Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/03/12/default-dinners/

Mar 12

Another Not-for-the-Better Change

Last Sunday we were on our usual caffeine run in downtown Seattle. Once we got Julian’s fix of choice at Caffe d’Arte, we were going to swing by the Penzey’s store around the corner and pick up a couple of things. QUELLE HORREUR!!! The store closed January 10th! Most of the spices and dried herbs in our kitchen come from Penzey’s. We do have other spice shops in/near Pike Place Market. I can’t go into Market Spice because the stench of their most popular tea (think Bigelow’s Constant Comment on steroids) gives me a migraine. World Spice is a block up from the Spanish Table. It has a wide selection that turns over quickly, as many of the restaurants in town buy from it.

I guess I’ll have to go back to ordering my Penzey’s supplies online; failing that, we can visit one of their stores in the greater Portland area.  (Hey, any excuse to go to Powell’s Books and Pok Pok.)

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/03/12/another-not-for-the-better-change/

Mar 02

I Am a Cuminist

No, I didn’t spell it wrong. Cumin is one of my favorite spices. It plays major roles in Mexican, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian, and other Asian cuisines. It’s the major undertone in chili powder and curry powder. Some recipes allow cumin to take the starring role.

Tonight I made a lamb chop recipe that required me to toast and grind equal amounts of cumin and coriander. Loin lamb chops were crusted with this spice mix, browned on top of the stove, and finished off in the oven. The aroma of cumin hung heavily in the air. Julian came up for dinner and declared, “You are a cuminist.” Fortunately, this will not get me drummed out of town.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/03/02/i-am-a-cuminist/

Feb 27

Home Sweet Home

Casa Sammamish is ours (and the bank’s)! We closed yesterday, after signing all the papers on Thursday. Two hours later we were at the Homeowners’ Association annual meeting. We’d met several of our neighbors through the effort to keep the golf course from getting developed. Tomorrow night we’re having our former landlords over for dinner, to celebrate the peaceful passage of title.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/02/27/home-sweet-home/

Feb 27

For the Birds

We started feeding backyard birds over 20 years ago as a way to keep our strictly-indoor cats entertained. The original name of the bird feeder was Phoebe’s Phly-In Caphé, in honor of our first Russian Blue cat. The feeders gave Phoebe and her brothers (Roscoe, followed by Jasper, followed by Luka) hours of tail-wagging and chirping at the birds and squirrels. Neli has taken over Phoebe’s place in birdwatching.

Phoebe, the original Tsarina and birdwatcher of our home.

Phoebe, the original birdwatcher of our home.

The birds we have here in Bothell are more diverse than what we had in Dallas, Greensboro, or even in Seattle. For one thing, we don’t have cardinals. We have a subspecies of chickadees called chestnut-backed chickadees. We have a species of hummingbird that winters here rather than flying south. And then we have our friendly neighborhood bald eagles. One could say that we feed them indirectly, although they seem to be more interested in the carp in the river.

In search of dinner.

In search of dinner.

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/02/27/for-the-birds/

Feb 21

Bird Food

Here’s another post from my friend, Michele. I’ll add our take on feeding birds afterward.

My grandmother, of blessed memory, lived for most of the years I knew her in the two-family house where my mother and her brothers grew up. The Friedman family had the second floor, with living room windows that looked out over the roof of the porch and then to the street. Every morning my grandmother would wet some bread in water, open a living room window, and put the wet bread out on the roof for the birds. As far as I knew and as far as I remember, she’d been feeding the birds this way for as long as she’d lived in this house: 40 or 50 years by that point, I imagine.

When I was a kid, my mother used to leave the uneaten bits of our sandwiches (PB&J crusts, anyone?) and other odd bits of leftover bread out on the kitchen counter to get stale. Then she’d add them to already frozen plastic bread loaf bags with prior stale bread. When we went to the zoo, we would take these bags of “ooz food” with us to feed the animals. Eventually, the zoo outlawed the practice of feeding the animals, although I have no memory of what my mother did with leftover crusts.

We keep a bird feeder outside the dining room’s plate glass window, generally filled with mixed birdseed and sunflower seeds. Dubbed the “TweetStreet Diner,” the feeder provides hours of entertainment for our cats (especially Prospero, the smallest and the best hunter). TweetStreet customers entertain us as well: I keep the Birds of New York Field Guide (second edition) nearby and we’ve learned to identify a number of regular and occasional customers.

Recently, I had an aging loaf of bread in the drawer, so I set it out to grow stale before it could mold. A few days later, I broke the bread pieces and spread them below the birdfeeder. Squirrels and birds had a feast, and that simple act of tossing the stale bread brought old, good memories—of my grandmother Sarah and my mother’s ooz food—flooding back.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/02/21/bird-food/

Feb 21

Feeding Between the Lines, Birthday Edition

The matriarch of our Friday night crew celebrated her 93rd birthday this weekend. This is a big deal, and rightly so. Family members flew in from Ohio and Maryland, including her first great-grandchild. I was assigned an appetizer, so I made chopped chicken liver. This is my first foray into making chopped liver, although we’ve had it from Whole Foods in the past at Passover and Rosh Hashanah. As I’ve mentioned before, one of our friends has an intolerance to onions, garlic, and other alliums. This required some serious adjustment, since most chopped liver recipes contain lots of onion.

My base recipe was from Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking in America. Jewish dietary law forbids consumption of blood, so most chopped liver recipes require the cook to broil the livers on a rack to get rid of the blood. This one didn’t, for some reason (must be a Reform recipe). I chopped up some green bell pepper, celery, and cremini mushrooms for the onion-free bowl. I left out the mushrooms for the onion-full bowl. Both bowls also had fresh thyme from my plant, salt, pepper, and hard-boiled eggs. After the vegetables are sautéed, you add the livers to the pan and cook them until they’re not bleeding. Once the livers were done, I deglazed the pan with a little sherry vinegar. Then the livers and vegetables go into a food processor with the hard-boiled eggs. Just pulse a few times so the mixture remains a little chunky. Add salt and pepper to taste and chill. I cooked and processed the onion-free recipe first, so I wouldn’t cross-contaminate it with onions.

Both recipes were hits. The onion-free recipe needed a little more salt to our palate, but the onion-full bowl was very well-received, especially by the guest of honor. I daresay this success means I’ll be called on to repeat this recipe at the next mixed-household Seder.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/02/21/feeding-between-the-lines-birthday-edition/

Feb 21

Mid-February Haikus

On Wednesday I commuted by bus. You would think that a non-rainy day would mean a less clogged commute. You would think wrong. So out came the pad of paper for a few haikus.

Another gridlock.
Even express lanes are slammed
On Interstate 5.

An off-leash dog park
Halfway up Capitol Hill.
Never noticed it.

Leave home when it’s dark.
Get home, and it’s dark again.
Seattle winter.

Today on the drive home I heard that the rainfall this winter set a record.

Yo, El Niño!
Reservoirs are full.
Snowpack is above normal.
Now can the rain stop?

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/02/21/mid-february-haikus/

Feb 20

Sunny Saturday Morning

As I mentioned in the last post, it’s been a record-setting winter for rain hereabouts. So when I saw the Sun out this morning and there was no frost on the golf course, I decided it was high time to get on the bike.

Usually my first ride of the season is the relatively flat route to Redmond via the Sammamish River Trail. Instead, I took a shorter ride to Lake Forest Park and back on the Burke-Gilman Trail. This direction has two advantages: I can visit the stores in the Lake Forest Park shopping center, and I get a good view of Lake Washington at Log Boom Park. An additional, albeit temporary, advantage is that 68th Avenue across the trail is closed. Lots of other bicyclists, walkers, and joggers had the same idea as I did this morning. The bald eagles were observing the action from their perches above the trail, no doubt looking for a Yorkshire terrier to carry off for lunch.

Today’s mission, in addition to getting me out of the house and onto the bike, involved searching for non-frozen chicken livers. Since many grocery stores don’t sell many of them, it’s hard to find packages that aren’t in the freezer case. Fortunately, the Haggen in Lake Forest Park had them. I also picked up some onions and mushrooms. The fate of these ingredients will be disclosed in the next post.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/02/20/sunny-saturday-morning/

Feb 13

The Columbia City Crawl

To get Julian out of the house, we took a road trip to Columbia City today. This neighborhood is where all of the various ethnic groups in Seattle mash together. It’s rapidly gentrifying, but it still has an African-American vibe. Julian’s mother spent her last years in a nursing home in Seward Park, to the south of Columbia City. Since Betty died, we haven’t gotten down there very much.

We started out by having lunch at Island Soul, a Caribbean restaurant that has a diverse clientele. Julian, aka Miami Boy, introduced me to the joys of Caribbean cuisine. Island Soul does it right, even if we’re in non-tropical Seattle.We ordered the Soul Bowl, a sampler of jerk chicken, oxtail stew, curried goat, rice and peas, and collard greens. The serving utensil was actually a large platter, with smaller bowls set on top. Fried ripe plantain slices garnished the platter between the bowls.  I also had a glass of its sorrel, a hibiscus-based drink with cinnamon and clove. (Think Red Zinger tea, only better.)

After lunch, we walked across the street to Green Eileen, an offshoot of Eileen Fisher that sells gently used clothing. In addition to Seattle, Green Eileen has a store in Yonkers, NY. The profits of the store go to charities that serve women and girls. I found a boiled wool jacket for a very reasonable price, along with two tops and a skirt. Much of Eileen Fisher’s clothing is too unconstructed for my tastes, but I managed to find items that work with the rest of my wardrobe.

The next stop was Bob’s Meats, where we got some veal scaloppine for tomorrow night’s dinner. The veal was pretty red, so I doubt it was from calves raised under normal veal conditions (confined to a small crate). We went to Mutual Fish to look for tonights’s dinner, but nothing called out to us. Therefore, we drove up to the International District and went shopping at the Uwajimaya flagship store in the International District. Our alternate term for this Asian supermarket is Oohwhatjabuyme. The store sells nearly every foodstuff you need for Asian cooking. You can also find kitchen utensils and a wide variety of rice cookers with neurofuzzy logic. (What does this mean? Damned if I know…) The bookstore sells cookbooks, and there’s a food court with most Asian cuisines represented. The Uwajimaya building has apartments above the grocery. Even though those apartments would be closer to work than our current digs, I would find that way too tempting. It would be like an alcoholic in recovery living above a tavern.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/02/13/the-columbia-city-crawl/

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