I absolutely hate the word “blog”

I’ve never been a huge fig person before — not because I don’t like them, per se, but more because I have no idea whether I like them or not. I guess they don’t seem to have a particularly distinctive flavor, at least according to my palate. I know they’re all the rage with foodies, though, and I was feeling hungry, bored and adventurous. And Grant was off at some football thing, so I was left to myself to figure out dinner plans.

Enter Pagliacci. Their current seasonal offering is the Prosciutto Fig Primo, and it made my mouth water when I heard the description over the phone (text doesn’t do it justice):

PROSCIUTTO FIG PRIMO 
The thought of a sweet fruit on a pizza is often considered a foreign concept. We pushed the boundaries of pizza making with our Pear Primo and thanks to its continued popularity, we knew figs could be a hit too. We combine figs with prosciutto, basil and fresh mozzarella on an olive oil base for the perfect balance of lightly sweet and salty flavor.

Our usual standard is their Parma Primo, which has prosciutto plus basil, tomato, olive oil, mushrooms, fontina, mozzarella and goat cheese on an olive oil base. So this was close to home while still being adventurous and fun. And I actually think there’s a higher ratio of prosciutto to other stuff with this special.

At the end of the day, the fig primo had definitely won me over, even though it was a bit pricier than our usual (extremely expensive) favorite. The only improvement I would make is to add some tomatoes.  It was so very sweet that it seemed like it could use something tangy to balance it all out.  Still, it turns out that a) I like figs in some contexts, and b) I’m not yet over the fruity pizza trend.  Mmm mmm!

So my most recent Costco run yielded a box of chanterelles, of all things.  (I think of Costco as more of a bulk mouthwash and paper towels kinda place, but hey… they were cheap, fresh, wild-harvested, local, and bright orange with gills, so how could I refuse?)

I’d never cooked anything with chanterelles before, so I decided to just sautée them in a bit of butter and chicken broth, and let their natural flavor shine. Ahem, that was LET THEIR NATURAL FLAVOR SHINE.  (They didn’t hear me.)

Turns out chanterelles don’t really *have* much of a natural flavor.  In fact, I had to drizzle a bit of white truffle oil on them just to make them fun enough to eat!

Lesson learned: while the name may sound all French and elegant compared to, say, oyster mushrooms, the latter is actually much tastier.  Now I know!

Trumpet, like most cats, can be a bit of a picky eater. But I have been wanting for ages to try and switch him to a more natural brand.

A couple years later, I’m *actually* getting around to doing something about it. I got him using Wellness brand dry food that’s well-geared for his particular needs (he’s UTI-prone). But I tried giving him wet food from that same company, and it was a no-go — he only likes stuff with a sliced/chunky texture, and not that godawful horrifying pastey mixture that most wet cat foods possess. (And I totally sympathize. We don’t want to have to open cans of that shit for him, either.)

Thankfully, I’d bought those cans at a small, locally owned pet food store in Whitecenter, near my old work. They guarantee all their foods, so they reimbursed me even for the cans that we had opened up and rinsed out — no hard feelings! Given that I figured it would take a few more tries before I found a natural wet food that Trumpet would touch, I was bummed that this refund-friendly place was no longer convenient for me.

I popped into a local Mud Bay Granary just to see if they could be of any help, and they very much were! They lay out all their cat food brands and the reasoning behind them on their site, which is very helpful.  And they gave me three free BIG cans of wet food for free, just to see if he liked them.  And they said if he didn’t, I could come back in and get three more free cans.  And then they gave me free salmon treats to try out on him.  And they have a zillion convenient locations all over western Washington.

Have I mentioned that Mud Bay is awesome?

Grant and I wound up having to hit the Sub Pop 20th Anniversary Comedy Show without dinner in our stomachs last night, so we used my precious iPhone to locate some late-night grub. (By the way, the Citysearch Web app for the iPhone is pretty darn handy, if not 100% accurate.) We stumbled into the Virginia Inn (aka “My Inn”) fifteen minutes before the kitchen was going to close, and the staff were all super-nice and accommodating.

We recalled that the VA Inn had been closed for a while since they were expanding their kitchen, so we were hoping they’d have a decent selection of actual food, and not just bar fare. And it turns out, we were right!

I ordered the “Steak Frites” and requested it medium rare, thinking I might get a dried-out slab of charred flat-iron and some blah fries. But what I got was a thick, small but hefty, perfectly Pittsburghed (charred on the outside, rare-but-not-chilly on the inside) filet mignon chop, and some of the most superbly prepared potato strips I’ve ever tasted — for a total of $22.

Oh, how I wish my iPhone battery hadn’t died, so I could post a photo! For greasy pub food, I had a meal that rivaled the stuff one could get from The Met for three times the price. I was blown away. I’m definitely mentally re-bookmarking my inn as a place to head back to. I’m so glad they’ve re-opened!

They say there are two types of cooks — bakers and chefs. Bakers are generally thought to be methodical and rule-abiding, and they deal mainly in chemistry. Chefs are innovators and risk-takers, and they deal more in physics. I had always thought myself to be more of a chef than a baker (as evidenced by my complete inability to follow a recipe exactly) — but I believe one can learn to bake even if one’s heart sings a main-course song.

I’ve received lots of compliments and inquiries about my baked goods, and I think I’ve managed to put my finger on the specific chef-like risks that I’ve incorporated into my baking practices with great success. (This is not to say I haven’t had MANY failures — I just don’t blog about those!) So here’s a list of some of the specific tweaks I tend to apply to most baking recipes.

Read the rest…