17 posts tagged “food”

Ahh, Monday. Looking forward to a week of blzzzzZZZZ. Okay, work is boring. So, about the weekend...

The Great Nabob was a lot of fun, and ended with watching the Mighty Boosh at Eric's house with Devon and Kessler and Kessler's giant giant cat. Also, drinking like 8 rum and cokes and totally regretting it on Saturday. Saturday I was sick pretty much all morning, pulled it together long enough to pick up Betsy and stop by Herb's place, and then go home and nap. The Huskies lost, obvs, to the surprise of zero people. Saturday night I had a mini-Bale-a-thon, watching Velvet Goldmine, followed by Batman Begins (which Casey watched too). I fell asleep on the couch and woke up at nine, crawled into bed-proper, and woke up again at - well, we probably shouldn't talk about that. Sunday was a laaaazy day. Casey watched the game while I slept, woke up, watched Man Stroke Woman, continued working on my back-up computer project (my computer is a mess and in desperate need of reformatting, but it's been a pain copying everything I need to backup to my external) and read. I made a delicious quiche, which turned out quite well though I think I may have added a bit too much milk, Casey ran, and I watched the commentary for half of Pan's Labyrinth and for a couple episodes of The IT Crowd. Graham Linehan constantly called the commentary watchers geeks, which I am, and is fine. But you know, I'm also not a total freak, so it got a little irritating. Also, it's FOX MULDER, not Fox Scully, goofballs. There were a couple discussions about American television where the British actors were like, what is it? Is it [something totally wrong]? We don't know!

I love commentaries, but the best ones are those that are 1. charming, 2. funny, 3. informative, and 4. self-deprecating. And I hate commentaries that consist mainly of complimenting everyone involved in the project, and/or self-congratulations, and/or redundancy, and/or actor jargon/constant references to director's/writer's/actor's past projects.

Quiche. I love quiche, and I really think the best quiche is the most basic quiche - cheese, bacon/sausage/ham, spinach/broccoli, bake it up. I made a fairly complicated quiche (caramelized onion/ham/swiss/apple/spinach) over the weekend (I still have Yakima apples to use up), and though it turned out well (I should have used more salt) I am anxious to try a tomato/mozzarella/basil quiche next. I have never found a quiche recipe that I love, but I think staying basic is better. I don't use cream or half-and-half, as some recipes call for, and it's always turned out fine.

4 eggs
1 cup whole milk
salt/freshly ground pepper/nutmeg

premade pie crust (get in refridgerated section near pre-made rolls)

1 medium sized onion
1-2 tbls butter

a little under 1/2 pound sliced ham, cut into 2-3 inch strips
1-1.5 cup shredded swiss cheese
a large handful of chopped fresh spinach
1 small apple, peeled and sliced thin

Pre-heat oven to 375.

Caramelize your onions in the butter. Basically, just let them cook in the pan, moving them around occasionally, until a nice, pretty brown color. I usually finish off my onions by deglazing the pan with a splash of balsamic vinegar, and I'll occasionally add an extra couple pinches of sugar in the beginning of cooking to make them extra sweet and caramelized. Adding sugar is called cheating, but I like the way it tastes better :) Set aside to let cool.

Whisk together your eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. I keep a little jar of whole nutmeg in my spice cabinet and just grate a little with a microplane - makes a huge difference over the pre-ground kind. Make sure to consider the salt content in your eggs - I used a hearty pinch for this and I wished I had used a touch more, but I didn't want to oversalt considering that there's also plenty of salt in the ham (and in the cheese).

Place pie crust in pan. Layer the following: a handful of swiss cheese over the bottom (keeps your crust from getting soggy), caramelized onions, another small handful of cheese, apple slices, ham, another handful of cheese, chopped spinach, and pour egg mixture over the whole thing. Press down lightly so you make sure that egg has gotten over everything, top with the remainder of your cheese. You can definitely get away with using less cheese, but my feeling is that 1. it helps to hold the quiche together, and 2. quiche isn't really the healthiest food in the world anyhow, you might as well accept this and move on. But I've been known to do the light layer of cheese on the bottom and a layer on the top and calling that good. Bake for 35-45 minutes or until cheese and crust is golden and pie has puffed up (it will go back down when it cools). Watch to make sure your crust doesn't burn - if it starts looking too brown, you can either drop the heat of the oven down a bit, say to 350, and/or cover the edges with foil.

Tastes better the next day.

Once this one is finished, I'm planning on using the same basic recipe and adding parmesan to the egg mixture and filling with fresh basil, tomatoes, and topped with fresh mozzarella. I'll let you know how it turns out!

I love pork. Eating it makes me feel guilty, because I think that pigs are intelligent animals and should not be treated the horrible way I am sure they are treated in slaughterhouses. Also, the word 'slaughter' is about as disturbing as any word in the English language, except for maybe panty. It is always better to go free range, cruelty free, whenever possible. I never cook pork at home and really only eat it at specific places because it is so delicious that it cannot be denied.

My favorite places to eat of the ig-pay (that's pig in pig latin, for those of you with knowledge of that exotic language)-

1. Paseo. My favorite food in Seattle, bar none, is Paseo's midnight pork and their black beans. Thinking about it right now has my mouth watering. I would love to buy a huge mountain of their tender, juicy, flavorful midnight pork (pork shoulder, braised, I assume) and a giant tub of their juicy, spicy-sweet black beans and eat it until my stomach explodes or my face falls off. Try not to confuse it with the Toyota Paseo, because whenever I see one of those on the street I get hungry. 4225 Fremont Ave N

2. Pig Iron Barbeque. My favorite bbq! It's in South Seattle, which is quite a trek from where I live up on the North End. It is in Georgetown, and maybe twenty minutes to a half hour away from my home. What with the freeway turning into a clusterfuck starting on the tenth, I will probably not be able to eat it for a month and the thought of that makes me sad, but they serve the best barbeque I've had here. Their pulled pork, beef brisket, babyback ribs - everything is juicy, tender, flavorful, and they even make their own creamed corn. 5602 1st Ave S

Well, now I've made myself hungry. The lovely pig cartoon is by Natalie Dee, www.nataliedee.com

Once, I had a curried sweet potato wrap at this coffee shop I used to frequent. Needless to say, I tried it on a whim and I fell in love immediately. It was awesome - spicy and sweet and full of flavor and texture. I never saw it in their modest deli case again, but I've been dreaming of it ever since. It's that food I think about when I think about the perfect meal. Who knew a deli case tortilla-wrapped potato salad could stir that kind of passion? But it did, and has, for years. Well, after searching high-and-low for the fabled wrap, I finally decided to try my hand at the concoction last night. And it turned out so well I'm berating myself that I did not try this sooner.

It's a little on the dry side (particularly after being chilled overnight) so it really is best in a burrito-like form or wrapped in a flatbread or naan, but you can always add a little extra dressing if you want to eat it plain.

You're going to need:
2 medium-to-large sized sweet potatoes (or yams)
Sidenote: Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have sweet potatoes, a light yellow, sweeter version of the root vegetable, as well as yams, the traditional orange. I prefer the sweet potato but that's just what I grew up with.
1/2 cup sweet onion, chopped medium (I like Walla Walla, if you can get 'em at the right season)
1/2 cup of frozen peas, thawed
2 medium-to-large carrots
Olive oil

2 tablespoons mayo
3-4 tablespoons plain yogurt (I used greek style, it's thicker and creamier)
1 tbsp curry powder or a little less (I like mine extra curry-y)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
    +1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
red pepper flakes

salt
freshly ground pepper
optional - flat-leaf parsley, chopped
optional - 2 hard boiled eggs, roughly chopped

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F. Peel the potatoes and cube into 1/2 inch pieces. Slice the carrots to similar size. Toss in a bowl with a couple glugs of olive oil and salt. Pour into a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet. Roast for 20 minutes, turning over halfway through cook time. You want your vegetables fork-tender but not mushy.

While your veggies are cooking, prepare the rest of the salad. Pour your 1/2 cup frozen peas into a strainer and run cool water over them; set aside to finish thawing. Chop your onion.

For the dressing: whisk together the mayo, yogurt, 1 tbsp. lemon juice, a pinch of salt, a couple turns of pepper, and the curry powder together.

Once your veggies are out of the oven, let them cool in a dish for about ten minutes and then add the peas, onions, and pour the dressing on top. Add the roughly-chopped egg if you like it or want to include it. Toss, giving the potatoes a little mash now and then for added creaminess. Add the rest of the lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, and chopped fresh parsley. Let chill in the fridge for at least an hour before serving.

Serves 3-4 as a side dish.

I've been thinking that I should go on some sort of less-food-eating plan since lately I've noticed my pants have grown a bit tighter. I think it's due to summer malaise. I go to the gym but I lounge and snack the rest of the time, and I either have to go to the gym more or I have to eat less. Or buy bigger pants?

However, I ate the most delicious breakfast this morning and it is hard knowing that I can only have it on a very rare occasion. Breakfast samosas at Whole Foods! Imagine flaky buttery slightly spicy samosa pastry filled with spiced potatoes, eggs, onions and peppers. The pillowy, fried deliciousness cannot be overstated. Mmmm breakfast!

Friday I decided to take a trip to Whole Foods, despite my (fairly faint) promise to try not to spend money that day. Oops... I ended up getting the following:

Fresh mozzarella bocconcini
A big bunch of gorgeous fresh basil
Beautiful local organic bing cherries
A loaf of challah (a sweet, eggy braided bread)
Fresh egg pasta

This is what I ended up making:

Caprese pasta salad with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, fresh basil, in a balsamic dressing

Challah french toast with bing cherry sauce and whipped cream

Challah bread pudding with hazelnut caramel sauce

Fresh egg pasta with prawns in white wine garlic sauce

Basil butter (for cooking/spreading on bread)

There are some delicious leftovers in the fridge. The bread pudding & caramel sauce turned out particularly well! I'll try to post recipes and pics in the next couple days.

This week I've been particularly lazy about breakfast eating, buying yogurt at the nearby convenience store and paying way more than you should pay for a cup of Yoplait. I've been trying to save money and thus have been cutting back on the amount of fresh fruit eating I normally consume, even though the raspberries have been calling my name when I step into the grocery store (raspberries are very seductive fruits). Today I decided to try something new - Del Monte Fruit Naturals Red Grapefruit cups (see picture). I really like fresh grapefruit. If you do the work and cut the sections out of the halved grapefruits, and chill them in the fridge, it's like the most amazing breakfast you can imagine. Cold, sweet, juicy, tart, mmm. My dad used to do that for me when I was little and whenever I eat it that way, it always reminds me of him.

The Del Monte Fruit Naturals cup is not a long way off that feeling. The grapefruit sections are floating in "extra light syrup" and the ingredients consist of grapefruit, water, high-fructose corn syrup, and preservatives, primarily. The most disappointing part is how sweet these are. They are reminiscent of real fresh grapefruit but have been sanitized for non-grapefruit lovers with all that damn corn syrup. The cup was more filling than I expected, but the fruit pieces alarmingly sweet. I could not even conceive of drinking the leftover juice the way I would have if this had been real, fresh, non-corn-syruped juice. All in all, it wasn't a bad breakfast - just 60 calories for the cup, and the pieces were big and retained the appropriate texture and look. Still, it made me pine for the real thing.

I spend a lot of money on groceries, way more than I should, because buying groceries doesn't really feel like spending money to me. Like, I need food, clearly, and I just presume that it's cheaper buying groceries than eating at restaurants. However, the way that I grocery shop is not very conducive to saving money.

I'm particularly bad at avoiding new, novel items. Ice cream, snacks, candy, and frozen foods tend to crop up on this list, and while I don't gorge myself on all those unhealthy items, they are expensive. And novelty items don't often lend themselves to being completely finished, because there's a good chance you won't like that Szechuan Barbeque rice chip that Pringles Select makes (note: I did like it). But I'm lucky to have a boy in the house that will also finish eating many of the less-weird items I purchase, but ice cream tends to sit in the freezer. I got lucky last time with the Snoqualmie Gourmet Frozen Lemon Custard; Casey has even bought more containers of it (he eats it with sliced bananas, and this raspberry-tea-honey concentrate that I bought in Japan, drizzled on top). When I was in Japan, I got to try a lot of novel candy items, Orange and Brandy Kit Kats (good, but not really like a kit kat); green tea Kit Kats; cassis, pineapple, and grape mentos; and those Onigiri Senbei crackers that I'm so addicted to.

There are some foods that are regulars on my snack list, and here are some of my favorites:

• Spicy Thai Kettle Chips are my absolute favorite chip in the universe. Its spicy-sweet-citrusy flavor packs a really delicious punch, and while it leaves your mouth with a slight burn, it's the burn that tells you you're alive.
• Snyder's of Hanover Pretzel Pieces in Honey Mustard & Onion are way better than the nibbler size. They are smaller and have more of the rough pretzel-inside on the outside, so the flavor is like WHAM instead of wee.
• Swedish Fish - red only - small fish size are a lot less sticky than the big size. And red is the best color, so, winner.
• Riesen are those chocolate caramels with dark chocolate on the outside and they are so delicious. And, considering that they can be found easily in most grocery stores and drug stores, they're freaking amazing.
• Haagen Daz Extra-Rich Light in Blueberry Cheesecake is better than any regular ice cream I've tried. It has swirls of blueberry sauce and chunks of graham cracker crust in a creamy cheesecake ice cream. Extra good if you let it melt a little.

So if you are feeling adventurous the next time you go to the grocery store, maybe grab a bag or container of something you've never tried before. It might end up being your next favorite!

Snack Resources:
Candy Blog
Heat-Eat-Review
Writers & Artists Snacking at Work

Mainly, food. Jen, A., and I have decided (most enthusiastically) to start making dinner a regular occurrence for us. Together, I mean. And to try new things, because we're, you know, urban sophisticates.

Best resources:
The Seattle Weekly 2007 Dining Guide It is invaluable. For serious, people.
The Stranger Seattle Restaurant Guide
The Seattle.com Restaurant Guide
Seattle BonVivant Blog
The Tasting Menu - Seattle
Urban Spoon Seattle
Your friends and coworkers. Only the trendy ones. (jk!)

So far on my list I have:
The Tamarind Tree
La Carta de Oaxaca
Brouwer's Cafe
Senor Moose
The Jolly Roger

I went to Crave with Tina/Ian/Casey and it was amazing, I'd love to go again.
And I always, always want Paseo. Always. Now. When I'm sleeping. When I'm eating something else. Always.

UPDATE: Not that anyone is going to read this a year later, but I did want to say that of these, we've tried the Tamarind Tree, now my favorite restaurant, we tried to try Oaxaca but were shut out by the crazy crowds; I've been to Brouwer's a couple times (not with J & A) and it's one of my favorite bars in Seattle. Great bar food and great beer, though a little on the pricey side.

I love yogurt. It's a great snack OR breakfast, and the BEST yogurt I've ever had was in Japan. They make good yogurt over there, seriously. I actually went hunting for some Japanese style yogurt, but apparently the demand is not particularly high because I didn't find any. So, I'm looking for something similar.

I don't know what it is about Japanese yogurt, except that it's fresh and mild, runny (the best yogurt is runny, for serious people - it means that it hasn't been thickened up with pectin, seaweed, or horse/other animal hooves, ie gelatin), it's the perfect combination of sour and sweet and it's not too heavy or fatty. It is one of the things I miss the most about Japan, and I am not lying. I DREAM about the yogurt.

Apparently their yogurt is essentially just a European-style yogurt (Bulgarian style is very popular there) and it's only been widely available in Japan for the past 30 years or so, and only recently become popular. I found this information odd as they clearly enjoy yogurt things - yogurt drinks are popular, and they even have a yogurt liqueur (Yogurito).

So far I haven't had much luck. A lot of organic yogurts (like Wallaby) are a little grainy, and I can't quite figure out why but it might be the kinds of sweetener they use or the milk base? Right now I'm working through a giant container of Straus European Style Whole-milk Vanilla. It is not bad but the vanilla is a little overwhelming, it's pleasantly runny, but maybe a little too sour.

The biggest problem with my hunt is that I actually have to finish the yogurt before I can move on and try something new. But, since I eat my yogurt with a plethora of fresh fruit, at least I won't be getting scurvy or bone loss anytime soon. Right?

I just ate some veggie lasagna and it's not even 10 in the morning yet. However, I took a small piece because all my coworkers were like, "yuck, lasagna in the morning," and I wanted some, so I just took a little. And now I want more, and feel like it would be weird to go back. But it was delicious, and maybe worth it.

UPDATE: I did it. It was worth it.

UPDATE: I also ate some at 11:49. I am calling it a snack, though it will probably end up being my lunch.