Saturday, November 03, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Mushrooms!
There's a great article in today's Seattle P-I about Jeremy Faber of Foraged and Found Edibles. Some of you may remember he is the one who helped supply me with mushrooms for our Harvest Dinner a month or so ago. If you get a chance, make sure to stop by their stall at the University and Ballard Farmers Markets and pick up some tasty treats.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
It's been too long
I know it's been forever since I last posted, it's been quite a busy summer. This year we decided to grow more of our own vegetables than we had in previous years. This included 15 different tomato plants, bok choy, rainbow chard, cippollini onions, leeks, red peppers, sorrel, strawberries, blueberries, basil, thyme, and I'm sure I'm missing something else. It was pretty great being able to just go into the backyard and pick what we were going to eat for dinner that night.
But the weather this summer was kind of weird so a lot of our tomatoes didn't start coming in until the end of the summer and the bok choy was done pretty much right away. Our only consistent crop was the rainbow chard that kept on giving all summer and is still producing even today. Our strawberries were a pretty big disappointment, I think we only got to eat 3 or 4 of them the entire summer. I'm sure the squirrels got away with a few more than that, but not many.
We've actually done a pretty good job procuring most of our produce, fish, and meat from the farmers markets this year. It wouldn't be uncommon for me to visit three different markets over the course of the week. There's something pretty fun about trying to figure out what you're going to make for dinner based on what's fresh at the time. "Looks like asparagus is almost done, but look at the beets!"
I've been getting getting a bunch of meat over the past couple of years from Skagit River Ranch up in the Skagit Valley. I think the aha moment happened a couple of months ago when I had made a pork shoulder roast. We were sitting down eating it and I had noticed Kristen had nothing left on her plate while I had trimmed off the pieces of fat. When I asked her about it she said, "I don't think my piece had any fat." Being pork shoulder I knew there was fat all over that thing so maybe she just didn't notice. So I decided to sample a bit of the fat with my next bite and it was a revelation. It just melted in my mouth like the most beautiful butter you had ever tasted. Normally with the fat from factory farmed pigs it would either be chewy or leave a greasy film on the roof of your mouth. But not with this pork and that's when I knew I couldn't go back to factory farmed meat.
Harvest Moon
Tonight is the first night of the harvest moon, which is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. During this time the moon rises pretty close to when the sun sets which means there isn't a long period of darkness so farmers could continue to bring in their crops under the light of the moon.
To celebrate the ushering in of autumn and the harvest moon we decided to throw a little harvest moon feast at our house this past weekend. It was a great time with lots of great food and a whole lot of good friends. At first I was a bit overwhelmed because a lot more people were coming than I thought would. It's kind of like college admissions, where the school would accept a certain number of people know x% wouldn't accept the offer. While the idea of feeding so many people was daunting, I must say it was heartwarming knowing so many of our friends were willing to spend their Saturday night with us.
I had originally planned four courses, three of which I would do the bulk of the cooking. In order to make sure I got everything done on time I had a little notebook that I used to schedule my week and assign tasks for each day. I gotta say, coming up with that schedule save my butt because luckily I got everything done with minimal stress on the day of the dinner.
The first two courses were salads and starches and I tried to do as much of that in advance as I could. Two days before the dinner I rolled and cut the pasta as well as made the two different sauces. The day before I braised one of the proteins and made one of the salads and prepped the other's dressing. The morning/afternoon of the dinner I cooked mushrooms, made the last starch and made my mise en place for the rest of the night.
The night of the dinner went pretty smoothly and according to plan. First course was salads so all I had to do was bring the one prepped salad and the other prepped dressing up to room temp and grill the romaine prior to serving. The starch course just involved cooking the pasta I had made two days before and reheating the sauces. I also had to reheat the third starch dish I had made earlier that day.
The protein course was the most challenging because a lot of that had to be made a la minute. So while people were working on their starches I threw the snapper in the oven to roast. I then took the chicken out to the grill to cook but soon found out the coals had burned down too much so I had to cook them on the stovetop and finish in the oven. While I was doing that, I also needed to make my polenta, saute my kale, warm up the mushrooms, and fire my shortribs that had braised the night before. It sounds like a lot to do, and it was, but everything happened really quickly. When the chicken was ready to be finished in the oven, the snapper was ready to come out. That made it easy to put the chicken and shortribs in the oven while I plated the fish. On the stovetop the polenta cooked, while the kale sauteed, and the mushrooms reheated. The fish went out first with the kale while I plated the shortribs, chicken, and polenta. Then those two went out and I was done. Phew!
I left the last course, dessert, for our guests to supply and I was happy I did. People brought all sorts of wonderful crumbles and cakes and other sweet tasty treats. It was an exhausting but amazingly fun night and I can't wait to do it again.
Here is the menu of things we prepped:
Course 1
Potato, bacon, haricots verts served with a dijon and sherry vinagrette
Grilled romaine with roast garlic and asiago dressing
Course 2
Braised lamb ragu with hand cut pappardelle
Veggie ragu with homemade linguine
Farro with chard and chanterelle and lobster mushrooms
Course 3
Whole roast Alaskan wild red snapper (aka rockfish) with sauteed kale
Braised shortribs with creamy (and cheesy) polenta
Pan roasted chicken breasts with chanterelle mushrooms
But the weather this summer was kind of weird so a lot of our tomatoes didn't start coming in until the end of the summer and the bok choy was done pretty much right away. Our only consistent crop was the rainbow chard that kept on giving all summer and is still producing even today. Our strawberries were a pretty big disappointment, I think we only got to eat 3 or 4 of them the entire summer. I'm sure the squirrels got away with a few more than that, but not many.
We've actually done a pretty good job procuring most of our produce, fish, and meat from the farmers markets this year. It wouldn't be uncommon for me to visit three different markets over the course of the week. There's something pretty fun about trying to figure out what you're going to make for dinner based on what's fresh at the time. "Looks like asparagus is almost done, but look at the beets!"
I've been getting getting a bunch of meat over the past couple of years from Skagit River Ranch up in the Skagit Valley. I think the aha moment happened a couple of months ago when I had made a pork shoulder roast. We were sitting down eating it and I had noticed Kristen had nothing left on her plate while I had trimmed off the pieces of fat. When I asked her about it she said, "I don't think my piece had any fat." Being pork shoulder I knew there was fat all over that thing so maybe she just didn't notice. So I decided to sample a bit of the fat with my next bite and it was a revelation. It just melted in my mouth like the most beautiful butter you had ever tasted. Normally with the fat from factory farmed pigs it would either be chewy or leave a greasy film on the roof of your mouth. But not with this pork and that's when I knew I couldn't go back to factory farmed meat.
Harvest Moon
Tonight is the first night of the harvest moon, which is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. During this time the moon rises pretty close to when the sun sets which means there isn't a long period of darkness so farmers could continue to bring in their crops under the light of the moon.
To celebrate the ushering in of autumn and the harvest moon we decided to throw a little harvest moon feast at our house this past weekend. It was a great time with lots of great food and a whole lot of good friends. At first I was a bit overwhelmed because a lot more people were coming than I thought would. It's kind of like college admissions, where the school would accept a certain number of people know x% wouldn't accept the offer. While the idea of feeding so many people was daunting, I must say it was heartwarming knowing so many of our friends were willing to spend their Saturday night with us.
I had originally planned four courses, three of which I would do the bulk of the cooking. In order to make sure I got everything done on time I had a little notebook that I used to schedule my week and assign tasks for each day. I gotta say, coming up with that schedule save my butt because luckily I got everything done with minimal stress on the day of the dinner.
The first two courses were salads and starches and I tried to do as much of that in advance as I could. Two days before the dinner I rolled and cut the pasta as well as made the two different sauces. The day before I braised one of the proteins and made one of the salads and prepped the other's dressing. The morning/afternoon of the dinner I cooked mushrooms, made the last starch and made my mise en place for the rest of the night.
The night of the dinner went pretty smoothly and according to plan. First course was salads so all I had to do was bring the one prepped salad and the other prepped dressing up to room temp and grill the romaine prior to serving. The starch course just involved cooking the pasta I had made two days before and reheating the sauces. I also had to reheat the third starch dish I had made earlier that day.
The protein course was the most challenging because a lot of that had to be made a la minute. So while people were working on their starches I threw the snapper in the oven to roast. I then took the chicken out to the grill to cook but soon found out the coals had burned down too much so I had to cook them on the stovetop and finish in the oven. While I was doing that, I also needed to make my polenta, saute my kale, warm up the mushrooms, and fire my shortribs that had braised the night before. It sounds like a lot to do, and it was, but everything happened really quickly. When the chicken was ready to be finished in the oven, the snapper was ready to come out. That made it easy to put the chicken and shortribs in the oven while I plated the fish. On the stovetop the polenta cooked, while the kale sauteed, and the mushrooms reheated. The fish went out first with the kale while I plated the shortribs, chicken, and polenta. Then those two went out and I was done. Phew!
I left the last course, dessert, for our guests to supply and I was happy I did. People brought all sorts of wonderful crumbles and cakes and other sweet tasty treats. It was an exhausting but amazingly fun night and I can't wait to do it again.
Here is the menu of things we prepped:
Course 1
Potato, bacon, haricots verts served with a dijon and sherry vinagrette
Grilled romaine with roast garlic and asiago dressing
Course 2
Braised lamb ragu with hand cut pappardelle
Veggie ragu with homemade linguine
Farro with chard and chanterelle and lobster mushrooms
Course 3
Whole roast Alaskan wild red snapper (aka rockfish) with sauteed kale
Braised shortribs with creamy (and cheesy) polenta
Pan roasted chicken breasts with chanterelle mushrooms
Monday, April 16, 2007
Today in the news...
Such sad news today at Virginia Tech and I'm sure there will be more questions than answers in the days ahead. Today's events reminded me of a similar incident that occurred at my school when I was in college.
In 1996 at Johns Hopkins, Rex Chao was killed after being elected the President of the College Republicans. The shooter was his predecessor and former friend Bob Harwood. I heard the shot that night and the memory is still as clear as if it happened the other day. That evening I was on the phone with my sister in my dorm room that overlooked the beach, which is what we called the grassy area in front of the library. While on the phone I heard a loud pop and commented to my sister, who was also a student at Hopkins, that I heard what I thought was a gunshot. Her response was that it was probably just a car backfiring because who would believe that something like this would happen at your school. A place that is supposed to be about learning and growing as you make your way into becoming a full fledged member of adulthood. Where your parents pay a lot of money under the assumption you'll be safe. Even though we were in the middle of Baltimore, a city with one of the nation's highest murder rates at the time, I never would have dreamt something like that could happen.
Not long after I made the comment on the phone, the sound of sirens filled the air and the night was filled with flashing lights. Sadly, what I heard was a gunshot and even more shocking I knew the shooter.
Bob was a friends with my sister and a roommate of one of her good friends. He was two years ahead of me so I didn't know him real well. My only experiences with him were in Rhode Island politics as we were both from the smallest state in the country. I had been working with the Lincoln Almond gubernatorial campaign in the summer of 1994 prior to starting my freshman year of college. We had run into each other at some functions including the Republican convention where Lincoln was officially named the Republican candidate after a surprising upset in the primary. Now, before all my liberal friends here in Seattle start disparaging me for participating in a Republican convention I must point out that New England politics are different than politics elsewhere in the country. Also, Gov. Almond was a protege of the late Sen. John Chaffee who was a well known moderate and was probably more liberal than a number of Democrats, past and present.
On election night in 1994, I got a call in my dorm room from Bob congratulating me on Lincoln Almond's victory that night. I thanked him and we chatted a little while about a hard fought campaign before ending the call and getting back to studying. That was the last time I remember talking to him and didn't really think about him until that April night almost a year and a half later.
None of us could really believe what was happening and the internet was as omnipresent as it is these days so we couldn't just go to msnbc.com to find the latest news. Slowly, throughout the night, the details emerged. There was a shooting after a meeting. After the College Republicans meeting. Someone was hurt. That person was dead. He was just elected the president of the College Republicans. His name was Rex Chao. His shooter was a senior that had graduated early and come back for the election. He was caught by security shortly after it happened. His name was Bob. Bob Harwood.
That's when it became more than just a story on the 11 o'clock news. The sound of the gunshot, the sirens, the flashing lights, that wasn't something on TV or in a movie. It happened outside my window and someone I knew was involved.
On my way to class the next morning I passed the spot where this tragic incident happened. The area was taped off and there on the asphalt was a small pool of blood. Just the sight of that made it even more real and knocked the wind out of me. I continued to class saying a silent prayer for Rex and for Bob.
Over the days and months there were memorials for Rex and outrage that something like this could happen. A statue was built to commemorate a life cut short by someone whose life was now to be spent behind bars.
A few years back I was in Berkeley for Thanksgiving with my sister and her friend that was Bob's roommate joined us. He gave us an update on how Bob was doing in prison and how he had grown a beard and wore dark glasses to seem tougher and not to get into trouble if someone thought he was looking at them funny. They talked about their memories of him and we all said how tragic it all was. Two promising young men who would never have an opportunity to realise their dreams or potential.
Eleven years later and it just seems things have gotten worse. When I first heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech this morning on my way to work, the first thing out of my mouth was, "Not another shooting. Seems like there's one every week." I don't know what the answer is, but I do know an incident like this affects so many people. As time goes on, we move on...but we're never the same.
In 1996 at Johns Hopkins, Rex Chao was killed after being elected the President of the College Republicans. The shooter was his predecessor and former friend Bob Harwood. I heard the shot that night and the memory is still as clear as if it happened the other day. That evening I was on the phone with my sister in my dorm room that overlooked the beach, which is what we called the grassy area in front of the library. While on the phone I heard a loud pop and commented to my sister, who was also a student at Hopkins, that I heard what I thought was a gunshot. Her response was that it was probably just a car backfiring because who would believe that something like this would happen at your school. A place that is supposed to be about learning and growing as you make your way into becoming a full fledged member of adulthood. Where your parents pay a lot of money under the assumption you'll be safe. Even though we were in the middle of Baltimore, a city with one of the nation's highest murder rates at the time, I never would have dreamt something like that could happen.
Not long after I made the comment on the phone, the sound of sirens filled the air and the night was filled with flashing lights. Sadly, what I heard was a gunshot and even more shocking I knew the shooter.
Bob was a friends with my sister and a roommate of one of her good friends. He was two years ahead of me so I didn't know him real well. My only experiences with him were in Rhode Island politics as we were both from the smallest state in the country. I had been working with the Lincoln Almond gubernatorial campaign in the summer of 1994 prior to starting my freshman year of college. We had run into each other at some functions including the Republican convention where Lincoln was officially named the Republican candidate after a surprising upset in the primary. Now, before all my liberal friends here in Seattle start disparaging me for participating in a Republican convention I must point out that New England politics are different than politics elsewhere in the country. Also, Gov. Almond was a protege of the late Sen. John Chaffee who was a well known moderate and was probably more liberal than a number of Democrats, past and present.
On election night in 1994, I got a call in my dorm room from Bob congratulating me on Lincoln Almond's victory that night. I thanked him and we chatted a little while about a hard fought campaign before ending the call and getting back to studying. That was the last time I remember talking to him and didn't really think about him until that April night almost a year and a half later.
None of us could really believe what was happening and the internet was as omnipresent as it is these days so we couldn't just go to msnbc.com to find the latest news. Slowly, throughout the night, the details emerged. There was a shooting after a meeting. After the College Republicans meeting. Someone was hurt. That person was dead. He was just elected the president of the College Republicans. His name was Rex Chao. His shooter was a senior that had graduated early and come back for the election. He was caught by security shortly after it happened. His name was Bob. Bob Harwood.
That's when it became more than just a story on the 11 o'clock news. The sound of the gunshot, the sirens, the flashing lights, that wasn't something on TV or in a movie. It happened outside my window and someone I knew was involved.
On my way to class the next morning I passed the spot where this tragic incident happened. The area was taped off and there on the asphalt was a small pool of blood. Just the sight of that made it even more real and knocked the wind out of me. I continued to class saying a silent prayer for Rex and for Bob.
Over the days and months there were memorials for Rex and outrage that something like this could happen. A statue was built to commemorate a life cut short by someone whose life was now to be spent behind bars.
A few years back I was in Berkeley for Thanksgiving with my sister and her friend that was Bob's roommate joined us. He gave us an update on how Bob was doing in prison and how he had grown a beard and wore dark glasses to seem tougher and not to get into trouble if someone thought he was looking at them funny. They talked about their memories of him and we all said how tragic it all was. Two promising young men who would never have an opportunity to realise their dreams or potential.
Eleven years later and it just seems things have gotten worse. When I first heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech this morning on my way to work, the first thing out of my mouth was, "Not another shooting. Seems like there's one every week." I don't know what the answer is, but I do know an incident like this affects so many people. As time goes on, we move on...but we're never the same.
Monday, February 05, 2007
because i'm a lazy bugger
Kristen has much more pics and details about our trip back east. I promise to put more up here when I get a chance.
Kristen's Books Written for Girls
Kristen's Books Written for Girls
Monday, January 15, 2007
Bergdorf Holiday Windows
The Bergdorf windows were some of the only holiday windows still up when we were in NY the week after New Year's. Here are some pictures, I'll have pictures of the full window up some time later.
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