My Favorite Breakfast!

Whenever I have time to enjoy the morning, here's the jist of what usually happens:

Syrup made from last summers frozen raspberries, brown sugar, and butter.

Whole wheat waffles, Stumptown french-press coffee, Skagit Valley Ranch bacon, raspberry syrup, and sun shine!

Fruits of Spring!

We've been having ideal mushroom weather here in western Washington lately; frequent rain showers with mildly warm weather and sun breaks. The morels especially love the sun breaks. At the farmers market this past weekend, Foraged & Found Edibles had an impressive plethora of morels along with a small basket of Gyromitra montanum. I had no idea Gryomitra's were edible, as they're commonly called "false morels" - I just assumed that meant they were not morels and therefore inedible. But after consulting several sources I was convinced that they're not only edible but a popular (and cheap) morel substitute. Then on my bike ride home today I slammed on the breaks at the sight of a log bulging with white mycelium and a collection of whitish, gilled, shelf-mushrooms emerging. It could only be one thing - Oyster Mushrooms!! Naturally, I came home and made a mycological feast:

Here's the cast of characters from left to right:

Pluerotus sp., Morchella esculenta, and Gyromitra montanum

Below is a quick and poorly done picture of the finished product. I made some pasta with olive oil, salt, and pepper. On top is a saute of the mushrooms, four different Allium's (leeks, baby onions, green-garlic, and walla walla onion scapes), chard, and sea beans (Salicornia) - delicious!

Beef Bourginon, it's what's for dinner!

Amidst my studying, I was suddenly hit by an insatiable craving for beef bourginon. All things considered, it's incredibly simple and quick to whip up, I need to do this more often. Oh and I added chard. I have officially discovered the importance of chard. yum.

Food on my Mind

Spring quarter has begun at UW and I've fallen comfortably back into a relatively monotonous, yet efficient, pattern of cooking and eating, nothing worth noting on a blog anyway. However, due to popular demand, here's what I've been thinking:

-Empire's new Stumptown coffee ice cream is terrifyingly addictive (I'm eating some now in fact)

-In the lab at school I've been growing some edible fungi on agar...naturally my mind has wandered to wonder what it would be like to fry up one of these, agar and all. I don't think I'll be investigating this anytime soon. However, I did happen to read about agar and other plant-based gelatin replacements in Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking, and learned that they are all carbohydrates (unlike gelatin which is protein). Also, agar is not digestible by humans, meaning it just passes through as dietary "fiber".

-I was recently sent an awful article about how bad agave syrup is (it's a big new health-food trend, if you haven't heard). Intrigued, I did a tiny bit of research and discovered it is, in fact, inferior to regular old table sugar. Basically, agave syrup is just fructose...Highly concentrated fructose to give it a syrupy consistency, which could easily be called "high fructose agave syrup". We've all learned how bad high fructose corn syrup is, it's the same story all over again, just with a different plant source.

-At the farmer's market a few weeks ago we found ourselves in desperate need of coffee, which lead us to discover my new favorite bakery: Fresh Flours. It's on Ballard Ave. right in the middle of the Sunday farmers market. Their skilled barista serves Stumptown coffee and their pastries are utterly divine and wont break your wallet.

-Maple blossoms were selling at the farmers market today - they're in bloom EVERYWHERE! Get your own for free! (apparently they're edible, I'll let you know when I try them....maple blossom salad anyone?)

Beignets for Second Breakfast

This morning, I woke up, ate first breakfast, took my physics final, and went back to sleep. Then I woke up again with a brilliant idea for second breakfast: beignets!! (New Orleans style doughnuts). It's basically a choux paste that gets fried.

Whipping the chouxish dough to satiny ribbons!:

Frying in bacon grease:


A landscape of beignets sprinkled with cinnamon-butterscotch-sugar:

Bread!

With nearby Essential Bakery moving far, far away to South Seattle in search of cheaper rent, Alex mentioned that we should start making bread. My first reaction was excitement at the possibility of Alex learning to make bread, then I realized maybe I could make bread too. I haven't had much luck making bread in the past several years, but I did have 48 hours with nothing but studying to do and Baking With Julia. This is roughly the Country Loaf recipe, the big change is all the flour I used is equal parts white flour and whole wheat flour.

Yesterday I made the "sponge" (basically a starter) and let it sit on the counter covered with a cloth for about 8 hours:
Then I put it in the fridge to ferment over night and pulled it out in the morning to warm up before adding the rest of the ingredients and making the bread dough. Here it is, in a lightly oiled bowl, ready for it's first rise:


I let it sit for several hours while I ran some errands and it rose a lot!:


Next I shaped it and let it rise a second time for about an hour before putting it in the oven:


Finished Product:


Delicious!

Raw

I've been skeptical of raw food diets ever since I first heard about it. Plus the only so called "raw food" I have ever had has been really unimpressive. But this evening I attended a raw food dinner that absolutely blew my mind. It was truly phenomenal and ingenuous food. It was the type of food that's recognizable, though I really had no idea what I was eating because it was unlike anything I've ever had before and absolutely delicious. I found it interesting that after a while I could actually taste and recognize most of the ingredients in each dish, though they were still perfectly balanced - I wonder if this is what a super taster feels like! I talked to a few people who try to eat only raw foods and they said they recognize that it's not for everyone, we all have different body chemistry, and for them, raw food is it. For me, eating locally is a top priority and a lot of the staples of a raw food diet are not at all local, like bananas and almonds. Most of the people that were in charge of the dinner work for Thrive, and thus used some of their recipes. I definitely need to explore this more...