Abra

Energy??? I can only wish I had energy! Normally I do work out, and that helps me keep my energy up, but this week - no way. I decided that I needed a healthy breakfast to get through the morning. An egg white frittata with chicken sausage, leftover roasted potatoes, red onion, piquillo peppers, and shiitakes. This is a 7 WW point pan full of yumminess. With a few shakes of Melinda's Roasted Garlic Habanero sauce, I'm zooming slowly through the morning. We have two performances today, with only an hour and a half in between, so we're having a cast potluck dinner. When I signed up I had every intention of making a beautiful orzo salad with Kalamata olives, feta, and sun dried tomatoes. But now I see that there's no way I'm going to make it to the store, and I'll have to scrounge through the fridge and pantry to make something halfway decent. So now you're going to see how I make my famous "fridge-cleaning" dinners. Except that there's not much in my fridge today, so I'm worried. I only have a couple of hours to come up with something - wish me luck! You probably imagined that a personal chef would eat better. I promise, after today, the rest of the week will be easy as pie, and I will be able to represent my chosen profession better. Peanut butter with red wine - hmph! And I promise to answer questions, so ask away. I'm not ignoring you, just swamped for one more day. And speaking of seafood, I do have some escolar in the fridge. Hmm, with so many people eating it, the portion would be very tiny. There's only one bathroom backstage...should I risk it?

Oh, this is giving me lots of wonderfully peculiar sandwich ideas. I love peanut butter, and eat some every day. I suppose that's an addiction, right? I grind my own peanut butter at the store. I love it on thick-sliced, very dense and hearty whole grain bread. A good dark honey is one of my favorite additions, like Corbezzolo or buckwheat honey, but I also use all sorts of jams, and even Thai sweet chili sauce. As a kid my favorite was peanut butter on what we then called "French" bread, with hot cocoa. As I teenager I loved grilled cheese with peanut butter. And I still eat peanut butter on apple slices, or spread on a banana instead of bread, too. Some things you just never outgrow!

So, to fortify myself before opening night, even if we did have to eat before 5:00 in order for me to make it, we had a salad with roasted potatoes and a little ribeye, which is unfortunately overdone since I left it in the pan while I tried to put on makeup. And then...truth in blogging. When I got home, having survived the opening night crazies, I had, oh, this is so hard to admit, peanut butter on rye bread with a glass of red wine. I'm sure I'll be banished from Blogland, or even from eG, for such an apalling combo, but you know what? It suited me just fine. As for WW points, I've been way over yesterday and today, and also not keeping track. Not setting a good example at all, am I? When life gets crazy, like it has been the past few days, instead of sleep I tend toward weird food. Lots of weird food. But don't knock peanut butter on rye until you try it - it has that certain je ne sais quoi, but I don't know what it is.

Sure, I'd be happy to demo. Let's see, I need to do some work with my vinegar mother, which threatens to take over the house, so I'll have my husband document the process, and we can talk about how quickly you all can get out to Seattle to grab a piece of my mother and start down the vinegar road. I'm having dinner guests on Monday, too, and I'm sure to try some new recipes for them, so that'd make a good demo. I started making some raspberry and blueberry liqueurs last month that also need attention. It's my first time making them, so I'll show what I'm doing, and maybe some of you will be able to jump in and save me from disaster. Since I'm not a trained chef, I'm blissfully free of inhibitions. In the food world, that means that I almost always make new recipes whenever I have people over, and at least half of the time I'm making new recipes for clients too. I did preview the muffins and raspberry bars before I made them today, because I sensed that the client would be very exacting, being a lady in her 80s with ideas about how things should be done. But the shrimp salad was new, and turned out to be quite nice. Now, for you chocolate fanatics, you can find the recipe on Epicurious, under Fudgy Chocolate Raspberry Bars. I'd insert a link, but I don't know how, short of just pasting in the URL. Berries are one of my favorite things about the summers here. The other day I walked with my dog and grazed on blackberries most of the way, stopping to get a few amazing plums and a shirt-tail full of crisp, sweet apples from abandoned trees. I feel like a bear, in summer, grazing my way around the island. All of the work I've shown so far I do by myself. I do use a helper sometimes, especially if the client wants any level of service. I have no FOH experience, and no instinct for serving, and I have a great helper who does. She's done a ton of work for a local caterer, and is a garnishing whiz. She's taught me so much, so that I'm no longert actively ashamed of how my food looks, but her garnishing blows mine into the dust. Here's a little blurb on anise hyssop that I grabbed from the web: "Native to North America, Anise Hyssop is a perennial herb that is known for its anise scented foliage. It has violet colored flowers that bloom in July. It is a good bee and honey plant, and is used in seasonings and making teas...(Agastache anethiodorum) - member of the mint family, the leaves have a rich aniseed flavour, delicious in salads. Butterflies, hummingbirds and bees love Hyssop, and the edible leaves can be used for teas, salads and to flavor drinks. " I like to eat the leaves, and the flowers are pretty sprinkled onto food. I don't want to drone on and on - I think blogs are the most fun when they're really intereactive. So please, ask questions, give feedback, and let me know what you'd like to see more (or less!) of. Since Batuta asked, let me start by saying that I have a (probably too ) detailed and lengthy bio on my website. Just go to www.rollingbaygourmet.com, and click on Meet the Chef. That's the general story. The thumbnail answer is that mainly my clients find me, because a) I'm a marketing wuss, and b) I have a husband who doesn't complain that I'm not working full time. But as I mentioned last night, tonight's the opening of a show I'm in, and I have to still make a decent dinner of some sort, put on makeup (something I only do for stage stuff and so am woefully inept at) and try not to succumb to stage fright. Geez, maybe I'd do better at makeup if I just thought of it as garnishing! Tomorrow I'll have more time to get really honest about the personal chef business, for those that are thinking of going into it, and for the merely curious.

Today started off with a typically unglamorous breakfast: Morningstar Farms Breakfast Patties on whole wheat toast and a yogurt. Earl Greyer tea too - I love all that bergamot. Then I headed out to the store at about 7:15, shopped, and arrived at the client's house at 8:30. Oh no! I left my clean laundry, including my aprons, at home. Believe me when I tell you, I cooked very neatly and carefully all morning! It's always a hazard of personal cheffing, forgetting stuff. I try to be really compulsive with my lists, and it doesn't happen often, but there have been some doozies. My favorites were the time I showed up to make a risotto, minus the arborio, and another time when I was supposed to make stuffed cabbage - with, you guessed it, all the other ingredients, but no cabbage. So here's what I made today for the ladies luncheon: Fruit Salad with Lime, Honey, and Anise Hyssop Golden Raisin and Rosemary Mini-Muffins Curried Shrimp and Rice Salad Raspberry Fudge Bars By the time I got home at 2:00 I was too starved to make a lunch worth photographing. It was just a turkey sandwich and some plums. So far, it's looking like I need a personal chef myself!

Ok, here was a delicious and quick (since I didn't have to cook it) Thai meal: pad kee mow for me, spring rolls and salad for my husband, and then, because I let it slip that it was my birthday, complimentary fresh coconut ice cream with fried bananas, and a tin of totally addictive tamarind-chili candy to take home. So let's not talk about today's points, ok? So now to do the final recipe and menu printing for tomorrow. A ladies' luncheon, where the hostess is in her 80s, and the guests are all "young women" in their 50s. The hostess chose curried shrimp and rice salad, fruit salad with poppy seed dressing, golden raisin and rosemary muffins, and raspberry fudge bars. Tomorrow night is opening night of a community theater production I'm in, so I fear that it will be another day of haphazard eating for me. I'm aiming for a nice main dish salad, though. I need greenery - and sleep!

First things first - Happy Birthday Jake! Thanks for sharing my birthday. It's so great to see all the WW folks here too. I'm really looking forward to this week. Now, to business. My client for the day was a single woman. I cook for her every two weeks, making her dinners for 10 nights, most of which goes straight into the freezer. When I met this woman, about a year ago, her freezer was full of Lean Cuisine, and her fridge full of mostly empty pizza boxes. Now she gets food like this week's menu, which she often takes to work for lunch. We're on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, by the way, so commuting is a big part of some peoples' lives and getting food when you get home late to a smallish island isn't all that easy, hence the state of her eating before I started cooking for her. So my schedule was like this: Hit the grocery store at 9:30. Arrive at her house, unpack the groceries, and unload my equipment by 10:30. Start cooking up a storm, pausing to take some photos (good thing for my clients I'm a better cook than photographer!). By 2:30 the food was all done, packaged, and in the fridge or freezer, by 3:00 the kitchen was cleaned up, the dishwasher running, and I was out the door. Not a bad day's work! Here's what she got: The food arrayed before I started cooking Persian Meatballs with Spinach, and Israeli Couscous with Dates and Almonds Ribeye Steak with Port-Rosemary Reduction Sauce, and Glazed Carrots with Balsamic Vinegar and Butter Halibut Acqua Pazza, and Orechiette with Zucchini, Anchovies, and Mint Curried Chicken Salad Chicken Braised with White Poppy Seeds, Black Cardamom, and Coconut Milk, with Saffron-Cardamom Rice I know the presentation isn't wonderful. I do try my best, but there's only so much one can do with Gladware and freezer-ready servings. My clients are in it for the taste, thanks goodness, not the beauty of the food. Tonight I have a Planning Commission meeting (in my alter-ego as a Responsible Citizen I'm a member of the Commission), so it'll be a quick meal at our favorite local Thai place. Normally I do cook for my husband and me even after a full day of cooking, but there's just no time tonight. That's in no small part because I'm cooking for a luncheon party for 18 women tomorrow, at a new client's house. I think she's going to be very picky, but I'm hoping she won't mind if I take photos. However, I have to get prepared for tomorrow, and get to the meeting on time, so home cooking is the thing that has to go. Unless, of course, a Dejah-clone appears to work a little magic in my kitchen!

Ok, so right off the bat I have a confession to make. Today is my birthday. How cool is that? First-ever blog and 54th birthday, all in one. Trouble is, I'm so slammed today and tomorrow that I don't even have time to celebrate - that'll come later in the week. But I did do a little something special for myself that I wouldn't do on just any morning - picked my breakfast fresh from the back yard. I got 43 lbs of blueberries from my two bushes this summer. These are the last of them. Around here blackberries are considered a noxious and invasive weed, but I can't help myself - I love them. These little strawberries were never bigger than a thumbnail, but now we're down to the last few brave survivors of our recent heat wave. Still yummy, though. Inspired by Dejah's Red River Cereal photo, I'm having Wheatena with my berries. I put peanut butter and brown sugar into the Wheatena (more about that later), and then right after I took this photo, I dumped the berries into the porridge. I'll spare you the image of the combined breakfast - it looks much prettier in its separate state. Oh, there's also coffee in this breakfast, although I'm normally a tea person in the morning. I was up until the wee hours getting semi-ready for my day, so coffee seems called for. This is a double Americano my husband made for me on his La Marzocco. So, besides being the Birthday Girl, I'm a personal chef. You'll get a little taste of that today and tomorrow, as I cook for a regular client, and for a party for a new client. And then for the rest of the week I'll finally get to catch up with some food projects, recipe-testing, and just plain eating that I've been wanting to do for weeks now. By the way, I'm a Weight Watcher too. Each meal I'll have something to say about it in WW terms, but I'll keep it at the end of each post, so you don't have to think about WW points unless you want to. So why the peanut butter? I like to get some fat and protein into my whole grains, whenever possible. A tablespoon of peanut butter stirred into a serving of Wheatena, a spoon of brown sugar, whisk it all together for a creamy and delicious 5 points. Add berries, and it's one of the best uses of 6 points that I can think of. I'll be back this afternoon with pictures from today's cooking. Here's the menu, just as a preview: Curried Chicken Salad Acqua Pazza, served with Pasta with Zucchini, Anchovies and Mint Chicken Braised with White Poppy Seeds, Black Cardamom, and Coconut Milk, served with Saffron-Cardamom Rice Ribeye Steaks with a Port-Rosemary Reduction Sauce, served with Glazed Carrots with Balsamic Vinegar and Butter Persian Meatballs with Spinach, served with Israeli Couscous with Dates and Almonds. Yum - as you might guess, my lunch will be tasting these creations. See you all later - I'm off into the world for my first day as a 54 year old person!

Oh my gosh, what beautiful pastries! I'll bet that stuff is flying off the shelf. I'm going to Portland at the end of September, and I hope I can personally sample everything mel makes.

It is genuinely hard to find, even when you're looking right at it. And it is sort of a warehouse setting, so you might have had it right. Wesza took a bunch of us there after a Salumi lunch, or else I'd never have found it at all. And I wasn't driving, so unfortunately I can't give you any better directions than you got from Mapquest. Just wanted to tell you you're not alone!

Wow, Dejah, you are obviously a formidable cook, as well as a world-class multi-tasker. I bow to your beautiful blog, and I echo the others' call for recipes - everything looks so delicious.

Holy cow! Uhh, would you just come over once a week and make one for me? Seriously, please tell us how long this project took you, and whether you were able to spread the prep over several days. I'm not that good at eyeballing metrics - would a half sheet work for that amount of batter? And please, for the record (not that I'm likely to be doing it in this lifetime) please talk some about the method of spraying the white chocolate, and any reasonable alternative for the spray-challenged.

I do WW online, and am a personal chef, so I cook and eat great food all the time. I lost 65 lbs over a 14 month period, then have maintained that for about 8 months. Now I'm geared up to start losing more. WW absolutely works for me, because I love fruit, veggies, and whole grains. I've never eaten any sort of packaged WW meal, and dare say I never will. We could have a little eG WW thread for food ideas and support, if anyone wants to. Support on the WW boards usually does include mostly people who eat horrible gunk every day, so it would be refreshing to have a foodie points-counting club.

At a Seattle-area gathering last night, FWED's contribution was an Exotic Orange Cake he learned at the World Pastry Competition. I have to say that it was one of the best desserts I've ever had in my mouth. FWED, please post the recipe so I, and all of our fellow cake-lovers can try it and swoon!

Wow, that is scathing. She had a completely different set of dishes than we had, with not one thing overlapping, but it sounds like the overall experience was the same, except that we enjoyed our food, when we got any.

Yum, your other breakfast, with kashkaval, mint, and olives looks so good too! For the Mtabla - does peeled wheat mean wheat berries, like you can buy in the bulk section, or is it a specific Middle Eastern preparation? And the dried corn - the same stuff we might add to soups?

Elie, will you give us your mtabla recipe? It looks yummy and refreshing, sort of like a breakfast version of mutabbal.

Drat, I was hoping that our good lunch wasn't just an anomaly. We'll try them again, and see what we get. We have been to Noodle Ranch and like it pretty well. I love noodles! We saw Burrito Loco but didn't know it was supposed to be good - next time we'll try them.

Well, at least really one really wonderful dish, that would make me go back anytime I'm in the University Village. It's a pleasant space, and we had an awesome server (you're lucky if Jeremy waits on you), and some better than expected food. First, I suggest avoiding the tofu "fries", which are some sort of lo-carb abomination. We ordered them because I love tofu, and virtually every table had a martini glass of them, with three dipping sauces. Our server didn't recommend them, but we ordered them anyway. The fried tofu achieves a texture so far from its natural creaminess as to be astounding - it's dry and sort of woody. Jeremy came by, saw us not eating them, and took them off the bill without us saying a word and even though he had warned us about the dish. But I had a Vietnamese noodle bowl with caramelized shallot pork that was truly delicious. I love a classic noodle bowl, and this was sort of fusion, but, dare I say, it was better than a lot of authentic bowls I've had. The noodles were rice, although not glass. There was an amazing amount of delicious, small bits of grilled pork with a great and classic caramel flavor. Lots of greens, including crisp lettuce, cilantro, and mint, and a nice nam pla-type sauce that needed a little perking up. With a good squirt of sriracha, and a dump of the contents of the bowl of lime-cucumer dipping sauce that came with the fries, I had one of the best lunches in recent memory. I'll ask for that sauce on the side next time I order the bowl, because it finished it perfectly. Does anyone eat there, and if so, what else is really good?

I love the dark, slightly bitter honeys. The French miel de sapin, which is a pine honey, and chestnut honey are my very favorites, but I like the Tasmanian leatherwood a lot too. Our local "garden variety" honey is blackberry, which is nice, although light and mild. Whenever I travel I bring back honey, to remember places by. My cupboard is full of my honey stash - little bottles from everywhere.

At this time of year I'd go for berry shortcakes. Individual cakes, baked and split ahead of time, berries prepped ahead, cream whipped, last minute plating is quick, and I think everyone feels really pampered by shortcake.

I too use Thai sweet chili sauce with many things - one of the best is in a peanut butter sandwich instead of jam. Morningstar Farms Breakfast Patties with sweet stuff - like orange marmalade, maple syrup, or Thai sweet chili sauce, on toast. Watermelon and feta - equal proportions, as a fantastically refreshing salad. Grapes and a gutsy bleu cheese like Cabrales. Raisins and amontillado. I used to think I ate weird stuff, but really, cornflakes and Zinfandel???? That totally takes the cake, in my book.

I just did a lavender-blueberry jam - now there's a heavenly flavor combination!

Wowsers, that Berry Dinner sounds fabulous. I did get the announcement, but I was feeling berried-out at the time. Now I'm doubly so - today I made lavender-blueberry jam (really a wonderful combo, blueberries and lavender), blueberry liqueur, and a lavender-blueberry crumb cake for a friend's party. I still have LOTS more berries, but I fear that I'm running out of steam. And there are some yummy salal berries in my yard as well, that I wish I would do something with.

Actually, my son had a pretty good rejoinder: "But what about the stupid who are also hungry?" Blueberries have taken over my life. We picked 25 lbs last weekend - I made pancakes, muffins, syrup, and blueberry herb vinegar, froze a ton, and still have about 10 lbs left to deal with today. and then the bushes probably have that much again for me to address next week. I'm with all those who live on fruit at this time of year, and also with those who don't like beries with chocolate. Now that I think of it, that probably makes me a crow - that's who's really after the berries right now.