Category: food

Raspberries and Lavender

The beach condo my family stayed out was on the Olympic peninsula and about 10 minutes away from the small town of Sequim. It’s a great little town. Because it’s in the rainshadow of the mountains it receives a lot less rain that the surrounding areas. The climate is great for growing things, especially lavender.

While we were in Sequim we stopped by Graysmarsh Farm to pick some raspberries and buy some lavender. E had a fun time roaming up and down and rows and eating handfuls of raspberries.

E examines the raspberries.

When he got bored with the berries he entertained himself with some of the handy sticks lying around.

Everyone enjoyed feeding E berries and he was more than happy to keep eating and eating and eating them.
(During the next 24 hours he had four poopy diapers. It was insane.)

I had never seen such huge raspberries before. They were incredible.

We ended up with two big buckets of berries. We ate one of them and then froze the rest.

By the time we were finished everyone was tired and E was tired AND grimy. But everyone had had a good time.

Besides berries, the farm also grows lavender. Because they don’t have a fancy gift shop their prices on bulk lavender were a lot better than some of the other local farms ($15 for a gallon bag instead of $25 at other places). If you’re interested in visiting the farm they have a website with details on their growing schedule.

Dinner and Ice Cream AND Cupcakes

My brother and sister-in-law Ken and Mindy are fairly serious foodies and took us around to some great places when we were in Seattle. Our first night there we ate dinner at Tilth. They specialize in organic New American cuisine served small plates style and were named one of the NY Times’ best new restaurants of last year.


Even though the restaurant is housed in a renovated cottage and we sat outside on the patio, Tilth is probably the fanciest restaurant I’ve been to. When N and I go out to eat we tend to frequent ethnic dives or if it’s a special occasions we’ll go to a schmancey steak house (I adore a good steak). But this was my first experience with fine cuisine served small plates style and it was great.

We had the Chilled Walla Walla Onion Soup, Sweet Corn-Yogurt Flan, St. Jude Albacore Tuna, Mini Duck Burgers, and the special which was Artichoke Ravioli. The food was delicious and delicate and gorgeous. (I had my camera with me but was sadly too shy to get it out for pictures.) My favorite dishes were the Onion Soup (the house-smoked salmon in it was great) and the Artichoke Ravioli.

After dinner we walked down the block to Molly Moon’s Ice Cream where we split scoops of salted caramel and balsamic strawberry ice cream (both delicious). As we ate our ice cream we continued our impromptu dessert stroll and walked further down the street to Trophy Cupcakes.

I had first heard about Trophy Cupcakes on Not Martha and had filed it away as a fun place to try if I was in town. Ken and Mindy had been there before and liked it so we made it the third and last stop on our grand gastronomic walking tour of the Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood. (On the way there we discussed how the walking part of the evening conveniently and completely balanced out the ice cream and cupcake part of the evening.)

There were so many delicious-looking flavors that choosing was hard, but they were $3.50 a piece (and we had just had dinner AND ice cream) so we picked out a Pineapple Upside Down cupcake and a Snickerdoodle cupcake and cut them into fourths so we could each taste both. They were both fantastic. The flavors of both the cake and the frosting were rich and creamy and surprising like their namesakes. There were pineapple slices at the bottom of the Upside Down cupcake and the top of the Snickerdoodle cupcake even had the same texture as a Snickerdoodle cookie. I have no idea how they pulled that off but it was great.

I didn’t try the Red Velvet flavor but I thought they looked adorable.

The next day Mindy and I stopped by the University Village mall to do a little shopping and uh, what do you know?–Trophy Cupcakes’ only other store is located there! I’m not one to ignore a sign from fate so we went and brought back a few more cupcakes to share with the guys: Strawberry Cheesecake, Coconut, Triple Chocolate, and Vanilla Chocolate. It took us a few days to eat them all so the the chocolate flavors were kind of stale when we got to them. But the Strawberry Cheesecake and the Coconut flavors were fantastic. I would recommend those and the Pineapple Upside Down and Snickerdoodle flavors if you ever go.

And if you’re ever in Seattle, you should really go.

Sweet Chili Chips


I know it doesn’t sound like they would be that appetizing, but these sweet chili brown rice chips are really good. They were sampling them at Costco and both E and I liked them. They’re wonderfully crunchy with just the right blend of spicy/sweet. And they’re made from brown rice so eating handfuls of them is healthy! (Ahem.)

They’re also good for people with food allergies. They don’t contain milk powder and they’re wheat/gluten-free for those with celeriac disease.

Fancy Fast Food

Yum, sushi…sushi made out of Popeye’s chicken! (Wha-wha-WHA?!?)

Fancy Fast Food is the brainchild of Erik Trinidad, a New York advertising designer/amateur food stylist. Trinidad creates haute cuisine out of fast food meals and photographs the results.

To see a step-by-step slide show of the above meal’s transformation see here. Time has more info on Trinidad here.

Berry Lemon Mini Trifles

My friend Kristin and I hosted a baby shower for a neighbor last night and I made these mini trifles for the party. I think they went over pretty well; a couple people asked for the recipe.

I used this Tyler Florence recipe. I was feeling slightly ambitious and so I also made my own lemon curd using this recipe. (I wasn’t feeling up to making my own pound cake though. I like to use Costco’s; it’s really good).

I love making lemon curd: I find the constant stirring meditative. There’s something magical about stirring, stirring, stirring and then suddenly bam!–the mixture thickens and turns into curd. I know I’m a nerd, but I think it’s fun. It’s kind of like a science experiment. And besides, an 11 oz jar of lemon curd was $5 at the store (and I needed two or three) while a huge bag of lemons was under $5 at Costco.

And I’m cheap like that.

Indian Cooking Class and Recipe

On Saturday I went to an Indian cooking class with my hair stylist/friend LeeAnn. It was a lot of fun. I think the teacher, Savita Puri, is in her late sixties/early seventies and she was very sweet. Her husband of 51 years (!) was assisting her and kept cracking up the class with jokes and stories. They were adorable.

The class was conducted demonstration-style, so we watch them cook Murg Makhani (butter chicken), Aloo Gobi (potatoes and cauliflower), Dal (lentils), Zeera (cumin) rice, naan (flat bread) and a mango mousse dessert while following along with the recipes. Then we ate everything–it was delicious.

I love Indian food but have only cooked it from scratch once and that was in the pre-E days. It has seemed daunting to gather all the spices and specialty ingredients needed. But the teacher gave us the address of a good Indian grocery store not too far from my house and so I think I’m going to go stock up on supplies and then try out the recipes at home.

If you’re interested in the class, it’s held the last Saturday of every month at Thanksgiving Point from 11 am to 1 pm. It costs $40 and different recipes are showcased every class. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it a regular thing, but I might go back in July because Mrs. Puri said that they might make one of my favorite dishes, chicken saag, that month. Yum!

In the past (i.e., that one time) when I’ve made Indian food I’ve just serve short-grain rice like I use for Korean food, but having the Indian rice really adds a lot to the meal.

Recipe: Zeera (Cumin) Rice
Serves 4

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups basmati rice
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 4 cups water
  • 2 T oil
  • salt to taste

Directions:

  1. Wash the rice 4-5 times, then soak for 15 minutes and drain the water.
  2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add cumin seeds, when it starts crackling add the rice. (Be sure not to let the cumin seeds burn!)
  3. Fry the rice for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
  4. Add the rice, salt, and water to a rice cooker. Stir well and then cook until done.

The food did not disappoint

N and I took E to the festival on Saturday. It was great. Parking was a bit of a hassle, but that was the only difficult part. It wasn’t too crowded, but there were enough people there that there was a busy, festive vibe.

E had a lot of fun. He liked listening and watching the a Scottish bagpipers and drummers corp; he started drumming along on with them on his tummy. He also liked the food. N and I got a bunch of small plates from several different booths and ended up with Tibetan momos, Salvadorian papusas, an empanada, Sudanese chicken stew and kabob, and a Scottish crowdie. We thought the momos and the Sudanese food were probably safe for E, food allergy-wise, and so we let him try them. He really liked both of them. He kept dipping his momo into the hot sauce to eat it and he ate a full third of the Sudanese plate. I thoroughly enjoyed everything except for the crowdie, which was basically cream layered with oats and raspberry preserves and was a little too bland for my tastes.

All and all, it was a fun event and the food was delicious. It will be fun to take E again next year when he’s old enough for some of the kids’ activities they have.

Festival + Food = Perfect Weekend

Two of my favorite things are festivals and trying different cuisines. A festival with a focus on international food? Be still my beating heart! If you’re in Salt Lake and looking for something to do this weekend, might I suggest this event?


The festival celebrates the “traditional cultures of the many groups, native and immigrant, that make Salt Lake their home, so the whole community can enjoy a diversity of authentic foods, music, dance and crafts.”

Looking over the list of food booths made my mouth start watering. There’s going to be so many types of delicious food: Tibetan, Sudanese, Lebanese, Soul food, Thai, Hawaiian, Vietnamese, Indian, etc… I can almost taste the momos already! And besides the food booths, there are also cooking demonstrations.

The festival runs this Friday (5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m), Saturday (noon to 10:00 p.m.), and Sunday (noon to 7:00 p.m.). More info can be found here.

SO good


N and I had some Haagen Dazs Pineapple Coconut ice cream last night. It was SO good: creamy (but not too dense) and very fresh tasting. There were just the right amounts of tasty pineapple and coconut chunks in it: not so many that the ice cream was overly chunky, but enough that you got at least one little bonus in every bit.

So if you enjoy pineapple or coconut (or the pure unadulterated taste of summer) it’s worth a try.