Dinner Party

On Sunday we had Tom and Kathy over for the first meal in the Sister House. When Kathy asked what to bring, my only request was dinner plates! We are not really set up for guests yet! We had salad, pot pie and cherry trifle for dessert. It was really nice to cook a meal for them for once. They have fed us regularly for years now. There will never be any way to properly thank Tom for the beautiful creation that is the Sister House but it was nice to start with an inaugural dinner.

Wanna Eat Something Tasty?

Dice up some onion and soak in fresh lime juice. Cube up some watermelon and cut up some jicama. Use your hands to gently toss the watermelon and jicama into the onion and lime juice. Sprinkle chili pepper and cumin to taste and toss. Crumble up some cotija cheese and chop up some cilantro. Sprinkle liberally over the top and serve ASAP. This dish does not like to wait to be consumed.

I find when I am missing Los Angeles I am usually missing food. Matt and I liked to buy bags of fruit from the street vendors. The bags usually had some sort of melon, mango, papaya, pineapple, maybe jicama and always spices, chili powder for sure and I don't know what else. So refreshing. The above dish is the result of a Los Angeles craving on a hot day. I knew kind of what I wanted but Googled the ingredients anyway just for reassurance that I was on the right track. I found a recipe with everthing I was jonesing for except the recipe called for cumin, something I hadn't thought to add. Yummy!

Full Oval

The sink and stove have been put to use. I can't say it was for some grand dish. I hard boiled some eggs. As I post this I realize there is some poetry in that, considering that this blog is called Eggtown and in just 2 weeks we will be celebrating Egg Days here in Winlock. The other day on the mail route, one of my customers asked me if I wanted some eggs because her chickens had laid more than she could use. I happily said yes and she came out of the house with 2 dozen (!) eggs! I got home from the route and the propane man was just finishing installing our tank. The next day our plumber finished nearly all his tasks here so I had a working kitchen sink (heavenly choir singing) and a working stove (angel harp orchestra). And now I have 24 hard boiled eggs. Full circle.

1000(ish) Words Because I Have No Pictures

I have a 3 gallon glass carbouy sitting in the garage that is just over half full of fresh apple cider. The other day I went over to Tom and Kathy's house. Kathy and I filled a bunch of bushels full of apples from their trees. There is a fellow in Toledo called Kendall and he recently acquired an antique cider press and was looking to put it to good use. So we washed up all the apples and got the machine rolling. First all the apples went into the crusher. The crushed pieces fell through to the tray on the bottom of the machine where they were caught in what looked like a bottomless bucket. Once the bucket was full we pushed it forward along the tray so it was positioned underneath the press. Fitting a round wooden disk into the bottomless bucket we pressed all the juice out of the apple bits. I figure that we had about 5 gallons by the time we were done. The whole business smelled good, tasted good and was so freaking quaint that I felt I was a subject in a Norman Rockwell painting. But you will just have to trust me on that because I didn't have my camera on my person and missed photo-documenting the experience.

The Puyallup Fair - Food

Where the prize winning beef goes after the blue ribbon ceremony.

We all know that food at the fair is expensive and yet, we are still shocked when a soda clocks in at $3.25. That is better than the water I bought later: $3.50.

My piroshky. Now is the time for me to say that I am really jealous of the fairs that Nathan has been going to in Ohio. The food looks so much more fun. This is the most exciting thing I could find. I mean a person can only eat so many funnel cakes and elephant ears before they go searching for something new. I miss the Los Angeles County fair. It is a fair that serves up everything deep fried. Ain't nothin' wrong with that once or twice a year.

Here are ladies engaged in piroshky preparation.

Matt's "Flamin' Hot Cheesy Brat"

The Southwest Washington Fair - Food

I knew I wouldn't have room for "real" food and dessert so I skipped the "well-balanced" part of a fair food dinner and just went straight for the donut sundae (or as Kathy would say: dog nut sundae).

This is Matt's plate. For those of you who did not hear the sound of him gnawing on bones from two states away, he is no longer a vegetarian. He fell off that wagon hard. Peer pressure. That's what it is. I blame Tom and Kathy and their kitchen and barbecue magic.

In Case You Had Not Noticed

I have been quietly adding to my Family & Friends blog list and the Blogs I Like To Visit list. I would like to point out the following new adds:

• My beautiful Sister-In-Law Kate
• My friends from high school: Nathan, Melissa, Shantel and Bret
• Laugh til you cry blogs: Cake Wreck and Fail Blog
• Blog of my kindred spirit (even though she doesn't know it so it probably puts me square in the creepy stalker category): Dooce

And finally, a shoutout to Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors who listed Egg Town on his blogroll. Funny thing is he has Egg Town in the food category because the day he visited I had a drooly, slobbery post all about the wonders of Wildwood restaurant but the day he posted the Egg Town link was just about the same time I was posting about all my cat pee woes. Yum.

Dinner with Friends

On Monday we were invited to dinner at Stephanie & Cassandra's house. I didn't take as many pics as I thought. Drew & Stephanie completely remodeled the house when they moved in and it looks fantastic. And yet, no pictures. I don't know what I was thinking. We had a great time and are happy to be making friends in our new state.

Matt, Steph, Drew & Ousta, Cassandra - FYI, I have a picture that is more flattering to everyone but Matt raised his beer bottle in toast and completely blocked out Stephanie. Sorry about that guys.

A Cassandra Special: Tofu dog with Easy Cheese. I am not sold on this.

Una's canine counterpart: Ousta (or Oustabelle, or Smellybelle depending on who you ask). Like Una, Ousta is aged, blind, losing hair, rickety, a bit smelly and still very, very loved.

I meant to write more about our night with friends but I have let too much time slip by and the immediacy is gone. I will do better next time.

The Pie Auction

Sunday was the Toledo Cheese Days Town Barbecue. For $7 a person could get a plate of roast beef (cooked in the park by the Lions Club who began the process at 5am), baked beans, coleslaw, watermelon, garlic bread and orange drink. If you are me, $7 will get you coleslaw, watermelon, garlic bread and orange drink plus shocked looks from the roast beef servers. Anyway, once the barbecue is over the leftover meat is auctioned off as depicted in the photo below. Most of the meat in the ziploc baggies sold for around $75. They did have meat in 25lb. boxes. One of those boxes went for a bid of $350!

Following the beef action was the pie auction. Silly me. I brought $20 thinking that would be enough to get me a pie. It wasn't. Drew pitched in $15 and we got this peach pie with a perfect crust for $35.

They also threw in a watermelon left over from the barbecue for good measure.

Becca bid on the Strawberry Rhubarb pie and snagged it for $50 (no watermelon though but that is probably a good thing as she flew home to San Francisco the next day and a watermelon would probably incur and extra baggage charge.

But $35 and $50 are small potatoes compared to the marionberry pie pictured above. That thing sold for $1200. No. I did not put an extra zero on that number. Twelve Hundred Dollars!!! The man sitting down and the man standing up are father and son. They were bidding against each other and got impatient when the auctioneer was only moving the bids up by $25 increments so they started shouting out their own numbers: $300, $500, $900. The crowd was freaking out. Collective gasps were heard round the park. This pie was the last thing up for auction and this family had already dropped at least $1000 on the meat and other pies. The son finally one-upped his dad and walked away with the expensive pie. Do you remember the floods in December? Rumor has it that this family owns Sunbirds, a sporting/outdoor outfitter store in Chehalis. They were under 12 feet of water and the Toledo Lions Club really helped them out, rescuing people trapped in the upstairs of the store and assisting with clean up. So the family came to Cheese Days to support the Lions by buy everything at really high prices.

The Fruits of My Labors

I doubt the phrase "Michelle has a green thumb" has ever been uttered so this is quite an accomplishment. They are tiny berries but compensate for size with sweetness.

Chicken Bingo

When life gives you chicken poop. . .
Take your friends out to dinner.

The chicken pooped on my number so I won a gift certificate to a local restaurant. Yay!

Egg Days Carnival

I didn't get everything ticked off my list of Egg Days wishes but I did have a good time.

Free food is always worth documentation. The free egg salad sandwiches had not run out by the time I finished the route. Yay!

I am the only one pictured enjoying the sandwich (in the elementary school cafeteria w/ a side of Kool-aid lemonade) because none of my companions were willing to risk bad mayonnaise. Sissies.

I was pretty stoked about the cake walk. Drew was excited to be in the presence of royalty. He paid for this year's queen and last year's queen to walk for cakes with us. He. Is. Delighted. Just look at his face.

Matt is the one who landed on the lucky number. I am the one who ate the cake(s). I ate 3 of the six cupcakes. Again, not one of my companions would partake. They claimed it was too hot for cake (100ish degrees). Boo hoo. I left the remaining 3 cupcakes at the bar we went to seeking shelter from the heat. I am sure they went to good homes.

Squeeeee!! It's Egg Days Weekend

We will be attending the Egg Queen Coronation this evening. I will miss the parade and a bunch of stuff on Saturday because of the mail route. Even so, I am really looking forward to everything and the things I can't attend I will enjoy vicariously through Matt and Drew. Here are a few highlights from the Egg Days brochure:

• An Egg Queen contestant whose favorite color is "pink and sparkle"
• Chicken races - $1 per bet
• Free egg salad sandwiches and lemonade served from the elementary school cafeteria
• The Egg-Lympics (even though the egg drop has been canceled we still plan to participate in the Egg Toss, Egg Relay and Egg Olequa (floating plastic eggs down the river to see whose egg crosses the finish line first)
• Baked Potato bar @ the Winlock Senior Center with ALL the trimmings
• THE CAKE WALK!!! I am going to miss this so Drew has agreed to win me a cake come hell or high water
• The Dog and Owner fashion show
• The Carnival and all it entails
• The 5th Annual Dog Show

So as you can see we have a full weekend ahead of us. The only possible snag is my mail route. My route crosses the parade route so if I don't get to the crossing before the parade begins I will have a long detour to get around. If/when I make it through the crossing on time it will be smooth sailing to the end of the route and on into the party.

UPDATE: Winlock Egg Days has a blog. Why was this information so hard to come by? Or how did I miss it if it has been right in front of my face for months.

Wildwood Revisited (aka food porn)

What did I do after I dropped Matt off at PDX yesterday? I went to Wildwood (again) and submerged myself in delicious dining.

PURÉE OF RADISH GREEN SOUP
shaved radish, fennel and parsley
I don't even know where to begin extolling the virtues of this soup. It was a very hot day in Portland yesterday and this cool, grassy bowl of genius was just the ticket.

HAND FORMED SPINACH AND RICOTTA LASAGNE
garlic confit, globe artichokes and pumpkin seed salad
I ordered this dish based on 3 words: pumpkin seed salad. And look at it. So simple and yet so perfect. The lasagne itself was tasty but it was the greens and seeds that really did it for me.

CARAMEL PINE NUT TART
rosemary honey ice cream and warm apricot-fig compote
Please. What more need I say?

The Dirty Little Secret in My Freezer

My supplier, Phil, really hooked me up. I got a major discount on my "fix" of choice. Let me illustrate one of the benefits of small town living. Phil works at Cedar Village, our local grocery story. This is the sort of place where the pharmacist knows my name and the checkers are very discrete in keeping their knowledge of my junk food habits on the down low. I polished off the Jeno's Cheese Pizza supply at Cedar Village awhile ago. I kept waiting for them to restock but I guess nobody noticed it was gone. Sigh. So I started to squeak my wheel and Phil ordered me a couple of cases. I was buying them 4 at a time but today Phil told me that if I just bought the whole case I could save a pile of money. So I did and now that I look at the stacks o' pizza in the freezer I wonder what I was thinking. It can't be possible to still be a fan of Jeno's cheese after 12 pizzas, can it?

Don't ask me to describe my love for this particular frozen pizza. I can't explain. One big selling point right now though is that it is the only brand that will fit in my toaster oven. So, bonus.

I am warming up to Portland part 2

On Thursday Apr 10th we headed back to Portland to see The Avett Brothers. Before the show we had dinner at Park Kitchen. We ordered the chef's tasting menu. The menu regularly changes and the food just kept coming and coming so I lost track of what we at. I know there was a nettle soup in there somewhere, chickpea fries with pumpkin ketchup, sunchokes with new potatoes, crackers with sheep's milk cheese and rhubarb compote, squash with greens rice and mole and a bunch of other stuff. I am telling you, we ROLLED out of there. Here's the thing though. The sublime mixing and blending of flavors and textures we had at Wildwood were too fresh on our minds. Something just didn't gel all the way at Park Kitchen. Maybe we just ate too much and our palates got muddled and confused. Dessert didn't help. That is the one area Park Kitchen did not excel. The desserts they sent out with the tasting menu were a mediocre chocolate cake with kumquats in a simple syrup and and also a lime custard with rhubarb sauce. See these desserts sound great and look good on paper but the execution just didn't work. Unlike the heavenly turnovers at Wildwood that sounded so-so but ended up rocking my world. I ordered the turnovers there on the waiters suggestion. I hadn't planned on selecting them. Yay for helpful waiters.

We had a short walk from Park Kitchen to the Crystal Ballroom for the show. Man alive were we uncomfortably full. Neither of us wanted to go to the concert anymore. We just wanted to get home and get our fat selves into bed. I am glad we didn't bail. The Avett Brothers are good stuff. I highly recommend that you pick up a CD or catch a show if you can. Here are a couple of videos to set you on your way to Avett fandom.

I am warming up to Portland Part 1

This post is a little late in coming. Last week I convinced Matt to take a half day off work and come to Portland with me. The way I see it, he has spent so many weekends in Los Angeles for work he can spare a few hours for me on a Monday afternoon. The purpose of my trip was to get some running shoes. No, I am not running. Yes, I am walking with the hopes of working up to running later. Does anyone else feel like their body was not put together in the right manner to run? Nothing about it feels natural to me.

First stop of the day was lunch at Wildwood.

Wildwood is a restaurant opened by Chef Cory Schreiber. He specializes in recipes utilizing ingredients from the Pacific Northwest. I am ashamed to admit that I can't remember what we ate other than it was moaningly delicious. My entree was akin to liquidy/cheesey/creamy ravioli with greens on top. The combination was sublime. In the chef's eyes I probably committed a cardinal sin by not eating the hunks of fried bacon dotting the plate but, eh, dead flesh, not for me. I didn't realized there was bacon from reading the menu description and I wasn't about to send the beautiful dish back. We noticed on the way in the Wildwood has a cookbook. With each bite I was more and more inclined to buy it. What absolutely convinced me to make the purchase was dessert: Hazelnut Chocolate Turnovers - caramel sauce, hot fudge and butternut crunch ice cream. Sounds like a pretty generic collection of ingredients but the crust was hands down the best I have ever had and the total package took the sum of parts into the stratosphere. Matt agrees.

After lunch we made our way over to the Portland Running Co. A helpful clerk had me running up and down the sidewalk in a variety of shoes until we found the pair that kept my ankles from rolling in and messing with my knee and hip joints. Matt said he found it funny to watch my gangley self running back and forth in front of the window. I came away with a really fast lookin' pair of silver/purple/white shoes. I swear they work better if they are pretty.

A quick stop at IKEA for another CD shelf and we were on our way home. We had signed up to stuff envelopes at the Lewis County Democratic Committee offices. How delighted are we that there is such a thing!

Portland visit #3

Matt and I went to Portland for the Finntroll concert on Wednesday night. We headed down a little early to grab some dinner. Many people ask if I miss Los Angeles. The answer is that I miss it most when I want to go out to eat or go to a movie. If I never eat another grilled cheese sandwich made with Kraft Singles and Wonderbread and served with a side of tater tots it will be too soon. My point is that it was a treat to head toward the land of "real" restaurants. From the book eat.shop.portland we selected Ken's Artisan Pizza because it was a cold rainy night and the warmth and aroma of a wood fire oven sounded perfect. When we drove by though the place was overrun with customers. We are neither patient or well adjusted to standing in the rain so we just drove right on by. Since there seemed to be a bunch of other options in the neighborhood we parked and walked. In the next block we ran across Navarre - also listed in eat.shop.portland. It was the happiest of accidents. These people are food geniuses. Never have I smiled so broadly whilst eating turnips. They were served with brown sugar sauce and it was inspired. We also ordered braised greens, the pickle plate (mostly for Matt - but I did eat a pickled bean), home made bread with olive oil, prico (yeah!! fried cheese!!), and Matt had some steamed clams because he has decided that ocean filters don't count as animals. He may be have a point, I don't know. For desert I had THE BEST PIE EVER - peach/raspberry. There is no point trying to describe this perfect pairing. Matt had spice bread with goat cheese and honey. Just his style. I tried it but it didn't hold a candle to my BEST PIE EVER.

We were trying to time everything so we got to the venue after the opening band played. We were doing alright until the bridge we needed to cross was closed and the detour sign lead us into a no man's land of underpasses and signage voids. So we got to the concert a little after Finntroll started playing. They are such a happy metal band. A brief description of them is the marriage of "traditional Finnish hoedown music,"humppa", mixed with folksy black metal." We had a great time. I took a snippet of video. That lasted until I got busted by the bouncer. Here's my question: what difference does it make if I get a little footage to amuse myself and friends. It's not like the quality is bootleggable or anything. It is useless to pretty much everybody. Oh well. Here is the footage. It will stay here until I get reprimanded by someone who cares (?).

The hair swinging kills me. Is this a parody of a parody? See Dethklok. And Dethklok on MySpace.

And Dethklok with Finntroll music (!!! - check out the name on the store at the very beginning). The crowd went bonkers when this song played. Enjoy.

This is how we do things in the country

1. We air our grievances in public:

Ran across this sign on my walk this morning. I didn't have my camera but I thought is was so funny I ran home to get it. I was afraid Allen would drive by and see it before I got back. Wonder who Allen is? How much does he owe? Why did he borrow the money? If he doesn't pay up, maybe I will learn the answers to these burning questions if his "buddy" makes good on the threat to let everyone know what a smuck [sic] he is.

2. We can our own goods.

I had some pangs of guilt yesterday while I was helping Kathy can marinara sauce. My mom did lots of canning while I was growing up. I never wanted to help and viewed the whole endeavor as pointless - I mean seriously, there was a grocery store right down the street! Now that I am grown up I find home arts like canning fascinating. As a teenager I thought anything as gender specific as home-ec was evil. Now I kind of dig it. Go figure. Anyway, sorry I wasn't more cooperative as kid mom. When you come to visit we will can something!

3. We bruise the crap out of ourselves.

Yes, that is my hairy leg. My bike turned on me and the pedal went for blood. Now the bruise is black - so pretty. I won't be wearing shorts or skirts for the rest of the season. I guess it's good for me that the rains started yesterday.

Porland part II

Matt and I went back to Portland on Saturday. No reason, just wanted to get out and see something new. We went back to Food Fight for some groceries. This time I was smart and brought along a cooler bag w/ ice packs so we could buy perishables.

After Food Fight we weren't sure where to go. Someone mentioned the Hawthorne area and we passed Hawthorne on the way to Food Fight so we headed in that direction.

Hawthorne in general seemed a bit too hippy dippy for our tastes but a closer inspection led us to some places we will certainly revisit. First up: a gem of an Indian market. It is called India 4 You but I can't find a link or address to post. Matt bough a can of Petha (a pureed white pumpkin dessert) and I bought some frozen Rasmanlai (milk based dumpling-like pillows of goodness). Further along down the street we stopped in at Powell's bookstore for some browsing and then hit Pastaworks next door where Matt did some damage in the wine department and I bought a book to help us figure out where to go on our next visit to Portland (eat.shop.portland). After Pastworks we stopped in at Bridgeport Ale House where Matt had a few beers and I read the local weekly. Our last stop was Pho Van Hawthorne, a very noisy place for some very hungry vegetarians to eat some very tasty Vietnamese food. We started w/ crispy veggie egg rolls w/ ginger soy sauce, followed w/ more egg rolls (plus noodles) for Matt and curried tofu & rice for me. The picture above is of my Ginger creme brulee and Matt's Vietnamese coffee. Delish and Pretty all at the same time.