Seattle and several suburbs in the area offer yard/food waste collection along with trash and recycling. One pays for this service. The yard and food waste go to a composting company, which sells the former leaves and lettuce back to residents for a profit. Such a deal!
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/06/21/the-circle-of-compost-and-cash/
Jun 20
Saturday in Bellevue
Bellevue is the second largest city in King County after Seattle. The downtown area reminds us of Dallas, only with better weather. Conspicuous consumption is rampant. We had to return an item to the Sur La Table store, in a shopping center called the Bravern. A Ferrari and a Bentley were parked at the entrance. There’s a Neiman Marcus in the complex, completing the comparison to Dallas. We had a late lunch at Wild Ginger, one of our favorite Pan-Asian restaurants in the area. Their fragrant duck buns are to die for.
After our visit to the Bravern, we went over to Bellevue Square, which is only slightly less upscale. It has Nordstrom and a Tesla store. We noticed that the Sanrio shop, home of Hello Kitty, in the mall had closed. This signified three things to me: There is a god; She is merciful; and She also hates Hello Kitty.
The neighborhoods of Bellevue to the east of I-405 (aka the longest parking lot in western Washington) are a bit more diverse in their offerings. A branch of the southern fast food chain Chick-Fil-A just opened off Northeast 8th Street. The parking lot was packed when we went by. I’ll save my neighbors the trouble of standing on line: It’s just a fried chicken sandwich topped with pickles. You may now return to your normal teriyaki stand.
Our final destination was the Bellevue branch of Uwajimaya, a small chain of Japanese-Asian grocery stores. Their specialty is Asian groceries that most stores hereabouts don’t carry. You can find any variety of soy sauce, tofu, or rice there. Unfortunately, you can also find natto there. The most exotic things we bought at Uwajimaya today were duck gizzards for dirty rice and Japanese sweet potatoes.The latter have an interesting texture when baked, almost buttery before you top them with anything. I’ll probably serve them with lamb chops tomorrow.
Our usual haunts in Bellevue are not in the downtown area, with the exception of Facing East. This is a Taiwanese restaurant just north of Bellevue Square. A friend who was born in Taiwan has declared it the real deal. As it happens, his mother and the owner of Facing East were neighbors when they were younger. There’s always a line out the door. Their signature dish is pork belly buns topped with an interesting cucumber pickle. I’d take these over a fried chicken sandwich any day,
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/06/20/saturday-in-bellevue/
Jun 20
Seattle Summer Solstice
Happy Summer Solstice! In Seattle, that means one thing: The Fremont Solstice Fair and Parade.
Fremont is the polka-dotted sheep of Seattle neighborhoods and proud of it. Where else will you find a larger-than-life-sized statue of Vladimir Lenin, which gets strung with lights every Christmas? There’s also the Fremont Troll, clutching a VW Beetle underneath a bridge. The Solstice Parade is an extension of this eccentricity. There are several rules for the Parade:
All floats are human-powered.
No written signs.
No corporate sponsorships (Lenin would not approve).
Put some spare change in the baskets that are passed around during the parade, as the collection benefits non-profit organizations in the area.
The “highlight” of the Fremont Solstice Parade is the armada of over 1,000 naked bicyclists. They’re body-painted and otherwise decorated, so it’s not meant to be a lewd display. In the early years of the parade, Seattle Police would arrest the naked bicyclists. Currently there’s a truce (there aren’t enough police vans to arrest them all), as long as the bicyclists behave themselves. The photo below was taken two years ago, when our friend Bruce lived near Ground Zero of the parade route.
Bicyclists at the Fremont Solstice Parade, replenishing their vitamin D stores after a long winter.
The guy in the vest was the self-appointed traffic cop for the parade.
In addition to the Parade, the Fremont Solstice Fair includes an art car show, concerts, and assorted arts and crafts vendors. In a city that seems to have a neighborhood street fair every weekend, Fremont’s is undoubtedly the biggest and one of the best organized. Not bad for a neighborhood that features statues of Lenin and a troll.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/06/20/seattle-summer-solstice/
Jun 19
Final Stop
The last two days of our trip were spent in Lyon, the third largest city in France. Unlike the bastides, the architecture of Lyon dates to the Renaissance and later. Unlike in Paris, more modern skyscrapers have encroached closer to the center city. However, it’s a vary charming town. We stayed in a hotel on the Presqu’île, between the Rhône and Saône rivers.
Two large churches of differing vintages dominate the skyline of Lyon. The Cathedral of St. Jean is close to the riverfront. On the hill above St. Jean is the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourvière, which dates from the late 1800’s. The latter is extremely ornate, with gold-leaf mosaics decorating the sanctuary. Some of the mosaics depict more recent Catholic Church history, including Joan of Arc and the declaration by Pope Pius I of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The view of the city from the hill is stunning. When we first visited Lyon in 1991,we climbed the hill via The Way of the Cross trail. This year we took pity on our knees and took the funicular. The markers that once marked each point on The Way of the Cross have since been located to the plaza in front of the church. Another new site since our last visit is a statue of Pope St. John Paul II, which commemorates his visit to the Basilica in 1996.
St. Jean is in the foreground, Notre Dame de Fourviere is atop the hill.
Lyon is generally recognized as the gastronomic capital of France. On Sunday morning we wandered through a riverfront market. The quality and variety of produce were astounding. Julian pulled me aside at one point and said, “I’m depressed. Tomorrow we go home to Safeway.”
Produce vendor at the Lyon riverfront market.
That night we had dinner at a restaurant owned by Paul Bocuse, Le Sud (The South). Bocuse is one main reason that Lyon has its culinary reputation. Unfortunately, we were not enamored of Le Sud. The food was good, but not transcendent. We enjoyed meals in Paris, St. Cirq-Lapopie, and Cordes more and paid less for the privileges.
Next time we go to Lyon we’ll spend more than two days there. Perhaps we’ll rent an apartment and cook with goodies from the market. In the interim, we’ll have to make do with Pike Place Market and the fruit stand around the corner.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/06/19/final-stop/
Jun 19
To the Bastides, Parte Deux
Bastide #5 was Cordes-Sur-Ciel. As with the other towns we visited, tourism is the main industry. The city was much more touristy than the other bastides. However, our accommodations here were probably the best of those outside Paris. We stayed at a delightful bed and breakfast called Le Secret du Chat. Alain and Marie are excellent hosts. Not only are they good cooks, they have a garden (the secret) that overlooks the valley. Our breakfast companions were a lively mix of French, Irish, Swiss, and Polish people. We also had a very pleasant home-cooked dinner with Alain and Marie. Unfortunately, we missed the Cordes Cookbook Festival, which was scheduled for the week after we left. (Zut alors!)
Our B&B in Cordes-sur-Ciel.
Our final town on this stretch of the trip was Albi. It doesn’t qualify as a bastide, although there are some nearby. It’s famous for two landmarks, the Cathedral of Sainte-Cecile (St. Cecilia) and the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum. Sainte-Cecile is the largest brick cathedral in the world. Parts of it are under renovation, but the parts that have been renovated are stunning. The ceilings are painted with the saints, and the altar table is a marble and mosaic masterpiece. Toulouse-Lautrec was from Albi, and the museum holds a large collection of his works, from his childhood doodles inside a French-Latin dictionary to paintings to the posters for which he’s best known. Another landmark for us was the Marché Couvert, an assortment of bakeries, butchers, and fish shops.
If you want to visit the bastides for yourself, you will need a car. Most of these villages don’t have rail service. (The tourist choo-choo trains don’t count.) You also need a bit of daring (and a strong undercarriage on your car) to negotiate some of the roads leading to the bastides. Make hotel reservations well in advance of your trip, as accommodations are limited. Most of the bastides can be done in a day, so you can set up in Beynac (for example) and visit Domme, Roque-Gageac, and other bastides on the Dordogne from there. Cordes and Albi are near each other, so you can set up in either town. St. Cirq-Lapopie is pretty isolated from the others, and we would argue that it deserves two days.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/06/19/to-the-bastides-parte-deux/
Jun 17
To The Bastides!
We visited several hilltop villages in southern France called bastides. The peasants could retreat behind their walls when under attack during the Hundred Years’ War. The walls have crumbled, but the towns have survived.
Accessing these towns is not easy for modern tourists, even though nobody’s pouring boiling oil on you from the ramparts. The roads up to them are narrow and don’t accommodate small cars well, let alone tour buses. Our map app sent us on wild routes through countryside and tiny villages. The destinations, fortunately, are well worth the hassles.
The first bastide we visited was Domme (pronounced dumb). This is an adorable town that overlooks the Dordogne. Our hotel, L’Esplanade, was near the church and town square. The specialties of the region are foie gras, truffles, strawberries, and walnuts. We had dinner at the hotel, which was superb. Julian had the foie gras, while I had shrimp. The walnut bread served on the side was wonderful, a pain de campagne (country bread) rather than a heavy non-yeasted loaf. We had breakfast at a little pâtisserie in town that served interesting jams with the croissants and breads–rhubarb and peach-walnut.
The Hotel Esplanade in Domme.
We stopped at two other bastides on the way to our next hotel in St Cirq-Lapopie. The towns of La Roque-Gageac and Beynac are right on the Dordogne, but the chateaus and ramparts are on cliffs above the river. The views were spectacular. Parts of Beynac are excavated into the cliffs, and those areas are currently being reinforced using more modern construction techniques.
Beynac.
St. Cirq-Lapopie is another clifftop town with stellar views and amazing medieval architecture. Its patron saint is the youngest person canonized in the early Christian era–at age three years, according to the church literature. To get to this town, the map app directed us over a one-lane bridge that barely accommodated our rental Peugeot. (Needless to say, the tour buses take an alternate route up the hill.) The town suddenly got very crowded about 10 am with French, German, and British tourists. There are only 18 hotel rooms and a few rental apartments in St. Cirq-Lapopie, so the bus tourists have to stay elsewhere. As a result, the town gets quiet around 6 pm. On our last night we had the terrace of a restaurant to ourselves and had a splendid meal. Julian found this the most interesting village to photograph.
St. Cirq-Lapopie
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/06/17/to-the-bastides/
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Jun 15
Words from the Wiseacres
The trains in Europe are great. However, they don’t serve some of the smallest towns in France. To visit those, you’ll need to rent a car. We’ve rented cars to travel around Europe twice, and here is our collective wisdom:
Rent the smallest model that will fit you, your traveling companions, and your luggage. If necessary, downsize your luggage to fit a smaller car. Our Peugeot 308 just barely fit on a one-lane bridge, and we needed to worry about its size for parking spaces.
Most rental cars in Europe are manual transmission. You can find automatic transmission cars, but prepare to pay more to rent them.
Rent a diesel car. The mileage is better, and diesel or gasoil is cheaper than gasoline in Europe.
Download a map application for your cell phone that can work offline. This will be helpful in the hinterlands, and will reduce your need for excess data plan for your cell phone. Those megabytes add up fast.
Learn to think in metric. Distances are in kilometers instead of miles, and fuel is sold in liters rather than gallons. One kilometer (km) is 0.6 miles, so 10 km is about 6 miles. One gallon is 3.8 liters. So if you buy gas at 1.40 Euros per liter, that’s 5.32 Euros per gallon. A 50-liter tank of gas (just over 13 gallons) will set you back 70 Euros. Consider the cost of gas carefully when you think about renting a car.
Also consider the cost of tolls. France’s autoroutes are highly tolled. The drive from Montpellier to Lyon (about 300 km/180 miles) set us back over 20 Euros.
Although renting a car in Europe is not cheap, it will allow you more flexibility in your travel times and destinations. It also gets you away from the tourist traps and into the countryside.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/06/15/words-from-the-wiseacres/
Jun 13
More on Rest Stops: The Millau Viaduct
“Why a duck? Why a no chicken?” (Chico Marx, The Cocoanuts)
The Millau Viaduct is the highest bridge in the world, and the tallest structure of any kind in France. It opened for traffic in 2005. It’s an amazing bit of engineering and good-looking to boot.
The Millau Viaduct, courtesy of Julian.
We had lunch at the rest stop/visitors’ center just north of the viaduct on our way to Lyon. The restaurant had an interesting wrap-type option called Capucins, based on the headdresses Capucin monks wore. A thick pancake batter is scooped into a mold and is baked in the shape of a cone. The cone is then filled with meat or other fillings. I got a Roquefort Capucin with lettuce, walnuts, and pear chutney. Julian got a roast beef one. We augmented the Capucins with gazpacho. Julian said in the southern US Capucins would be named after other conical headdresses: Ku Klux Kones.
Just a typical lunch on the road in southern France.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/06/13/more-on-rest-stops-the-millau-viaduct/
Jun 13
Feeding Between the Lines, part two
We’re attending a birthday party tonight for our friend who is intolerant of onions, garlic, and the like. As you may know from my original post of this title, our friends have a plethora of allergies, intolerances, and aversions. My philosophy is to make something that the maximum amount of people can eat. So I made a beet salad with a simple vinaigrette: olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, black pepper, and a little dried oregano. I’ll put a little fresh oregano on top of the salad before we go tonight. We’re also making our famous mint sauce for the barbecued lamb that our host is making. Fresh mint, red wine vinegar, and a little sugar; it doesn’t get any easier.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/06/13/feeding-between-the-lines-part-two/
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