Thanks-birthday

My birthday usually falls around Thanksgiving weekend, so I usually try to do small things since people are revved up for big cooking. Also, I like doing small things so you can have time to actually hang out with people instead of a giant loud mob of people you don't really spend time with.

First up: I had a birthday brunch with my girl's night crew. I also got a great early birthday gift from cousin: Ad Hoc cookbook. I love that my friends like cooking:

Starting at 12 o'clock: asparagus strata with poached eggs, vegetarian quiche (goat cheese), quinoa muffins, green onion potato pancakes with smoked salmon (and horseradish sauce). The potato pancakes were form the cookbook. Turns out, having a shredder blade on your food processor does make a difference.

Also, I need a food processor. More recipes that I pick out seem to call for it (a sign of aging?)

Hasbrown baskets (half with bacon and half without). Bottom layer is hash browns that you bake, then you crack an egg into it and bacon if you want. Bake again. So good and individual sized!

Cranberry french toast (with home made cranberry syrup!). Similar concept to the strata (soaked overnight in the egg concoction). So it was like having a savory and a sweet option. Also, if you don't want a whole piece of french toast this is a nicer way to portion control and not miss out on flavor.

Plate 1 - only because it all wouldn't fit on it at once.

Plate 2: the syrup was good on the muffins too. Not pictured - bloody mary, mimosa, and watermelon!

Brunch was at 11, I was supposed to go running at 4. Running didn't happen.

Next: Bizzaro round 2. I had been craving spaghetti carbonara and one of my frequent foodie in crime wanted to eat for my birthday. Had to try Bizzaro.

Snap pea carbonara - it's a well rounded meal with all 4 food groups!

One of the specials of the night: Chestnut ravioli stuffed with mushrooms and served with beef brisket in truffle sauce. Just look at it...

They are also famous for their meatballs. I had to try one:

And for those of you out there that miss gluten free Italian food - they have gluten free pasta!

I come from a long line of foodies. My uncle is one of the more vociferous producers of foodie delights. Thanksgiving Lunch was a perfect example of the random smorgasbord of deliciousness that we can conjure. Especially when uncle has obtained a smoker...

Homemade cheese ball (bacon, green onion, red onion, walnuts), scotch cheddar - I don't drink scotch... so I failed at picking up the flavor well, brie, and a blue cheese cheddar thing. Think blue cheese but yellow base. Soon to be - newest member of the family (cousin's fiance) made the cheese ball. She'll fit in just fine.

Cheese ball with a spicy option!

The full menu clockwise from top left: grapes, jalapeno/habanero deviled egg, tomato/cucumber salad, smoked chicken with cucumber sauce on grilled pita, smoked fish with (um.. I forgot the sauce) on cracker, smoked (what I called pork, others called duck) with cheese crumbles on a toasted baguette, smoked duck with cilantro and plum sauce in a steamed bun, and smoked duck with a mushroom-vinegar reduction.

You know I did close ups, right?

Duck/pork? Either way, yum.

What I thought was duck 2 ways (but it might have been 3 ways).

Chicken with cucumber sauce.

Smoked fish. It wasn't exactly tartar sauce.

Spicy deviled egg!!!

With Thanksgiving dinner we just continued the cooking factory:

Roasted vegetables, sticky rice and snap peas and mushrooms (made by Aunt), kale salad with mango (made by another Aunt), garlic mashed potatoes and port cranberry sauce (made by cousin), last minute giblet gravy - a collaborative effort once we realized there was no canned gravy, and of course... deep fried turkey (by the man with the smoker).

Some of you may wonder - what's with the sticky rice? When we used to bake the turkey the sticky rice was the stuffing. And let me tell you... it is SOOOOO good. Can't really do the same when you deep fry, but it's still considered a necessary (and very popular component to Thanksgiving meal).

The gravy was a close call this year. Usually my brother makes giblet gravy. He's got a system down. Since he's moved to Japan for a while we thought there would be canned gravy, but when we looked in the cupboard we couldn't find it.

Cousin (that gave me the cookbook) and I decided to wing it / look up a recipe online. It's a bit tricky when there's no flour in the house or any turkey drippings.... She found the recipe, I found ingredients / asked Aunt where they were...

Cousin that made the cranberry sauce also has a tradition of making the dessert. This year she made chocolate bread pudding with dark chocolate Guinness sauce.

No, that's not rye or pumpernickel. It's the chocolate that turned that bread brown! We also get tons of persimmons from (pay attention now) my sister in-law's dad's tree.

If you've never had one, they're like the consistency of an apple with the sweetness of .... well it's between an apple/peach on the sweetness scale I would say. Hard to describe. Anyways we decided to try and incorporate the persimmons into our meal beyond the usual eating the fruit as-is. Enter: Persimmon pie.

What's that? How's it all look together? It looks like it also comes with dairy free vanilla ice cream!

I insisted that a birthday cake would not be necessary since there would be way too much food. Here is what my loved ones did to improvise:

Those are slim jims stabbed into the middle of those twinkies. They added the candles because the slim jims wouldn't light on fire. I thought the powder was black pepper, but it turns out they sprinkled the dish with cocoa powder, and surrounded it with fresh berries. I ate the berries. One of the dogs wouldn't even eat the slim jim.

It provided good fodder for our frying experiment:

What do you do with a vat full of frying oil after the turkey is done? Why you find other things to throw in there. The next day we had our sweet plate- fried twinkies, fried persimmons (not actually bad), and fried snickers.

The marinara sauce goes with the fried mozzarella sticks (on the left plate with the fried oreos). And our random plate: fried bananas, pickles...

And oh yes, we fried corn. It is GREAT, but I don't know how people get the kernels to stay separate.

To celebrate my cousin's engagement we went to a french restaurant ( I don't know the name. tbd). Foie gras two ways, and pumpkin soup

It introduces itself:

To clarify - it was the wild huckleberry.

And the restaurant fancified the couple of honor's candy bar:

They ate the chocolate disk that said "Congratulations" before I took the picture. Awww cute raspberry jam heart.

Cookbook cousin made me breakfast this morning! Beer cooked shrimp and grits with cheese/jalapeno and kale. (and bloody mary).

Close up shot!

mmmm. We learned that orange juice does not substitute lemon juice or lime juice in a bloody mary. Also, adding beer doesn't help.

Diet starts when?

I forgot some things. P.S. it's cold out.

It's getting cold outside. This means more hot pot and comfort food. Back in Oct during my posting hiatus I forgot a picture of my spin on Rachel Ray's Reuban Mac and Cheese. I like to add Kale (probably mentioned this in earlier posts) to make it feel healthier and to help push the cheese through. You can replace some noodles with veggies in general so you're not actually eating more in volume, but that's for those who can't control themselves... many of you.

If you plan on making this your work lunch for the week, I'd suggest not putting any veggies in there in the original stock, and then just throw them in the container. They'll cook when you reheat, and not get overcooked and bitter throughout the week. Also, vegetables don't seem to keep for very long after you cook them.

Forward through for some New York-Jewish style breakfast at Roxie's diner. I think I got the Emerald City scrambler- which is brocoli, spinach, green onions, pesto and cheese. And I added meat. Probably corned beef. Substituted my sides (usually toast/bagel and hashbrowns) with LATKES! That mystery ball in the bowl is sour cream. MMMM....

I don't know why, but I associate latkes with winter. They are soooo good, and are trickier to make than you'd think. Mostly because I haven't found a recipe to love yet.

Dinner club strikes again with taco soup! Home made corn bread, fresh avocado, tortilla strips and an un-pictured mug (or more) of spiced hard cider.

Dessert was home-made apple-walnut pumpkin cake!

There were so many big pieces of apple it made the cake nice and moist. I would think that because recipes usually make you mush ingredients for cake so much that it'd be weird, but it was a good texture and made the cake much more interesting. Let me show you!

I also am obsessed with butternut squash and pumpkin. Every year I research for recipes so for an idealistically cheaper option than going to nice restaurants and fighting through crowds. Gambled on butternut squash and sage soup. Then got lazy with ingredients (didn't have parsley). Decided to spice it up a bit with curry powder, ground cloves, and nutmeg. Then to use up thyme and chicken I had, I made chicken and thyme and through that in there.

So really, I made butternut squash curry, because I also got lazy and didn't add much chicken stock. To go with my newly founded curry I made wild rice (scrape through the pantry much?) and a layer of greens.

As you can see, I added a layer of Gruyere on top, because it's getting old...

What's that red plate behind the bowl you say? Why, it's peanut butter chocolate trifle that my coworker made for people's birthdays.

Mmmm delicious. Here's what the curry looks like all mixed up:

Now I'm hungry, so I'm going to make some udon!

Back Track Post 2: All around the world in Seattle

The new, the standard, and the Men's room.

New: I recently challenged cousin's boss to a fundraiser race. Post-attempt to train I decided to go grocery shopping and pit stop at my old neighborhood espresso stand. Not such a great idea on an empty stomach and dehydrated from exercise.

To calm my jitters, I excitedly decided to go to Mike's Chili Parlor. If you've been reading with me from the beginning, you'll know this has been a place I've been wanting to try for quite some time. (Sign says "Chili, beer, cash only" - who wouldn't want to try that?!?!)

Besides, it's never good to grocery shop at Trader Joe's when you're feeling all wacky. Came in, sat down at the bar, and ordered a bowl of chili with onions, jalapenos, and cheese.


It was a Sunday, and the Redskins were on - so it was very difficult not to order a beer to go with it. But since I already felt like I was self-imploding on the spot, I stuck with water.


How it looks when you mix it all up! Mmmm.

Final verdict- delicious, but not good for my sensitive digestive track after what it was already telling me. I made it through grocery shopping, but let's just say.... I had to run home quickly. And very. very. carefully. Didn't realize there were so many bumps in the road on the way from Ballard to Northgate.

Happy hour with some physics friends turned into dinner with 1. So we decided to treat ourselves to Bizzaro instead. I miss Italy more than I realize. We had to get the drunken clams: Dad, I know you don't like tomato based clam stuff, but this was GOOD. Let me make it giant so you can see better.

See the focaccia for dipping?

All meals come with a salad. I think the carrot thing was dumb. Just make me a smaller carrot. Kind of strong on the dressing too, but I love the radishes!


The standard menu looks appealing enough to hook you into wanting to go again right away, but the seasonal menu is just too tempting to pass up!!

Exhibit A: Pumpkin ravioli with sage butter sauce

It looks like it's a cream base- but it's not!! SCORE!

Exhibit B: Happy Sausage Pillows with duck/bacon sausage

To the rest of the world, it's known as gnocchi. But I like this idea of calling things pillows.

We were understandably stuffed after this meal, but everything tasted so good I wanted to try dessert. My companion was being a wussy, so instead of the cheese plate - which is charmingly described below:


I got tiramisu! It was painfully delicious. I could hear my heart rasping as it slowed down from all the cream.


Standard: A week or 2's worth of recovery and I headed out to Mexican with some friends to Carta de Oaxaca.

I got my favorite dish there- caldo de pescado. Which is a spicy fish soup.

It's not lemonade, it's a pomegranate margarita, and that's not beer, it's water.

They have tons of salsas - and the biggest love/hate relationship I have with it is the habanero salsa. I love habanero, but the habanero does not love my gut.

As a side, we all split some fish tacos. They're not fried like most fish tacos, and stop thinking dirty. It's not that kind of fish taco.

Do you see what I see? That's right! Radishes! They are good with tacos. Who knew?

Personally, I am not a fan of mole. With the amount of food mixing I do, you'd think it'd be right up my alley. I don't know why I do not like the chocolate sauce. I just can't explain it. But if you do, this place is known for their mole. My dinner mates got two versions:

Mole Negro Oaxaqueno: black chili mole. Say that 3 times fast.

And

Tamales de Mole' Negro

Dad came into town, so the standard first stop was Mike's Noodle House. Blanched tripe/liver, and fish congee. I don't eat liver. The only time I ever had was in honor of my paternal grandmother when she passed away. It was her favorite. We'll let her keep that as just her own.

The sauce goes with both dishes pictured. It's jalapeno with soy sauce and sesame oil.

The sauce is also good for dipping shrimp into if you ever get bored of cocktail sauce!

It was also Restaurant week in Seattle, so I coerced Dad into trying something we normally wouldn't consider: Lola. It's a Tom Douglass -Greek style restaurant. Mar loves the donuts there, and I would recommend the breakfast with octopus in it. If you love seafood I think you can consider the weirdness more of a novelty. A delicious, savory novelty.

First course: Tzatziki and pita. Lamb kebabs.



They were two separate orders, but this is what I did with it:

Helllllllz yeaaaaaaaaa.

The waitress and I kind of had an awkward stand-off. I asked if there were any dishes without garlic, or minimal garlic. (Another ingredient that does not reciprocate my love for it). She looked at me and said, "This is a Greek place....."

I get what she's implying. I mean, think hummus. Ya. I know. But my Dad is in from out of town and it's restaurant week, so he should try your restaurant. Just help me out here, lady.

After a few rounds she snapped out of it and was able to very professionally and politely recommend this:

Not on the regular menu: cornish hen.

The dish that probably didn't have spit in it - Leg of lamb. You know there was garlic.


Dessert was all mine, because Dad doesn't really do desserts. I picked baklava and honey spice cake. I think the baklava came with cinnamon whipped cream, and the honey cake came with a thyme whipped cream.

Boxed it home for later. The garlic was getting to me.

A few weeks later Ash and I hit up Voula's. Which is a greek-style breakfast joint. Also featured on DDD. May have been the same episode as Mike's Chili. I think last time I got the Naked hobo with ham. This time I made sure I got the pinata benedict.

Pulled pork and hollandaise with a kick!

Ash didn't like it because it was overly smokey. Admittedly, it did overpower the rest of the dish. I like meat, so I was still okay with it.

A week later, I went to bfast with Viet at Senor Moose. No actual moose on the menu, but very good Mexican. (yes... I am starting to get tired of Mexican at this point).

I had only been here before for dinner, so it was exciting to get to try breakfast.

Chorizo con huevos

Turns out, chorizo and scrambled eggs just reminds me of a camping trip from my childhood in Cali.... This was much better than back then.

After tailgating the husky game some friends and I went to Wing Central in the U. District to watch the game.

If you want spicy, but a bit different from regular buffalo wings you should try the blazing bbq. With blue cheese. But that is just preferred over ranch for any wings I eat.

Apparently, at this restaurant all beverages that appeal to me have "Men's Room" in its name. I don't know why.

Regular bloody mary's there come with veggies. Bloody mary with bacon vodka though, must be named "Men's room mary." It also substitutes the pickled vegetables for this:

Cold bacon. That's right, cold.

The cold bacon was off-putting at first. Then I put it in my drink and let it soak up some flavor. Much more acceptable.

I then switched to beer. Wanted red ale. The only red ale they had was "Men's room red ale." Honestly, I don't understand why they were described this way.

To try if you ever visit: 1 of their 51 bomb shots, and their hell wing. You can order the hell wing individually, and you have to sign a waiver to eat it. Didn't try it at the time. But you know where that will lead to, right?

Yes. Tears and the bathroom.