girl chow

I just love FTB, which has become my favorite all-purpose restaurant -- it's the kind of place you can go to for any occasion-- birthday, anniversary, paycheck celebration, just to grab a good brew and some gumbo. As I posted earlier in this thread back in March, their gumbo is really sinful. My favorite dish remains the halibut with the red pepper sauce. Yum. One of the original owners of FTB is Kevin Roy, owner/founder of the great oil company, Sotto Voce

I'm hoping that prices go down too. I'm going out later today to do some comparison shopping. I'll post my research later.

I think we can all agree here that Mutual Fishis one of our top picks for quality seafood (see shrimp thread going on right now). They're just north of Columbia City on Rainier Ave. S. (just south of the ID). Also, I'm a Larry's girl (when I'm in the hood) and I really think the fish counter help at any Metropolitan Market is always pretty good. If you tell us what neighborhood in Seattle you'll be looking, we could probably find more places where you can find salmon closer to you. Or, wait, were you asking where to buy actual salmon, or could you possibly mean good restaurants where you can order salmon as an entree?

Woohoo for flowering peas! These people down the street from my office have this amazing contraption involving wires, string and wood stakes for their peas. I noticed as I was driving by this morning how pretty the flowering buds looked. It almost makes me want to grow peas, except that I don't like peas I've got tomatoes going in my raised bed (a work in progress)... zucchini, butternut and acorn squash planted.. five kinds of pumpkins planted (including one mystery start from a mystery bag of pumpkin seeds I got from someone...should be interesting). To plant: a French peppermint start hubby picked up at Windmill Nursery today.. is this the kind of mint that grows like nuts? I'm thinking, just because it's mint, I'm going to put it in a container, but I'd love any advice if anyone is a mint grower (I don't know much about mint, other than that I know it grows like crazy). I love this time of year.

Well, considering the Copper River Salmon season opened about 3 hours ago, I'm thinking it's a scam.. or year-old frozen fish. Either case, not good. Or, wait, you know, could you be confusing Copper River salmon with Columbia River salmon? That run of wild salmon has been open and is still open right now.

Ahhhh, Shakey's. It's the place where we would always spend our birthdays when I was a kid (the one that used to be on Auburn Way North). I remember for your birthday, they would bring you a pizza with a candle... and the candle would be stuck into a marshmallow on top of the pizza. Hilarious. We loved it. For the record, there are still two Shakey's in this region. The one I go to (very rarely) is in Maple Valley at 23917 S.E. Kent Kangley Road, which is in the Four Corners area. I haven't been, but I know there is one in Renton on Petrovitsky. You should go there for a touch of nostalgia and tell us how it was. Farrell's also was a place I spent a lot of time as a kid (the 1970s version of Chuck E. Cheese, but with way better eats). They used to have a giant ice cream dish called the "pig trough" or something like that... a huge sundae that 5 or 6 kids could share. oink oink.

The Copper River Salmon season opens Monday with an opener that should bring fish into the Seattle grocery stores by Wednesday (at least that's what the seafood folks at Larry's are saying). Not sure about prices yet. One guy told me excpect $25 a pound for King and maybe $16 to $18 for sockeye, but those would be early market prices, which are always higher. As we've done in past threads, please post the price of salmon as you see it in the market Also, let us know how you're going to cook it. When I get my first piece next week, I'm thinking I'll be grilling it with just a squeeze of lemon (my usual m.o.) doesn't need a lot of help, really. Here's a site that isn't updated yet, but generally is a good source of info about the opener and the CR salmon runs. I expect they'll update it very soon.

heh heh heh. I was fine in the morning. We spread our drinking out over several hours, so we never quite got to rock star behavior mode. Ok, the calamari.. a screaming deal at $2 for a cone. But I have to add that a few of the pieces I ate were on the rubbery side of being done (can't speak for the rest of the cone). I'll cut them some slack considering everything else was splendid.. and $2 is nothing for a cone of calamari. Next time, I plan on sampling more stuff from the bar menu too.

Thanks for the tip Tsquare. After our Cascadia bar trip, we stumbled over to the See Sound Lounge for more drinks. It's true, the food is provided by Mistral. We were still full from our Cascadia calamari and sliders, but the menu looked good from Saturday: Moroccan style quail with preserved lemon couscous, $12; an assortment of artisinal cheeses, $8; caesar salad, $8; Sicilian style pizza, $8; sashimi grade tuna with oil cured olives and potato salad, $8. Also, some sweets and a few nibbles. We sampled the comp flatbread with the chili oil. Had the bartender, Karen, not been so damn cool, we might have bolted from the place because it is pretty sterile .. concrete floors, high ceilings and white pillars and low-slung furniture that is much more comfortable than it appears. Karen is a bartender with a good sense for balanced drinks. Several drinks were unusual and unexpected combinations .. like jaegermeister and absolut mandarin... and vanilla stoli and Rose's lime juice... all we sampled were pretty tasty.

Please tell me about this one. Was it an actual fir needle infusion or something? How funny you mention the douglas fir sorbet ... MsRamsey, LEdlund and I swilled a few of the Cascadia alpine martinis made w/the sorbet at our bar outing to Cascadia on Saturday (a good time was had by all). We loved the drinks -- especially when the douglas fir sorbet melted into the absolut vodka. The sweetness of the sorbet was perfect with the vodka. The beginning of the drink was very much a chilled vodka martini... but as the sorbet melted, it totally transformed into a different drink with almost gin-like flavor from the melting fir sorbet. Very cool effect. As for the bar menu... the sliders (made with ground filet) were superb.. and I think we all agreed the calamari cone was worthy of its $2 happy hour price. I thought the bucket of fries were fine, but I would have liked them cut a little larger (just personal preference). The service was outstanding.

I think they only attack trees. I haven't seen anything mentioned about flowers, or even vegetables Here's a pretty good link about Western Tent Caterpillars from the City of Seattle.

No need to give your credit card number. I put the reservation on my card. I sent you details of the lunch via PM.

We too have some aggresive wasps in the South Sound region. I've already *accidentally* knocked a nest out of the shed (scary as hell) and hubby reports that they had even taken up residence in our pickup truck (guess we should drive it more often). I shudder to think about tent caterpillars. Egads.

Tighe, despite my protests, my father dragged me to Hunan Garden in White Center and I have to say I was not unimpressed. I think you're right.. their high turnover means fresh food is constantly being brought out (fine with me). I haven't tried Spirit of India yet (I will now), but I do know that there is another halal Indian restaurant on the Eastside, which also has a decent buffet. It's called Kabab Palace. The owner also owns India Gate (although I'm not sure that location is halal). Kabab Palace gets their halal meat from a company that imports meat from New Zealand. Kabab Palace: 15230 N.E. 24th St., Redmond, 425-401-6899.

Hi Steve! I'll call and see if I can bump up the reservations to 6. If you bail on us, we will post about your absence, and talk about you while we lunch

Yes! I think stackstones would work well for small projects such as an herb spiral, although stackstones are squarish stone blocks and would look much more uniform than the project pictured in the link (what a cool idea and use of random stones you might already have around your yard).

Oh good! Herbs between the tomato plants will probably be just fine, giving them room to breathe and a nice varied landscape as everything grows in. Last year was my first real year for growing vegetables (besides a few pathetic attempts at container growing on my apartment deck years ago), so I don't know if we just got lucky or what. Our tomato plants were HUGE! Like monster huge. Not quite bad-B-movie-run-from-the-mutant-plants huge, but pretty huge. They were flowing out of the cages, which are about five feet high and a few feet wide, which is why we had so many problems getting between the plants to pick all the tomatoes. We used steer manure, a 5-10-10 vegetable fertilizer, lots of water and planted in a full-sun location in our yard. We weren't obsessive about weed control, but routinely did weed maintenance. We're rotating our planting area this year to the other side of the yard, so we'll see if that will be a good location for tomatoes. I think with all vegetable growing, though, it's a lot of trial and error. I'll take a digital photo of our Roman stackstones and see if I can post it here, or I'll e-mail it to you. They are just awesome, they have tongue-and-groove construction, so whatever you build will be solid.

We're on! I made reservations for 5 at noon June 4. Please let me know ASAP if you can't make it so I can either change the number for our reservation or find others to take your place. I have the following on the list: Me LEdlund MsRamsey SeaGal matsutakekichigai FYI: You have to give a credit card number to reserve your space. They do not charge you in advance, or charge you a fee for cancellation even if the reservations are cancelled on the same day, or charge a fee if someone in your party bails at the last minute (which I'm hoping doesn't happen to us, because that's just embarassing). However, they will charge a $25 per person fee if your party is a no show. This is what their web site says about reservations: Q: Why am I asked for my credit card when I make a reservation? A: It is our policy to take a credit card number to hold every reservation as a guarantee that our guest will honor their reservation. If a reservation is not honored or has not been cancelled by 3:00 p.m. of the day of your reservation a "No-Show" fee of $25.00 per person will be charged to your credit card.

Thanks for bringing back this thread from the dead! My makeshift greenhouse last year (and this year) was fantastic! We had a bumper crop of tomatoes (six plants) last year, a beautiful pumpkin patch, purple beans, zucchini squash, acorn squash (table queen), crookneck squash, and a decent stab at an herb garden that survived the winter (I transplanted to container pots over the winter). This year, we'll have early girls, a mystery tomato start someone gave us (no idea what kind it is, which should be interesting) as well as purple calabash and two other heirloom tomatoes (given to me by a friend who buys her seeds from Territorial) and cherry tomatoes. We've also got starts growing of zucchini squash, acorn squash, cucumbers, five kinds of pumpkins, including Atlantic giants, which supposedly will get to 200 pounds, but we'll see... I planted a different kind of giant pumpkin last year and the biggest one was 20 pounds... and that's not so giant. As you can tell from my list, I have a HUGE back yard. We have .40 acre and lots of room for planting. Last weekend, my husband and I built a second raised flower bed in our backyard out of Roman stackstones. It was so much fun (and I can't believe I would ever think manual labor would be fun, but stackstones are great to work with). Right this minute, he is planting about 20 dahlia tubers he bought yesterday at the Cook Lane Dahlia Farm in Auburn (great place to buy tubers, but don't buy from their website, they sell much cheaper at the farm). Reesek, your garden looks lovely!! I have to warn you, though, that you might consider giving your tomatoes a bit more room. From your picture, it looks like your plants will be really crowded once you add your tomato cages (unless you're planning on doing a lot of thinning or come up with some other contraption). We learned our lesson on spacing tomatoes last year. We planted six plants last year in a space that was about 7'x8'. We grew them on tomato cages. We had a bumper crop (literally hundreds and hundreds of tomatoes), but we had a problem getting to all of them because we did not leave enough room between our tomato cages to get in there and find the buried tomatoes. This year, we're going to plant six plants in a 15'x8' area. I think that will give us room to navigate the plants. I am conditioning my starts next week, leaving them out to get used to the climate. I'm planting late next week or the following, most likely, depending on the weather. Last year, during the first week of May, we had a freak hailstorm and very chilly weather (anyone remember that?) and I lost a few tomato plants and my cilantro. Not repeating that mistake this year!

I know Abra already knows about this, but for others who want to give Cascadia a first try with a minimal investment (in theory anyway), a group of us will be gathering May 8 in Cascadia's lounge to sample the bar menu and cocktails. Click here to find out the details.

One of my favorite places to eat in the Seastar neighborhood is Pogacha. Much more affordable and casual than Seastar, but great in its own way... it's a place that has built its entire menu around Croatian style flat bread... they have pizzas and a wood-fired oven that creates all kinds of scrumptious concoctions. It's an unusual restaurant, quite good. Not a good place if you're doing low carb. They will bring you endless baskets of the bread. Just thought I'd give it a plug.

Thanks Placebo. I bought all my moz cheesemaking supplies at Beecher's. I have to say, I was a little disappointed on a recent visit that the two counter folks at Beechers knew nothing about cheese cultures and couldn't give me any direction or answer any of my questions, other than how much they cost (and there were no "cheese officials" around for them to ask). I bought Ricki Carroll's "Home Cheesemaking" book and that has given me a lot of great direction and now I feel pretty comfortable with the whole concept of cultures. I highly recommend the book for all beginners like myself. I now have such a good list of sources for cow milk, I don't need to look anywhere else. However, like you, I am absolutely now in search of goat and sheep milk.

Heh heh heh. Nice payback. You should've grabbed a chair on the way out. Has it been too long to write the owner a scathing letter? Or at least call them? I'm a big fan of calling and bitching after the fact. How else will restaurants learn? That waiter should be fired, or docked some serious pay... or flogged or something. Stealing someone's plate before they've finished, or even eaten!, is pretty tacky.. and then to not apologize? Geesh.

The Fairview lost its caterer so the owners offered her the place as a catering facility. She's calling it "Julep." It has a ballroom, and several smaller rooms to host weddings, business meetings, etc. She also is moving her Redmond facility to another location (also in Redmond).. and has plans to open a restaurant there sometime in the near future. It will at the top of my list to eat there, her food is reaaaaaaaaaly good. MsRamsey, LEdlund and I had a nice little time snacking on her desserts at Taste Washington.

Ok, I'm thinking the 4th seems a good day. I'll give people until tomorrow to post if they want to join us, then I'll call and make reservations in the afternoon (read: sign on now people, or you'll miss the boat!)