• Home
• Me & Food
• Recipes
• Blogroll!

RSS

Archive for the ‘Seattle’ Category

What to do with all this apple butter??

A quick morning treat that we had along with a ham, cheese, onion and red pepper scramble to give us the energy for a little hike with friends today!

Apple Cinnamon Sweet Rolls

• 1 tube crescent roll sheet (Pillsbury makes crescent roll dough that isn’t cut into triangles because they realized that people like me like to use crescent rolls for EVERYTHING!).  You could also use actual cinnamon roll dough if you were inclined to make such a thing
• 2 heaping tablespoons of apple butter
• 3 Tb AP flour
• 3 Tb brown sugar
• 2 Tb butter
• 1/2 Tb cinnamon
• 1 cup sifted powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 Tb orange juice or milk

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Unroll crescent roll dough and spread with apple butter (try to leave a little space at the top of the sheet where your roll will end.
3. Mix flour, brown sugar and cinnamon and cut in cold butter until crumbly.  Spread this on top of the apple butter.
4. Roll either lengthwise or widthwise, depending on how many/how big you want your rolls. 
5. Slice into even rolls and place in ungreased pan (I used a glass pie plate).
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes…keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.
7. While they’re baking, mix powdered sugar, vanilla and juice/milk.  Add more liquid if necessary.
8. Let the rolls cool just a bit before adding glaze.

Sweet and yummy! A great morning treat! The glaze sort of soaked into the rolls a bit while I made the eggs. 

We’re headed out for a mini-hike with our friend Nicki and Santana’s good friend Bonnie.  When I say “good friend”, I mean Bonnie and Santana have had 2 play dates at our apartment.  Once, Bonnie threw up.  Once, Santana peed on the floor.  Neither time did they try to play with each other.  GREAT friends.  I am interested to see them on neutral territory today.  Santana thinks she is too human for other dogs.  If she wasn’t so adorable and sweet, this would be a problem. 

Bonnie inherited Santana’s pink jacket, since it actually fits her.

 

Santana was skeptical…

Very very skeptical.

We’ll see how they do today and maybe get some adorable pictures of puppies possibly becoming friends???

Soy Squared Fried Rice

Update: our car is at the body shop and we should have it back next week! I can’t wait to see it all fixed!

Second update: In case you forgot how wonderful Santana is, here are some gorgeous pictures Matt took yesterday while he was working from home.  In the afternoon, the sun comes directly in the sliding glass door and Santana follows the sun for a warm nap place as it moves across the room. 

  

Food time!

Our somewhat-regular Thai restaurant makes this AMAZING fried tofu. I have tried fried tofu at other places and it is OK, but I haven’t found a restaurant with the same kind and it makes me sad.

So Monday night I took a leap and tried frying up some tofu for fried rice. It turned out GREAT! Next time, I’ll season up the flour mix a little more and fry at a higher temp for a little longer (the second batch turned out better than the first).

  Soy Squared Fried Rice

• Fried tofu squares
  • Extra-firm tofu, cut into squares and pressed between clean towels to remove the extra moisture
  • Dredged in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, red pepper.
  • Fried on both sides in some vegetable oil until brown (about 10 minutes or so, depending on the heat of your oil)
• Round one: aromatics
  • Chopped Onion
  • Minced Garlic
• Round two: Veggies that need to be cooked a bit
  • Chopped red bell pepper
  • 3 carrots, peeled into long ribbons and roughly chopped
  • Frozen edamame (about 1 cup)
  • I feel like I’m forgetting something—you really can use any veggies you like.
• Round three: Veggies that only hit the heat at the last minute
  • Bean sprouts
  • Sliced green onions
  • (I often use baby bok choy or some cabbage here)
• Sauce options
  • Peanut Sauce
  • A tiny bit of broth or water
  • Soy Sauce (If you use soy sauce, that probably makes this a soy-to-the-third-power fried rice)
  • Hoisin
  • Thai chili sauce (only a tiny tiny bit!!)
  • Cayenne pepper
• 1 heaping cup of leftover rice (you can make fresh rice, but leftover is a little more dry and fries really nicely)
• 2 eggs, beaten

1. Prepare the tofu in a large frying pan, skillet or wok and set aside.  Leave a tablespoon or so of the vegetable oil in the pan.
2. Sauté the aromatics in the oil until translucent.  Using the leftover oil from the tofu works well because there will be a tiny bit of flour from the tofu coating, which will thicken as the sauce cooks.
3. Add in the round two veggies and let them cook until they are just starting to get tender. 
4. Toss the round three veggies in and stir.
5. Add your choice of sauce right after this and toss to coat.  I usually use a mix of the stuff listed above and sometimes try to make my own if I have the ingredients on hand.  You’ll want it to seem just a little more liquid than you like because you still need to add the rice and tofu.
6. Remove the veggies and sauce to a large plate. 
7. Fry the rice (sometimes I hold back the green onions and fry them with the rice instead) until it starts to get crispy.  This is where things can get smoky and burnt if you’re not paying attention!  This is also a good time to add peanuts if you want (an amazingly wonderful addition) or sesame seeds if you have them.
8. Make a well in the middle of the rice and fry the eggs quickly.  Once they cook through, mix with the rice.
9. Add the veggies, sauce, and tofu back into the pan and toss it all together. 

We served with some pot stickers from the freezer and a honey-cayenne-soy dipping sauce that Matt made! SO delicious!  Plus I have leftovers for lunch!

The other night, we also made some drinks with a fresh watermelon puree and some vodka….it was a liiiiittle too strong for us, but the watermelon was delicious (I have a giant bowl in the fridge with watermelon and cantaloupe and it is snacking heaven this week!) and I am mostly SO excited that it is almost summer! Hooray!

CSA Veggies Galore

So I am working from home today because I was in a minor accident on the highway that has left me really shaken up (I’ve never been in an accident before!), but physically OK.  Santana is trying to comfort me by climbing into my face every few minutes while I try to answer emails and conduct phone appointments from home.  She’s adorable and really knows just when to be sweet at the point when I need it the most.  Last night (after a morning of vomiting up her breakfast because she ate too fast), I fed her dinner by hand, piece by piece.  She got to practice her tricks (sit, down, shake) and we worked on “leave it”…she was NOT amused.  After we got done she searched around for a bowl full of food, and then she stood over by her bowls and glared at me.  To celebrate her cuteness, a couple pictures:

 

 

 

So, that was more than a couple…but she’s too sweet and adorable and I couldn’t choose! The first one is the day after we got her I think…she was SO tiny! 

To further take my mind off of this morning, here are a couple recipes, inspired by the return of our CSA box last week.

Crockpot Leek and Potato Soup

• 1 large leek, washed and chopped
• 1 lb red potatoes, peeled and chopped
• Minced Garlic
• Dry Thyme
• Chicken Broth
• Cream and shredded cheese to taste

1. Sauté leek and garlic in a bit of olive oil to get it nice and soft and translucent, with little bits of caramelization starting to form.
2. Add to Crockpot with potatoes, thyme and chicken broth to cover.
3. Cook on low for the day (I’d guess at least 4 hours, depending on the size of your potatoes…ours cooked until about 7:30pm, when I got home)
4. Puree or mash to your desired consistency. I left a little bit of potato chunkiness, but pureed it with my stick blender quite a bit.
5. Add a bit of cream to smooth it out and shredded cheese (we used cheddar) depending on your taste.  The cream and cheese could most definitely be left out.

Easy! These heaping bowls of soup were our whole dinner this night, and it was a perfect soup for a rainy and cold evening on the couch. (Again, what is going on with me and the fuzzy pictures lately??)

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

We also had some HUGE stalks of asparagus in our box this past week.  Some of them were almost an inch wide at the bottom!  I chopped them up and made them into a quiche!  The recipe I started from had completely different fillings, but quiche is one of those things that you can turn into whatever you want, which is why I love it so much!

Bacon and Asparagus Quiche

• 2 batches of pie crust of your choosing (homemade is obviously best, but Pillsbury works in a pinch)
• 8 eggs, beaten
• 2 1/2 cups half-and-half, cream or milk
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tsp cayenne
• 1 large bunch of monster asparagus, washed and chopped into small pieces
• 5 thick slices of bacon, cut into bite-size pieces
• 2 cups shredded cheese (we used an Italian blend we had in the fridge)

1. Cook bacon pieces over medium heat until they are rendered and crispy.  Drain and set aside.  Sauté the asparagus for just a few minutes in  tiny bit of the reserved bacon drippings (um, YUM) to get them just slightly cooked.  Set aside, with the bacon.
2. Line pie plate with the rolled-out crust.  This recipe has enough for two whole pie plates.  I filled one regular-sized dish and then cut the rest up and made mini-quiche in a muffin tin.
3. Line the pastry with two sheets of foil and bake at 450 for 5-10 minutes.  Remove foil and bake an additional 3-8 minutes, until the crust is a little dry.  The mini-quiche will get brown and dry much faster than the large, so keep your eye on them.
4. Lower the oven temp to 325 degrees. 
5. Mix eggs, dairy and seasoning in a large bowl.
6. In the bottom of the crust(s), evenly distribute bacon, asparagus and cheese.
7. Pour egg mixture into crust.  Here’s a tip….pay attention!  I had a few mini-quiche that didn’t want to come out of the muffin tin because some egg had leaked outside of the crust.  Whoops!
8. Bake until you can put a sharp knife into the center and it comes out clean.  The small ones took about 15-20 minutes.  The large quiche will take 40-45 minutes. 
9. Let rest before digging in.

Since I had a HUGE amount of quiche, we froze a few of the minis and saved the large quiche for weekend lunch and weekday breakfast over the next few days.  We served a couple mini-quiche like this:

 

On the side:

• CSA broccoli steamed with garlic and soy sauce
• Thin spaghetti with an onion, white wine, slightly-creamy sauce and tossed with fresh tomatoes and half a bunch of spinach, chopped small. 

A really satisfying dinner with lots of veggies! Plus, we had a handful of broccoli and about 1 cup of the pasta left which made a really great lunch at work! Thanks to local and organic farmers! YUM! 

αυγά rancheros?

First up, Santana teaches Matt how to do push ups! No matter what she is doing, if Matt tries to exercise in the middle of the living room, she POUNCES!  Her whole body wiggles and wags along with her tail and she looks happier than ever while bounding across the room to run under him, lick his face, pounce in front of him, and just generally play along with this super fun game of pushups!  It is crazy adorable and we love her for it!  This morning we decided she is the perfect dog for us because of her quirky awesomeness…and we concluded that this is because she is the dog-version of our favorite schvester, Dori.  They are puppy/person soulmates, for sure.

  

Second, some yummy giveaways:

Erin at I Walk In This World is giving away a ton of Mr. Kracker products and asking about whole foods.  Whole foods! Hooray!

Over in Jackson’s World you can enter a giveaway for some Holey Donuts….I need these. Anytime they send me an email, I spend most of the day debating whether or not I need some mail-order donuts. 

Can we count Holey Donuts as a Wholey Food? I think so. 

Ok, enough drooling…on to some cooking.  I have a few meals backlogged that I want to post, but will just spread them out over a few days.  First up, a Greek-inspired breakfast (we have been on a Mediterranean kick lately, I guess).

You all know about my recent obsession with mexi-breakfasts.  I usually get really excited when there are huevos rancheros on a menu…I love the mix of the runny fried egg, creamy beans, crunchy tortilla, spicy salsa…it’s all wonderful for me.

We had leftover gyro meat from an amazing meal we shared from  Mr.. Gyro in Greenwood (this place is SPECTACULAR), and I turned it into a greeky rancheros type thing.  I may need a suggestion for a title for this meal, since all of my ideas have been pretty lame. 

Greek Breakfast Heaven

• 2 pitas
• 1/2 cup cooked chickpeas
• 1/4 of a small onion, chopped
• dried parsley
• 1/4 cup water
• minced garlic
• 3 Tb shredded cheddar cheese
• Leftover Gyro meat
• 4 fried eggs

1. Toast pitas until a little bit crispy
2. While toasting, sauté onion and garlic until soft. Add parsley, water and chickpeas, cooking over medium-high heat until water is mostly absorbed and chickpeas are heated through. Mash chickpeas to desired consistency (I left it fairly chunky).
3. Spread chickpea mash on pitas and sprinkle cheese ton top.  Pop back in the oven for a couple minutes to melt the cheese. 
4. Heat gyro meat.  We just reheated in the microwave for a couple minutes.  Our leftover meat had a little yummy sauce on it, so that got mixed in as well and when it reheated (with a tiny bit of water added to keep it from drying out) it made a really flavorful sauce. 
5. Put the reheated meat and any sauce on top of pitas.
6. Top with fried eggs.  I aim for over-medium.  

YUM!  This was sooo satisfying.  Definitely not a light every-day breakfast.  But a wonderful weekend treat that held us over for quite a while!  We definitely got our protein in for the day! Also note in the second picture how perfectly my two eggs turned out!! The two I made for Matt were not as pretty, but I was pretty pleased with myself for the second batch. 

 

 

Coming soon: Big S Farms Salsa redeemed! Stay tuned!

Family Time Finally!

I mentioned somewhat briefly before that my parents were here last weekend (Friday – Tuesday) and that we had a great time.  This was really just brushing over the entire weekend, which included a TON of eating at new places, hanging out with my mom and dad and Santana being adorably excited to see them.  I was waiting to post any details about the weekend until I got the pictures my dad took.  I wanted to share some of the great shots he got (luckily, we had mostly pretty nice weather).

When my folks got in on Friday, they were exhausted from flying across country all day, so we got lunch at Macaroni Grill and crashed at home and played with Santana until Matt got home.  After my parents went to their hotel in the U-district, Matt and I got a fast dinner and crashed for the night.  A very very uneventful first evening in Seattle.

Saturday was a completely different story! Since my parents’ hotel is located directly next to one of our favorite breakfast places, we splurged (way expensive and HUGE portions) on a fun Saturday breakfast/brunch. 

Portage Bay

Portage Bay is really amazingly wonderful, and it shows in their food.  Their philosophy “Eat like you give a damn”, is seen in their great local, organic, DELICIOUS breakfast choices (we’ve never been for lunch). My dad ordered Banana Foster French Toast, my mom went with a Pork and Apple stuffed omelet and Matt and I shared one of the best omelets I’ve had in a while: Greek Omelet. Pepper bacon, herb-roasted organic onions, organic baby spinach, Greek myzythra cheese, basil pistou. YUM!  It came with their roasted potatoes, which are addictingly wonderful.  We took Dori and her mom here when they were in town, and of course they loved it! We’ve actually only been a few times, since it is such a splurge (and a long wait on the weekends), but if you want to impress visitors in Seattle (or to be impressed if you’re visiting yourself), head to the U-district Portage Bay.  They have a 2nd location on South Lake Union, but we haven’t tried that one yet. 

After breakfast, we crashed at our apartment for a bit again, and I taught my mom and dad how to play Wii bowling.  This was probably one of my favorite parts of their visit because it felt a lot like being home as we got competitive and joking around with each other while we were playing.  Also, my dad is amazing at Wii bowling!! He is extremely particular and precise about things, so once he figured out how to line up the shot, he did really great! In his first time ever playing! Way to go dad!

After relaxing for a while, we headed to Woodinville to visit the Red Hook Ale Brewery.  So fun!  They have a tour there that costs $1 per person…it includes the tour (obviously), plus a mini taster glass, and the equivalent of at least 2 pints of beer samples! I don’t really drink beer (although I tasted all of them from Matt’s glass), but I know when I hear a good deal! $1 just for the little glass (which will be perfect for mini-cocktails) is a good deal, but we also got some fun info about Red Hook’s history and the making of beer in general.  The tour itself was held primarily in a large room with a bar and tap setup.  This is really the only feasible way for them to give the tour to 60-80 people at one time, and it worked pretty well.  Our tour guide (Valerie), was really funny and called some annoying people out for talking the whole time (they eventually snuck out).  Definitely another place to go when visiting the Seattle area, especially if you are a fan of beer!  

My dad got a picture of the outside of the tour/gift shop/restaurant entryway (and Matt and I waiting patiently for our tour)

After the tour, we sat down in The Forecasters Pub, located in the Brewery, for dinner.  My dad got a really yummy chili, my mom had a southwest-type salad, and Matt and I split a pasta dish we weren’t crazy about.  It’s bar food and if we had been in the mood for burgers or something, I probably would have been more impressed, but I was starving by this point, so anything was good. My dad got more pictures!

Sunday was GORGEOUS.  The sun was shining and it wasn’t raining…we took advantage of the weather and the four of us walked with Santana up to the 74th Street Ale House.  We weren’t planning on stopping there, but we were all getting hungry after poking our heads in little stores along the way and working up an appetite.  Since it was so nice, we grabbed two outdoor tables and tied Santana next to us.  She fussed the entire time, but I fed her some of my mom’s potato chips and she was pleased.  She loves to snack just like I do! 

My dad got the blackened salmon sandwich and my mom had a Reuben (there was an article taped to the window saying that this was the best Reuben in Seattle!). 

Matt and I split a soup and salad combo, with caesar salad and the 74th St Gumbo.  From their website:

Based on an old New Orleans recipe, we feel this is the best Gumbo anywhere. "Hot and Spicy", it consists of baby shrimp, roasted chicken, fresh Cascioppo Brothers andouille sausage, onions, tomatoes and green peppers. Served on a bed of "Dirty Rice" and garnished with pickled okra. Accompanied by freshed sliced Essential Bakery rustic white bread.

It was pretty yummy, with a nice spice to it.  I also stole a bunch of my mom chips (for me and Santana).  A great lunch!

My parents were really full, and still on East coast time.  So Matt and I were on our own for dinner and got a quickie rotisserie chicken and had macaroni AND potato salad on the side (my mom and I spent the afternoon making these…LOVE comfort food from home!)

While we were walking, my dad took some pictures of the area:

        

On Monday, Matt had to work and I took a vacation day to show my folks Pike Place Market.  Even though it was not as busy as it would have been on the weekend, it was still pretty packed.  We didn’t stay long, but my dad took lots of pictures and we ate at Lowell’s in the market, where all three of us had Lowell’s Famous Fish & Chips – 4 Pieces of Hand Breaded Alaskan Cod, Fried Golden and Served with Cole Slaw and French Fries, Tartar Sauce and Lemon Wedges.  Malt Vinegar on the Side. Very crunchy and tasty ! But a huge meal! 

The highway right next to the market.

Me glaring at and my mom ignoring my dad’s picture attempts.

Park sleepers                     

Lots of color in the market…  

     

            As you can see, my mom and I are not amused by the idea of standing in the middle of the road for a picture with the Pike Place sign.  I normally complain about people doing this when I’m down there!

Since their flight was leaving super early Tuesday morning, we took them to a hotel by the airport Monday after Matt got home, and Matt and I just had sandwiches for dinner later that night. 

Such a great weekend!  Santana was super excited to see them, and got just as excited each day when they came back over!  I hadn’t seen my mom since last June and my dad since August…the longest I’ve ever gone without being home, so it was such a nice, relaxing weekend to have them here.  I can’t wait until I get to head back to NY for a visit!

Click over to Santana’s blog post about the weekend to see the adorable puppy pictures my dad took!