Needless to say we did a great job of breaking in the new portable Coleman grill that Gavin picked up at Fred Meyer’s (Seattle’s alternate to Target), ate a lot of yummy food and consumed many bottles of wine. Lots of neighbors joined in and except for the party crasher from the “Hemp Fest” (I”m serious!) it was definitely the more the merrier!
Now that I’ve lived in a four seasons climate I still think that it doesn’t really feel like summer unless you are able to take a summer vacation – rent a house by the lake or at the beach. Next year we’re gonna make that happen. In the meantime there’s still lots of peaches. raspberries, corn on the cob, potato salad and yes, more deviled eggs to enjoy and we’re gonna do just that!

Do you know I never ate an oyster until I moved here? And my first one was at the Walrus and the Carpenter in Ballard. That place is so cool I think anything would taste good there! But oysters just taste like the sea – salty and fresh and to me it’s incredible! Apparently I am in good company…

Ah yes, a glass of crisp white wine! But which one? Taylor Shellfish takes care of that question for us (check out their website, it’s great!). They are announcing the 2011 winner on May 1st!

This post is making me wish I was at Happy Hour! In Seattle there are many places to go for great oyster happy hours! At Ethan Stowell’s Anchovies and Olives has Oyster Power Hour where oysters are $1 a piece! At Elliot’s Oyster house happy hour they start out at 3pm for 50 cents and increase 25 cents every half hour until they reach their normal price at 6pm.

Well, it’s 6:15 and I don’t have any oysters right now. Only 3 very noisy and very hungry cats. But I do have a bottle of chilled Pinot Grigio and a minute to stop and stare at the sea and dream of tranquil times!

So we all know what a cedar plank is (how come his didn’t catch on fire like mine did?) but what the heck is sous vide?

Wikipedia tells us: Sous-vide (pronounced /suːˈviːd/), French for “under vacuum” is a method of cooking that is intended to maintain the integrity of ingredients by heating them for an extended period at relatively low temperatures. Food is cooked for a long time, sometimes well over 24 hours. Unlike cooking in a slow cooker, sous-vide cooking uses airtight plastic bags placed in hot water well below boiling point (usually around 60 °C or 140 °F).

Scott served samples of both styles of salmon with a drizzle of buerre blanc. Both were delicious but I have to say I’m still partial to the cedar plank style but was really happy to learn about this sous-vide method I’d never heard about. And also about a major new cookbook called Modernist Cuisine that’s coming out that will make foodie history.

From the Modernist Cuisine website:

Modernist Cuisine is a six-volume, 2,400-page set that is destined to reinvent cooking. The lavishly illustrated books use thousands of original images to make the science and technology clear and engaging.

and a quote worth taking note of:
“This book will change the way we understand the kitchen.” — Ferran Adrià

That sounds like one helluva book (retailing at $600! Hope our Seattle Food Geek doesn’t get the crazy “Julie and Julia” idea to cook every recipe out of this book – that would take a really long time and make one very very long movie and I would need a lot of popcorn!

Hope everybody had a great Labor Day weekend!

Is summer really over?
Only “officially” as far as I’m concerned! (Which sounds a bit crazy for someone who is as big of an Autumn nut as I am!)
Still, I believe in milking it and for as long as the days are still long and warm I want to have a few more picnics and those few final glasses of Rose before the first leaf falls!

And I wouldn’t mind sipping one of those Rose’s on this porch which belongs to the Blackberry Farm located in Walland, Tennessee.

Huffington Post did an article on farm to table restaurants and listed a handful, Blackberry Farm’s “The Barn” being one of them. Here’s what they had to say:

“Blackberry Farm’s restaurant, The Barn, is hailed for its seasonal, farm-fresh meals. The restaurant serves both food inspired by its Smoky Mountain location and haute cuisine. Located at Blackberry Farm, a worldclass inn and farm, a sampling of the menu includes: white beans, globe artichokes, pickled onions and caramelized bean puree, Painted Hills Farm beef strip, and local honeycomb and brandied fig jam.”

Brandied fig jam? That sounds scrumptious!!! The good news is that the farm to table movement is huge and is the essence of cooking with fresh, local ingredients. I am learning how important this movement is in the state of Washington with all its farms and can’t wait to really delve into this movement.

In the meanwhile, here is a great link on American Farm to table restaurants. Check out restaurants and news in your own area – no matter what the season is!

On the back of my cereal box – VERY useful information for Seattle!
I like the idea of having an indoor picnic and I have just the place to do it (my new attic!)
Now if only it would rain! (I know, be careful what you wish for!)

As seen as Seattle’s Pike Place Market! I’m calling these carrots “transitional” meaning great for summer sharing a platter with the pencil asparagus ready to be dipped into a garlicky aioli or when the weather cools down sprinkled with fresh thyme and roasted along side some yummy chicken for an Autumn dinner. Beautiful either way!

As if delicious coffee wasn’t good enough now it’s artwork too! This exceptional expresso is from El Diablo Coffee Company in Queen Anne and the photo is courtesy of Gavin. I was curious of how baristas make the simple swirly design in lattes and Gavin told me that was nothing compared to the artwork that comes out of El Diablo.

He was right!
The coffee was deelicious and also try the Cuban toast! Grilled, golden, yummy!
El Diablo Coffee Company is located at 1811 Queen Avenue North #101, Seattle, WA – right next to Queen Anne Books, a glorious combination!

Can’t get enough of my neighbor’s plums as you can tell by this big beautiful bowl of them!

And instead of making a plum tart I tried something different – Ina Garten’s Plum Cake Tatin. So easy, and so delicious!
This recipe will become a regular for me, you can substitute any fruit you want. Just have a hot cup of tea standing by and you are all set!

The carmelized sugar which you pour all over the fruit

The finished product! Maybe next time a little whipped cream too!

That is the slogan for the fabulous combination of Caffe Vita and Theo Chocolates. Usually I don’t like math but in this case I am definitely making an exception!

They say that behind every cloud is a silver lining and in our case it was a chocolate lining! This past Saturday we headed over to Fremont to Jet City Devices to get my sadly cracked iPhone screen repaired. The guy who worked there Tom was so cool and told us to go grab a cup of coffee and be back in 15 minutes while he made the repair.

Fremont is a little local yocal town full of small cool bars and shops but the first thing I noticed was a very vintagy sign by a parking lot for the Fremont Almost Free Cinema - how cool is that?! Kind of like Cinespia in Los Angeles minus about 100,000 people! That night they were showing Metropolis which we would have loved to have seen had we not already had plans…

Then a sign on a brick building across the street caught my eye – it said “Theo Chocolate”. We had to explore! Seconds later we were surrounded by gorgeous piles of chopped chocolate samples – chocolate with chili’s, chocolate with lavender, chocolate with coconut and curry. Wow, the selection went on and on!

And perhaps to cleanse the palate, samples of delicious Vita coffee – nice and hot! What a dreamy and unexpected combination we had wandered into! Theo does offer a tour which we will definitely take the next time we are not so spontaneous!

Of course this kitty cat wrapper caught my eye although there was certainly plenty plenty of delicious looking chocolates to look at and smell!

The best part about Theo chocolates and Caffe Vita is that their entire business is based on Fair Trade. Part of their philosophy which I wish more companies would incorporate:

“At Theo, we believe there is no luxury in products that benefit us today, while jeopardizing future generations ability to meet their needs”.

Cozyland approves this message! We also approve chocolate and coffee at Theo and Vita – a total win/win!