California Sun

California produces some damn fine fruits and veggies. I thought we got good tomatoes in Seattle, I thought I grew delicious tomatoes in Seattle, but California has raised the bar. The good tomatoes in the East Bay are REALLY GOOD. Also, avocados have become a staple in my diet:

Halved and sprinkled with salt

Our very first meal made from a California farmers market was a cast iron pan full of ground beef, peppers, onions,  and eggplant:

Beef-Pepper-Eggplant saute with a side of avocado

 Alex and I spent several weeks crashing with my dad before we found our own place in the bay. One night we cooked my dad and his lady-friend dinner. I dug up potatoes from my dad's front yard and we whipped up a feast with our loot from the farmers market!

Dad's potatoes!

Pork & veggies in an Avocado-Pesto sauce

topped with tomatoes and served with roasted potatoes

For the record, avocado and basil are super delicious companions!

Fried Olives

Ladies and gentlemen, I am blogging in REAL TIME. Alex and I recently moved into a cute half-a-duplex in Berkeley, CA and it's taken us some time to acquire internet. So we've been relying heavily in our neighborhood businesses for internet access, coffee, beer, and food as we re-build our living space.

Paisan has been the other half of our home. They have internet access and they're open from 8:30am-9pm with everything from morning pastries to vermouth braised pork (OMG so amazing!). I want to be friends with all their servers and did I mention their food is INCREDIBLE and inspiring! Also they have a delicious IPA on tap (Green Flash IPA).  

But the reason I am blogging now is because I am eating the most amazing olives I have ever had. They are fried olives and they are amazing. It's like the next generation of hush puppies... I'm so blown away. Alex just said, "they're like popcorn shrimp, but tasty and not terrifying!"

mmmm fried olives!

An Edible Marriage

Well, since my last post I graduated college, got married, went on honeymoon, packed up my entire life, and moved to California where the new hubby and I have been in limbo for a few weeks between a storage unit and my dad's house. Needless to say, things have been a bit crazy...

Anyway, first things first - I must give props to the deliciousness that graced our wedding:

Edible Flower Bouquets - I wanted my bridesmaids and I to have completely edible bouquets, so I grew lots of edible flowers in my own yard, but ended up using flowers grown by the folks at Colinwood Farm.

Also, my friend Sarah figured out how to make roses out of bacon!! She put a dab of hot glue on a skewer, topped the glue with lettuce, and topped the lettuce with bacon baked in the shape of a rose bud. The glue gave the structure integrity while the lettuce acted as a barrier between bacon an glue. Brilliant!  While I was freaking out before the wedding, my bridesmaids assembled our bouquets with bacon roses, pea vines, bachelor buttons, squash blossoms, calendula, nasturtiums, and my favorite - columbine! Then immediately after the ceremony we chowed down.

Madres Catering - These ladies were an absolute pleasure to work with. They were totally chill and down for anything. They used local and/or organic produce and let us provide the meat and bread from our favorite folks at the farmers market (Skagit River Valley Ranch, Stokesberry Farms, and Tall Grass Bakery).  After our ceremony, we were greeted at our reception venue by Madres' lovely staff and a selection of appetizers. We chose to have a "heavy appetizer" style reception so our guests could be free to eat and drink as they please without having to conform to a set dinner plan. Here is our menu with pictures where I have them:

Salad Cups! 

Soup Shots 

Shots of zesty tomato soup that I found to be an important injection of calories between hugs and conversation!

Crostinis with:

Shredded chicken tinga

Roasted cumin mushrooms with parmesan

Dilled salmon

Polenta Triangles with Roast Tomato Chutney (so good!)

Bacon Wrapped Cesar Potatoes

Roast potatoes with Cesar dressing, wrapped in bacon (delicious!)

Sausage Bites with a Trio of Dips

Skagit Valley sweet and hot Italian sausages wrapped in pastry dough

Slider Bar:

Cuban pulled pork

Beef patties

Vegan roast veggies

Condiments

Tall Grass Bakery brioche or mutli-grain slider buns

NON-ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES:

Heather's Groovy Drink Mix

(Heather is one of the owners of Madres, she is a wizard with a blender and whatever happens to be in season!)

Dry Sodas

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES:

Homebrew!

Made by me, Alex, and our friends!

(and supplemented with Elysian beer and Charles Shaw wine)

The only one not on the list is the beer we toasted with - a brew that Alex and I concocted together:

Lavender Ginger IPA

(Also Sarah designed this gorgeous drink menu!)

Trophy Cupcakes - Dessert was a couple hundred mini cupcakes of three different flavors: Snickerdoodle, Triple Chocolate, and Hummingbird (a more savory dessert cake made with banana, pineapple, and coconut).

In addition to Trophy cupcakes, Alex's sister made gluten-free vegan cupcakes ( you can see a few at the edges of the photo above, at the base of the tier).

T'was a delicious wedding indeed!

Savory French Toast

This was a complete and total experiment. We had some bread that was on its way out, and a craving for Mexican food. So Alex whipped up some french toast batter made with eggs, milk, cinnamon, paprika, and cumin. When all the bread was used up we scrambled the left over batter and constructed the picture above - Mexican Toast topped with scrambled batter, sauteed onions and asparagus, sour cream, cilantro, and cheddar cheese. And to our surprise, this was totally delicious! ...I definitely want to play with savor french toasts more!

Baked Eggs

Ever since Alex convinced me five years ago that eggs are delicious, I've been very slowly exploring the myriad of ways to cook an egg.  We had breakfast with our upstairs neighbors one morning and Candice made a dish simpler than scrambled eggs. It blew my mind and I went through a bit of a crazy egg-baking phase. It's just an egg or two in a ramekin with a splash of milk, some chopped kale (or spinach or whatever is in the fridge), topped with cheese, and baked in the oven just until it sets. If the eggs are still a tad runny, toast makes a great companion. And no breakfast is complete without a piece of Skagit River Valley bacon!

Love Soup

Several months ago I heard a friend of mine had caught a nasty cold, so set out on a mission of creating the most healing soup I possibly could. This is something I do for my friends every once in a while, and making soup for people always gives me the satisfying feeling that I'm some sort of good witch brewing up healing potions.

I started by making pasta.  This is where that magic ingredient of "love" comes in. I kneaded a lot of love into that dough!  Also, I find freshly made pasta is just generally a special treat.

Fresh made pasta is a simple ratio:

1lb. All Purpose Flour

4 Eggs

1oz. Water

1oz.Vegetable Oil

These ingredients are combined all at once and kneaded for at least a couple minutes either by hand or in a mixer. I usually eye-ball the amount of water and oil, I probably actually use more than 1oz. of water because it's much easier to add flour to a moist dough, then it is to add water to a dry dough later on. Anyway, making pasta honestly just takes practice to know what good pasta dough should feel like.  It should be neither sticky nor dry and it should have a tough elastic quality to it. After the initial knead, the dough must rest for at least an hour, preferably two, or overnight in the fridge. Then you can start rolling it out.  You can simply use a rolling pin (or a wine bottle!) and a knife to make noodles, but I have a manual pasta machine, so that's how I make my noodles.

To make the soup, I sauteed onions, leeks, carrots, fresh-frozen ginger, and garlic (I used a lot of ginger and garlic - for good health!). Then I added duck stock made from Stokesberry Farms magical ducks and let it simmer with a cinnamon stick and some dried chanterelle mushrooms. Meanwhile I roasted a chicken. When the soup was done, I added the fresh pasta since it only needs a minute to cook and will continue to absorb moisture as long as it's in the soup.  I finished the soup with pieces of roasted chicken, pesto, salt, and pepper.

Yay healing soup of love!

A life of its own...

I love edible art, so I'm dedicating this post to my favorite food artists.

1) Meatscapes - photographs by Carl Warner

...Seriously, this is a photo of meat.

He's not bound to meat either, check out these vegetables:

2) Alexandre Dubosc's Caketropes:

3) Jan Svenkmajer's meat interludes from the movie, Lunacy: