For a recent World of Warcraft raid, I actually dug a cooler out of our storage closet and filled it with ice, beer, Mexican Coke for me, and Diet Pepsi for Grant.
You know, so we could enjoy our favorite beverages without having to get up in the middle of a boss fight.
We are such nerds.
Whole Foods officially discontinued their awesomely durable, heavy-duty plastic bags as of Earth Day this year.
So what are they offering instead? Paper. Yep, tree-harvested, not-so-sustainable paper. Sure, I know paper bags biodegrade, but they also disintegrate in the rain and require us to chop down and process trees.*
I kept hoping they’d replace their plastic bags with alternatives like bamboo or corn, which are sustainable and biodegradable, but feel like plastic. These bags are also super-durable and don’t fall apart when wet — a major concern of mine here in Seattle, since I sometimes try to walk to the grocery store instead of driving, and I can’t always plan ahead in order to carry my canvas bags.
But the word from Whole Foods is that those alternatives are too high of a price point for Whole Foods. I could understand this in theory for a smaller organization, but Whole Foods has plenty of money with which to be more responsible. They should a) suck it up and do it anyway, since it’s not like they’re losing money in their business; and/or b) start charging customers for the bags. So friggin’ simple.
And the real kicker? The Whole Foods delis switched from paper containers to plastic shortly after the bag changeover. Yeah, take a minute to let that sink in. Now I not only can’t walk home in the rain with my groceries, but I also can’t microwave my deli dinner in its container. How’s that for green logic?
Those Chinese fortune cookie messages used to be so dull. Even when it was good news, it was either devoid of creativity, or imposed with some lame time restriction.
“You will have a good day tomorrow.” Seriously, we got that one a few months ago. WTF? Not even a good WEEK? And how about “next Thursday”? I’d be even more impressed if I were given a specific date. And “You are surrounded by many good friends” seems less like a fortune and more like an observation, you know? Which is more creepy than uplifting when it comes from a cookie.
But Grant and I got some surprisingly comforting and insightful scraps of corporate-manufactured prophecy the other night — so much so that I immortalized them in Scotch tape. Let’s take a closer look at those messages, shall we?
VA: “You have remarkable power which you are not using.”
Grant: “You will never need to worry about a steady income.”
Given our recent combined nine months of unemployment, plus rumblings of change on the horizon at his work, it’s nice to be reassured via tasteless confectionary messages that we’re gonna be OK.
(And as an aside, the bunny place cards are from Hen’s Easter dinner, but they only felt appropriate since Grant is a rabbit in Chinese astrology. “The luckiest of all the signs”, so they say.)
My favorite of all Catalan holidays. Even better than the one that involves champagne, fireworks and pastries. Dia de St. Jordi is sort of comparable to our Valentine’s Day, except far richer in history, culture, lore, accuracy, and passion. So please indulge me with a ridiculously long post-holiday posting. :D
The real joy of it for me, though, is in the food! In addition to all the adorable festivities in Barcelona, all the bakeries and delis carry red-and-yellow-striped food, like the Catalan flag (or senyera). So I of course took this as a challenge to combine my love of cooking with my love of decorative edibles.
I’m not a whiz with Catalan food yet (despite Jen’s awesome birthday gift of a Catalan cookbook), plus I wanted to leave room for creativity. So I tried to stick mostly to foods that were Spanish or at least kinda Mediterranean. (And I botched the one truly Catalan thing I tried for — authentic allioli, in case you’re curious — but we *did* have Catalan cava on the table.) I started off with the pasta salad pictured above, which consisted of saffron ourzo, feta cheese, basil, cherry tomatoes (red and yellow, of course) and bacon. Read the rest…
Another good DIY trick! I sometimes use Courvoisier to spike sangria, mulled wine and whipping cream, and I almost always buy the mini-bottles since they’re so cheap and I don’t use much. These are one of the few mini-bottled alcohols that still come in glass instead of cheap crappy plastic, and I’ve been compulsively hanging onto my empties for a few months without really knowing why.
But I got a great idea — they’re perfect for small batches of fresh salad dressing. (I love making my own dressing at home, but it doesn’t have much of a shelf life so I prefer to make tiny quantities.) I don’t love sticking it in an unslightly Tupperware, because it doesn’t pour smoothly. And I don’t like having my Pyrex measuring cups occupied by dressing, in case I need them for cooking.
Voilà la solution! Mini Courvoisier bottles are tiny and pourable and cute on the table, and I get to re-use something that would otherwise be junk. And now I finally have a reason for having hoarded all the little bottles like some kind of glass-loving treasure freak.
This would be kind of a cheap post without a recipe, though, wouldn’t it? Normally I’m terrible about writing such things down, and this is no exception, so all quantities are completely and totally invented on the spot, but I’m pretty sure they’re not far off. Enjoy!
Honey Mustard Dressing
1 Tbsp dijon mustard
1 Tbsp dry white wine
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
3 Tbsp milk, kefir or yogurt (depending on how thick you want your dressing to be)
2 tsp honey
splash soy sauce — about 1/2 tsp — optional
1 tsp nutritional/brewer’s yeast — optional
salt, pepper and garlic to taste — optional
Combine, shake vigorously, and enjoy!
With orange bourbon vanilla whipped cream, garnished with orange zest and shaved bittersweet chocolate.
This is what follows the awesome meal I cooked for Grant’s folks, which also includes:
Man, I love a good excuse to cook!
Grant and I recently subscribed to Seattle Metropolitan, just in time for the “Hot Breakfast Spots” issue. While I was frustrated that a bunch of things were reported wrong (like hours of operation and menu items), we were still thrilled to have a good breakfast/brunch guide, since it’s our favorite going-out meal.
We decided to give The Georgian at The Fairmont Olympic Hotel a whirl, since it was caucus day and it was right around the corner. Figuring it’d be swamped with other people who had the same idea, we called ahead to make a reservation. There were all of three tables in the giant English tearoom-styled dining hall, so I guess everyone else caucused hungry? Their loss!
I expected the Georgian to be a bit stuffy and awkward, given that it’s a snooty hotel whose restaurant is usually frequented by top-dollar execs on business travel. But while the atmosphere was a bit stiff, the food more than made up for it — they had a very natural and local menu with lots of organic items, and there were several interesting combos like a lobster chipotle Benedict and some killer omelet additions.
But what really wooed me were the eggs. I ordered them “over medium”, which usually means “still totally runny yolks” at most joints. But the Georgian hit the PERFECT balance of egg yolks that are neither runny nor hard and opaque. Plus, I ordered the breakfast flat-iron steak medium rare, and it wasn’t totally cooked to a brown unrecognizable jerky like most breakfast steaks tend to be.
And lastly, the treat. I usually have to avoid sweeter breakfast delights like French toast and waffles, because the carb-tastic options do a number on my blood sugar. Opting for protein-rich selections is the only way I can guarantee the meal will last me more than an hour, sustenance-wise. So I was thrilled, after ordering my steak-eggs-and-hash-browns combo, to spot a little white pot of something baked. It turned out to be a tiny spiced pumpkin bread type coffee cake — just enough sweet treat to let me know I didn’t have to miss out on the fun, without screwing up my protein-heavy intentions.
All in all, this was one of the best brunches I’ve had in a long time. And we go out to brunch a LOT, and we’ve been checking out more and more spots since Seattle Met tipped us off to our options. Best of all, there didn’t seem to be a single error in the magazine’s reporting on this spot — there was a fresh-made juice of the day, there was a great selection, and there were no major surprises or disappointments when it came to hours of operation or menu offerings. And the eggs “over medium” really were over medium. I couldn’t ask for more!
So the new rage is Mexican Coca-Cola, which is made with cane sugar instead of America’s Top Preferred Sweetener, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). We came across this stuff when we were shopping at Costco for a big party, and the case we picked up was a real hit. We even had friends asking us to to pick them up some on special order, since they didn’t have a Costco in their area.
Well, we thought this special Costco Coke was our little secret, but we were wrong! Grant and I dined at the Boat Street Kitchen for lunch the other day, and they had “mexi-coke” on their menu. Apparently it’s broken into at least the Belltown haute cuisine scene.
It’s funny — I knew there was a kosher Coke-seeking sub-culture, since apparently regular American Coke isn’t kosher. But I never really knew that there was a sub-culture for Mexican-made food products, aside from Mercado Latino type stuff. There you have it, though — Mexican Coca-Cola is popular and swanky. Who knew?
I know I love the stuff, and I love the big glass bottles it comes in. And the Costco near us has been selling out of it a lot lately, so I’m obviously not the only one. Now, if only they’d come up with a version that’s both HFCS and caffeine-free — how happy I’d be!
So this weekend was Grant’s birthday party, and months ago he’d specified that he wanted to go to this awesome Brazilian place where they carve slabs of meat on long skewers onto your plate with sword-like blades, and it’s generally very badass and awesome. It’s also pretty busy - so I made a reservation about a month and a half out, just to be safe. I called a couple days before the actual party to reduce the total number and ask a couple questions, but all was set to go.
Then, when we got there, the hostess had us wait a bit for our table. She came out and asked me when I’d made the reservation, and I told her I’d made it ages ago, but finalized a few changes that same week. She looked worried, and said, “Well, there’s another girl here who says her name is Virginia and she also has a party of 11″. I immediately concluded, out loud, that she “probably just overheard me or read that off your screen, and wanted her party to get seated, you know?” And everyone in my group agreed - it’s not that common of a name, and 11 is kind of a random number for a party, etc. I started mentally fuming at this chick, thinking she could steal the spot for the BIRTHDAY PARTY I had planned IN ADVANCE for MY BOYFRIEND. I joked to the party that if we saw a group of 11 people slink out of the restaurant, we were all to boo and hiss at them.
Then the hostess immediately came out and said our table was ready. We were all a bit surprised, so I made some crack about how I was The Real Virginia, and she said, “Actually, there was another gal named Virginia with a party of 11, and she had just been seated, but they had your name down as just ‘V. Culler’ instead.” Huh.
So of course I felt bad for having suggested that my Doppelgänger was full of shit and trying to pull one over on us. We sort of tried to speculate as to which table it could have been, but there were so many big groups that we gave up. Either way, other VA, I hope you guys enjoyed your meat, sorry for insinuating that you were a devious bitch!
P.S. Yes, I do know that Doppelgänger is supposed to mean someone who *looks* like you, not has your name and books parties like you. But I challenge you to find a snappy synonym for the latter.
So I’ve been sick on and off for almost a month now, in a weird stomach-but-not-flu way that comes and goes unexpectedly and sporadically, and kind of zapped my appetite and ability to really enjoy food, and whose effects never seemed to last more than about a day. And since I’m unusually succeptible to food poisoning and such, I just assumed it was a series of flukes of that vein, and thought nothing of it. Until I had to miss work TWICE in one month, at a job that I love and hate to be absent from. So last Friday I finally went to the doctor to figure it out. So what, you may ask, was the problem?
Turns out I’m a HOST. I have PARASITES. More specifically, some sort of flagellated protozoa. I don’t remember which kind. Nor do I care, frankly, as long as they DIE. But seriously, how gross and, more importantly, UNFAIR is that? Why unfair, you ask? Because my friend Steve went travelling in Vietnam, Cambodia, Argentina, and Mexico in the past couple months, eating whatever he came into contact with and felt like consuming, raw or not, risky or not, and he came out fine, whereas I got frickin’ PARASITES by staying on domestic land and eating food from the Whole Foods deli or something. Screw that!
Anyway, this is probably the most unpleasant blog posting I’ve ever done, but I’m just mad at the little fuckers for taking away my joie de vivre/et manger for so long. Jerks. For the first time in my life, I think I’m happy to be on a terrifyingly powerful medicine that wipes out all life in my body. I hope they’re sentient so they can feel their impending death. Die parasites die!
P.S. To everyone I’ve turned down a brunch/lunch/dinner date with in the past month - let’s go eat!
