the door, 25 people long. Lots of white-collared young professionals, government employees, and even White House special police officers frequent the joint. It really is the place to be.

My favorite coffee? If I'm ordering out, a soy latte is my beverage of choice. They also sell coffee beans by the pound, and yesterday I bought a pound of their chocolate raspberry blend. Mmm, it's just scrumptious. Almost good even to make me excited to get out of bed in the wee hours of the morning.

Definitely the next time you head down to the Capital area on a weekday (their shop is only open business hours), you must stop in and have the M.E. Swing experience!

Cooking -- my story

One of the best things about having more free time after finishing grad school is having more time and energy to cook. I must say, I do not miss the days of unhealthy, unappetizing cafeteria food, or grabbing sugar or caffeine-laden food for late night brain sustenance. Perhaps it is because my mom was a foods and nutrition major, or because I have several friends passionate about organic eating and cooking that this has become a great area of interest to me. I find it challenging and fun to find nourishing recipes that are both tasty and healthful, and then try them out in my kitchen. My theory is, who wants to eat healthy food if it's bland and boring, right? But trying new recipes with unusual ingredients, fresh spices, and lots of flavor provides an outlet for culinary creativity that I very much enjoy. It's very satisfying to be able to discover recipes that are both healthy and delicious. One of my approaches to exploratory cooking is to find one or two new recipes each time I make a weekly shopping trip to try. I figure that now is the best time for me to begin experimenting with recipes, since I am generally only cooking for myself, and don't have to incorporate multiple food likes/dislikes/allergies as many wives and mothers do. This way I can learn how to become a better cook and hopefully develop skills that I can use if/when I am cooking for others in the future.

Of course, even now it is most fun to be able to share my dishes with family and friends at brunches, potlucks, and dinners. Many of my friends also enjoy cooking, and it's lovely when they share their delicious new recipes at these events, and then we end up swapping recipes and all expanding our culinary repertoires. Home cooking is a wonderful gift to be able to share with those you love!

So, in recognition of the important place that cooking has in my life, I would like to share my favorite recipes here as I discover them.

Inspirations from Julie and Julia

Since Washington D.C. got slammed with 2 feet of snow this weekend, most residents have been snowed in for a few days. I can't complain, because it's actually been quite a lovely weekend, giving us the chance to stop running around at the typical D.C. frenetic pace and enjoy the company of dear friends that live close enough to walk to. We've enjoyed board games, cooked delicious meals, danced and listened to music, and just enjoyed being together. While the blustery snowfall continued outside, we have also watched several movies, a perfect snowstorm pastime. Although I enjoyed all of the films that we watched, the movie Julia and Julie that we watched last night was particularly inspiring.

Several of my friends had told me about this movie and how much they enjoyed it. I have to say, I was not disappointed! Julie and Julia is a delightful story which juxtaposes the cooking adventures of Julia Child in her early years of cooking, and the adventures of Julie, a cooking enthusiast in Manhattan fifty years later who decides to cook her way through Julia Child's cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." The movie follows the ambitious cooking projects of Julie and Julia; it follows Julie as she attends the esteemed French cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu, and then embarks with two fellow cooking enthusiasts on writing a cookbook for American women on the art of French cooking. Julia, meanwhile, loves cooking as a creative outlet to her stressful and monotonous job, and through the suggestion of her husband Eric, decides to start a cooking blog in which she will blog about cooking each of the 524recipes in Julia Child's cookbook, a feat which she vows to accomplish in just one year.




There were several aspects of this story which were very inspiring to me. First of all, I found it very inspiring the way that both Julie and Julia took their circumstances of boredom, restlessness, and free time, and channeled their energies invest in their passion: cooking. Julie was trying to figure out what she would do while she and her husband were stationed in Paris for his job. She could have simply sought to get a typical administrative job working for the government, but instead she choose to enter the new territory of the professional cooking world. She didn't choose what was neccesarily simple or routine, but choose to invest her time and heart in one of the aspects of life which brought her much joy - cooking, nourishing, delicious food, and sharing it with those she loved.

Similarly, Julia was able to embrace on her ambitious cooking project as a way to bring color, joy, and new direction to what was currently a stagnant, and sometimes disapointing routine. As an aspiring writer, she had previously gotten turned down by publishers on her manuscript, and was discouraged about not being able to have ever landed a publishing deal. Yet it was partly beacuse of this unfulfilled dream that she had the desire to resume writing again and to begin a project that she felt she could successfully finish. And in the process of her cooking blog and cooking adventures, she was able to combine her passions of writing and cooking, and fulfill her dreams.

Another aspect that really touched me about this movie was the relationship of Julie Child and her husband Paul, and Julia and her husband Eric. Both husbands were extremely supportive of their wives' endeavors, encouraging them, affirming them, laughing with them, and being there to pick up the pieces when their wives' dreams seemed to be falling apart. And the beauty of Julie and Julia's love for cooking was not only that it brought themselves joy, but that it was an oportunity for them to bring joy through learning about, buying, preparing, cooking, and serving delicious food to their husbands. Although Julie definitely hit some bumps in the road and had to learn the hard way that in the end her husband was more important that her goals in themselves, it is inspiring to see her realize this discover the importance of her marriage anew.
Through sharing their passions, Julie and Julia are able to offer a gift of themselves to the ones they love in a unique, creative way.

So, the moral of the story for me was that there is always time to follow your dreams, always time to nurture ambition and new goals. Sometimes these goals are intertwined in your 9-5pm job, but often times, they are not. But this story reminded me that in that space where we do have room to shape our activities, be it on the weeknights, weekends, or even our lunch breaks, there is a chance for creativity to unfold, and a chance for us to follow our dreams unabashedly. It just takes a little ambition, a little courage and a little unconventionality to turn those things which bring us great joy into a dream undertaken and fulfilled.