one of the hardest things for me about traveling with three small children is not being able to go out to restaurants. on our recent trip to spain there were so many cool restaurants i wanted to go to, but couldn’t. i suppose that’s technically not true. we could have gone to restaurants. but the probability of misery at restaurants is high, especially when the hours are funky, the focus is on quality not speed, and the children are already on the cranky side from spending the entire day being culturally enriched at museums, cathedrals, and the like.
however, as most of you know from pat’s blog we still managed to try some spanish gastronomic delights. this somewhat, though not completely, made up for eating more oscar meyer hot dogs in five days than we had in the past two years. we bought a few (perhaps i use that term a tad loosely, haha) cheeses, some chocolates, world class ham and….drumroll…polvorons.
these cookies, which are a traditional spanish christmas cookie, were divine! the flavor was fairly mild, though rich, and the texture was quite crumbly. a bit like a shortbread cookie, only much more tender. the cookies practically melt in your mouth without really having to chew. so dangerous! they are made primarily with lard, sugar, eggs, and some sort of ground up nut. i’m not sure if it’s almonds or hazlenuts. the word on the ingredient list was ametlla torrada, which i can’t find a translation for. but from doing an internet search on polvorons i’m guessing it must be one of the nuts i mentioned.
i need to experiment a bit and try to make my own. i think this russian tea cake recipe will be a good starting point, though sadly it will probably be a while before i get the energy to try it. perhaps next christmas.
Does anyone else follow the Orangette blog? if so, i apologize for the repetition. anyway, i love it. i love it so much that when we move back to seattle i might be in danger of becoming a molly stalker. and it will be so much easier now that she and her husband are opening up a restaurant in ballard! think me and my three rugrats can stealthily hang about the restuaruant every day, all sydney bristow-like, without anyone noticing? no? must come up with another plan.
at any rate, how cool is that? you all must go when it opens, take pictures, and tell me how it is so that i can live vicariously through you!
Before going to PA for Thanksgiving Eve, Sara, Amy (oh and Sara’s friend Karin) went to see “Twilight” the movie. It was what it was – definitely much better than my expectations. I just watched it again this weekend with my mom and I liked it even better the second time around. I think it helped to have moved beyond not accepting that the casting didn’t live up to my mind’s eye of the book characters. I really liked the style of the filming and the color palette. They definitely weren’t going for a Disney-like full color quality. Of course they adjusted the plot points a bit but overall they stayed surprisingly close to the book. Robert Pattinson, as Edward, was in fact pretty yummy but we caught a couple minutes of of him as Cedric in “The Goblet of Fire” on tv last night and he looks much better w/out white face paint and lipstick. Too bad he dies in that one.
The baseball scene turned out really cool and the end credits really rocked. Those were my favorite parts. Sadly none of it was actually filmed in Forks or PA. Which was a bummer. Forks the movie town was a cute little borough, definitely wet, but still cute which isn’t the real Forks, and the high school was this classic multi-story number you’d see, well I don’t know where you’d see it but not in Forks. My mom even started laughing at that first shot of the school (and so did Amy and I the first time around). The brief scene in PA wasn’t at all like PA either.
Our PA (the REAL place) Thanksgiving was great as usual. 17 people counting Mr. Jonah-cakes who enjoyed his cauliflower and cheerios.
Bella Italia: The sign lets you know about Bella & Edward
On Saturday Slanky and I ditched the kid and went out to dinner and a movie. We decided to try Bella Italia because we’ve never been there. You “Twilight” fans will note its reference in the book. We told ourselves we definitely weren’t going there because of the book but I think we were a little curious as to how much they’d play it up. The Peninsula in general has benefited a lot from the Meyer-mania. You can read about that here. My mom told us that there were some block-wide celebrations happening at all the businesses down town next to the theater showing “Twilight” when it first opened and we saw this display at a clothing store a couple storefronts down from Bella Italia.
Vampire-like clothes? Not sure. The apples in the display are a nice touch.
Apple in display
Dinner at Bella Italia far exceeded our expectations (Is this starting to sound familiar? I think at this point I should just stop having expectations because I’ve been wrong so many times lately!). We started with a calamari appi (sautéed with olives, artichokes, tomatoes & roasted garlic on polenta) and it was perfect. The sauce was good, calamari was fresh and cooked well, the artichokes worked surprisingly well and the olives and garlic didn’t overpower anything. We wiped down the plate with our leftover bread. It was that good. We also shared a small Caesar salad and the croutons were house-made – crunchy on the outside with a little bit of buttery chewiness on the inside, totally good. Slanky had a mushroom ravioli (which I pointed out to him, was what “Bella” had, he didn’t remember) and I had a smoked salmon fettuccini. I think Slanky enjoyed his and mine was great too. I’ve had better versions of this dish in the past (my personal preference is with no tomatoes but this version had them) but this was nothing to complain about. The salmon was locally smoked and delicious and they did not skimp on it. The dish was so big that I took half of it home. We had a good white wine but I can’t remember what that was. Later we headed to the movie. We saw “Quantum of Solace” which sucked. I could say more about that but I won’t. In hindsight I should have forced Slanky to see “Twilight” instead.
so, my mom is coming for a month long visit, arriving on thursday. i am quite excited, but one of our headaches with parental visits (both sets) is coffee grounds. how is it that they seem to make a giant mess more often than not? is this a general coffee drinker problem, or just a parental problem? anyway, to get to the point, pat and i are contemplating getting a nespresso machine so we can hopefully bypass coffee grounds altogether. they have a few regular coffee flavors in addition to the espresso flavors. and as an added bonus we could theoretically invite people over for coffee and actually have coffee to serve. imagine that! as most of you are aware, neither of us knows the first thing about coffee. so are hoping we could get some nespresso opinions, input and advice. please feel free to comment (as you always should) even if you did not attend PLU or don’t have a spouse/partner that attended PLU.
We just got back on Tuesday from a trip to PA. Having a baby has definitely changed our style of vacationing! The Peninsula seems so much further than it ever used to feel. Ok, perhaps that’s because we need to pack like we’re wintering in Juno but anyway… I digress.
We had a lovely time seeing the Wendels out at the lake even though the weather wasn’t as sunny as we’d hoped it would be. Slanky went skiing but I only touched the water to confirm there was no way I was getting in.
We also did a little hanging out with the family. My mom and grandma’s house sits on a couple acres of wooded land and so I returned to a favorite childhood hobby of mine-foraging. Naturally, in the city it’s a little hard to find great berry patches but out there was a gold mine. My mom and I took a little trip around the property and we found black caps (zillions of bushes, most weren’t ripe yet), huckleberries (which she kept referring to as currants), black berries and salmon berries (elusive, usually those are better found deeper in wooded areas or at least around taller trees than where we were). I also saw one thimble berry bush but none of the berries were ripe yet. Here’s our bounty after just a little while.
My mom was very impressive. She’d tromp through a bunch of sticker bushes just to get at a few ripe berries. On our way back Slanky and Mr J met up with us and got to pick a few berries too.
It was only berry picking but something about it, something I can’t quite put into words, made me really happy and perhaps a little sad in some small way. I felt pretty nostalgic as we were winding around in the wooded areas… an activity that I took for granted in my early childhood and it isn’t something that my children will really get to experience the way I did. Ok, enough with the heavy stuff.
We got the berries back to the house and experimented with making a pie out of them. It mostly tasted like blackberry but it was still a fun experiment. I think I’d like to try just salmon berries or just black caps. We had leftover dough so we decided to make a turnover with some strawberries that were grown by my grandma’s friend. My mom and Grandma were skeptical but allowed me to experiment so I made a balsamic strawberry one. I used about a tablespoon of vinegar and you could just taste a hint. I’d use more next time to bring out the flavor.
Anyway. It was a satisfying result to tromping in the woods with my mom. I’m thinking about persuading her to bring more black caps with her next time she comes but I know her adventures wouldn’t be as fun solo. But damn, those berries were good!
I’m just now getting to this.. It’s been a busy week. Anyway. The pie-off went really well! Let’s see if I can remember all of the pies that were there. I brought a hideous looking smoked salmon cheesecake, David brought a very tasty broccoli pie, Amy brought a very labor intensive (and so worth it!) risotto pie, Bethany made a cottage pie and a banana cream pie, Jenny made a strawberry pie (which was her first American pie – great job!), Eve made a bumbleberry pie and Melissa brought a pumpkin per Mel’s request and a german chocolate pie. Oh, and last but not least, Jay brought a blackberry pie. The hostess kind. Amy I missing any? We ate like kings, if I do say so myself. Bethany even had the neat idea of making mixed drinks that were pie inspired and she even had some recipes but I think everyone was just too full to fit anything else in!
Now I’m trying to think of another themed dinner. Any ideas? All recipes from our mothers? All slow cooker foods?
More photos of our pie fun can be found here.
We (here in Seattle) have hatched a plan for an all pie meal that’s going to be happening on Sunday. Am I a total nerd for being excited about this? I can’t wait to see what people bring and I’ve been totally obsessed looking for recipes for savory pies. There are so many options, it’s hard to narrow it down. Nothing so far has jumped out to me as the perfect savory pie but I’m hoping to find a good one especially since this is supposed to be a whole pie meal. For my first attempt at this I figure I probably shouldn’t just make something up. A few people are doing sweet pies so it’ll be a whole meal!
On Tuesday I ate a mushroom. I didn’t mean to, it just kind of happened. Slanky and I had grilled some leftovers from the weekend skewers (which had some mushrooms for the non-haters at the bbq) and there was a grilled one that looked just like the beef and I popped it off and ate it before I realized it wasn’t meat. It definitely didn’t taste like anything except the marinade and the texture was a little lighter than meat but overall it didn’t kill me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I can now eat mushrooms because when I actually put thought into the prospect it still makes my stomach turn. However, I didn’t vomit after realizing my mistake so perhaps there’s hope for me yet. At this rate I should be able to eat them with wild abandon by the time I am 80.
seriously? apparently there is no escape. ARGH!!! how incredibly frustrating. we don’t eat a lot of canned foods, but do occasionally have tuna (which has already got the mercury going for it), and frequently use canned beans and canned tomatoes. what the heck can you possibly use instead of canned tomatoes???!!! i suppose i could get serious and start canning myself, but come on. i don’t see that happening.
unbelievable.
*sigh*
okay you guys, this is an amazing cookbook, everyone needs to look at it! sorry i can’t do a direct link to it right now, but i’m on a macbook without a mouse and for some reason wordpress won’t let me cut and paste website links without a mouse. GRRR!
so i haven’t actually gotten a chance too cook anything from it, as i just got it and we are still in alaska at pat’s parents house. BUT–i had to post about it even so because i’m so excited about it! it looks awesome. i’m sure some of you have heard about it on NPR? maybe? maybe not? at any rate, i have read it back to front. it’s definitely much more than recipes. there are fun cooking tidbits and stories and trivia as well as cooking tips.
and for you vegetarians out there–this is not a veggie book, BUT i’d say at least 70% of the recipes are vegetarian, so it would be totally worth it for you too.
oh, and a little shout out for eve-i read this bit about salt and immediately thought of you! “When To Salt: salt when you begin to cook, and you win on two counts. if you salt the meat or onions at the start of a saute, or salt the vegetables or the fish as they go into the oven for roasting, you use less salt in the end and BUILD DEEPER FLAVORS. With onions, for instance, salting at the very beginning of a saute speeds up browning. the salt encourages the onions to give off their liquid. Among other things, that liquid contains sugars which encourage browning, so the saute goes faster. At the same time, the salt infiltrates the onion, which makes it taste better. Talk about a win-win situation.”
will try and report back as i actually begin cooking these recipes.