April 5 - Lola, The Cops, Ghostland

Didn't those spoons used to come with little ice creams?

I am relatively new to the world of the business professional. My experience with the 9 to 5 has been varied and, at times, uncomfortable. Especially when it comes to the business lunch. Food to me is something fairly intimate, and I like to enjoy it. It's hard for me to enjoy food when I'm around people who control my income, but I'm working on it.

Last week the Chief Administrative Officer (yikes!) took my department out to Lola for a celebratory lunch for doing a good job in the first quarter. Yay! We started out with a sampler of spreads served with griddled pita. I never want pita any other way. We got 4 spreads: feta (rich but not exciting), sweet red pepper (fresh tasting but again, not exciting), tzatziki (pretty good, nice and dilly), and kalamata~fig (definately the standout - delicious!).

Olives and figs: meant to be together.

Of course, since I knew where we were going for lunch, I did a bit of research online into their menu. I was excited to see that on their list of lunchtime kebabs was. . . lamb's tongue. What! Of course I was intrigued. How big is a lamb's tongue? What's it like? Will I feel guilty eating it, knowing that there is a lamb out there that can no longer get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Well, I never got to find out. The lamb's tongue was sadly absent from the kebab selection, and I was forced to default to my second choice: Vlahotiri cheese and poached fig, drizzled in fig balsamic and accompanied by a Greek salad and more of that beautiful griddled pita and tzatziki.

Oh, glorious cheese!

I was incredibly pleased with my selection. When it came out, the cheese was just slightly melty on the outside, and it paired beautifully with the sweet, chewy figs. Mmmm. . . cheese. I dug in with (professionally) careless abandon.

Unfortunately, not everyone had a win with their lunch orders. Jackie, one of my co-workers, did a soup and salad combo - featuring an experimental "tomato" soup. Why the quotations? Well. . . it didn't resemble any tomato soup I'd ever seen before. It looked like pureed beets, and tasted like cinnamon-spiced carrots. It wasn't altogether unpleasant, but definitely somewhat offputting. Back to the drawing board, Tom Douglas.

It was a nice color, at least.

So how cool is our CAO? Well, after a delicious lunch he took us all across the street to Dahlia Bakery. It's the bakery that supplies all of Tom Douglas's restaurants with their desserts. It's a great little standalone takeout spot, though. They have fantastic breakfast items and their tomato soup (the regular type) is consistently great. They also have what is universally accepted to be the world's best coconut cream pie, conveniently available in a single-bite size.

Tiny sized to reduce fat-guilt.

While I was tempted to go with the fail-safe pie bite, I was enticed away by the mini carrot-cupcake. Carrot cake has always confused me. Why would you make a dessert out of a vegetable? That doesn't make sense. So I've been trying to reach an understanding of the carrot cake. This seemed like a safe mini introduction.

And I was pleasantly satisfied with the little cake. I was saddened at first at the overly cream cheesy and underly sweet frosting, but when paired with the tender, spicy cake it worked perfectly. Well played, Tom Douglas.

The calculator is pictured for scale reference.
The cupcake didn't come with a free calculator. Unfortunately.

I was going to include in this post my first foray into macaron-making, but it was an epic fail. I will instead close with a couple pictures from some concerts I got to go to this weekend.

The Cops played at Chop Suey on Friday night. I think I might like Chop Suey because it looks like my parent's Chinese restaurant back in 1991. Maybe I find it comforting, I don't know. My friend Ian had been raving about how fantastic The Cops are live ever since they played The Tractor a little while back, so I was pretty jazzed to see them.

Rock n roll!

I wasn't disappointed. Despite multiple equipment failures, they put on a pretty rocktastic show. Especially this guy, who I suspect I may be in love with now:

If you're out there, I love you. . .

Saturday night I was lucky enough to charm my way into a ticket to the sold-out Ghostland Observatory show at The Showbox. They're also known for their mind-numbingly awesome live shows, so I was pretty ecstatic when my friend Jon called me two hours before the show to tell me he had an extra ticket.

Score!

The show was legitimately really good, but I have a gripe: there were so many fog and laser machines on stage I wasn't sure if I was being dazzled by the band or the stage techs. I mean, come on guys, you're young and hip, do you really need all that flashy stuff to put on a good show? Just a thought.

I took like 50 pictures and this was the only decent one.

I'm going to try those macarons again soon. You'll see a post of it here presently. Promise.

April 4 - O Poutine!

The St Hubert chicken > Col Sanders.

I've been enthralled with Canadian culture for a while. It's a combination of hockey, music, and teenage soap operas. Mainly the last one. I wait with bated breath for the next episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation. I'm addicted to it. In a very unhealthy way.

Made more unhealthy by the fact that it's sparked a curiosity in me about poutine. Poutine is the national dish of Canada. It's what the Quebecois fur trappers used to eat on the tundra when the winters got tough and they needed to keep up their strength for the annual reindeer chase. With the upcoming premier of the Degrassi Spring Break Movie, I could see no reason to put off trying this mightily caloric dish.

De-starching process.

It starts with a foundation of fries, preferably freshly made. I'd never made fries before, but had I realized how simple and delicious homemade fries are I would likely be a much fatter girl. I used one large russet potato per person. I used my v-slicer to cut the into 1/4 inch strips and the soaked them in cold water overnight.

I had ordered the sauce mix on Ebay some months back. It's from Canada's first fast food chain restaurant, St Hubert. It is of course named after the patron saint of poutine, who is a national hero in Canada. St Hubert day is a nationally recognized holiday that everyone gets off work to drink Labatt Blue and eat poutine in his honor.

The excitement! It's building!

The packet gets emptied into a couple cups of cold water and boiled until it thickens. Ridiculously easy. It has a mild but hearty flavor. I think I may try to do homemade poutine gravy someday, but I have something like 5 more packets of this stuff to go through first.

Damn you, Ebay!

The potato strips got drained and dried and then dropped in 325 degree oil for about 10 minutes, or long enough for them to get pretty flexible. Then I let the rest on paper towels for about 15 minutes, but you can leave them for up to two hours before finishing them. When I was ready to assemble my poutine, I put the fries back into the oil now at 350 for a couple minutes to crisp the outsides. Man they were tasty.

Ignore the grease. Who wants to be healthy anyway?

The next ingredient needed for poutine glory is fresh white cheddar cheese curds. Luckily, I live in Seattle, and have access to Beecher's cheese shop. They make cheese on site and a variety of cheese-related items. Their mac and cheese is something magical to behold. Anyway, I picked up my curds there, and applied them to my poutine project.

Now if I only had some way. . .

As soon as the fries were done, they went into a bowl with a handful of curds on top. I poured the piping hot sauce over everything and voila! Poutine for six!

The poutine! It's. . . magnificent!

I was mostly pleased with the result. It was tasty enough, and the fries were G.D. delicious. I'll definitely make those again. Probably with sweet potatoes. The curds were tasty, but didn't get melty in the dish. I may have to put them more in between the fries before oozing on the gravy. I'm not sure how close this is to authentic French-Canadian poutine, but it was pretty good. In a very wrong incredibly unhealthy way.

By the way, the Degrassi Spring Break Movie was something of a disappointment. It was more like three episodes of the show rather than an actual movie, especially in the A-plot B-plot aspect. The A-plot did involve my favorite character getting into wacky adventures, which is awesome, but the B-plot sucked big time. Come on, Degrassi, was that really necessary?

Degrassi: They're really reaching.

March 31 - La Cocina y Un Bento

Ssssssalsa!

I am very much a creature of impulse. Oftentimes it lands me in some pretty wacky situations, but I am a slave to my whims. It's not always a bad thing, sometimes it ends in me getting exactly what I want.

And sometimes what I want is a big, gooey mess of tex-mex goodness. There's a common complaint heard in Seattle regarding Mexican food - that the authentic stuff is available and of good quality, but the border style stuff is lacking. I wouldn't go as far as to complain about this, since I've found La Cocina & Cantina to be perfectly acceptable Mexicanesque food.

Tacos and enchiladas and taquitos, oh my!

Having escaped the land of the buffet, I tend to steer clear of them these days. This being the case, the buffet at Cocina doesn't appeal too much to me, but my date couldn't resist her siren's song. The offerings seemed to be pretty decent, especially with the inclusion of a dish seductively named "chicken baked in juices."

Juice-chicken, ceviche, and a crispy thing.

I feel a certain guilt when I eat at texymexy restaurants because I pretty much always get the same thing: a chimichanga. Why? Well, partially because it's fun to say. But also, it's pretty much the ideal sloppy tasty mexy food: shredded marinated beef wrapped up in a crispy tortilla, accompanied by the typical rice/bean/lettuce party.

Say it with me: chimichanga!

My favorite version of the chimichanga comes smothered in a saucy sauce with tons of very un-Mexican cheese, but the Cocina gets points anyway for putting theirs out with a healthy portion of their very tasty guacamole.

Man I love guacamole.

You know I'm a sucker for the innards.

My one buffet avoidance related regret is that it comes with a complimentary dessert. Note to restaurant owners: free dessert is always always a good idea. It's long been established that pho needs to come with cream puffs (because they're so Vietnamese?) and has recently been discovered that Thai food is most favorably remembered when followed by red bean pudding.

The boy passed up the flan in favor of fried ice cream. Because he is a fool.

Well, it's no flan.

Going out to eat was awesome since I didn't have to pay for it, but preparation for the work week reminded me that I have to keep to my budget when planning my lunches. Enter: the vegetable bento.

I'm no bento expert, but I have embraced the idea. First off, bentos are adorable. Really really adorable. On top of that, I can make them delicious, healthy, and cheap - so I'm pretty well on board.

Stir-fry is a pretty simple concept, too, so bonus. The only tricky part is that it requires some serious heat, so preparation is key. I gave my broccoli a quick blanch and prepped the rest of my vegables for stir-frylation.

Check out that steam, baby.

I decided to work with onion, red and yellow bell peppers, some mini bok-choy I picked up at Viet Wah, a can of baby corn, and the aforementioned broccoli. After my biz was all set up, I set out my wok (yeah, I have a wok-what of it?) and put it on the very highest setting. When it was dangerously hot, I added a couple tablespoons of sesame oil and some minced garlic and my onion. Right as the garlic was coloring I added all of my other vegetables, and the secret ingredient.

Rabbit food!

Yes. Stir fry sauce from the Nine Dragons, otherwise known as the midwestern king of Chinese cuisine. My parents own it, so the family secret recipes are mine for the stealing. But not for the sharing. Sorry. If I told you I'd have to kill you.

The murky depths of secret mystery.

The magic of the sauce lies in its ability to season the dish and create a nice thick tasty goo to marry the vegetables together and bring the lovely flavors to the rice. It's actually not very complicated. You could probably come up with something similar to make your vegetables into stir frys, it just wouldn't be as good.

Ha ha.

So this dish is really about 2 minutes in the wok from start to finish. I just toss things about until the green wilt and everything seems cooked. It sounds vague, I know, but the only concern I ever have is overcooking the vegetables. Which hasn't happened yet, so it's pretty avoidable.

That's what it looks like when it's done.

And that's it! Packed into my little bento with some string cheese, a tangerine, and some furikake to season any leftover rice, it's a nice lunch I can easily consume while enjoying my latest guilty internet pleasure.

It's-a bento!