Best…soul food…EVER!

Bleh…I came down with a nasty cold on Friday afternoon and consequently spent all my free time this weekend slurping chicken noodle soup, downing diet Sprite and cold medicine, and napping. But instead of boring you with the details of my convalescence (I know, too late!) I wanted to share some photos from another restaurant we went to on our trip to Seattle.

While we were in town Ken and Mindy took us to another one of there favorite restaurants, The Kingfish Cafe. It’s known for having the best soul food in Seattle and is a local favorite. Pre-recession, people were known to queue up outside before they even opened up. Mindy said that they once saw a fistfight break out in line over someone cutting!

We started out with some fried green tomatoes and hush puppies.

N ordered the gumbo. He thought it had an excellent blend of flavors.

Ken and Mindy couldn’t praise the yam fries and collard greens enough so I ordered a steak which conveniently came with both. The steak was decent but they were right about the fries and greens: both were AMAZING. The fries were crispy and cinnamony and the greens weren’t bitter at all, only bright and tender. I’ve had collard greens a few times before, but this was the first time that I’ve really enjoyed them on their own. They were SO good. Between them and the fries, the steak was almost an afterthought for me.

…and then the four of us shared this giant strawberry shortcake!

It’s hard to see the scale of it from this picture, but it was actually the size of an adult’s head. It was delicious: creamy and sweet and caramelly (besides the caramel sauce the whipped cream was also caramel-flavored). And all those rich notes were perfectly balanced by the tartness of the berries. Even though we were already stuffed with our entrees the entire shortcake was successfully polished off.

What passes for spontanaity, post-baby

Last night N and I were planning to go see Sonic Youth at the free outdoor concert series that Salt Lake City puts on every summer. But after a long day at the office for him and a long day of wrangling a somewhat cranky E (he’s teething) for me we just couldn’t get excited about driving downtown and standing around in a hot sweaty crowd to listen to a band whom we probably wouldn’t even be able to actually see on the stage (because of the aforementioned hot sweaty crowd). Yep, we’re getting old.

We had already arranged for a babysitter and didn’t want to cancel on her. So we put E to bed and went to dinner at Pizzeria 712, a restaurant that both of us had heard of but never tried. It was really good.

I’ve never been to a restaurant like it in the Orem/Provo area: it’s upscale but casual in the same way Tilth was. Like Tilth, Pizzeria 712 is also devoted to sustainability and sourcing their ingredients from organic/local sources. (I don’t think they take it as far as Tilth does, but then again that would be pretty difficult.)

The atmosphere there was lovely and refined but not stuffy. We sat out on the patio and enjoyed the evening breeze. We started with braised short ribs served on top of polenta with horseradish cream and then shared a pizza topped with speck and soppressata (both are cured meats), shaved garlic, and mozzarella. The crust was hand-tossed and thin and crispy. It was obvious that the flavors had been chosen carefully and they all worked well together. We finished with a vanilla panna cotta served with a cherry sauce. It was SO good: creamy and sweet and cool and perfectly balanced by the tartness of the cherries. Considering the high quality of the food the prices were very decent. Our three course meal (without any alcohol) came to $35 plus tip.

I really had a great time: the food was delicious and N was a perfect date. After knowing each other for ten years he still makes me laugh like no one else does. And to top the evening off I ran into a friend I used to work with and haven’t seen in a year (Hi, T!) and we had the chance to chat and catch up. It was a serendipitous and charming evening.

Pizzeria 712 is located on the bottom floor of now-defunct Midtown Village development and while the pizzeria itself is warm and inviting, it is a little strange to look out at the huge unfinished building across the parking lot. I hope their location doesn’t hurt them: they’re now my favorite restaurant in Utah County and I want them to be around for a long time.

My New Diaper Bag

I have a bad habit of obsessing over purchases. And having E has only magnified this tendency because there’s so much baby gear out there to choose from nowadays. The first diaper bag I bought was a Skip Hop Dash. I liked it: it had tons of pockets and wasn’t frilly looking. But after 20 months of wear it finally gave out: the lining is thrashed and it’s stained and ratty-looking.

I took a look around online and ended up getting another Skip Hop bag, this time a Duo Deluxe bag. After a day of agonizing over patterns (cherry bloom or blue camo? Argh!!!) and pestering N for his opinion (“The camo pattern reminds me of G.I. Joes I had as a kid”) I ordered the camo. I liked the pattern and it certainly didn’t hurt that it was on sale for $42 (list price $54).
It came in the mail this week and so far I really like it. This deluxe version of the duo is larger than the previous version and it’s bigger than the Dash model I had before. It’s quite sizable and you can fit a ton of stuff in it. There are plenty of pockets for all the random things I carry around with me (sippy cup, E’s Epipen and allergy medicine, cell phone, diapers/wipes, a book, water bottle, wallet, etc…).

My only gripes with it are 1) the lining of the two zippered pockets is made out of the same thin synthetic material that wore out on my previous bag. I don’t want the lining to wear out before the rest of the bag again and so I’m leery of putting my clunky wallet and keys in those pockets, but there’s really no other convenient secure pockets for a wallet. It would have been worth it to upgrade that fabric. 2) There’s no key hook sewn into one of the pockets like there was in the Dash bag I had. I liked not having to dig for my keys.

But overall I like the bag quite a lot. And you can get it on Amazon with free shipping, which is how I like to roll.

More Lavender

While we were in Sequim we also stopped by a few lavender farms. My favorite farm was Purple Haze Lavender. It probably has something to do with being named after a Jimi Hendrix song but the farm’s atmosphere is friendly and relaxed. (Some of the other local farms are kind of frou-frou and a bit stuffy.)


This was actually my second time visiting. My mom and I stopped by almost ten years ago. The farm (and it’s name) has stuck with me all these years so on this trip we took the opportunity to go back.

It was just as charming as I remembered.

In B Flat

N is pretty much my own personal cool hunter. I don’t know how he finds these things, but he does. Last night he showed me this great collaborative music/spoken word piece, In Bb 2.0.

Give it a try. Select a few or several videos and see how they mix together. If you want to include it the spoken word piece is included in the video on the far left, third from the top.

For more details about the project check out the FAQ.

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.

Gasworks Park

After we ate our way from one end of Wallingford to the other we stopped by Gasworks Park on the way home to take in one of the best views in Seattle.

There were a lot of people there enjoying the summer evening.

It was relaxing to watch the boats go by.

Woman’s best friends.

Detail of a sundial.

Today is a state holiday to honor the pioneer members of my church and so N has the day off from work. Presented with a Thursday night that was no longer a “school night” we got a sitter and went out to dinner and to see Harry Potter. It was really nice to spend time one-on-one with N chatting and laughing after not seeing each other for a while. I think it might be true what they say about absence and the heart because he seems even cuter and funnier than before.

I hope you have a great weekend!

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.

I’m baaack!

E and I arrived home yesterday and we were both super happy to see N after being separated for about a week. I guess that after our horrid flight to Seattle where we sat on the tarmac for an hour (half an hour at both ends!) I was due for a dose of good flight karma because yesterday E fell asleep on my lap as soon as we took off and he didn’t wake up until the landing gear hit the ground. It was amazing because E never sleeps when someone’s holding him.

The only unpleasant part of the flight were the grumpy old people sitting behind me that started loudly complaining about having to sit behind a baby as soon E and I sat down. Things like, “Oh great, we have to sit by a screaming baby” (E was not screaming) and “this is going to be miserable” were said repeatedly AND loudly. Did they not think that I would be doing everything in my power to keep E quiet? I didn’t want to bother anyone. I was stressed out as it was. Sitting in front of them was already making me ten times more nervous than I would be otherwise because they were chomping at the bit to be critical. And the flight hadn’t even started yet!

My sister Jan was actually on the same flight but we had been unable to get seats together. But I was able to switch seats with someone and sit next to her. I normally never do this sort of thing, but as I was changing seats I looked the old people in the eye and said, “Don’t worry, we’re moving so we won’t be inconveniencing you.” They looked a little stunned for a second (maybe they didn’t realize how loudly they had been speaking?) but then they started congratulating themselves on their good fortune–while I was still standing right there. Argh!

Okay, now that I’ve vented about the mean old people I’m ready to move on. *Exhale* All and all, it was a wonderful trip. Besides spending time with family my favorite part of the trip was the food–the food was GLORIOUS.

Photos and details tomorrow!