Jensen

Yes, that's fresh pasta...I made it yesterday afternoon, tossed it with some semolina flour, and just let it sit on the counter until it was time to cook. I used a different recipe yesterday for the first time--the one from Moby Pomerance's eGCI course. The pasta was much easier to work with than it has been in the past. I liked it! The only downside of the meal was that I tried to anticipate the return of the Spawn and put the pasta on to cook too early. Little did I know that Wayde was going to socialise with Sensei for a while! (It got a little overcooked.) I'm looking forward to trying the pasta recipe again when I don't screw it up

It's later ... One of these days, I will learn not to put so much food on my plate. I could only eat half of that serving! And here's the salad:

Tonight, dinner will be a little later than usual, as the Spawn has her aikido lessons until 7:30. (Wednesdays are like this too.) Because I also want to go grocery shopping tonight, I prepared that old family stand-by ... spaghetti! Actually, it's tagliatelle with sauce Bolognese but the Spawn still calls it spaghetti Here's the sauce: and the pasta: It will be served with a simple salad of baby spinach, bacon bits (using some yummy smoked bacon from Ronnie Suburban!), and a vinaigrette. More pictures later ...

Sweetened condensed milk, consumed with a spoon.

Perhaps it would but did you notice how many of my plates were white? (that woudl be all of them) Oh, that's too funny ... without looking, I was sure that you'd had wonderful, coloured dinnerware in your blog! My dinnerware is cheap old Corningware. The bowls that come with the set are shaped like rice bowls so, the last time I was at IKEA, I bought some even cheaper but shallower white bowls for 50 cents each. I love a good bargoon!

There are some obligations that go along with this trip that you should know about before you volunteer to take my place. 1. We're staying in one of the one bedroom cottages. It has one queen-size bed and one sofa bed. There are three of us going. That means two of us have to share a bed. I've pondered being really selfish and taking the bedroom all for myself but I will probably give my sisters the bedroom and take the sofa bed. Obviously, the "go fuck yourself" benefits* of turning 40 have yet to take effect for me. 2. My sisters mentioned something about giving each other pedicures. "Hmmmppph. Great prezzie for me...", I thought, "touching someone else's feet." I did tell my sister that, since it was my birthday, I thought I should be exempt from the reciprocal pedicure thing. I'm not even sure I want them touching my feet! Maybe I'll dye my hair some wild, streaky colour whilst they are playing footsie with each other. I'm hoping that it's because they use local products. Obviously, the Fanny Bay oysters are local (notice how I got that plug in there again? They are incredible!) but it'd be nice if the fish were truly local as well. * Several years ago, when one of my friends turned 40, another friend told us that, for a woman, her 40th birthday was her "go fuck yourself" birthday. That's the point at which you can tell someone to go fuck themselves and then NOT feel guilty about it afterwards.

Now that I look into it more, it wasn't petanque that Papa played. After your note last night, I looked it up and saw photos of the game as played in Australia. I must have been having a Homer Simpson moment not to see that it wasn't played on grass! Doh! Here is where my grandparents played: Canada Pacific Lawn Bowling Club Either way, I think the tournament and buffet at Zachary Jacques' sounds like way too much fun and definitely something I should be doing! Rokinrev: believe me, you don't want me singing in your choral group... And now, on to my day so far! Breakfast was my usual two cups of coffees. This morning, I made yogurt (much discussion about making yogurt at home here). Once I got the batch underway, I started fretting that all my blathering on about making yogurt would jinx me and it wouldn't turn out. I had to admit to myself that the real reason I am now using "visual cues" in the making of my yogurt has absolutely nothing to do with my skill level. It's only because my thermometer went on the fritz. Accckkkk! I'd be exposed as a yogurt fraud! Yikes! Now I know how all you guys with performance anxiety feel... Luckily though, after only a couple of hours, the yogurt is clabbering nicely. I might even stop the incubation earlier today than I have in the past to get an even sweeter end product. My last batch incubated for only 6 hours and it was great. This batch is looking almost as thick as that one at only 3 hours into the process. Although, I wonder if shortening the incubation period would affect its usefulness as a starter for my next batch. Hmmmmm. I will have to ponder this for a while. For lunch, I made an asparagus quesadilla-thingie. (I say "quesadilla-thingie" instead of just "quesadilla" just in case it was woefully inauthentic.) At any rate, I chopped up some leftover roasted asparagus spears, grated some queso with jalapenos, plopped it all between two tortillas, and put it in a frying pan. Served with some purchased salsa and some homemade yogurt cheese standing in for sour cream. As you can see, I'm trying to be artful in my plating techniques <cough, cough>. I'm wishing I had coloured plates though. Wouldn't that look so much nicer on something other than white? Uh-oh ... more of that performance anxiety!!!

I can't believe I found it again! I did learn an important lesson in finding sites though ... if you remember the original search terms you used to find it in the first place, chances are much higher that you'll be able to find it again. In this case, the key phrase was "bulgaricus"... At any rate, this is the site that mentioned bringing the milk up to a boil will help lessen whey production: click here Ellen: I'm making a European style yogurt. According to a couple of different sources (including the link above), the difference in method is the addition of dry milk powder. I'm guessing that would increase the protein content in the mixture and lead to a firmer end product. (But don't quote me on that...it's really just a guess )

Oops. Sorry ... my grandfather used to play it and we always just called in "lawn bowling".

That's great to hear! Welcome!

Oops ... sorry, didn't mean to avoid that part of the discussion. I've never had call to use one of the store-bought containers. I'm the only one who eats yogurt (well, the Spawn will eat it but only if it contains copious amounts of sugar) so I only make one batch at a time. Because of that, the container that came with the yogurt maker is always available. All that being said, I don't see why you wouldn't use the container's own lid.

Interesting. Do you have any idea why this is? Not a clue. It was just something I read on a yogurt-making website somewhere and decided to try it out. So, rather than use my thermometer, I went just by visual cues and the yogurt was a better consistency. Much less whey... I'll see if I can find the website again. It might have explained it and I just didn't retain that information.

I used my own yogurt as a starter for my last batch and, guess what???? it was the best batch ever! I did freeze a small amount of the current batch as was hinted at in FoodMan's recipe. I'm not sure whether I'm brave enough yet to try it though... Also, I did read somewhere (exact location is lost in the recesses of my brain) that those plastic yogurt containers are absolutely usable. I think I read it as a feature of the yogurt maker I bought; the container that comes with it is about the same size and someone wrote somewhere that you could use that and store-bought containers interchangably.

I haven't but it looks great! Did you see they have a lawn bowling tournament in July? Hmmmm. I'm thinking that'd be something fun to do! Have you been to La Provence in Roseville? We went after seeing a review in the Sacbee. It was pretty tasty but no lawn bowling. I think I have to take in that tournament! Thanks for the link!!!!!

It was damn good Lemony, but not overpoweringly so. Just the right amount of richness and very smooooooth. The colour looks a little fluorescent in the photo; it was more natural in real life.

Geez, even my back-up plans are falling through! Yikes! It turns out that the Spawn ate the salad fixings for her lunch while we were about so meat pie and salad became meat pie and roasted asparagus: This is, without a doubt, my favourite way to eat asparagus. I coat the spears with EVSCCPDUOO ( my own little joke ... Extra Virgin Stone-Crushed Cold Press Decanted Unfiltered Olive Oil) and then season with some kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Then they go in a hot oven for about 10 minutes. For the salad, I just chopped up a fresh tomato and drizzled it with a wee bit of dressing made from mayonnaise, mustard, and balsamic vinegar. The mustard is really tasty. It's homemade from all organic ingredients; I bought it at a bakery in Sonoita, AZ while I was there with my book club.

I forgot to add that Z-Pies got a mention in Newsweek in February: Article here Pretty good for a little Placerville place! Wayde knows one of the owners, Marnie, so we're pretty happy for them.

It's been a great day so far (even if ALL my food plans have been changed ). We picked up our friends at 10:30 and headed out to Foresthill where we would have lunch at the Robber's Roost restaurant. Marge and I ended up ordering the same thing (Snow Crab and Tomato Eggs Benedict) and the guys ordered the same thing as well (steak and eggs). Here's the eggs Benny: The eggs were perfectly poached; the white was cooked through and the yolk was runny ... just how I like them. Just below the egg was a tomato slice and then below that was a crab cake (presumably made with snow crab). It was very tasty. It came served with potato cakes and fruit salad. The fruit was nice but the potato cakes were quite bland. Not even salt helped them I took a picture of Wayde's plate as well but he wasn't waiting for me to take it (hence the knife and fork in the picture): The guys liked their breakfasts too. After we'd done, we found a small backroad that ran between Foresthill and Colfax. With a name like "Yankee Jims" road, how could we not take it? It added a fair amount of time onto our trip but we got to see scenery like this: Okay, that wasn't food related but what the hell ... I'm in the blogging seat now! We stopped at an old suspension bridge over the American River and watched some kayakers shoot the rapids. I went to check out the cable anchors and found some Miner's Lettuce growing there: I tasted one little piece ... it tasted very green. Once we got back on to a larger road, we headed for Auburn so that we could jump onto Highway 49 towards Placerville. I wanted to swing by Venezio Winery to buy a couple of bottles of their port. My sister and brother-in-law love their port (as do I!) so I'll take both bottles up to BC with me later this week. They're now selling chocolate to go with the port and, as they serve it when you taste the port, I got to sample it. Incredible! It tastes like the centre of a truffle. Needless to say, I had to buy a jar of that as well. The winery is half way between Auburn and Placerville and both of those communities are equidistant from our house. So, rather than turn around and retrace our path, we decided to head on to Placerville. While there, we had to visit the hardware store (an old-fashioned one!); the only thing better than an old-fashioned hardware store is a good feed store! We also took a wander through Tony Matthews, a nice kitchen store, and then headed to Z-Pie for some meat pies. We bought a case of 24 frozen pies: 12 steak and cabernet and 12 chicken and mushroom. They make a great quick dinner. This is where the big change in plans came about. We hadn't planned on being out so long and had hoped to go grocery shopping this afternoon. Wayde promised the Spawn that he'd take her to a movie tonight. Well, we didn't have enough time for both so we'll be going grocery shopping tomorrow night and eating Z-Pies and a salad for dinner tonight. More on that when it's dinner time ...

Our plans for Tigh-na-Mara so far are dinner in the Cedar Room on Friday night (Fanny Bay oysters! Be still my heart!) and then dinner in the cottage on Saturday night. One of my sisters is a "healthy cook" (it tastes like cardboard but it's healthy cardboard) but my other sister, Linda, is an incredible cook. I'm sure she'll be in charge of the dinner plans. She'll likely be enthused with the whole blogging idea too. I'm not sure what we'll do for the other meals ... I imagine we'll be out exploring. I'm hoping the Coombs market will be open. Ludja...this book club I'm in is really cool. They take field trips! Before I joined, they read "Under a Tuscan Sun" and then some of them took a trip to Italy for three weeks! (Okay, they ended up in Umbria, not Tuscany, but still...) After reading some Steinbeck, they took a long weekend in Monterey. More recently, they planned a trip to Arizona to see the desert in bloom. I was never clear on what inspired the trip but I went along anyway.

Wayde has his own discussion forum where he hangs out; it's all about Honda VTXs. And, after making a couple of poor decisions regarding the Internet, the Spawn no longer has access (yeah, that's right ... busted surfing porn sites!). I did mention the blogging to Wayde last night, once I knew that we were going out for brunch today. I could probably take pictures of food at home without having to explain anything (which may or may not make some sort of statement about me) but, if I want to take photos at brunch, I reckoned I'd better let him in on the deal.

Yes, I am the lemon connection. Which brings up another little tidbit about myself that I neglected to mention ... I don't drive. Not a big deal in the more enlightened urban centres of the world but, unfortunately, Sacramento ain't one of them! And why does the lemon connection bring this to mind? well, I owe Ronnie a box of lemons and I haven't remembered to ask at the grocery store for a box while I was there with a licensed driver. Yes, that's right ... I often go grocery shopping on foot. The nearest grocery store is just over a mile away so I don't buy too much on any one trip. Oh, the plans I had for this morning! I'm part of a book club that meets once a month at a different member's home. While there, we all eat breakfast. One of the members is a hard-core vegetarian so I'd set myself a little private challenge ... make the entire breakfast vegetarian, without seeming to be vegetarian and without using any fake meat products. So I had this idea for a breakfast dish for book club...sort of a strata, with layers of thin pancakes, grilled vegetables (zucchini and eggplant), tzaziki, a roasted tomato sauce, and topped with feta cheese. I thought today would be the perfect time to try this idea out. If it worked, it would look wonderful and make a great photo contribution. If it didn't, I could always put some granola in a bowl, top it with some homemade yogurt, and pretend the whole strata thing never happened. Who would know? Oh, I was practically dancing with glee! My first blog meal had the potential to be visually stunning! Who cares what it tasted like? I could make that part up! Then, yesterday, on my way home from the grocery store, I stopped in to say hi to our friends who live around the corner, Marge and Bob. Me: So, did I understand Wayde right? Are we going out to Foresthill for dinner tomorrow night? Aside: I wonder if anyone will mind if I take pictures of the food. What if the restaurant isn't any good? What if it's [gasp] pedestrian? Marge: No, not dinner ... brunch! My first reaction was "Yeah! Brunch! That's even better than going out for lunch!" Then I remembered the strata thing. Oh well.... So, breakfast this morning is simply C-O-F-F-E-E. It's not even espresso with wonderful clouds of foam swirled into it. It's just plain old coffee. Well, not just plain old coffee I guess; I do buy Peets' coffee. I like the French roast, which is too strong for Wayde (gives him migraines), so I just make a small pot...two cups. And that's my coffee quotient for the day (otherwise I get a migraine!). Oh, there won't be any pictures of my kitchen in this blog, unless I scan in some magazine ads for high-end kitchens, artfully excising the model from the photo and skillfully inserting a whippet or two for authenticity. Being non-resident aliens (technical INS term), we can't take advantage of a number of banking opportunities here ... no 401K and no mortgage (unless we want to pay a gazillion percent interest--hey, we might be foreigners but we ain't stupid!). All that to say that we live in a rental in an older, established neighbourhood. Let's just say that the kitchen is original and leave it at that.

I'm not going to start my "official" blogging until tomorrow but, while I've got a few free minutes, I thought I'd at least introduce myself. My name is Jen Jensen and I live in Sacramento with my husband and 14 year-old daughter, Kathleen (AKA the Spawn). We are imports from BC (Canada) and have lived here for 5 years now. I "retired" when we moved here, as I only have a "live" visa, not a "work" visa. Before moving here, I worked as a technical writer on various IT and business process projects. My hobby is dog racing (whippets, not greyhounds) so we also live with four of the five dogs I own. Living here in CA with us are Streaka (AKA Über--as in Streaka über alles.); Tighe (AKA Goober, because it rhymes with Über and matches his personality); Dayton (Dids); and Rogie (meiner Deutscher Junge), whom I co-own with a friend back home. My fifth dog, Derby, is Tighe's daughter and lives with my friend in BC. In the coming week, I'll be eating at home, eating out, and (most exciting of all) eating at Tigh-na-Mara, a spa/resort on Vancouver Island in BC. The trip to Tigh-na-Mara is why I won't be starting until tomorrow ... I want to be able to include my meals there in the blog. Until tomorrow ...

Owen, how is your cooking club organised? A friend set one up two years ago and we've really enjoyed being part of it. Another couple we know is interested in setting up another group but I'm not sure the same organisational structure would work with these particular people. The already-existing one is comprised of four couples and we meet four times a year. The host is responsible for setting the menu, distributing recipes, and the entree. Generally, each other couple is responsible for two dishes; they also bring wine. This format has worked well for us; two of the couples are "foodies" and two aren't. So the two that aren't have had a chance to learn from the other meals and to evolve their own skills. The other group that is interested in forming another club don't cook much at all. The women of the group want to do it so that they can learn to cook. With that in mind, I think a different format would be required. Can you share the structure of your club? Thanks!

Not likely ... I live in Sacramento! Owen has tagged me and I plan on tagging Mayhaw Man for next week. (I haven't told him that yet so shhhhh...it's a secret)

I just PMed Owen, offering to put my head on the block. I was so inspired by his repeated comments about eating better because he was blogging ... isn't peer pressure a wonderful thing? The only thing of real interest I have to offer is that I am travelling to BC next week for a weekend at Tigh-na-Mara with my sisters, a 40th birthday gift from them. I've just found out that the resort has Internet access, so I could report on dining at the Cedar Room. Oh, and I plan on visiting the spa as well so I might be able to report on their spa lunch too. That being said, I'm more than happy to let someone else do it too...