malarkey

Lark!

These are one of my faves: They are from the website Christmas-cookies.com. Lime Pistachio Cookies Makes about 18 For the cookies: 1 cup butter or margarine, softened 1 cup sugar 1 egg 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon grated lime peel 1 cup finely chopped pistachios For the lime icing: 2 tablespoons butter or margarine 1 cup powdered sugar 1 tablespoon milk 1/4 teaspoon grated lime peel Cream butter and sugar; beat in egg. Stir in flour and lime peel; mix in pistachios. Refrigerate dough 1 hour. Preheat oven to 375F. Roll dough 1/4 inch thick; cut shapes with cookie cutters. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned; cool. Pipe icing to outline cookies. Lime Icing: Beat butter with powdered sugar, milk, and lime peel until smooth. If frosting is too stiff, beat in a few drops more milk; if too soft, beat in more powdered sugar. Makes about 1 cup.

I'm a sucker for old transferware. Love old china/pottery patterns. Johnson Bros., Spode.. Love old glassware too. I was madly collecting stuff till I realized its sort of a stupid thing to collect when you live in an earthquake zone :-/

You might want to check Salumi's hours. Its highly likely Armandino will have the place closed up for the holidays. Good recs so far. A few I haven't tried yet... hmmm you gave me an idea for MY upcoming days off...

They have it now I know cuz I had it last week! and yes, it IS the bomb. For a diner type experience, try the Woodinville Cafe, across the street from the Albertson's. Decent food.

HMMMM I'm not sure I'd make Dick's your first hamburger in 5 years. I'd go higher end for the first one. For that, I would consider Palace Kitchen or Two Bells (although Two Bells doesn't do fries). Then you can start slumming it From your list, I'd go to Red Mill or Daly's. At Red Mill, my favorite is the one with grilled anaheim chiles and monterey jack cheese... What I like about Daly's is they do cook to order. You get your food piping hot every time.

OK, Speck is joining us. Add us to the list!

I'm definitely in. Let me ask Speck if he wants to join us, because I know he doesn't read the board very often. p.s.: as long as there's salt and pepper anything on the table I'll be happy I'll vote for the traditional banquet!

I love the Athenian, but their food always is, um, well, you don't go there for the food. You go there for the ambiance, for the experience. I'd go there again in a heartbeat (since its been awhile). Have a cocktail with breakfast. The place feels well worn in and comfortable. Great views, you won't want to leave if you get one of those cozy two top booths by the windows. But the food... well...

I'm in, depending on the date...

FINALLY!! new beers at bottleworks

I think you'd do fine to add a Belgian Wit to your sampling. It certainly fits the 'dramatically different from how macros taste' department. And its a Belgian that isn't heavy. Look for Hoegaarden, Unibroue's Blanche de Chambley, Delirium Tremens I *believe* is also wit style.. oh, and La Chouffe Golden.

says "cooks rule"!

little ms foodie got QUITE the note written on the back of her menu. she needs to come clean about it!

it was fabulous, incredible, and wonderful, and I was a shameless groupie. *SIGH* Thanks to Tamara Murphy for putting on quite a fete, it couldn't have been easy to pull that off. Thanks to Kim Ricketts and Judy Amster, who orchestrated this fine event. And thanks to Tony, for showing up and being gracious and accomodating and entertaining and for all the pics and autographs and the story about some guy in a lamé thong teabagging everything in sight. Or something like that.. Looking forward to the new show, AND to making something from the Les Halles cookbook, as soon as my cut off thumb heals.

men, hold yer wimmen down, cuz I'm tellin' ya, he's drop dead gorgeous in person, and charming as hell.

OK, so I met a few fellow eGer's at Seattle Center and we descended on the annual Cask Beer Festival put on by the kind folks at the Washington Brewer's Guild. There were 2 tasting sessions, 4 hours each. We managed to get tickets for the early session, (12-4pm) because we bought them back when they first went on sale. This thing sells out every year, and there are always people clamoring at the door saying "sell your ticket?! PLEASE???" I blew my tastebuds out first thing by choosing to start with a pour of Maritime Pacific's XPA Hop Harvest. Just the name should tell you what this one was all about. Intensely hoppy, grassy marijuana like flavor and aroma. I love beers like this but it was extreme and I had to have some water and pretzels just to come back to earth. For a radical difference, I then had Diamond Knot's Oktoberfest. Malt malt and more malt. To me this didn't have any hops but I'm not sure that's a fair assessment considering the beer I started with. It was a lovely beer though, and a favorite amongst our group. Next came the Elysian Jasmine IPA, and this was a mellow beer not strong in any one direction or another. I couldn't taste any jasmine but my co-tasters could so I was still probably having some hop burnout. Now, here's the confusing part. This was a cask beer fest, and who do we see here? Unibroue. With bottles. OK, so they are bottle-conditioned. But still. They had the usual suspects, Le Fin du Monde, Terrible, etc. They told me Sleeman has no intention of radically altering the line. They will drop the lagers (I didn't know Unibroue made lagers) but everything else will stay. He also informed me that they are soon releasing a cranberry Ephemere which I should be able to find on tap at several area pubs. He assured me that the apple Ephemere and the cassis Ephemere would be staying in the seasonal lineup. AND the Blanche de Chambley. This was good news to me. Unless they change the recipes... Next: Silver City's Fat Woody. Heh. Clever name. This was a scotch ale aged for 6 months in american white oak. This was an awesome beer, and one of my favorites of the day. Smooth, complex, it sits at 9%, but wasn't alcohol-y at all. very well balanced, I loved this one. Next came Old Sol from Big Time. This was a wheat barley wine, almost a year old, it had been brewed in January. I heard someone say they thought it needed more time but I thought this was a lovely beer. They told me they usually tap it at the solstice and it sells out then, so they sell it even younger than this. It had a very slight spicey wit thing going in the background, didn't have that strong alcohol hit most barley wines do, although I do believe the level was up there. Gorgeous. Had Deschutes Black Butte Porter, lovely roasty toasty fresh flavor, I've had this one many times on cask. Had Harmon Brewing's ESB, a nice hoppy typical NW ale, very quaffable, and the Festi'ale from Far West Brewing, also a fairly standard NW ale, with a slight hint of spice and a lovely roundness in the flavor that I can't quite describe adequately. The Far West guys are doing some nice things. I've had a couple of their offerings this past summer I really liked. THEN came the controversial beer of the Fest. Anacortes Brewing had what they called a Belgian Ale, that was brewed in a belgian manner according to the brewer who was there pouring. He'd used an abbey 2 yeast and a hefeweizen yeast and put a whole ginseng root in the cask. Whoa. Immediate aroma hit was how a chile pepper smells when you pick it off the vine and its been sitting in the summer sun. Flavor was also chile pepper like, but without the heat. Some floral stuff going on too. Now, a couple of my co-tasters were getting a very metallic hit off this beer, some said it tasted like tea, and didn't like it at all. But I had one other person back up my peppery assessment and we both liked it, although I'm not sure about calling it a Belgian. Daring effort from this guy. I'd be interested in tasting that one alone and not after drinking a bunch of other stuff. so, only 11 out of ~35 beers got tasted. *sigh* so many beers so little time...

Susan- this looks GREAT! and I can sooo relate to the livin' on the porch culture. shouldn't it be called the "florida room"? LOL I think if I lived in that climate I'd grill ALL the time...

but why oh why did they discontinue the Mountain Ridge chips?!?! They were my favorites...

We did this as kids too, but with my mother's home made white bread hot out of the oven. The sugar melts a bit and ummmmmmmmm.

Hmmmm interesting. I've been buying Shelton free range turkeys for several years now. I think they are good, but these bronze babies I might need to check out... little ms foodie, brining is WAY important, and I also use a cooking trick I picked up from Martha S. Yes, that Martha S. It has resulted in the 2 best turkeys I've ever made, and I've been making turkeys for quite a few years now. If you want to know the details, PM me.

so.. SCE, according to your bio you are graduating from culinary school this month! Congratulations! ..You know, we are all still curious about your foray into the world of beer. Let us know how your tastings go and what your impressions are.

have tried a few of these and so far the Fish Tale is the front-runner. why? because it has the most hops. thhhhhhhpppppp!! so THERE!

while I was sleepily standing in line at the store early saturday morning, I saw what looked like cases of Deschutes Jubel Ale. I blinked, I rubbed my eyes, no, I wasn't seeing things. Some of the winter seasonals are here already. I brought home a bottle each of: Deschutes Jubel Ale, Bridgeport Ebenezer Ale, Full Sail Wassail, Fish Tale Winterfish Ale, Lost Coast WinterBraun, and Alaskan Winter Ale. They also had Pyramid Snow Cap and the LaConner seasonal, and a few others I'm not recalling. I'll be tasting these soon happy holidays!

scrambled eggs with harissa, croissant from Cafe Besalu, double short caffe latte. M, still on the harissa habit