Abra

Here it is...ta da...The Lutefisk Store. it has some other name, really, but that's all we call it. Outside they have Lutefisk TV Dinners!!! And inside they have Lutefisk TV Dinners!!! Can you believe it? They also have lots of other pan-Nordic stuff like lingonberries and stroopwaffels and soup mixes. and then, what's this? Dutch food! Klary, look! Oliebollen, and Boterkoek. In fact, I got lots of Dutch stuff that I can use in your recipes, especially the bitterkoekjes for that gorgeous pudding. In Poulsbo you can evidently buy fish right from the boat, although I never have and have a drink right on the water. Or, you can go to Central Market, coming soon to a screen near you. Have a look at these while I upload Central Market, and dinner.

I hope I'm not going to overwhelm you with pictures here! Once you start snapping, it's hard to stop, but still, this is a shop 'til you drop installment.. So first, we left home, turned the corner, and met up with these guys, who are new to the neighborhood. When we could tear ourselves away, we crossed the bridge off the island over the Agate Passage. We'd heard that there was a new Vietnamese place in Poulsbo. Hmm, doesn't look too promising, but we decided to give it a try It wasn't bad at all, but Westernized from what we're used to. A vegetable crepe The ubiquitous noodle bowl and a chicken in (just a very little) black bean sauce. We asked the owner if he had a more pungent anchovy sauce, and he said that was the sort of request he loved to hear. He brought it back to us twice, each time adding more fish sauce, and finally told us that he's lived in the U.S. since he was 14, some 22 years ago, and that we were eating it stronger than he himself likes it, having Washingtonized his own tastebuds. We wouldn't make a special trip over there, but it was good enough to eat again if we needed food in Poulsbo. Poulsbo isn't all Norwegian. On the edge of town, besides the Vietnamese place, is also We didn't go in today, but they do have a small assortment of things that are hard to find unless you go to Seattle. But right downtown in Poulsbo is all the Norwegiana. Lots of kitsch as the shop windows reflect These new benches aren't even bolted down yet, and they look really nice and inviting. Once again, Riley knows where to shop I'm going to have to leave you in suspense for a while and go and get the dinner started, or we'll never eat tonight. Next up: The Lutefisk Store!

Ok, dinner tonight, in case you want to join in: Herb Sandwich from Parma Chicken in "Cooked Wine" Root Vegetable Mash with Orange Zest The strangest thing about black treacle is that we never see it at all here, but I keep seeing it in recipes. Same with the candlenuts. So when I saw them I grabbed them, and then have never been face to face with the right recipe. Jack, you could do us a big favor by starting a treacle thread. It's not exactly molasses, right? Those little wood ears, you soak them first? Do they keep that ribbony shape? Therese, besides putting sweetened red beans at the bottom of shave ice, what do you do with them? I love them when I eat them out, but haven't used them at home. The harder to read stuff includes blachan, Peruvian black mint sauce, dried lily buds, tkemali, shrimp paste, and Nigerian palm kernel oil.

That was a chuck roast from Misty Isle Farm, an especially delicious beef. But it did cook for over 3 hours in order to be that tender. And I forgot to say before that no, I've never made little regular cakes in that mini pan, but I've only had it for a few months. I'll bet they'd be cute too. Coffee break time! A speculaas for Shel, a perfect persimmon for me and, contrary to appearances, no cappucino for Sushi. Smithy was the first to suggest a combined French/Dutch dinner, so in her honor I dug a bunch of stuff out of the deep recesses of my cupboard. Now, I have plenty of weird stuff that I use occasionally, or even that I've only used once, but here I confined myself to unopened packages that have been in the cupboard for, ahem, something over a year. "Over" is a pretty loose term. There's one item that I know for sure has been in there for (deep breath) at least 5 years. Actually, more than one. More than two, even. This is just to show you what a compulsive ingredient-accumulator I am. Please, don't make me cook with these this week! I know, I suggested it, but now that I see what all's in there, I'm bailing. Another time, er, maybe another year, I promise! So here's the plan. Based on the surprising popularity of little Poulsbo, I'll head over there for lunch. It'll be a Vietnamese lunch, since a Norwegian lunch isn't really to be had there. I'll show you the town, which is quite attractive, and shop at the Central Market for a Batali dinner menu. I've got to do the dinner tonight, because tomorrow we'll be getting ready to go, and that's a great time to eat out and not make any dirty dishes. I know that Central Markets exist in some other places, but I've never been clear about whether this one is related to those others. It's a stupendous market, though, and maybe some of you will recognize a corporate identity and solve that mystery for me. I'm going to narrow down the menu and head off the island. I should mention that we're a 35 minute ferry ride from downtown Seattle, but there's a bridge at the other end of the island connecting up to the Kitsap Peninsula, whereon lies Poulsbo. So no ferry today, but you'll see plenty of them on Friday. Catch you later.

Who has Molto Italiano? If I cook from that, who wants to cook along? I just went through it and am dying to make about 30 of the dishes. If I leave out the ones my husband won't eat, like Sweet and Sour Pumpkin, or any pasta (well, he'll eat a bite or two, but it's never worth making pasta just for the two of us) there are still about a dozen dishes that speak to me today. To wit: Cheese Bread form Genoa Chicken Livers with Balsamic Vinegar Herb Sandwich from Parma Chicken Thighs with Saffron, Green Olives, and Mint Chicken Stew with Polenta and Celery Root Chicken with "Cooked Wine" Pork Loin in the Style of Porchetta Stuffed Meat Loaf Root Vegetables Mash with Orange Zest Pan Roasted Turnips Can I please have one of each? I did buy that mini-pan locally, here,, but you can get one online here. Poulsbo is racking up a few votes, I see. Klary, you're coming here? Awesome! Kathleen, make that beef FOR Sam. He'll be bowled over, and you can smile modestly.

Actually, no! I totally spaced on the lid-wiping part of the instructions. Oh, that's bad! I'll have to try it again. Did you use the amount of potatoes called for by weight, and still get it crispy? I'm so embarrassed!

Good morning! No glorious sunrise for us today, instead we have this admittedly much more typical view for this time of year. And I had a much more typical breakfast too I love Boca breakfast patties. I'm still an unreconstructed hippy when it comes to certain kinds of food, and my roots are deep in whole-earth, vegetarian, whole-grain, soy and nuts type eating, even though I've considerably broadened my spectrum over the years. I want to catch up on the comments from yeaterday and this morning. Toliver, the camera is a Sony DSC V1. It's not at all high end, and it's not at all new, and it's still got dozens of features that I haven't mastered. That instruction manual is really intimidating! Ludja, I really do play a cookie-choosing game with Riley where I put a different kind of cookie in each hand, let him sniff them, and then let him choose one. He'll almost always go for one with peanut butter, next would be cheese, and he also loves the charcoal ones. If I take a little cookie and spread a bit of people peanut butter on it, he's absolutely in heaven. But no, he's not at all spoiled. He's an Old English Sheepdog, with a haircut, weighing about 100 lbs. Sharon, welcome to eGullet! How nice to see you here in my other world. Pan, since you don't cook much, it would probably take you longer, but there's nothing hard about that meal. By doing my personal chef gig I have learned to have 3-5 things cooking at once without stressing over it unduly, and that comes in handy at home too. Klary, thank you for your faith in me, but your food already looks so beautiful and delicious that it really needs no reinterpretation at all. I don't have very good pastry cutting skills, which is why I wanted individual servings on the speculaas. I know, hot knife, wipe after every cut, and so on, but I think that a perfectly clean pastry cut is one of the hardest things to accomplish. If any of you have good tips and secrets for that, please, bring 'em on! Rjwong, you must have been reading my mind about the blue plates. In truth, I'm looking for some new plates, since we don't have the required 20 for Thanksgiving dinner, and I keep having to force myself not to look at any more blue plates. The ones you see most of in this blog are from China, and we got them at an Asian ceramic place. The nice ones from last night (our "good" dishes) are Heath, from Sausalito. I keep thinking that for presentation purposes I need some white plates, but every time I see them in the store I get bored before I can even get them to the register. As to the salad, it was rich and complex. The watercress wasn't a discernible separate note at all, more of a brightening flavor. The cabbage with walnut oil, the duck, the chestnuts, walnuts, and cracklings, are all so earthy and sweet, with a nice bit of salt from the confit process, that you really want that spicy little dark green thing from the watercress. The cabbage softens during a short marinating period in the dressing, so it's not crunchy, but the toasted walnuts and the cracklings do provide crunch. The whole thing feels good in your mouth, smooth and inviting. It's very hearty,and with a bit bigger serving and more duck it would be a lovely main dish. And Jack, I wish I'd thought of capers and vinegar for that skate. That would have livened it up considerably. The wine last night wasn't oaky at all. It was a Wilridge Klipsun Vineyard Nebbiolo, a wine that goes brilliantly with salty foods. I'd opened it for the confit, but it kept on being really nice with the main course. So, what shall we do today and tomorrow? I feel like a kid on a snow day, being forbidden to work and invited to play. Friday morning we'll head up to Orcas Island, and tomorrow night we want to try out a new restaurant here on Bainbridge that's been getting great reviews, but in the meantime, the world's our oyster. Mmmm, oysters. Some ideas: 1) I have a lot of weird ingredients in my cupboards. Often I buy things that I don't know how to use, or that are seldom used. I could pull them all out, take a picture, and let you guys request a dish or a meal from my pantry. 2) I could take you to Seattle and show you Pike Place Market and other foodie-mecca-type places, if that hasn't already been done to death. 3) I have the new Mario Batali cookbook and haven't even cracked it yet. We could have an Italian dinner. 4) I could go in the opposite direction from Seattle and show you Poulsbo, a little Norwegian-emphasis town on the Kitsap Peninsula. 5) You could help me refine the menu for my Orcas wine pairing dinner. 6) We could all work together on our Thanksgiving menus. 7) We could have a cyber-dinner. That's a thing we used to do on another food board, where a group of people would all cook the same meal on the same night, wherever they were in the world, and we'd talk about how it came out, what tweaks we made, and pretend that we were all gathered together around a big, virtual table. 8) I need to clean up all of my personal chef kit, repairing the chaos caused by the Walla Walla gig, and geting ready to take some stuff up to Orcas with me. It's in the garage, and it's a messy job. Normally I'd never let anyone see me do it, but if any of you have a morbid curiosity about messy garages... 9) We could roast some coffee. Or anything else. So, whad'll ya have? Whad'll ya have?

I made the butter beef, and the filled speculaas tonight as part of a Dutch/French dinner. You can see it here. Delicious!

All I can say about that dinner is Oh My God. If you want to make a dinner that will wow your friends into food nirvana, make that exact dinner. The Duck Confit Salad with Red Cabbage, Chestnuts, and Watercress is easily one of the best salads I've ever tasted. The combination of flavors and textures knocked my socks off. Because it was a first course, I used only two duck confit legs for four people. Since I had to shred the meat, I used the skin for cracklings. And since my chestnuts had been frozen, and seemed a bit dry and mealy once thawed, I flashed them through a pan of hot duck fat. Other than that, I made it exactly as written. We ate it with the utmost devotion. Klary's beef in butter is indescribably delicious. She PM'd me to be sure to brown the meat long and low, and so I did. I braised it for about 3 hours, maybe a little more. I don't usually find beef very interesting to eat, but this was absolutely killer. And with the Potatoes from Quercy and the Puree of Celery Root and Apples, well, words escape me. My friend and dinner guest said "I don't know that I've ever eaten a better dinner" and that pretty well sums up this combination. You've got to try them all together. For Klary's speculaas, I did make a few changes. My dough looked a lot lighter than hers did, which I assume relates to the amount of molasses in our brown sugar. I added about 3 T of molasses to the dough to darken it up. That made the dough pretty soft, but I wasn't planning to roll it out in any case. I wanted individual servings with no cut edges, so I made it in my mini cheesecake pan, with removable bottoms. I divided the dough into 24 pieces and pressed dough into the bottom of each little pan. Then I spooned the almond paste on top of the dough and covered each pan with a second round of dough. By the way, I added a few drops of almond extract to the almond paste, to get a more almondy flavor. I think maybe Klary's almonds are different from ours. This made really cute small cakes which I plated with a little creme Anglaise made with Earl Grey tea that I got from Epicurious. That proved to be a truly lovely combination, especially served with a glass of vin de noix. So Paula and Klary, and all of you vin de noix crew, and the duck confit crew, thank you for being with us tonight for a genuinely fabulous dinner. It was quite a treat. Oh, and I should mention that it didn't take forever to prepare either. I spent about 4 1/2 hours cooking, which is not at all bad for the number and complexity of dishes. So, what are you waiting for?

Eek, Klary, are you still up? Why oh why does Holland have to be 9 hours ahead of me? Should that beef be covered? I have the lid ajar right now, awaiting inspiration. And I've done a non-standard thing with the speculaas too. I hope the Netherlands Cooking Goddess is watching over me! Now to tackle the French stuff. Shouldn't I have started this about 2 hours earlier?

I was a skate wing virgin. I might wanna be one again. Assuming that you too have never cooked it, here's the graphic lowdown on why we don't much eat this creature. Not that it's in any way bad. It's just...weird to prepare, and very underwhelming to eat. If Wendy hadn't suggested the browned butter, I'm not sure it would have had any flavor at all. Here's what came home from the fish counter The fish lady had told me that you have to peel the cartilage off after you pan fry it. I had no idea! I gave it a light dusting of seasoned flour, pan fried it in some browned butter, and voila. Half of the thing was the aforementioned cartilage. But it's kind of beautiful, no? Here's what was left, plopped on a salad. I don't want to blame the poor skate, since there may be many better ways to prepare same, but I think this might be another one of those things that Only Comes Once a Year. Or even less often. Perkiins is waiting to see whether any skate wing is coming his way. He's a very elderly cat, and patient, but he didn't get any. Now off I go to work on tonight's dinner. But first, let me say that the Urfa Pepper, as well as Marash Pepper, come from Zingerman's. They're both really worth having. And yes, I've thought of a hint of vanilla with the Chard. Is there a seafood risotto with a vanilla bean in it? The photos in this blog are taken without a flash, as opposed to my first blog, where I han't learned that trick. I do doctor them a little, "fixing" the contrast, sometimes the "levels" (whatever that really is) and occasionally also sharpening the focus. Perkins is still fuzzy though, even with doctoring. Mostly that's the indoor photos - the outdoors is beautiful all by itself, mainly I just crop and post. I always love it when people post pictures of their markets, and their towns. My first blog was really tightly focused on the stove and the plate, so this time I wanted to open my world up a bit more for you. It's so nice to have you all here. Let's go play in the kitchen!

So, coffee. This is the sign behind my husband's espresso bar. He's a certifiable coffee nut. I actually think he likes the machine as much as he likes the coffee. He also has a ton of coffee gear - it sure makes it easy to find gifts for him. Here's a cappucino he made for me. Well, actually, he made it for you. Whenever Riley and Sushi hear the coffee grinder, which, in truth, can be heard all over the house, they come running. They're very ritualistic pets. Every morning Sushi jumps right up on the bar for a little coffeetime snack of dried crunchies. I might point out that she'll ignore these crunchies at mealtime, but as a coffee break treat, she laps them up. She's not too photogenic, being all one dark color, and she refuses to smile for the camera. In fact, she stuck out her tongue at the very idea. Now Riley, his coffee break thing is to catch little cookies in his mouth. He has learned the command "back up" just so he can catch cookies from further away. He looks like he needs orthodontia in this shot, but if you look carefully you can see that he is just about to close on a little cheese heart.

Here we are at the Bainbridge Island Town and Country store. It's a community institution, the sort of place that serves free coffee to people when the power is out on the island, organizes food donations to the local food bank, has a float in the 4th of July parade, and is a thoroughly wonderful place to shop. There's excellent bread a huge organic produce section, of which this picture shows about 1/6 of the stock a mind-boggling assortment of upscale oils and vinegars a gorgeous fish counter and even interesting housewares. I spend a lot of time there, and I always enjoy it. We have a Safeway on the island too, but I go there as little as possible. Riley loves to go shopping with me. This is his favorite store, another community institution that's part nursery, part feed store, and also specializes in useful outdoor clothing. Riley especially likes it because they let him come in and pick out his own cookies. I know, it looks like he's so well-mannered. You have no idea how hard it was to get him to keep his nose out of the bins and sit semi-still for this shot! Yikes, I see that it's getting past lunchtime. Let me go whip up something with that skate before I post the coffee photos. Need a coffee fix? You'll just have to wait a minute!

Speculaas with almond paste, of course! It never crossed my mind to make the plain one. Mmm, brown butter and skate. Ok, that's for lunch. And a risotto is a great suggestion, Carolyn. I needed a creamy dish, but the particular Chard, a Kistler, is reputed to have high acidity, so I might need to add some acid ingredient to the risotto, if that's what I go with. There are a lot of apples on the ground, aren't there? I'm troubled by that myself, but I don't know why they weren't at least made into cider. The persimmons, the minute they are ripe, will be eaten straight out of hand, accompanied by ecstatic sounds. That's my favorite fruit, and they're usually not very nice around here, for some mysterious reason. I'm back from shopping and need a coffee. Pictures of both will follow, and then I'm putting on my apron and rolling up my sleeves. Oh, one schedule change. I also went to the chiropractor while I was out, and she ordered me not to carry heavy stuff for a few days, to try to relieve the tingling in my hand and arm. So I've rescheduled my tomorrow client, and will just concentrate on getting the menu together for Orcas, and planning Thanksgiving. We're having two of them, one with 20 eGers and a Rosengarten turkey, and one more traditional, except that most of the guests will be Thai and haven't had Thanksgiving before. So we can probably get some good Thanksgiving chat going in this blog too, if you all want to share your Thanksgiving hopes, dreams, and plans here.

Good morning! We live on Sunrise Drive, and now you see why it's called that. I got a good start to the day with this (much more conservative) breakfast. Sorry Moosh! Oh, it's so hard to decide on dinner. Between Paula's book and Klary's thread, I want to make about 20 different dishes, and since I also have a couple of other things I need to do today besides cook (how boring of me) I just have to go for a few that sound not too complicated and delicious. So here's my menu, a Paula/Klary combo: Paula's Salad of Duck Confit with Red Cabbage, Chestnuts and Watercress (I want to preview this as a possibility for the Orcas dinner. I made the confit using Paula's recipe, and it should be ready to eat by now) Klary's Draadjesvlees (beef cooked in butter) Paula's Potatoes in the Style of the Quercy Paula's Pureed Celery Root with Apples (and this plate will need some color) Klary's Speculaas Nothing fancy or hard here, just quite a few balls to get in the air. It sounds very wintery and comforting, no? Ruth, you ask a good question about cooking with other people's recipes. I love to cook other people's food! Mostly because I love to try new dishes all the time, so although I do have "tried and true" stuff, I don't make anything often enough to get bored. This blog may disappoint you in that way, because it's mostly going to be about new (to me) dishes. And no, I'm still up in the air on Thanksgiving stuffing. Do I need to hurry into a decision? I still have 10 days, and a big dinner to do between now and then. Should I really be planning Thanksgiving already??? Jack, I tend to think of the big, oaky American wines as also being fruit bombs, a combination that particularly doesn't sound good to me. What are your favorite foods to serve with an oaky cabernet sauvignon, and an oaky chardonnay? American, mind you, no restrained Euro wine here. As to the coffee preference, you shall see a bit later in the morning, when my camera follows me down to Shel's Espresso Bar. The question for the morning is: yesterday I saw skate wing, and bought a piece. I've never cooked it or eaten it. Who knows a good recipe? My initial plan is to give it a pan saute and put it on a salad for lunch, but I'm open to suggestions about anything more interesting to do with it.

First the no statements: no, I've never read Diane Mott Davidson, although I've heard of her. Is there anything scary in her books? I hate to be scared! And no, alas, no storage of Walla Walla onions. The sweet onions are so fragile, you just have to eat them while they're fresh. And no, no quinces at the moment, but that reminds me that the quince paste I made a couple of months ago according to jackal10's method is also on the Orcas menu. Yes, vin de noix is definitely on the menu for the Orcas dinner, as is something with the duck confit I started back 6-8 weeks ago. Hmm, so far quince paste, vin de noix, and duck confit. How to combine them....an arugula salad topped with the confit, with a vin de noix dressing, maybe some sort of toasted nut, quince paste cubes, a little dry, nutty cheese? I encourage folks from Washington to visit Walla Walla. I'd never been there until this past summer, but I've been half a dozen times since then. It's really a charming little place. I still haven't settled on a menu for tomorrow so I'll have to sleep on it. Besides cooking for the guests, there will be shopping, and some views of our little town on the island, plus a feature on my husband's mad passion, a 2-group La Marzocco espresso machine. We have a coffee ritual every day that even our dog and cat participate in. Yes, pet pictures are forthcoming too. Nobody's spoken up in favor of oaky wines. Don't be shy, if you love them, I need your help!

For dinner tonight I needed VEGETABLES. If you read my last blog, you learned that I was a Weight Watcher. Unfortunately, over the past year I've been watching my weight go up. Eating like we did in Walla Walla, you can see why. So tonight, a soothing and lighten-ing dinner of vegetables and fish. I simmered these all together with vegetable and beef broths, then added two of my favorite condiments. It probably sounds insane to combine Indonesian catsup with Central American catsup, but it was really good. The halibut got a dusting of baharat and Urfa pepper, then a layer of roasted garlic hummus, a layer of Panko, a spritz of olive oil, then a good roast in a hot oven. Have you ever seen these tiny Forelle pears? I found them for the first time today. I put the little mandarin orange in the bowl to show how small they are. Like Seckel pears in size, but like little Bartletts in flavor and texture. Ok, so French or Dutch? French or Dutch? I think I love that quasi-Belgian idea. I'll combine them in some way. I'm going to have a look at the book, and another look at the thread, and see how I can make a combined Dutch/French dinner for 4. Any special recipe from either the book or the thread that you think I should be making?

You might be interested in the blog I'm doing right now. I'd love to get comments on the gig with the teenage staff - would you call my role cook, or chef?

I haven't yet been to dinner at this place. It's created for the New Walla Walla, the wine money and people, as opposed to the 10,000 Seventh Day Adventists who live in the Walla Walla valley. It's the kind of place with $85 tasting menus, with $6 extra per course for wine pairings. But after this lunch, I'm absolutely ready to go back for dinner. We started with a bowl of hot beignets, strawberry and apricot jam, and strong coffee. My husband had Croque Madame, with the thinnest, crispest fries you ever did see and a cup of Hollandaise for dipping and I had, ta da, Duck Confit Hash which looked even more pornographic with its yolk broken and oozing. You might want to go to Walla Walla just for that lunch. Sundays only. But all good things draw to a close, and we set out across the state again, heading for home. It's really late autumn here now, and the wheatfields apple orchards and vineyards are all settling in for a long winter's nap. Home on the island today, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Did you think it rains all the time in Seattle? This is from our deck in mid-afternoon, and yes, that's the Space Needle in the left part of the distance. and just an hour or so later We're quite far north - that last shot was taken just before 4:30 p.m. And now, it's time to go cook. Halibut is on for tonight, since the season is just about over, and it'll be frozen only for the next few months.

So, inevitably there was a Morning After. I can assure you that I woke up in the morning in a daze. Did I really pull that off last night??? Here is where I awoke and shook it off in that little window, right behind the enchanting sign for the Coffee Perk cafe. Too bad their coffee is so terrible when their sign is so cute. In the great tradition of eG breakfast photos, I give you my breakfast Nah, just kidding. My husband made me take that picture. Actually, that wine was the Night Before the Morning After. Here's my real breakfast I kid you not. Leftover pesto pizza and carrot cake. It was a once in a lifetime breakfast, I swear. But see that coffee? Here's a closeup Wouldn't you call that Unclear on the Concept advertising? My annual cup of Starbucks, my annual breakfast of pizza and carrot cake. After that breakfast, I needed a walk! There are a couple of square blocks of downtown Walla Walla that are very scenic In case you haven't heard, Walla Walla is the epicenter of a burgeoning wine industry. In 1999 there were 15 Walla Walla wineries - today there are 70. Cayuse is so popular and so exclusive that it's sold out three years in advance, consequently this store is never open at all, just serves as sort of an architectural billboard for the unobtainable. After the walk, we went to a memorable lunch that will restore your faith in my good taste. I'll get the pictures uploaded, and you go get a napkin to wipe off the drool. Just a hint - duck confit is involved. Yes, they even have duck confit in Walla Walla.

Once in Walla Walla, although we'd sworn we'd never eat again, we did, in fact, have pizza for dinner. I'm not going to show it to you now, but that pizza will put in a surprise cameo appearance later in the blog. Bright and early the next morning I was at the grocery store shopping for the party. Well, to tell the truth, I had gone to one store the night before, went to two stores the morning of, and had to send my long-suffering husband to three more stores later in the day. Oh, and I had been to 3-4 stores at home before leaving. This party was a sort of logistical nightmare, not only did I not know the kitchen or the "staff" but I didn't know what would be available at stores in town or what it would cost. My husband says, about the whole event "there's professional, then there's brave, then there's insane." Guess which he thought I was? I spent about 9 hours prepping before the first kid showed up, not counting the 2 hours my husband spent saving me from a panic attack, after I heard that none of the kids had actual cooking experience. See how calm he looks? This is before the three trips to the store looking for dulce de leche. But in fact, there were a couple of serious kids who wanted to cook, were steady and trustworthy, and did a kick-ass job, once I taught them stuff like what it means to reduce a sauce, how to portion something so that every plate gets some, and how to taste for salt. Here they are, plating salad with pomegranate seeds. On the other hand, one kid dropped a cup of butter in a pan, put it on high, and went off to shoot the breeze with his buddies. Did I mention this was in a church? Oh, the words I did say! Would have had me excommunicated, if I had been communicated in the first place. As you can see, behind his wild-eyed stirring, there's food and gear just everywhere. The servers were terrorized by the names of the dishes, so we wrote them down. Even still, this middle-schooler could be heard muttering "Chinese Pork Tartlets" over and over again to herself. The church's convection ovens wouldn't hold a temp within 100 degrees of wherever you set it, so it's a miracle we had muffins at all and I was triply glad that Chefpeon had made the carrot cake for me. If I'd had to worry about baking that as well I'd have had a nervous breakdown. I bought some cute leaves from Pfeil and Holing, make a little sauce of the infamous dulce de leche, and the kids went to town plating up the dessert. All in all, it was a truly amazing experience. The food was all good, every course was served on time, nobody got cut or burned, nobody cried, the anniversary couple were ecstatic, and the kids said "thank you for being our chef." I like to think that one or two of them really learned something, and that they'll have more of a clue next time. Not that there'll be a next time for me, no siree!

Ok, no clue why, but we're in business, image-wise! So, on the way to Walla Walla We saw our first snow of the season and stopped in the little town of Cle Elum, where Glondo's Sausage makes some amazing meat. The long skinny salsicce in the photo are about two feet long Here's Charlie Glondo, mayor of Cle Elum and chief sausage maker, showing us his mayoral smile and an old sausage stuffer. He gave us a sample of his salami, causing us to buy a pile, as well as the pound of his beef jerky that I had originally gone in there for. his jerky is the best I've ever had. And that salami is the salami of my youth, tangy, aged, moist. I'll take its picture in a bit, but it could never look as fabulous as it tastes. Not 25 miles down the road, we couldn't stand it another minute, we had to have meat! Meat to eat, right now. Here we are at Smokin' Joe's in Ellensburg where we worshipfully devoured this The meat is self-explanatory. Major Meat. Mighty Meat. Melting meat. More meat than is prudent to eat in one sitting. Joe's sides are really unusual: the beans are really full of cinnamon, which is oddly good, and the salad is a combo macaroni and potato salad, with a little barbecue sauce. It's all quite sweet, sweeter than we'd normally want, but it's hard to leave a single bite. So we didn't. Stuffed to the gills, we drove over the northern end of the beautiful Columbia River across the Vantage Bridge and down through high desert country to adorable little Walla Walla I'm just guessing that this is not your image of Washington, right?

Wow, even though I know about 600 personal chefs, you all know some that are really different. Unless you have a commercial kitchen, it's illegal to have food prepped in advance, in almost every state. And I can't imagine serving food to drunk clients, naver having seen anything like that. The ass-busting part is right on!

But boring technical details aside, c'mon, y'all. What dinner shall I make tomorrow? French or Dutch?

Thanks, Jack. That doesn't work for me, although I've tried it several times today. I can post pictures from a non-eG server, and I guess I'll do that soon, if all else fails. It is better to host the images on eG, so they're preserved for posterity, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.