mushbrella

Just think, ants use these to cover from the rain.

happy big eight clara

Today was Clara's birthday party. Karen arranged a cool and culinary educated party at Eat Local. A sushi chef came and taught the girls how to make California rolls.


The adults got to try too, mine was oishii!

The lovely antics of Jersey makes everyone laugh.

Happy Birthday Clara! I hope you like your Barack Obama birthday card! Thanks Karen for inviting us!

bagelmania

I got some really good rest last night. It's been a while. I woke up so refreshed, that I decided to make bagels! I used the recipe in Nigella Lawson's "How to be a Domestic Goddess." I found that the recipe tends to make my mixer stand do a lot of work and I didn't get quite the look I wanted for the bagels. Next time, I am going to reduce it in half.

It takes a while to make them, but I found that my bagels, even though they weren't uniformly pretty, tasted amazing.

I made simple cheese scrambles to accompanied the bagel.

last day farmers' market

Today was the last day of the Queen Anne Farmer's Market. I put on my raincoat and wellies and headed two blocks down the hill. I didn't get much, just eggs, corn, and tamales. I wanted to get some winter squashes, but there wasn't a ton of organic ones that caught my eye.



There is a cute community garden near there as well. You can pick the lettuces, tomatoes, and herbs right off the plants.

These are the roses in my backyard.

stir fry

Jersey wanted to eat healthy last night. I got all of our veggies together, chopped them up and stir fried them in my wok. I had day old rice that I tossed in there. We had: broc, bok choy, kale, carrots, green bell pepper, shisito peppers, tomato, and zucchini.

I did an even cut of small pieces. My wok is nice and blackened from years of use and I oiled it with sesame oil tossed in the rice, carrots, zuc, peppers, and broc along with minced garlic and a shallot. After 6 minutes, I added the rest of the veggies and splashed soy sauce, salt, and pepper. I don't like my stir fry too soggy so I cooked for an additional 5 minutes. We had a healthy, nice soft crunch dinner!

the herky jerky

I just got back from San Francisco. I barely took any pictures when I was there due to exhaustion! I was happy to see everyone and eat at the normal haunts. I also finally saw my first whale swimming out in Pacifica! I got a bowl to commemerate the event from Ayumi Horie. She makes the cutest ceramics! Please take good care of my bowl Avalon!

A few places that I haunted with Jersey was Little Star Pizza and Regalito.
I went out with Jimmy and his friends to Bar Bambino. My favorite dinner though was with Erich at Kiss Sushi. The food was amazing. Ignore the yelp reviews, cause the omakase dinner was a lot of food and well worth the money. As Erich put it, "Do these people eat two Big Macs?"
I had to end the visit with the Saturday Morning Famer's market at the Ferry Building. It is a beloved ritual truly and depressingly missed. I went straight for breakfast at Primavera eating yummy Chicken Masa Chulupas. Then I bought some brown rice from Massa Organics among a variety of things that I could take on the plane with me. I had to snag some Warren Pears as the season is about to end. I ate one this morning.... it was godsent!


When I got back to Seattle, the saddest thing happened to me. I was in love with the Smart Car and ready to go down to reserve one. Unfortunately, the transmission was not smooth and driving it four blocks made me seasick. I hate it when you want to love something, but in the end it wasn't good enough. I guess I will have to save up for that custom black Mini Cooper I saw in Vancouver!

bitone is full of love

You have to check out this Bjork cover, from Bitone! Click here!

Bitone is a bunch of kids from Uganda. Check it out and support the cause.

super natural banana muffins

I wanted to make banana muffins for Karen, Tom, and Clara. I had blacken bananas ready to go and some yummy honey Greek yogurt that needed to be creamed in. I used Heidi Swanson's receipe from Super Natural Cooking. I didn't have any espresso powder, instead I used chopped up bittersweet chocolate. I hope my neighbors like their morning treat!

new roomie

Alas, the days of boredom and being stuck in the house are over. I am flying back down to SF for my new job as the Vice President of Marketing for Sparkplay Media. While Jersey is up in Seattle, I will be living with my good friend Avalon. She's a designer and an artist.

shared spider

Karen and I share a lot of things, but the one thing I weirdly loved sharing was the spider I named, Gnarls Barkley. He was a meaty one living between our houses. I loved staring at him and his gigantic web out the window while I ate breakfast. Unforuntely, today as I was enjoying my pancakes, I looked for him. The whole web was gone. Did the rain take him out? Or was it Jersey's revenge?

unfuck bumbershoot

We finally got in! Jersey and I went early and got main stage passes for the Monday night show. All is not wasted. Bumbershoot was actually a really cool art and music event. They closed off a huge area of the city where the Space Needle is and made it a full family affair. Teens were going nuts!

I ate at the Horn of Africa stand. It's all organic Ethiopian food. Delicious!


They also had a really cool drawing area, where you can do figure drawing or freestyle paintings. All of the materials were free. Pretty amazing stuff turned out for all ages.


We enjoyed a cellist playing while people were drawing on his white board.


The one thing I like about living up here, I got to see all these old skool bands I listened to in high school live! Superchunk was awesome.


We went home in the middle of Death Cab's set before it got nuts to leave. There were TONS of people there.