Butternut disaster

Last night was the second time Brad and I and our friends Joel and Bekka met for dinner party club (man, we really need to think more about what to call this - really, "dinner party club"? Ew). Since Bekka and I cooked last time Brad and Joel were up yesterday. When I came home in the afternoon I peeked in Brad's grocery bag and was a little bit shocked to see not pizza dough or hamburger buns or taco shells, but butternut squash, red onion, and artisan bread. I had been wondering how things would turn out, because we have two guys who eat meat and don't do much cooking, and two girls who don't and love to cook, but the groceries showed a lot of potential for vegetarian delights.

When Bekka and Joel got here the ladies sat at the table eating an appetizer of bread and several bread dipping options served in ramekins (Brad: "Joel, we're going to put this stuff in ramekins." Joel: "A ramekin? What's a ramekin?" Bekka: "Joel, you know, like the big white one I have." Joel: "A ramekin? What's that?" Repeat.) I had just decided to get out the camera and take a picture of the boys in the kitchen when, while attempting to peel the squash, Brad sliced his whole finger off.

It wasn't really his whole finger, but a pretty serious, very gushy cut in his left middle finger. Squash fell on the ground, Bekka and I ran around looking for bandages and tape, and Joel examined the wound. It bled a lot for a while, and then they ended up wrapping it tightly in gauze and securing it with duct tape.

Of course this would be the one month of our entire lives when Brad doesn't have health insurance. That's right: this is the one time EVER that Brad hasn't had medical insurance. He's in an off month between being covered through his old job and the new one, and when he went to apply for temporary coverage to get him through October, he was already past the deadline, so here we are, just waiting for November 1. Joel thought he might possibly "need a stitch." Would we have seriously considered the possibility of stitches if he were covered this month? I think so. It was bleeding a lot. But knowing it's 8 pm on a Friday night and the only thing open is probably the super expensive emergency room limits what you're willing to seriously consider.

Very professional bandaging

For the time being dinner preparations just went on. I jumped in and did some quick peeling of the squash while all of the chaos was going on, and then got out of the kitchen so the guys could finish up. They made Warm Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad (as seen on Smitten Kitchen, who got it from Orangette, who got it from somewhere else), and it was DELICIOUS. The tahini dessing is fantastic. Everything about it is fantastic. Except that there aren't any leftovers for me to eat today.

Ramekins!

This salad might cost you a finger, but it's worth it

For dessert we ate brownies and ice cream, and then Bekka and I went to the store and bought some New-Skin, and when we woke up this morning Brad's finger was still attached - so far, so good. Because if he loses a digit over peeling squash for dinner party club, it could really cast a pall over the whole operation.

Big day

So yesterday was the first day of the last year of my twenties. I think that is what is called a mind f. Getting older is the weirdest thing. It hurts my brain to think about how time passes and how I feel young and grown up and accomplished and unsettled all at the same time, and I know that's not going to stop, ever, even when I turn 500. Time is weird. But everybody knows that. And I feel like turning 29 is a bigger deal than turning 30 somehow, because 29 is the last of something, and 30 is the beginning. And I also feel like, who even cares how old I am or any of this thinking I'm doing right now? Let's all just spend a few minutes celebrating me!

And that is what we did yesterday. Because I am such a mature and responsible lady, I spent most of the day working from home and then writing essays (for school) from a coffee shop. But I really went crazy at the coffee shop, and instead of just buying a cup of coffee, I treated myself to a whole bowl of soup. On my birthday I really go nuts.

Then last night we went to dinner at Mizuna with Bekka and Joel, sometimes known as Lady B and Gentleman J. I had never been there for dinner before and it was great. They have a huge vegetarian menu, which meant that there were like five whole entrees I could choose between. I was in the lap of luxury. And our super cooky server took $6 off a really nice glass of wine in honor of my big day. The only downside of the Mizuna experience was that the same cooky waitress (can I still say waitress? do I have to say server? I'm not going to) knew it was my birthday, and when we were ready to leave came over and looked at me and said, "If I were you, I'd stick around for about ten minutes or so, if you know what I mean," POINTED LOOK. So we're all thinking, ooh, birthday treats to come for me! Dessert, etc. But here's what happens: she leaves us alone for about twenty minutes, and then gives us the bill. No dessert or mention of the fact she'd asked us to stick around. Happy birthday!

But Brad and I took care of the dessert thing by wandering over to the mall and getting some Oatmeal Cookie Chunk ice cream at Ben and Jerry's before he took me to see The September Issue. Ice cream=my favorite thing. Fashion documentary=fascinating. Me=so, so old, but having a very nice life.

There is more to life than food...

...But apparently that's all I want to blog about. First, a quick Fresh Abundance update: I forgot to order my fourth variety box last week. But I still had a few things left from previous weeks (potatoes and yams, a couple of pears, celery, onion, a couple of peppers, Swiss chard), so I made a delicious minestrone out of most of that stuff (no pears or potatoes or yams) with a recipe I modified a lot out of Gourmet. Because really, I just don't have two hours to spend on soup most days. I also don't eat pancetta. So instead of cooking the first group of ingredients (through chard stems) for a leisurely 45 minutes, I went with about 15. The soup was still delicious. In your face, Gourmet! Maybe a few tips from me would have saved your little magazine.

That was a joke.

And on to the main event! Cookies. I made some flourless oatmeal cookies last week and they were a big hit. I was a little nervous because I hadn't gotten to taste the cookies before I brought them to class the night I baked them, but they were very popular and also, I am in love with them. I made about 50 cookies with the amount of ingredients shown below. The original recipe is for "monster cookies" but I think mine were just people-sized cookies. I also used a combination of white and dark chocolate chips instead of other chocolate candies - and I'm pretty sure I used WAYYYYYYYYY more than the one cup originally called for. Probably more like one cup of each kind of chocolate. Probably more like one cup of chocolate per cookie. Brad and I ate every single cookie that I didn't take to class, too - and that doesn't usually happen. If you knew for certain that there were no traces of gluten in your oats (like Bob's Red Mill, or quelque chose comme ca), these would also be officially gluten free.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Monster Cookies
About 4 dozen cookies

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, slightly softened
1 1/2 cups creamy natural peanut butter, well-mixed
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking soda
4 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
About 2+ cup chocolate or mix-ins (follow your heart)

Preheat oven to 350F and line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper (or Silpat).

Cream butter, peanut butter, and sugars. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Beat in baking soda, then oatmeal and mix-ins.

Drop onto cookie sheets with an ice cream scoop and flatten slightly. Bake at 350F for 8-10 minutes or until done. Do not overbake! Don't you dare!

Remove from oven when slightly golden. Let cool on the sheets for a few minutes until they have firmed up enough to remove to wire racks.

My bizarro best

Last week I signed up for a produce box, delivered to my home for free, from Fresh Abundance. This is something I did a couple of times about a year and a half ago, and loved and thought I would continue to do forever and ever, with one "variety" box of produce (a.k.a. seasonal grab bag, selected by Fresh Abundance, not me) arriving on my doorstep every Friday. Well, I did it exactly twice and then forsook Fresh Abundance altogether, probably because it's not exactly cheap. A variety box costs $35. To me, this was too big a chunk of our ideal grocery budget.

But recently I've been doing some thinking, and here's what that thinking has revealed: I think most of my diet should come from things that grow in from the ground: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, beans, etc. Not EVERYTHING. Oh no, let's not get crazy. I'm going to eat cheese and eggs and ice cream. But if, as most health/diet experts would advise, I made the majority of my diet fruits and vegetables (really good, local, in-season ones), those fruits and vegetables should probably merit a big chunk of my food budget.

So, back to my variety box. I got a lot for my $35, all of it organic, most of it local. I'll list everything just so that you can take in the vast majesty of it.

• 3 apples
• 2 oranges
• a whole bunch of the best nectarines I've ever had
• a few peaches
• a few bunches of grapes
• several pluots
• two pears
  
• one head of red cabbage
• one giant head of romaine
• one HUGE onion
• 2 potatoes
• 3 or 4 carrots (THE BEST CARROTS OF MY LIFE)
  
• a bag of green beans
• a red pepper
• a jalepeno
• another unidentified pepper; it is tiny, which makes me think it might burn my mouth off
• a gigantic bunch of cilantro
• a ginormous bag of tomatoes

This is a lot of produce, way more than I would normally eat in a week. But I am trying, and it's been fun for me, and so I keep looking for recipes that will use some combination of the menagerie of abundance I have here. Last night I made Indian food with potatoes and onion and carrots and peppers and coconut milk and spices, and served it with quinoa and a lot of cilantro (which I thought I HATED, I must add, but it is so good with Indian food, apparently), and it was fantastico.

Other times, I just get panicky at the thought of all the produce in my refrigerator and start flinging things together into bowls and eating them. Which brings me to the weirdest ever BEST FOOD EVER.

Sarah's Bizarro Cabbage and Bean Salad
Now, the reason why this is so freaking bizarro to me is because I thought I didn't really like cabbage, especially not purple (or red) cabbage, especially not as the star ingredient in anything. In fact, yesterday, I was so unconfident in what I made that when I was eating at work I hid it from view whenever anyone passed by, to avoid scorn and ridicule. But, omg, it is delicious, with the best texture and flavor. I am in love with my bizarro salad. I'm in love, I'm in love, and I don't care who knows it!

Ingredients:
3/4 cup chickpeas or kidney beans
1 cup chopped red cabbage
some chopped olives
lemon juice
olive oil
sriracha
sunflower seeds
feta

So, you simply and wonderfully combine everything through olives, put in some lemon juice, olive oil, and sriracha to taste, top it all with a little bit of feta and a handful of sunflower seeds, and then indulge in the surprise treat of your life.

Muffin man

Last night I spent a few hours as the muffin man, baking about six dozen. Some for my mother-in-law, some for a staff meeting, and a few little baby leftovers for me and Brad. I made some pumpkin ones which were decent, not great, but the others are what I need to share with the world. These strawberry cinnamon muffins are soooooo so so good. Normally, I believe that any food thing with some semi-liquidy food thing lurking in the middle is at best questionable (Cadbury Creme Eggs) and at worst DISGUSTING (Gushers). But these have jam in the middle, and that very jam is a pure delight. I'd also like to note that these are low fat, if you care about that sort of thing. Please, treasure them.

Note: a good blogger would post a picture to really sell you on these muffins. I am not that blogger.

Best food ever, Bellingham edition

There are always a few things Brad and I HAVE to do while we're in Bellingham, and when we make a list of those things, food we must eat usually makes up about two thirds of it. So, I ate all sorts of good things - pizza at Rudy's, a burrito at Taco Lobo on my first-ever visit there, and a shockingly good cupcake (because really, you usually know what you're going to get with a chocolate cupcake, but this one was outstanding) from a new-to-me, oh so hip and trendy cupcake place in Fairhaven. Have I mentioned that I want to open my own cupcake place? Well, I do. Anyway, I ate a lot of good things, but there were three highlights.

1. Yam Alechiladas from Boundary Bay
When we were living in Bellingham I don't think that Boundary Bay served a huge menu of delicious food like they do now, because I think the first time I ate there was two years ago. This time I got their yam alechiladas (which I'm sure means that the enchilada sauce is enhanced by a little Boundary Bay ale), and they are really, really, really, really good. I wasn't expecting something amazing, but they are amazing. I wish I had taken a picture or something so that I could remember what exactly made me so enamored of them. But I'll just say that if I recall correctly (I am a great food writer!), they are spicy, a little bit sweet (but not too sweet, oh no), full of yams and beans and cheese and sauce, and garnished with some salsa and sour cream.

2. The Cookies 'n' Cream ice cream at Mallard's.
Now, much like the really good cupcake I ate, I was not expecting to fall in love with something so run-of-the-mill (and something I so frequently consume) as cookies and cream ice cream. But it was so good, with huge cookie chunks and (shock!) sweet, creamy vanilla ice cream. I can't put my finger on why, but it is just better than other cookies and cream. I ate said ice cream right after I ate way too much of my enchiladas. Totally worth it. You have to sacrifice for the things you love.

3. Cinnamon Chip bread from Great Harvest.
I don't know if this is offered at other Great Harvests in the world (it's not in Spokane), but at Bellingham's Great Harvest they have this cinnamon chip bread that comes as a round loaf with this, shall we say, crust of cinnamon sugar on top. My longtime college roommate and sometime soul mate Kathryn introduced me to this delight, which is, more specifically, fantastic bread with little pockets of cinnamon and sugar sprinkled throughout and that addictive crust on top. I hadn't had any of this delicacy in years, but while Brad was spending way too long at Everyday Music (formerly Cellophane Square), I thought I should take a walk up to Great Harvest to see if Saturday was one of their Cinnamon Chip days (because a bread this good can't be put out each and every day, or people in the know would go crazy - it must be released in small, regulated doses). And it was just such a day. The bread was better than I remembered it, and Brad and I snacked on it for three days, even sneaking it into international waters on our ferry ride to Canada.

Bellingham

Brad and I are back in Bellingham for the weekend and, as usual, as soon as I got here I wondered why I ever left. Today we spent forever browsing at Village Books, wandered around Fairhaven, ate way too big of a delicious dinner at Boundary Bay (Yam Alechiladas = ! My Yam Alechiladas are like, whoa), ate even more when we got ice cream at Mallard's after dinner, walked along the water (where I took "glamour shots" of Brad), and then capped it all off by lounging around at his cousin Staci's house watching The Soup. Tomorrow I'll run at one of my favorite places, check out the giant farmers market, meet some buddies for Rudy's pizza, and laze about at Boulevard. And all the while I'll be recycling like a mad woman and watching out for the millions of bicyclists racing all over the place. Oh, Bellingham. Every time I get here I realize just how much I've missed it.

Magically modified spicy soba noodles

It's that magical time again: BEST FOOD EVER!

So, on Tuesday I made something that was so very delicious that I had to write down notes immediately, lest I forget my night of total kitchen deftness and not be able to re-create this ever again. I started with a recipe from Smitten Kitchen for spicy soba noodles. But, I made some modifications here and there, because of my deftness, and because Albertsons does not have green onions! Who is manning the store over there? Seriously.

Sarah's Magically Modified Spicy Soba Noodles
(although this spontaneous title might imply otherwise, this meal is not drug induced)

Sauce

• 1/3 C water
• 1/3 C soy sauce
• a few squeezes worth of Sriracha (I'd recommend doing this to taste, for those spice babies out there)
• 1 T packed brown sugar

Everything Else

• 1/4 C (or so) unsalted peanuts, shelled
  
• 2 T minced giner
• 1 T minced garlic (2-3 cloves)
• 4-5 largeish mushrooms, sliced
  
• some red onion, chopped or minced (I used about 1/4 of a large onion)
  
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 bag of prepackaged slaw mix (or just use a regular old head of cabbage - I had leftovers from yesterday, but I liked the mix because it had some carrot and radicchio in it)
• 1 package soba noodles (mine were from the refrigerated section of the grocery store)

So, here's what you do. First, make the sauce. Combine the sauce ingredients in a small sauce pan over medium, until the sugar is dissolved; remove from heat and set aside.

In a skillet of sorts, heat the peanuts for a few minutes until they're golden brown. (You could also stick them in the oven for a few minutes.) Set aside. Put a little bit of oil in the pan, and add the ginger and garlic. Saute for a minute or so. Add the mushrooms and the red onions and cook for about 5-6 minutes.

Then, scoot everything over to the side of the pan so you have a little room to work with. In the cleared space, scramble the two eggs. Then mix the egg in with everything else. Add the cabbage mix and cook for 5 or so more minutes. Heat the noodles as the package says (mine just said to microwave them for 1 minute to loosen them up), then toss them into the pan. Pour the sauce and peanuts on top, and ta-da! It's spicy and so good.

I also sauted some blanched green beans with chopped red onion, salt, and pepper to have on the side. AND - Brad ate ten of them! Ten green beans! The only thing he picked out of this entire vegetable-laden meal was the mushrooms. That is big news.

Best Food Ever

So, this blog kind of cracks me up because it is so all over the place. Which really just means that I am all over the place. But, if I haven't made it clear before now, I love food, and I want my blog to be at least partly about food. So, I had the idea tonight that I could capture my love of food - things I eat out, things I make, etc. - in a delightful regular post called The Best Thing I Ate All Week. Or The Best Food Ever. I'm not sure which one yet.

So, for this week, we (apparently, I have introduced the royal "we" to this blog, hello!) have a couple of contenders. First, did you know that at Ben and Jerry's, you can get two different flavors on a "small" (small is definitely a relative term) scoop? It's true! Last night, pre-500 Days of Summer, I indulged in just such a double-faceted scoop. For my first flavor I chose Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch, which is good but, if we (hello again) are being blunt, just average. For my SECOND flavor though, I chose the amazingly extraordinary, exceptionally delicious, forever endeared to my heart Oatmeal Cookie Chunk.

Oatmeal Cookie Chunk is the kind of flavor that I really don't think I should like that much. I am not the hugest of lovers of oatmeal cookies, and I am kind of neutral in how much I like cinnamon, but this flavor brings together a bunch of things I only sort of appreciate to form The Ice Cream of My Life: sweet cream cinnamon ice cream with chunks of oatmeal cookie and fudge. And also chunks of plain old chocolate. It is the best. You must try it.

And the other Best Food Ever would have to go to the smashed chickpea salad I made tonight, which I put on top of some of that arugula I guilt tripped myself into buying the other day, and some of the tahini sauce my best friend Deb recommended, all on some toasted pieces of this very mysterious sourdough bread I guilt tripped myself into buying at a different farmers' market today. It was all so very tasty. And when I looked at my plate, which also featured some baby carrots, I felt like the vegetarian of the year. I mean, seriously. What a plate of produce and local baked goods and health, health, health. It was really, really good, but still, when I spied all of that over-the-top good-for-me-ness all together, it actually did make me laugh. In high school I was fine with going to Denny's at 11 pm and ordering a side of fries and a milkshake. Who have I become?!


PS: I know that Ben and Jerry's does not scream health, health, health! and that I therefore am horribly contradictory and/or hypocritical and/or completely out of touch with reality. But I am going to just allow that character complexity to add to what I referred to earlier: being all over the place. Both things are true. Most of my diet screams health, health, health! And the rest screams, ice cream!