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Portland, Oregon food blog with over seven years worth of recipes, restaurant features and food photos. Dig in!

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Awesome Onion Goggles

Seattle!

Seattle
Latte at Cafe Campagne

We recently went to Seattle for a long weekend and to see the Picasso Exhibit at the Art Museum. We were also going to try and hit the Battlestar Galactica exhibit at the SciFi Museum but we didn’t make it this trip. Perhaps that’s an excuse to go back before it ends in March?

Anyway, we did go to:

Cafe Campagne
1600 Post Alley at Pine
Seattle, WA 98101

We ate breakfast here on a Sunday morning. Luckily, it was kind of early (10:00 am), so the wait was only about 30 minutes, which gave us some time to walk around the market a bit. The latte here was wonderful and so was my omelette and rosemary raisin brioche toast.

Hotel Max
620 Stewart Street
Seattle, WA 98101

Right downtown and we got a great rate and 1/2 priced parking ($15/day). The hallways are all gray and the doors have blown-up black and white photographs of musicians/album covers/stuff like that on them. The rooms were a little small, but honestly a little bigger than our bedroom at home (we have an old house) so it really didn’t bother me at all!

Pike Place Market
1501 Pike Pl.
Seattle, WA 98101

Fun to walk around…crowded on . . . → Read More: Seattle!

Two Completely Unrelated Sauce-Type Things

enchilada sauce

Here are two accompaniments that I made recently (for different meals), that I really liked but they seemed really short for single posts. So, I bundled them up in one super-unrelated post!

The enchilada sauce I made for, uh, tostadas, which you can see in the title image. Does this make it tostada sauce? Anyway, it was very good. I thought it was a little spicy/harsh after the initial 15 minutes simmering time, so I added a pinch of sugar. I think that helped round it out. I also made the sauce about 5 hours before I needed it, which I think made the sauce perfect by the time I was ready to use it. I recommend doing that, or even making it overnight. It’s really great after the flavors have a chance to meld and stuff.

#1 Easy Enchilada Sauce
Adapted from a recipe by Emeril Lagasse
3 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
1 tbsp AP flour
1/4 cup chili powder
2 cups chicken stock or broth
10 ounces tomato paste
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
Pinch of sugar

enchilada sauce

In a medium saucepan heat oil, add flour, smoothing and stirring with a wooden spoon. Cook for 1 minute. . . . → Read More: Two Completely Unrelated Sauce-Type Things

Why I Cook

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Yesterday, Michael Ruhlman posed a question on Twitter as to why food bloggers cook. It’s short and bullet-pointed, but this is why I cook.

It’s fun and relaxing (especially if you have a glass or two of wine while cooking).
Otherwise, my husband would eat dry ramen noodles & take-out burritos. (Probably not all the time, but sometimes, yes.)
I love eating.
It’s a creative outlet.
It seems familiar and comforting — I have fond memories of my mother and I watching Julia Child on TV every Saturday afternoon.
It’s healthier. I know what I am eating and how much fat/salt is in there. And, if there is a lot of fat in there, I put it there on purpose. Ha!
The successes are really great feeling. When I baked my first loaf of French bread, (last month!!) even if it wasn’t perfect, it was still recognizable as bread. And it tasted like bread. That was so awesome.

Bonus Question Why I blog about it:

It’s nice being part of an online community of people who are passionate about food and love cooking too. I also just really, really like taking pictures . . . → Read More: Why I Cook

Pictures from Roslyn

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Mostly all pictures from our trip to Roslyn, WA. We stayed at Huckleberry House, right near downtown. We were in the Cicely Suite. Breakfast was delicious — smoked salmon and vegetable egg scramble, pepper-honey bacon, huckleberry pancakes and fruit. If you are looking for a place to stay in Roslyn, this was very nice. We aren’t normally B&B kind of people, but we enjoyed it.

Okay, now the pictures.

roslyn
The drive there, along 84/30.

roslyn
Where we stayed.

roslyn
The Cicley Suite.

roslyn
The B&B’s library.

roslyn
Northern Exposure location guide!

roslyn
A poster from MooseFest, a NoEx convention kind of thing.

roslyn
The Brick Tavern!

roslyn
Dr. Fleischman’s office. Now it’s a gift store, but his name is still there.

roslyn
The Roslyn(‘s) Cafe mural. They’ve taken out the ‘s.

roslyn
Me by the mural!

roslyn
The door to KBHR. The text is still up! Minnifield Communications Network! This is a 2nd door to a furniture store. You can’t go in this way, but they’ve kept the DJ area intact too.

roslyn
KBHR from a distance and a mining statue.

roslyn
The DJ area, . . . → Read More: Pictures from Roslyn

Happy Easter! Make S’meeps

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I saw this last week on Serious Eats. Brilliant!

It’s pretty self-explanatory.

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Yeah, I made high-end s’meeps with the fancy-pants chocolate…so what?

Get graham crackers, chocolate & marshmallow peeps. Assemble.

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Toast. I did mine for 4 minutes in the toaster oven.

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Remove from oven.

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Put top layer (un-toasted) of graham cracker on. Smoosh down.

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Eat.

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Grumpy-cat is not amused by s’meeps.

Completely unrelated, I played around with some possible new house colors today. We’ve never been happy with the grey/no contrast exterior of the house. Nothing pops. It’s kind of dreary.

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Hopefully, this Summer we will re-side and paint. And do something like this (excuse the kind of crappy photoshop):

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Dark orange door and accents. Green siding/paint. Bright ivory (with a hint of yellow) trim and columns. It would look . . . → Read More: Happy Easter! Make S’meeps