Breakfast is yummy with goat cheese

I tried my hand at making goat cheese again last week, and it was a great success! The first time I made it, the cheese was runny and mushy--tasty, but not what I was going for. This time it was firm but spreadable, and oh so tasty! i neglected to take pictures of the process, but here's something we put it on to devour: 

I made this fried egg sandwich for breakfast last Sunday, and it was delicious!! Ciabatta bread, fresh tomato, fried egg, slivers of cheddar, and then fresh-from-the-herb-garden basil. And of course the goat cheese.
Photo credits go to the lovely Pamela Torres, who claimed that there was no sandwich better in Portland. Little does she know! Portland breakfasts can blow your socks off!

A Date Night Smorgasbord

Our housemates are gone for the weekend, so Jesse and I enjoyed a little date night in a home to ourselves. He went to the farmer's market and made me dinner, which was devoured without taking any pictures. Grilled asparagus, fresh beets, and a tomato salad were enjoyed tremendously.


After that settled, we moved on to dessert!

Don't mind the incredibly messy coffee table. What you see are two of our choice cheeses from Cheese Bar (both delicious), and three macaroons (pistachio, lemon mango, and cinnamon) and two truffles (Bleu Cheese and Chipotle Pepper), all from Pix Patisserie down the road. Yes, the bleu cheese truffle was quite good.

What you don't see is a chocolate brioche, a bit of wine, and us canoodling in enjoyment. Ah, I love food.

Happy Easter

It's been such a long time since I posted! We've been keeping pretty busy here. My parents visited this weekend, so it's been a nonstop tour of restaurants and shops and hikes and all sorts of things. A little recap:

Jesse and I at Slappy Cakes. Notice the K and J pancakes in front of us, of course.

Hiking in the Gorge: this is Upper McCloud Falls, on a very rainy day.

Easter Brunch on the roof: with lemon curd, baked french toast, quiche, hot cross buns, and mimosas!

Happy Spring!

I have new fabrics and new projects to post about, so check back soon!

La Calaca Comelona, or, "The Hungry Skeleton"

I realize it's a little off to post about a Mexican restaurant on St. Patrick's Day. But I'm not Irish, so St. Paddy will forgive me, I'm sure.

We tried a new restaurant on Monday night: La Calaca Comelona ("The Hungry Skeleton"), on SE 23rd and Belmont. It was an instant favorite. It's ironic, actually, because we used to live 3 blocks away from it, but never tried it. Now we live across town, but decided to make the trip. And hooray that we did, because it was so good!
 Besides a lot of burritos and taco stands, we don't actually have a good selection of tasty Mexican food around, so it was quite a nice change from a giant burrito. They make everything from scratch there, from the salsas to the tortillas, and it all tastes so delicious. A friend asked "Isn't that the place where they don't serve you chips and salsa?" Well...yes. But it doesn't matter. They do give you different salsas to drench on your food, and that's all you need. And the food!

It's inspired by central and southern traditional Mexican, and look nothing like what you'd see at the local burrito stand. They have a short menu, almost like a lunch menu, that has tacos, sopas, and tostadas to choose from, with varying ingredients, for a little as $6-7. Then the dinner menu has bigger entrees, a bit higher priced, that are delicious and wonderful.
We decided to share the pulled pork sopa: a mixture of pulled pork, cabbage, and salsa over a thick corn tortilla. And then we split the Blackberry Mole over Chicken, with pears. We just had to try that once we saw it. It was a perfect mole--a little smoky, but with a fruity taste from the blackberries. As good as that description sounds, though, we both preferred the sopa! It was a bit stronger in flavor, I think.
I sipped my horchata throughout the meal, and we gazed on the slightly creepy Day of the Dead skeletons hanging around as decor. They're brightly colored, so they come off as happily eerie. The whole atmosphere and the food all brought me back to our honeymoon in Santa Fe.

{Photos from La Calaca Comelona}

Out back of the restaurant they have a cute little garden space and an outdoor bar. It was too chilly when we went, but we'll be back! Another horchata, a few tacos, and I'll stay all night long!

Doesn't that sound way better than potatoes and green beer?
Nonetheless, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Rice Pudding!

We saw this recipe while browsing the other night, and just had to make it. It looked so tasty, and when we realized we had all the ingredients just laying around, it had to be done.

It's not often that we have milk on hand, actually. Soy milk is the usual thing for cereal, and even for most cooking, so we rarely have milk. But last week I was ambitious enough to think that I would try making ricotta cheese, so we bought a gallon of whole milk. But then a cup was needed for one thing, another half a cup for something else, until there wasn't enough for ricotta anyway, so we might as well just use it all. Thus, rice pudding. She suggests floating a bay leaf in the milk for a little zing, so we tried that--honestly I couldn't taste anything. But I'm a little stuffy-nosed coughy right now, so I might not be so great at detecting the subtle flavors in foods. I did detect the sweet, sticky goodness of the pudding, though, and it was amazing!

Jesse was the one that did most of the work. Sometimes that happens: he does all the cooking, I do a lot of eating, and then I brag about it later. At least I'm good at giving credit where it's due!

The Twisty Side of Life

Jesse, in all his baking fervor, tackled pretzels last week.

 

Or maybe they tackled him... Either way, he managed to twist his way to a delicious browned, firm crust with yeasty goodness inside. Delicious!

 

Here they are before going into the oven, and that was the last picture I got before we gobbled them all up. A little salt on top, a little mustard, and they were perfect (I won't mention the fact that they stuck to the pan horribly because I didn't grease it enough...).

Twisty is a good illustration of how I've been feeling about life lately. Twisty, perhaps a little restless or unsatisfied... who knows how to describe it. But it's amazing how a little unhappines can affect all sorts of things in your life. I've been reading a lot of craft blogs, and trying to sew, which is a great outlet for my creativity drive, but at the end of the day it just leaves me wanting more. Then I look at all the stores on Etsy, all the people creating whole clothing lines on Burda Style, and blogs with successful women behind them who've created careers out of their crafty drives. It leaves me unhappy.

I want so bad to create that for myself, too, but...but, but, but. Always a but. Not enough money, time, talent, direction. There's a lot in my way, most of all the fact that I have no clear vision for what I actually want. I want to earn money doing the things I love to do. I have idea how to do that, or what it is, exactly, that I love to do.

Twisty, twisty. Excuses, excuses. For now, I'll keep working on my skirt.

Homemade Cheese, of the Goat Variety

Yup, you guessed it--we made goat cheese! Our dear friends The Beedles gave us a DIY kit for Christmas, straight from the local shops of Portland:

As you can see, our kit was for Chevre, or goat cheese, and as you can't see, it came with cheesecloth, a cheese thermometer, and the citric acid needed to curdle milk. Then we had everything else!

The hardest part was finding the goats milk, because it's not hanging out everywhere. What's more, you're not supposed to use Ultra-Pasteurized milk because that kills all of the good bacteria. And plain old pasteurized goats milk is hard to find. But we finally scored some at Trader Joe's, and brought it home dreaming of creamy goodness.

First, we carefully brought the milk to an almost-boil, then added in the citric acid, which curdled it and turned it a weird yellowish green color. But this was a good thing. We kept it at a good simmer until it really got a-curdling, and separated into curds and whey. At this point, I thought, "Little Miss Muffet must have been crazy to eat this stuff." It looked pretty gross.

Then we poured it all into a little baggie made of the cheesecloth and let all the whey drain out, leaving just the beautiful tasty curds: chevre! We mixed dill into part of it, because I have a love affair with dill. Then we let it cool.

And then we ate it! It was delicious! And we had made it all on our own!

Okay. it doesn't look like much, but it's pretty tasty!

So, just to recap, that's sour cream, butter, buttermilk, and chevre we've made in our very own kitchen. I just need to buy a goat, and we'll have a never-ending supply! I suggested it to Jesse, but he didn't go for that. Bummer. Maybe someday. We can have a family of goats, for Suki to make friends with. Our chevre kit makes 10 batches, so we have a ways to go still!

We're on a roll with the dairy items-next up, yogurt?

The Science of Butter

For Hannukah/Christmas/New Years, I got Jesse a cheesemaking book. (Really, it was for me). I've heard that making soft cheeses is really easy, and I've been so excited to try it out. We tried to make sour cream for our latkes awhile ago, and it was a bit of a runny mess. By now, though, it's solidified a little, and actually tastes like sour cream! Better than sour cream! It's amazing!

With that tasty success, it was time for another try, so I attempted butter. The recipe was really easy--take cream, shake until the butterfat separates, wash it, and add salt. While I could have used the food processor, I chose to shake it in a glass jar for 20 minutes, because I figured by the time I made the butter, I will have worked off enough calories to eat it. So I shook and shook. I got a little worried when I opened the jar and just saw whipped cream, but as I kept shaking the fat in the milk began to clump together into a big blob, leaving buttermilk behind. (So really, I made butter AND buttermilk. Two in one!)

You know those experiments in science class where cool things happen with regular ingredients? Like a baking soda and vinegar volcano? It was kind of like that. I was just shaking along, and the next time I peered into the jar there was a blob of butter there! I felt like I needed Bill Nye the Science Guy to explain what I just did. Or the president to give me a medal. Either way.

So, I washed and rinsed the butter a few times, mixed and mashed the salt into it, and then put it in the fridge! And this morning, Jesse and I enjoyed fresh butter on our bagels. And it tasted good....so good.

Happy New Years!

A Celebration of Hannukah

I don't know much about Hannukah.
One year, in Prague, I went to a Hannukah party where we ended up playing "Drinking Dreidel" and having a dance party. I don't think that was a very traditional Hannukah celebration, though.

This year, I decided we should try to pull off a Hannukah celebration, complete with food and dreidels and everything! Jesse used to celebrate Hannukah when he was growing up, so I thought he'd be a pretty good source of information, but it turns out all he remembers is getting an extra 8 days worth of presents. No help there.

But I figured I knew enough to make the food okay, and we'd just kind of wing it from there. Here's how it turned out...

We mixed the traditional potatoes and onions and fried them crispy brown to make latkes. We even made our own applesauce to put on them!! These turned out delicious--I would most definitely make them again. (The sour cream we tried to make is another story...another blog post...)

We made matzo balls and matzo ball soup. This turned out...not so delicious. I didn't season the soup properly, and the matzo balls tasted a bit like wet crackers, so it was just an all around flavorless, lumpy, wet spoonful you got when you ate it. People politely pushed their spoons around while suggesting things I should have used when making it, like salt and spices. I would say "next time" if there would be one, but I'm fairly sure there won't.

We read a Hannukah story, just to get in the mood. More to know why in the world we were trying to spin a dreidel and eat matzo balls. Here you see Andrea doing a fabulous job of reading The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming, by Lemony Snicket. I recommend it, and judging by the riveted looks on everyone's faces, they do, too.

 

In all, there was hanging out, drinking of wine, laughing at jokes, eating of food, and sharing in the wonderful company of my dear friends who showed up to celebrate a holiday none of us knew anything about.

I might not know the details of Hannukah, but I'd call our little makeshift celebration a smashing success. Happy Hannukah, everyone!!

Next up, Kwanzaa???

The Master Cook

In general, I would say I do most of the cooking here. In general. And by that I mean most of the planned dinnertime meals are things I look up recipes for, get ingredients, and try out myself.
This isn't to say Jesse can't cook, because he most definitely can. He does a lot of breakfasts for us, and he has about 3 or 4 dinner recipes that he can whip out from memory. These are all delicious, but I've pointed out to him that the same recipes often get...well...boring. So the other week he whipped out the Master Chef.
Oh, man. Let me dazzle you for a moment...

First off, he made us pizza. And I don't mean he went to the store and got the sauce and crust then put them together--no, he actually MADE the pizza. Everything. He kneaded the dough, mixed the sauce, and lovingly watched the oven to make sure they were doing okay.

(Isn't he cute?)

The final verdict was deliciousness on my part, even if he wasn't as happy with his dough.

Pizza a la individual...Mmm!

After the pizza, he tackled dessert for Thanksgiving, where he made a pie. Not just a regular old pumpkin pie--again, he took out the big guns, and made Poached Pear Tart with Chocolate Ganache. And again, he made it all, down to the pie crust and chocolate ganache. And again, it was pure deliciousness.

Sooo good...

He also did a slow-simmering Green Chili Soup, with real meat! Very impressive.

Since then, he's expressed desires to own a pastry brush for better dusting techniques, a butcher block for better ease of kneading, and several other gadgets that I can only assume will make even yummier foods for me to eat.

The Master Cook has arrived, and I am happy to welcome him to my kitchen.

I'm only a little miffed that he doesn't clean up after himself.

The Ghost of Thanksgiving Past

Thanksgiving is sneaking in on me this year. It seems like it was just Halloween! Thanksgiving is always that weird holiday that is a big deal, but no one's quite sure why. Sure, we're all thankful that the Pilgrims survived to be fruitful and multiply, but half of us came in on a later boat anyway. And we also know that the pilgrims and Native Americans didn't have the best of relations, no matter what our 5th grade school play tells us.
So it's become this strange family celebration that centers around food, and the awkward tradition of announcing what you're thankful for. But since it's always fun to eat, and it's good to be thankful for things, I won't argue. Instead, I'll remember a few Thanksgivings that stick out to me.

1) I'm about 12 or so, and it was just my parents and I for Thanksgiving that year. We'd decided to do something different, so we had gone to the library to get cookbooks from another country, and make a cultural feast. That year it was Mexico--the next it was France. The tradition only lasted 2-3 years, but I remember always being so very excited with what we could come up with.

2) I'm in college, and everyone is home for the holidays. Thanksgiving is generally a day to sleep in and veg until it's time to eat, but for some reason my parents decide it's a great idea to do our town's Turkey Trot--a 5k race way too early on Thanksgiving. Since they threatened no food unless we did it, I bundled myself up and flailed my way to the finish line. You know that terrible feeling of being out of shape plus being in cold weather? The feeling of your lungs giving out on you? That year, I was thankful I survived.

3) 2007. I'm in Prague, Czech Republic, teaching English. This memory has two parts, really. Part 1 includes the actual day of Thanksgiving, where my roommate and I got locked out of our apartment and had to borrow metro money and coats from the old Czech lady next door to find someone to unlock it.  You know what we were thankful for.... 
Part II is where we celebrated our very own American Thanksgiving with a lot of English teachers stuck in a country that doesn't do Thanksgiving. We pulled out a potluck feast complete with turkey, casseroles, veggies, and my new tradition of making kolaches!

 

4) 2008: my first Thanksgiving with Jesse and his family. I was introduced to all sorts of new "traditional" food like apricot balls, chick-lets, tried a couple new recipes of my own, and continued my kolache-making tradition. Plus, Jesse and I struck gold with the leftovers and went home with our next 25 meals. Score!

So, those are just a few that stand out in my mind. It's funny, I don't really remember strong, solid, Thanksgiving traditions. We seemed to change it up every year depending on who was there, who was vegetarian, and where we were. My Thanksgiving requirements are being around good people, with good food, and maybe getting to see some of the Macy's parade. Then, putting up decorations and turning on holiday music, because it's Christmastime!!

Soup!!!

I love soup. So much. So very, very much. It is warm and flavor-bursting and delicious and yummy. As the dust jacket of my newest soup cookbook says, soup is "the ultimate comfort food."

This new soup cookbook was given to me by my dear friends Nat and Andrea (I'm suspecting it was mostly Andrea, but I have nothing to back this up) for our wedding. It's called The Daily Soup Cookbook, and is chock full of really good recipes for an entire plethora of soup-cooking. It divides the soups out into main ingredients, like Corn, Lentil and Pea, Rice, Cheese, and so on. It also throws in extra little sections like Movies to Rent While You Eat Soup, Periodic Table of the Soups, and Things to Do With Leftover Soup.

Apparently Daily Soup is a great little soup place in New York City. I didn't know this because 1) I've never been to New York, 2) Portland is very far away from New York, and 3) I think my degrees of separation with New York is like 4. Meaning I don't know anyone who lives there.

But I guess they make good soup, because the cookbook is fantastic. They have really simple recipes all the way up to making your own stock. So far we've tried Greek Tomato with Orzo, Mexican Cheese, and tonight's meal: Corn, Red Pepper and Zucchini Chowder. Of the three, I think tonight's was definitely the winner. (It was also the only one Jesse made. Should I read into that too much?)

 It had been a long day at work, and I came home to find Jesse almost done making it, so the smell was overbearingly delicious. It was a perfect thick chowdery soup for a chilly day like today, and a perfect amount of vegetables for right after Halloween. My sugar-stuffed body appreciated those healthy veggies. Way to go, new cookbook (and Jesse). Thanks for giving us a winner!

Perhaps a trip to New York City should be in the works now. I mean, if the soup WE made was that good, imagine what professionals could do! I want to go to that place.

Also, since we've had clear weather lately, the moon was really pretty tonight, so here's a bonus picture. I'm still withholding indoor pictures of our apartment on account of an excessive amount of mess.

Autumn means cider and corn mazes

Last weekend seemed to be the official inauguration of fall here. Up until now it's just been sort-of fall. Now it's real. Mainly because I've had apple cider, been in a corn maze, and fondled a pumpkin.

We're still in the throes of moving here, but we've had some time to savor the finer things in life like frozen pizza and watching an old tv show on dvd. (It's Angel. I can't help it, I love Joss Whedon). Last week we bought a jug of apple cider, heated it up with a bag of Chai tea, and put a shot of rum in it (just because), and sipped to our hearts content. It was beautiful. I just love hot drinks so much, any kind, but I got a kick out of how clever we were with the Chai tea. Very clever indeed.

Then last week we went to the corn maze at Kruger's Farm on Sauvie Island. Of course the powers that be picked that day to drench Portland in a downpour, so the maze was muddy, to say the least. But it was a perfect opportunity for me to wear my rainboots, which is always fun.

We went to the "Haunted Maze," which was a bit of a disappointment in both areas. It was neither very haunted nor very much a maze. Well, half a disappointment. We were never lost, but I did scream about 10 times, and even ran away from a guy with a chainsaw once. So you could call that a haunted success. Jesse, on the other hand, was heartily unimpressed, as he was very manly and did not scream once.


But it was fun, sloshing around in a muddy cornfield with zombies running past you and cornstalks towering above you. Then we went home and had more cider.


Hello, Autumn.

Pears and the things we did with them

We were in Hood River for Labor Day, and bought a whole box of Red Bosch pears from a little orchard stand. Ever since, we've been figuring out what to do with them, besides just munching them straight. I love it when the pear is just ripe--not too mushy. We've recently been interested in canning and preserving, so some pears were already slated for that.

Here's a few things we've done with our pears:

Pears, cheese, and white wine. This cheese was aged gouda, recommended by the nice grocery lady. She was spot on--it was delicious! Please notice how many pears are on the octopus plate. Oh, yes. We are dorks.

Pear Ginger Preserves--a recipe from the Ball Canning and Preserving book, with pears (of course), fresh ginger, lime juice, and zest. Yummy!

Pear Butter--smooth and buttery, yet so full of pears!

I have to admit that Jesse is the master here. As much as I'd like to take credit, I tend to only get in the way and cause tense words to be said when I put dirty spoons on recently cleaned cutting boards. I like to think I helped, but really, it's Jesse who scrupulously sterilizes the jars, measures ingredients, and watches for the perfect gelling point. I just stand around and enjoy the smell. Then mention how much hard work this all takes.
I like to say "We made this." But when I'm smearing the butter on a piece of toast, then tasting the peary goodness, I don't really care who made it. It's just delicious.

We have a few more left, still, and it's a close call whether they'll be made into something like this, or just eaten up for breakfast. A perfect fall treat!

A Slice of Sweden in Portland

I've never been to Sweden. The closest I've come, like many people, is Ikea, which is overwhelming and impressive in it's clean lines and organizational mastery.

But recently I've stepped beyond Ikea to discover that one of my favorite little nooks of this city is a Swedish restaurant called Broder ("brother" in Swedish). Purveyor of all things Scandinavian, this itty bitty place has the modernity and class you might expect, with amazingly good food. It also has "WC" on the bathroom door, which just makes me happy.

I constantly beg Jesse to take me there for brunch, to get a good helping of aebleskivers (puffy little Danish pancakes) or pytti i panna (hash with potatoes and eggs).


One of the best things about the meal, in my opinion, is that it comes on individual wooden boards, with little frying pans for the eggs, and little bowls for the jam. It satisfies my "cute" longing while being superbly functional. And when you finish every bite, you get the feeling that you're quite satisfied. You've eaten just enough food--any more or less would have been catastrophic. But another look at the menu and you know you have to come back, at least just to try the Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam, or the Breakfast Bord (brown bread, soft-boiled egg, gravlax, sauteed greens, hard and soft cheese, fruit compote, lingonberry, yogurt and honey).

Top the meal off with hot coffee, and you're ready for the day!

Broder is on the corner of SE 16th and Clinton, and is open for breakfast and lunch. Meals are about $9-11. Happiness (or at least immense satisfaction) is guaranteed.

(Top and bottom picture from Broder.)