Breakfast. Also known as a Nica tipico or desayuno tipico. See also: delicious. Gallo pinto (mixed red beans and rice), eggs, and cuajada, a salty white cheese with a texture somewhere between feta and mozzarella.
I’m just home from a week-long work trip to Nicaragua, where pretty much all of the food is local. I’m still processing the trip, and am not sure what to say yet, other than Nicaragua is an amazing country with wonderful people, and if you’re even considering a trip, do it. You won’t regret it. (more…)
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…to bring you some completely non-food-related photos. I’m a ferry commuter, and although I maintain if you have to commute, ferry commuting is the best possible way to go, sometimes I feel like I’m actually being rewarded for the early morning haul. Case in point:
Apparently Sunday has become unofficial “pan-fried elk steak night” around these parts. I could think of worse Sunday dinners. I know that the typical meat and three plates in the South actually have three sides on the plate, but wine can count as a side, right? This was a fast and fairly basic dinner. Garden peas from the freezer, elk tenderloin, and a couple of delicata squash that have been hanging out in the basement for at least a month and were threatening to go soft, with a favorite summer wine on the side. Nothing particularly exciting, but real, good food, and fast at that. Not really worth rambling on about, and it really shouldn’t have taken me the better part of a week to post this, but sometimes that’s how it goes.
I’ll be late posting next week as I leave for Nicaragua for work (my job does not suck) first thing Saturday morning and doubt I’ll have easy access to the internet while there. You can picture me eating tropical fruit as my week 8 contribution, and I’ll try to post about the trip when I’m back. Week 9 will almost certainly be a soup-from-the-freezer meal, since I get home and head straight back to the office for the week.
Sources:
Elk tenderloin from the freezer
Peas grown by my in-laws up the street from the freezer
Delicata squash from Inaba Farm, Wapato, WA (via Full Circle box)
Flour from Fairhaven Mill, Bellingham, WA
Syncline Rose, Columbia Valley, WA (via Full Pull Wines)
Exceptions: olive oil, salt, pepper
I’m not sure any Italian would recognize these as tortellini (maybe tortellini made by a child?) but nonetheless that’s what I’m calling them. I’m on a mission to clean out my freezers this month, so when I found a bag of nettles I’d harvested from the backyard last spring stashed away in the bottom of the freezer, I pulled it out to start defrosting while I turned a quart of jersey milk from Dungeness Valley Creamery into ricotta. Mixed with a little salt and a couple of cloves of finely minced garlic, I had the perfect filling for pasta. After a less-than-successful attempt at ravioli that left me with a split open, gloopy (albeit delicious) mess the last time I attempted filled pasta, I decided to try my hand at something that seemed a bit sturdier. (more…)
[I fully intended to post this earlier in the week, but a trip to Portland proved to be far more entertaining than blogging. Who would have guessed?]
Happy dogs at the beach on a sunny (!) Christmas Eve
We’re on a two-year run of spending Christmas Eve at home, just the two of us and the pup, and I think we’re starting a new tradition. Saturday morning we loaded up the car, picked up my in-laws and their two dogs, and headed out for a mini road-trip, stopping at some of my favorite places on the Peninsula: Beaver Valley and Chimacum – where I always say I want to move – lunch at the Geoduck in Brinnon (if you ever find yourself in the area, it’s totally worth stopping for some incredible people/bird watching – this trip’s sightings included an Elvis impersonator, regulars who travel with their own can cozies, and a flock (?) of eagles just outside – and the oyster sandwich), retrieving and exploring the shoreline with the dogs, and finally to Hama Hama Oyster Company for crab and oysters, except the people in front of me got the last of the crab. More oysters is not a bad consolation prize, especially when it’s Hama Hama oysters. (more…)
It’s beginning to appear that I’m mailing it in for Dark Days this year, just repeating all of last year’s meals. This time, waffles (previously seen here), and I didn’t get quite as local as last time. Perhaps next week will be both a bit more creative and entirely local… (more…)
Filed under: Dark Days
In a typical week we might eat meat three times; I think my Dark Days posts tend to skew to the meatier end of the spectrum, and this post is definitely in that category. This week I managed two Dark Days dinners: steak and potatoes (and kale), and stuffed cabbage, and these were the two meat dinners we will eat this week. Many of our other dinners are largely local ingredients, but will have a major component (like dried pasta or rice) that doesn’t count. We’ve made significant strides toward a mostly local diet, but we’re far from perfect, and I can live with that.
Nothing like leading with a somewhat unappetizing picture...
I’m off to a soupy start to this year’s Dark Days Challenge, this time with an elk and vegetable stew with a tomato broth. We eat a lot of soup in the winter, some of them more successful than others. Count this one in the very successful category: meltingly tender elk, a thick, tomatoey broth, and plenty of vegetables. The vegetable stock didn’t hurt, either. In the past year I’ve taken to throwing many of my vegetable scraps in a bag in the freezer and then turning those scraps into stock when the bag is full. I’ve made chicken stock for quite a while, but we don’t eat enough chickens to keep us in chicken stock, so it’s nice to have vegetable stock to fall back on.
Beets, ready for roasting, when it was late summer and the light was still good.
The start of Dark Days snuck up on me this year, and it was looking like I was going to be starting the challenge with a snack (the quince “paste” that never quite set right and Yarmuth Farm “Dylan” cheese below – quince from an orchard on Guemes Island, I think, but now I can’t find the name of the place for the life of me) instead of a full dinner, but once again my freezer came to the rescue. (more…)
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I’m still here. My job is trying its hardest to kill me, but so far I’m still coming out on top, albeit barely. I’ll be back to writing more regularly soon (Dark Days is starting up again!); in the meantime, some photos of the past few months.
A productive year in the garden.
The saddest part of the summer: to Nebraska and Missouri to say goodbye to my beloved great uncle.
Lots of cooking projects, and nearly enough tomatoes to make me insane. Nearly.
Padrons from the garden, dinners on the deck, cherry pie, pizza (and more pizza), and the best hamburgers ever.
Weekends at home, with the spoiled pup and visits from the baby sister.
A road trip home to Montana, and a handful of very fun days with one of my favorite kids on the planet.
A backpacking trip that kicked my butt, but made me want to get back out on the trail every weekend.
And a spoiled pup, who we torture (lovingly) every day.
