Mostly what I ate this week.

Well, it's not been a crazy week event-wise, but we've been keeping busy. Nathan decided to invest in a new (used) bike that will be speedier than the heavy road bike he has been riding to work. He has very large hills on his way home from the university.

I think he was installing his water bottle holder here?

Anyways...once this week I made a SUPER easy dinner. 

At QFC you can get chicken breasts individually sealed in plastic, ready for the freezer. They come in packs of about six and often the packs are two for one! Skinless-boneless breast can be expensive, but not when they are two for one in bulk! The packaging is great--one is plenty for me and nathan to split, and better yet, they are sealed, so I take the back of the mug or glass and tenderize it while it's still sealed, and no worries about chicken germs getting everywhere. Stays contained and then cooks up real quick--in about the same time as a pot of rice with some vegis in the steamer on top!

a before and after--frozen then thawed and pounded

This is my rice cooker with the vegis on top. So there's a super simple dinner idea that also allows you to get out aggression by whaling on the chicken breast a little bit.

I also made a not so simple dinner this week. Last wednesday I headed out to the Columbia City Farmers Market (columbia city is a district of seattle I'd never been to before) but there's an express bus straight there basically from my house. Columbia City is south, where I don't venture too often, but it was super cute! It had a little main street type area with shops and theaters. There was an amazing looking used book store with a ladder to get to the high shelves, but sadly there was a sign announcing it was closing due to not enough sales to cover basic operating costs. : (

I bought these beautiful dahlias there for $5. Lots of beautiful arrangements, but decided to stick with straight dahlias since I know they keep pretty well.

Also got these beautiful heirloom roma tomatoes and zucchini for a recipe I had been wanting to try.

I got some lettuce and other heirlooms as well. 

The recipe is "Zucchini Rice Gratin" which I got off of Smitten Kitchen blog, and it looked super delicious to me, and a way to use what the season has to offer. Basically everything looks super delicious on the blog, and her photos are amazing:

http://smittenkitchen.com/

Zucchini Rice Gratin
Adapted from Gourmet, March 2008

My prior quibbles about this dish were that it always stuck to the pan (I try to alleviate this by having you oil your baking dish), was way too salty (and we are hardly salt-phobes, thus I’ve reduced the total amount from 1 1/2 teaspoons to 3/4 teaspoon; feel free to add more if you find it needs it), and that it used too many dishes. You can reduce your dishload by lining your zucchini baking sheet with aluminum foil (tomatoes are reactive with aluminum so I’d leave their tray bare) and hoping that you’ll consider using one skillet for the rice and onions. Despite the fact that I couldn’t reduce the moderate dishload further, we’ve never once felt that this dish wasn’t worth the extra suds.

1/3 cup uncooked white rice, long-grain is suggested but use whatever you prefer
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 pounds zucchini (about 3 medium), sliced 1/4-inch thick
1/2 pound plum tomatoes, sliced 1/4-inch thick
Table salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 medium onion, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 cup grated Parmesan, divided

Preheat oven to 450°F. Cook the rice according to your favorite method. The package directions work in some cases, but check my notes above about adjustments I find I have to make. If you cook the rice in a large, wide-ish covered skillet, it might cook even faster but you’ll have the chance to use it again (and save on dirty dishes) when you need to cook the onions in a bit.

While rice cooks, coat two large (or, if you have the same pitifully small oven as I do, three smaller) baking sheets each with a tablespoon of a of olive oil (a bit less for smaller pans). Spread zucchini and tomato slices on the baking sheets in as close to a single layer as you can. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Roast tomatoes for 10 minutes and zucchini for 20. Flip zucchini halfway through; it’s not worth the messy effort for the tomatoes. Leave oven on.

Heat large, heavy skillet (such as the one you used to cook your rice) over medium heat. Once hot, add 2 tablespoons olive oil, heat oil, then add onions, garlic and 1/4 teaspoon salt to pan. Cover and reduce heat to low, cooking onion until limp and tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Combine onion mixture, rice, eggs, thyme, half of your grated cheese and a half-tablespoon of olive oil in a bowl. Add a good amount of freshly ground black pepper. Use the remaining half-tablespoon of olive oil to coat a shallow 2-quart baking dish. Spread half of rice mixture in bottom of dish. Arrange half of roasted zucchini on top. Spread remaining rice mixture over it and please don’t worry about being neat about this; dinner will be “rustic” tonight! Arrange remaining zucchini on top, then tomato slices. Sprinkle with remaining grated cheese and bake until set and golden brown, about 20 minutes. Each oven varies, but I find mine does the very best browning when the dish is on a rack near the top of the oven.

Here was how mine came out:

It was tasty, but not worth all the prep work with the toms and zucchs. Wondering what if I just sauteed the zucchinis with the onions (in the same pan I baked it in) and just popped the tomatoes on without all that pre-baking business. Then it would be a super simple weeknight kinda meal. With a lot fewer dishes. It could also maybe use something a little more zesty? Anyways, you should all be proud that I actually managed to follow a recipe start to finish without straying, and next time I can use this basic recipe (mixing rice, cheese, egg, veggies and baking it) as a platform for culinary improvisation.

Also this week was my friend Jenny's birthday. I made this little girl for her:

And she had a picnic at gasworks park in Fremont. Nathan and I packed our bicycles up with cheese, bread, fruit, sangria, tapanade, etc. and had a lovely bike ride around lake union. Lots of sailboats out enjoying the weather. It was the perfect temperature all evening. How often can you say that?

The gasworks, downtown seattle across the lake, and the moon.

A perfect day...and last week.

It's been a crazy summer. I spent most of July participating in a dance festival that culminated in a performance, and while I kinda enjoyed the intensity of dancing 7 hours a day and then working at plum on top of that, it did leave me kind of short on time to do things like blog.  My dear friend Helen also participated in the festival with me and lived with us, and her last week in Seattle she was joined by her boyfriend and our mutual friend, Kyle. Helen's birthday is July 29th, and she wanted to go to Mt Rainier National Park (Nathan and I had never been) and Helen has lovely family in the area that took us out! So these are pictures from the beautiful hike we had up to Mt Fremont. 

Helen Poses like Captain Morgan. Kyle models the stylin' frame pack I bought for five dollars at our neighbor's garage sale while waiting to be picked up for the day. Sweeeet!

This is totally candid.

Nathan on the path through the shale.

The top! What a view!

AND SURPRISE! Kyle proposes to Helen. Helen says Yes.

This is a reenactment.

a blurry picture I took of the ring. Kyle designed it! Helen's favorite color: PINK!

 On the way down.

Fields of wild flowers!

SNOW!

So that was a grand and most perfect day. Followed by mad packing because Nathan and I had to leave the next morning to the midwest. I was on vacation, saw a lot of people who read this blog (so don't need to fill them in), and got to relax a lot while watching Olympics, which is exactly what I needed. 

Jump to current times...

Nothing too exciting going on here. However, in an effort to write on a more regular basis, here are a few things I did do recently:
Last tuesday was our 2nd wedding anniversary (we got some super sweet cards from the grandparents!) and we also went to dinner using the Poppy gift certificate the Bankas gave us for our birthdays.
Poppy is very convenient to our house and had some delicious, delicious food. You basically order one of a few options, and it comes with a variety of 7 or 10 things. They call them "thalis." There was some indian influence (note the naan bread) but otherwise it didn't feel particularly ethnic unless GORMET is an ethnicity.

Ok, we shared all of our items. Nathan got duck with fresh currents and peaches, strawberry-tomato-sage soup, curried kohlrabi, pickled blueberry and apricots, and a beet salad with gingerbread croutons.

I had some kind of beef, zucchini gratin, fennel blossom soup, the same beet salad, some other kind of salad with cucumbers, and pickled fennel.

Dessert thalis.

 Ok, and then one day for lunch I made myself this with the basil from my window boxes, which somehow survived not being watered for nine days while we were in Michigan/Wisconsin.

Then on Sunday we went to a friend's boyfriend's birthday "Rib Off" in which there were I think 7 ribs competing and we had to vote for a winner! It was extremely difficult. They were all delicious, and the weather was perfect. We played "corn hole" which is a kind of bean bag tossing game, and I was terrible at it.

We hadn't been to Madrona Park before. It was lovely.

 Two of my favorite dancer friends by lake Washington.

Too bad it was a touch chilly for swimming. It's hard to see in the picture (which is funny, because it was very easy to see in real life) but Mt. Rainier is just about center in this picture over the water. I need to learn how to make mountains show up in photographs!

My Day Yesterday

Yesterday was so nice. Finally I was feeling well enough to do things (unfortunately I seem to have relapsed a bit today), so I cleaned up the apartment, which had been suffering from my sickness-related laziness, and worked on my new craft project (which I'll talk about later). Our handyman and assistant showed up (thank god I cleaned!) to open our windows, so finally we can get some cross-ventilation. That alone would be enough to make a good day, but they also replaced our broken toilet seat and gave us a rubber plug for our tub! It's like christmas!
In the evening I had to attend a meeting in Ballard--for those who don't know, Ballard is a super-fun area of Seattle. We would like to go there more often, and although it is only six miles away, this can mean 2 to 3 busses and over an hour of travel time just to get there. Yuck. So I figured, since I was going there already I might as well do a few other things I have been meaning to do there. The first one was stop at the Joann Fabrics there (which isn't a great store generally, but I needed some certain items for my craft project that I can't get at the small Capitol Hill fabric store) and the second to go to the new BBQ restaurant that opened up recently where one of my friends works. Since I would need to get around Ballard once I got there, I decided to take my bike, which also cut out one of the busses on the way there, and since it was turning into a beautiful (but windy) day, I got some nice riding out of it. If I hadn't been sick I would have biked all the way there along the Lake Union Trail, but I figured some light riding would be best, especially around Ballard's cute neighborhoods. My meeting went well, and Nathan and Brian met up with me after their Ultimate Frisbee game (which they dominated!) so timing worked out perfect for a late dinner at Bitterroot. We started out with jalepeno hush puppies and buffalo fried chicken livers. Then we all split the combo platter known as the "cowboy killer." That is half a chicken, brisket, pulled pork, and ribs served with a pretzel roll and three sides. They were out of ribs, so they replaced it with pork belly. I was sad about the ribs, but the pork belly was amazing, obviously. This is the face Nathan made when he realized there was a three-inch-thick slab of bacon on our table:

They smoke their meats in house with apple wood, and you could really taste the flavor. The brisket and the pork belly were the most amazing (correlated to fat content perhaps?) Scratch that, the cheddar grits were the MOST amazing, but aside from that. The chicken and pulled pork were alright. The grilled asparagus was great. We got to choose from sweet bbq sauce, xxx spicy, and a vinegar-mustard sauce. I tend to like a Carolina-style vinegar sauce, and while the mustard sauce was pretty good, I think it needed more heat. I'm not big on sticky-sweet bbq sauces at all, except for Nathan's/Joy's, which has a strong acidity to it because it's made with lemons.
So that was my nice day. Monday is kinda my weekend, so I like to make it count! We are all suffering from a bit of a food hang-over this morning, and I'm brainstorming about a vegetarian dinner for tonight...

Spring Spring Spring!

Well, spring has definitely sprung...it's almost may after all, and we've been busybusy and also I've been sick...again. Here is a little centerpiece I put together for our table, but unfortunately the cat for some reason is OBSESSED with taking all the little things out of the teacups. She's not even allowed on the table, but I cannot leave the centerpiece unmonitored for a second, so sadly most of the time I keep our fly screen dome covering it.

 Last weekend Brian and Kate took us to the tulip fields in Mt Vernon...

 It is really quite breathtaking

The tulips are over for this year, but if you plan on going to this yearly event, I would not recommend the first beautiful saturday of the year...you might also want to wear rain boots since it was quite muddy, and whatever you do, drive back to I-5 via Hwy 20 and not through town! You'll simply never get there. Lots of people were biking in and could zoom right past the traffic. Were we ever jealous of them!

 Before the tulips we stopped at a very popular farm stand for the advertised "Immodest Ice Cream."
Quite.

 And also for some "Wood fired Piz...za"

Brian and Nathan by the pizza oven and Kate displays her pizza below

A review of the last month in photos

Thanksgiving:

I made pies! Pumpkin and Apple

Here is the spread!

The table is set!

Christmas presents ready to go to michigan!

Mom came to visit in early april and brought us an early christmas present--this tree skirt she made in the spirit of my great grandmother's many felt crafts. The tree skirt is one of a kind and filled with little scraps tidbits from past projects. Isn't she talented?

The big green sequins are from my great grandmother's collection, and she also made the candy cane my mom repurposed here. The checked scarf is fabric from a pillow my mom made for Kitty Witty, one of my favorite stuffed animals when I was about 5.

Steph so graciously invited me to her ritzy work holiday party at the four seasons. Got to wear my junior prom dress again!

Buffet!! Ohmygod the mashed potatoes were amazing.

Steph wore her old prom dress too!

Then we took a few pictures by the gum wall:

Nathan with our Zipcar truck and our most beautiful christmas tree in the back!

Gdad sent me these stained glass dancers he made! They are based on pictures of me and look great in my kitchen window! 

Finally finished fixing up the bathroom! Here it is:

Kitty likes to jump in the tub

Holiday Party! A huge success. Here are the cookies I usually make with my grandma every year. This year I made them with Steph. It was exhausting, but look how pretty!

Here is the recipe direct from my grandma:

CREAM CHEESE SUGAR COOKIES

4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening (Crisco or some other non-butter shortening)*
1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese
1-1/3 cups sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla

Combine flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg and set aside.  Cream together butter and shortening; add cream cheese and sugar beating until fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla;  beat well.  Gradually beat in flour mixture.  Divide dough in half.  Cover and chill 1-2 hours.

On lightly floured surface, roll dough 1/4 " -thick.**  Cut with cookie cutters.  Place on ungreased baking sheet.  Bake at 375 degrees, 7-9 minutes.  Cool on wire rack.  Frost as desired.  Makes 4-5 dozen cookies.


 * I have been known to use all butter instead of 1/2 butter and 1/2 vegetable shortening.

** The recipe calls for rolling out the dough 1/8" thick, but I have found that thin a cookie is hard to handle and burns too easily in the baking process.  I have better luck with somewhat thicker cookies.  All of this is up to you -- do what your experience tells you.

I made the frosting from powdered sugar, crisco, butter, vanilla, etc. The recipe was on the bag, but I really estimated amounts and it turned out fine.

Vegan Chocolate Cake! SOO good and SOO easy. Made this for my halloween party last year, this time I frosted it with some vegan frosting that was donated by Plum Bistro. 

Shortbread cookies!

I'm sorry this photo is awful. I made Andy's bread, Nathan made the goat cheese dip with garlic and herbs, Steph made cherry tomato, cucumber, and fresh mozzarella skewers, and then I bought crackers and tapenade from trader joes. 

The most beautiful tree of all time!!!!

Even Santa showed up to the party!

I know this picture is fuzzy, but it is the only photo where you can see my outfit! I got it vintage and it fits like a glove!

Stuffed mushrooms. Onion, garlic, spinach, thyme, mushroom stems, parmesan. Baked.

My fun little display on the radiator.

All ready for Christmas tomorrow! Working with Steph at Plum in the morning and early afternoon, and then a relaxing evening with my loving Nathan. We will miss everyone of course, but I don't think I have had such a low stress holiday in a while.