Life is good. Yesterday, after spending a week eating pulled pork leftovers, we had a nice, healthy salad for lunch (romaine, balsamic vinaigrette, yummy roasted beets in three different colors, sprouts, sugar snap peas, avocado, and Cowgirl Creamery St. Pat cheese), along with Cowgirl Creamery fromage blanc spread on thin slices of very hearty German bread from Esther's German Bakery (I liked it better now than I did when I spent a month in Germany in high school, but it's still a little too hearty for me). Not pictured: sauteed baby artichokes with bacon and garlic (pretty good, but lots of prep work. I guess that's inevitable when you're dealing with lots of small artichokes). The ingredients came almost exclusively from our box. We're lucky to be able to get such a wonderful variety of local foods delivered right to our door.

We went to Greens for dinner, to celebrate Amanda's birthday. It was just as good as our first visit. We were seated in a cute little nook overlooking the marina. The food was all very good. I think my favorite part of the meal was my appetizer--the spring sampler--which included grilled fava beans (still in the pod) and big meaty Italian bush beans. Yum! After dinner, we went back to Tree and Andrew's place and played Rock Band.

This morning, we went to the farmers' market and bought our first cherries of the season, along with more ranunculas. We spent a good chunk of the day going through our closets and collecting stuff to donate/throw away (our apartment was definitely in need of some spring cleaning), and then we sat on our patio and ate cherries. What a nice way to spend the weekend :)

(Also, our camera magically started working again. Hot dog! Hopefully it will continue to function normally.)

posted by caitlin on Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 4:03pm * last year * comments [0]

We had a fun day out and about yesterday. After much urging from my boss (who likes to live vicariously through Patrick and me, since we don't have kids and she does), Patrick and I finally got around to riding our bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge (apparently a quintessential SF activity, based on the articles I read about it).

We drove up to Pier 41 with our bikes (though we could've also taken Caltrain to 4th and King and then ridden up the Embarcadero). It was cold and blustery, but we pressed on and rode along the Bay Trail to the bridge. I had printed directions from a few different websites, but they weren't really helpful, and we probably would've gotten lost if we'd been using them. Luckily, Patrick had copied directions from Road Biking in Northern California, which were very thorough, and we made it to the bridge. I had to get off my bike and push it uphill a couple of times. I had been envisioning an easy, carefree ride, but it was tiring and windy and the path was crowded. It got better from there though.

Since it was the weekend, all of the bikes were on the west side of the bridge, and all of the pedestrians were on the east, which was nice. I was still a little worried about riding so close to oncoming bike traffic, but there were no collisions, and we made it across just fine. I stopped to take some pictures on the bridge, but they didn't turn out. When we got to the Sausalito side, we asked a couple to take our picture, and it would've turned out really well if I hadn't closed my eyes! Jeez...

There was a little more uphill riding (or bike-pushing, in my case) on the Sausalito side, and then it was all downhill or flat. The ride into and through Sausalito was pretty, but I was nervous about the parts that didn't have bike lanes. I'm not a very brave bike rider. But I'm glad I did the ride, and I would be willing to do it again someday. It was sunnier and less windy in Sausalito, which was nice.

We biked up to Harbor Drive, to Fish, our lunchtime destination. It came recommended by both Sunset and my boss, so I knew it would be good, and it didn't disappoint. We locked up our bikes out front (yay, bike racks!), right next to a friendly black dog named Pepper. We went inside and perused the menu until they'd officially opened for the day. The building was nice and sunny, with tall ceilings and friendly people taking our orders. I wish we lived closer so we could go there more often!

Fish was cash only and pretty pricey (but worth it, in my mind, as they are all about sustainable, local food, and everything was very tasty), but luckily we had enough cash with us. We split the fish and chips and fish tacos, with grilled fava greens on the side. We also got a little pot of Mighty Leaf earl grey tea to warm us up (even though the sun had come out, it was still a little chilly out on the deck).

We both slightly preferred the fish and chips, but the fish tacos were also really good. It was a happy lunch, with a little girl in a sweet flowered dress running around the deck below us, blowing bubbles. We finished up by splitting a big parfait glass full of butterscotch pudding. Good stuff.

Next, we rode just a block away to Heath Ceramics for their open studio event (luckily, design*sponge had mentioned it a few days earlier). Patrick, not enticed by a factory tour and glaze-your-own tile activities, went off to bike to Stinson Beach and Mt. Tam while I spent a couple of hours at Heath.

I felt a little awkward walking around with my backpack on, especially around all the breakable merchandise, but I still very much enjoyed myself. The store is full of beautiful things--not only Heath items, but also products from other wonderful companies, like Miette, Deadly Squire, and June Taylor. Swoon! Click here for more pictures from Heath.

Good to know for later: Heath carries Weck jars, which are some of the prettiest canning jars around, so if I ever decide to do some canning, Heath is a good source for supplies (although there's probably someplace closer to home that carries Weck as well). Also, if we ever attempt a home tiling project, I totally want to use Heath tiles, though it would probably be expensive. I could at least get accent tiles there. They have such great colors and shapes!

After browsing the store for a while, I went on a guided tour, which was led by none other than one of the current owners of Heath, Robin Petravic (I love what they did with Heath tiles in their home makeover)! Although Heath gives tours every weekend, this tour was special because they had some employees present in the factory to give demos of the different steps. It was really fun seeing how everything works. It also made me want to buy tons of Heath Ceramics products to support such a nice little company, but I limited myself to what would fit in my backpack (at least everything was 15% off during the open studio, and some of the things I bought were seconds, so I didn't spend quite as much as I normally would have).

After the tour, I spent a long time deciding what to buy. I ended up purchasing a modest number of things: one bowl, two mugs, one cup, another bud vase, and six vintage clay buttons (imagining that I could someday use them on some very special knitting projects, but they'll probably just sit in my crafts box forever).

Patrick rolled back into the parking lot just as I was loading my purchases into my backpack. He downed a free turkey dog (Heath goes all out when they host events!), and we ate some Pepperidge Farms Sausalito cookies, which we'd brought with us (part of our vague life goal to eat foods in the places for which they were named--also on our list: Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam cheese on Mt. Tam), then we biked back to downtown Sausalito, to the ferry landing. We briefly passed through the Sausalito spring faire, but nothing enticed us to linger. We hung around the ferry stop until the Blue and Gold Fleet ferry arrived, then we wheeled our bikes on board. It was crazy how many people brought bikes on; the whole lower deck was full of bikes sardined head to tail. Most of the bikes were exactly the same, from Blazing Saddles. I'm not sure how the owners found their bikes when we disembarked.

We arrived back at Fisherman's Wharf, loaded up our bikes, and drove on home. It was a good day!

Unfortunately, while taking pictures of my purchases, our camera suddenly went on the fritz, and now it will only take pictures like this one. It's kind of pretty, but not very useful.

So, barring an unexpected recovery, it looks like we're in the market for a new digital camera. We can't decide whether we want to get a tiny, lightweight camera or a fancy digital SLR. I'd like to be able to take really pretty pictures, but I don't know if either of us would really know what to do with a digital SLR if we had one. Plus you can't really slip it into a pocket or purse. But they sure do take nice pictures. Any suggestions?

posted by caitlin on Monday, May 5, 2008 at 9:13pm * comments [0]

Our first foray into the world of pulled pork went pretty well. We invited Tree, Andrew, Jacob, and Amanda over for a dinner of pulled pork sandwiches (or Tofurky sausages, in Amanda's case). Here's what we had:

Drinks: Beer and iced tea (made with PG Tips). If I'd realized it was Kentucky Derby day, I would've tried making mint juleps! Also, I would have insisted that everybody wear big hats.

Snacks: Rold Gold honey wheat pretzels, Acme sweet baguette, Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam cheese, carrots, hummus.

Meal: Grilled baby artichokes, asparagus, and zucchini; little sandwiches of pulled pork (using two 4lb Boston butt roasts from Dittmers) and bread and butter pickles (yummy! I love sweet pickles) on homebaked rolls (recipe doubled and used to make 18 rolls instead of 2 loaves); creamy coleslaw (with red cabbage--festive!).

Although the grilled artichokes tasted good, they were hard to eat because they were so small. I would try this again with normal-sized artichokes though. The coleslaw turned out well, and I got to use our new food processor to shred the cabbage and carrot, which was thrilling! I took a risk by modifying a loaf bread recipe to make rolls. They turned out pretty well, but a little too dense. I would've liked my rolls a little softer. I'll have to try a different recipe next time. But I'd definitely use the recipe to make loaves instead; it had a nice sweet, rich flavor. I bet it'd be good with jam.

The pulled pork took about 7 hours to cook (plus an overnight spice rub), and it was definitely good, but not as good as my coworker's pulled pork (but he has a smoker and had to wake up earlier than we did to make his). Instead of making my own BBQ sauce, I used sauce from we love jam, which was tasty. However, the pork soaked up the entire jar of BBQ sauce, leaving no extra sauce for sandwiches. More sauce would've been nice.

Dessert: Rice pudding gelato (from The Perfect Scoop) with butterscotch sauce (I used a similar recipe from Shuna's ice cream class, with half Muscovado and half normal brown sugar). My original intent was to have the ice cream topped with Delfina's roasted strawberries, but I must have done something wrong, because even though I took my strawberries out of the oven half an hour early, they still turned out leathery and a little burnt tasting. I'm guessing the problem was that I used a half sheet pan and the syrup cooked down too quickly, but the recipe said a half sheet was okay, so who knows. They weren't fit to serve to guests, so since I had some heavy cream leftover from the ice cream, I decided to make up a batch of butterscotch sauce instead.

The ice cream base tasted awesome before freezing, but I didn't enjoy its texture that much after freezing. The day of the barbecue it was frozen too hard, so it wasn't that pleasant to eat (even though I let it soften for half an hour in the fridge and then 10 minutes at room temperature). Today, when we had leftovers, it softened better, but it was denser than I would've liked because of the rice. I don't think I would make this as ice cream again; however, I would definitely use this recipe to make rice pudding (just skip adding the heavy cream at the end). Yum! The butterscotch, although kind of a strange flavor combination with the rice pudding ice cream, turned out very well and was pretty easy to make. Thanks, Shuna!

posted by caitlin on Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 10:09pm * last year * comments [0]

I was thinking--it's a little odd that when I look back on this time, I'll just have a record of what we ate. But there's just not much else to tell right now--life is good. We have a routine for the week (softball on Tuesday, The Wire on Wednesday, farmers' market on Sunday), and the only thing that really changes from week to week is what we make in the kitchen. I might as well write about it now, because once we have kids, I'm guessing our meals will get more routine as well. And maybe someday I'll get around to finishing my recipe database, and then all of these entries will be much more useful, and I can actually make some of the good recipes again!

1. Cayenne-rubbed chicken breasts with avocado salsa with brown rice and a salad with kumquats, celery, avocado, and grapefruit. The chicken took much longer than 10 minutes to cook (it always takes longer than the recipe says; I guess they expect the meat to be at room temperature), but it turned out pretty tasty. I used boneless breasts with the skin still on, which probably helped with the flavor and moistness. The avocado salsa definitely made the dish, and it wasn't bad for an easy-to-make meal. The salad was pretty good, if a little on the bitter side because of the grapefruit.

2. Farro salad with prosciutto and asparagus (from Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way) with a little red onion thrown in for good measure; asparagus one day, snow peas with pine nuts and mint the next; pickled carrot sticks; and mint tea with honey (pour boiling water over a handful of mint leaves and let steep for 5 min).

The farro salad was tasty, but I got a little tired of it about halfway through. I think it would be nicer in smaller portions as a side. I liked the combination of snow peas and pine nuts, though it wasn't any better than plain snow peas, in my opinion. The pickled carrots were pretty good, but I probably wouldn't make them again, as I don't think I'm a big pickled-carrot enthusiast.

3. Two weekends ago, I felt ambitious enough to make a nice Saturday breakfast. I tried making knothole eggs (or perhaps I'd rather call them bird's nest eggs. They have so many names--I can't decide!) per the recipe in Marion Cunningham's Breakfast Book. I also fried up a slice of Wooly Pigs bacon so I could fry the toast and eggs in the beautiful bacon fat, and Patrick supremed a tangelo (a recently acquired skill) and drizzled it with honey. I should have known to leave the egg cookery to Patrick; I never get it right. This time I started the eggs too low, and by the time the tops were done, the eggs were overcooked and hardly runny at all. Sad! But I'd definitely like to try this recipe again until I master it. It's a fun way to eat eggs and toast.

The weather was beautiful that weekend, so we biked to Palo Alto for lunch and ate at Coupa Cafe. I had two arepas; my favorite was the special arepa, which had a really nice shredded beef filling with black beans and sour cream. Good stuff! I don't think we had tried their arepas before, which is funny, because the arepas are one of their specialties (Venezuelan coffee is their other specialty, but we aren't coffee-drinkers).

4. That Sunday, I went to our farmers' market, all psyched up to buy stinging nettles and make a white nettle pizza a la Piccino. Heirloom Organics had nettles for sale the prior weekend, but they didn't have them that day, so I bought arugula rabe from them instead (equally fancy and seasonally appropriate, and no danger of painful stinging!). I also bought some super cheap squash blossoms from the stand that always sells beautiful bok choy. I made cornmeal pizza dough, froze half of it after the first rise, and shaped the second half into a 12" pizza, topped with squash blossoms and arugula rabe sauteed with sliced garlic and red pepper flakes; roasted garlic; Bellwether Farms fromage blanc; and Belfiore fresh mozzarella (4oz of each type of cheese). We ate the pizza alongside steamed artichokes and shelling peas.

Although I squeezed the sauteed rabe to get rid of excess water, the pizza still turned out kind of soggy, which was too bad. Despite that, it was really tasty--a very nice combination of flavors. I wish eating that much cheese were healthy, because it sure is delicious!

5. A few days later, I thawed the frozen pizza dough and made a second pizza, this time topped with tomato sauce, sauteed Wooly Pigs bacon, Spring Hill garlic cheese curds, mozzarella, and pickled jalapenos (based closely on this recipe). This was a bacon-heavy meal; alongside the pizza, we ate the last brussels sprouts of the season sauteed with bacon (very tasty!).

After eating a pickled jalapeno straight from the jar, I was afraid this pizza would be too spicy for me, but the cheeses tamed the jalapenos, and it was actually really good! The garlic cheese curds melted very nicely. I was very happy with both pizzas, but I think I liked the white pizza a little bit better.

6. Having delicious leftover dairy products in the house led to yet another unhealthy but tasty meal (that seems to be happening a lot lately; I think it's time to go back to eating a little more healthily). We had asparagus soup (from the Jimtown Cookbook, made with green garlic instead of regular garlic), grilled cheese (made with more garlic cheese curds), and a salad with red butter lettuce, Tracy's balsamic vinaigrette (my go-to dressing), avocado, grapefruit, toasted pine nuts, and snow peas. Planet Organics makes it so easy to eat seasonally appropriate foods, as does our farmers' market. We're lucky!. For dessert, we had strawberries and fromage blanc sweetened with a little vanilla sugar. It was a very good meal. The soup tasted like springtime and was nice and creamy. I think it would be even nicer served in a little teacup!

7. We followed this up with a slightly healthier meal, though there was lots of sour cream involved. Patrick made barley and turkey chili with jalapeno sour cream and amaranth crunch, again from Whole Grains (I really like that book!), and we ate it with corn muffins (sugar halved) and a crazy springtime salad involving lettuce, balsamic vinaigrette, avocado, strawberries, and kiwis.

The chili was very nice, and the toppings made it even better. It did require a decent amount of work though. I think it's worth a remake. The corn muffins were good but not amazing. I like Dorie Greenspan's corniest corn muffins better. The salad, though unorthodox, was tasty.

8. Last weekend we drove over to Morgan Hill to celebrate my grandma's 85th birthday! My mom is living with her right now (long story; the eventual goal is that they will both be living in Atascadero along with my stepdad, but the house there isn't ready yet), and a bunch of my relatives came to visit, which is always fun. I volunteered to bring dessert, and I decided to go with a casual but classy chocolate amaretti torte (from Dorie Greenspan's Baking; similar to this one, but topped with ganache) with toasted almond and candied cherry ice cream (from The Perfect Scoop, of course) on the side.

The torte was really easy to make, and it gave me a good excuse to buy a big food processor (the small one my mom gave us a few years ago works great for most things, but sometimes you need a big one!). The food processor did its job without any problems, and the torte turned out well. The ice cream was a bit soft because I had transported the ice cream maker insert to my grandma's house, and it didn't have enough time to get super cold in her freezer, but it still tasted yummy and complimented the cake well. As my great uncle pointed out, the ice cream was a lot like spumoni, with the chunks of almonds and candied cherry bits. I'd definitely make it again, but that's true of almost every recipe I've tried from Perfect Scoop.

9. I made a highly modified version of Sunset's shrimp and chickpea pasta, using what we could find at the farmers' market. I used snapper instead of shrimp, left out the mushrooms, and added steamed artichoke hearts. On the side, we had steamed spring peas and carrots, and since I'd managed to get my hands (or tongs, I guess) on some nettles at Heirloom Organics that weekend, I made a nettle tisane with strawberries for dessert.

I'm pretty sure the original pasta recipe would have been better, as the snapper wasn't as sweet and flavorful as shrimp would have been. But I didn't like the texture of the chickpeas with pasta, so I probably won't try making it again with shrimp. The peas and carrots were really nice; I love buying a big paper bag of peas at the farmers' market!

The tisane tasted pretty good, but it wasn't worth all the trouble and trepidation. I didn't sting myself at all, which was good, but the first time I tried making it, I discovered a creepy (dead) millipede-looking bug floating in the bowl after I'd steeped the leaves. I was worried it might be poisonous, and we might get sick if we drank the tisane, so I dumped that batch. The second time I tried, I didn't find any bugs, which was good. It was just too stressful a procedure, worrying about getting stung and whether there were any bugs hiding among the greens. I think I'll stick to eating nettles at restaurants.

10. I had a little extra milk and cream to use up from the birthday baking, so I made a half batch of malted milk ice cream. I used my Horlick's malted milk powder, and after a blind taste test, I decided to use Maltesers instead of Whoppers in the ice cream. I couldn't decide which I like better, but Patrick liked the Maltesers better, so that was that. I also made a half batch of Nigella's rhubarb crumble, because I had finally found some rhubarb at the farmers' market after waiting impatiently for many weeks (Happy Quail Farms had a small pile; yay, East Palo Alto!). I took both desserts to Wire Wednesday at Tree and Andrew's place, to share our bounty.

I haven't eaten many rhubarb-centric desserts, so I'm not sure how the crumble compares to others. I thought it smelled a little funny while it was baking, and the finished product, although enjoyable to eat, wasn't better than, say, a blackberry crumble. My favorite dessert of the two was definitely the malted milk ice cream. So good! I love The Perfect Scoop; it is definitely my favorite source for ice cream recipes.

11. Planet Organics was offering sorrel, which I'd never had before, so I decided to make The Green Man's sorrel soup from Jimtown Cookbook. Sorrel definitely has an unusual flavor--like lemon juice. I can't decide if I like it. I enjoyed the soup, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to make it again. I don't think it's the recipe's fault; I think I'm just not a big fan of sorrel. I'm on the fence--I'll have to try it in a few more recipes.

We ate Tracy's favorite lentil salad alongside the soup, topped with Spring Hill feta (which wasn't very crumbly but tasted like feta). It was yummy and pretty easy to put together.

And that brings us up to today. We're making pulled pork for the first time--an all-day event! I'll let you know how it goes, of course...

posted by caitlin on Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 1:05pm * comments [0]

I rode my bike to work in Mountain View for the first time today. It was a beautiful morning, and I enjoyed myself for the most part. I followed the same route that I used to get to my old building in Palo Alto (taking the Ellen Fletcher Bike Boulevard most of the way), and then I tacked on an additional mile at the end. Unfortunately, the last mile wasn't that great, as it was on busy streets without good bike lanes, but I found a better route on my way home. The good route goes through Shoreline Park, past lots of geese and wild fennel. I got a little lost on my way home, but I think I'll do better next time. The only drawback is that the area tends to smell pretty yucky because of its proximity to the Bay, but I'll take stinky swamplands over dangerous bike-unfriendly streets.

Yay, biking to work! I'm going to try to do it once a week at least. I'll only be able to use my current route through mid-October though; if I want to keep riding after that, I'll have to take the long way around, as the Benjamin Lefkowitz Underpass closes from mid-October through mid-April due to possible flooding of Adobe Creek.

posted by caitlin on Tuesday, Apr 29, 2008 at 10:35pm * comments [0]