it's only Monday for the unlucky among us.

Even though I totally think that Columbus Day is a sham, I sure wish I had the day off. Hurd has the day off. I wish I were a Hurd.

But, the weekend was nice. I spent it in the company of my good friend Zeke (pet-sitting). And, Friday evening I checked out Gist Street and a drag show at the Eagle. Good times!

Saturday morning e-dawg and I went to the Strip where I picked up some heirloom tomatoes (Blackberry Meadows), shittake mushrooms (Mushrooms For Life), a turnip green pie (Najat's), a asparagus-feta quiche, a chocolate-banana tartlet and some croissant (Cafe Richard). Saturday evening I went to a non-discriminatory dinner at Cambodican with a group of people that had been involved in the transinclusion side of the recent debate (as an alternative to the CTN event). We had a lovely dinner, and I really liked the food. Believe it or not, I had a fried rice dish. And, it was *tons* of food--I got two more meals out of the leftovers!

Sunday was pretty chill. I got up, took a long walk with the Zekester, got coffee from Beleza, went to my house and watched a movie (Puccini For Beginners), took a little nap, another walk, then kicked The Gooch's ass at Scrabble. The Gooch and I met up at the Quiet Storm. I heard that they had a new menu (to be released today), so was hoping for a preview, but didn't see one. But, you can go here today for the scoop. I'm a little worried, though, because I ordered their mac-n-cheese last night, which I've had there before and liked. But, yesterday it looked icky, and tasted even ickier. I almost-never send food back, but I had to return it. The server said they changed the recipe. All I can say is: change it back! That was a big bowlful of bummer.

I didn't bring my camera to the dinner on Saturday, but Emilia snapped a picture of my dinner with her phone. I don't know if you can make it out, but it was good!

again, the weekends kick the non-weekends' collective asses

As always, the weekend rocked and Monday is the object of my anti-desire. But, I actually came in to work to a really nice email from one of the guys I support that he sent to my supervisor, my boss and my boss's boss about what a number one, right on employee I am. Sweet! That was really nice. And, I got a super-sweet email from a friend via myspace. Monday is really trying. I'll give it that.

But, but, but! The weekend was super-duper. And, I, for one, enjoy super-duper. Friday I went a-dogsitting in Squirrel Hill. He's a sweet little guy. And, I ran out for some errands, and to go see my friend Bob Snyder's opening at Gallerie Chiz. He makes these awesome little paintings on wood that are just amazing. He even did a portrait of me a couple years ago, and I cherish it. We used to work together, and I hadn't seen him in a while, so it was really fun to catch up and also see my pal Alan and his wife Heather who we also used to work with. A nice little reunion. Good times. (AH - They asked about Hurdcakes, too, fyi).

Saturday was more dogsitting, then off to the annual Gist Street Cook-Out. Even though it was the seventh annual cook-out it was my first, and it was AWESOME. Bringing two of my great loves--authors/books and food--together. Ellen and I both made Heidi dishes. I made the sprout burgers--this time with an Italian twist--used lots of basil from my front-step plants, sundried tomatoes and parsley. Yum. And, E-dawg made Heidi's kabobs with muhummara slather. Hot damn. Actually, when we were leaving one of the grill guys said, "Whoa! That sauce was intense! We put it on everything!" of the slather. And, it was--tangy and spicy and delicious. Yum. Thanks, Heidi! And, I actually won something from the raffle this month! I've never won before. I won a set of notecards by a glass artist...whose name I'm blanking on... Anyway, a good time was had by all.

Sunday was a lazy morning with some reading, some attempted (but ultimately unsuccessful) napping and a re-watching of Election. And, a kick-ass breakfast, courtesy of Eric Gower. I made his Shirred Shittake Eggs. Oh, dang. So good. I made them with some crispy garlic homefries and oj, and it was a breakfast fit for a queen. Seriously. I'm going to make baked eggs all the damn time now. I forgot to bring the recipe, but I think I remember it:

Shirred Shittake Eggs
from Eric Gower's The Breakaway Cook

4 eggs
2 T, plus 1 t. dried shittakes, pulverized [I probably used a little over 3 T., which was about 3 dried shittake caps]
2 T. butter, plus more to coat the ramekins
sea salt and pepper
a little shredded cheese, such as gouda [ek - I used an extra-aged Beemster gouda]

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Melt the 2 T. butter in a small skillet, and add the 2 T. of shittake. Cook for a few minutes until the butter foams up. In the meantime, coat the 2 ramekins with butter, and sprinkle in some shittake dust and shake around like coating a baking pan with flour. When the mushroom-butter mixture is ready split between the two ramekins. Break two eggs into each ramekin, top with sea salt and pepper, a little more of the shittake dust and a little shredded cheese. Place into the oven and cook for about 12-14 minutes, until there is very little movement when you shake the pan, but the yolks are still soft. Turn out onto plates with a rubber spatula.


Sunday afternoon was all about hitting the pool. Ellen and I have set a goal to try to check out all the city pools. So far we've been to:
-Riverview
-Bloomfield
-Jack Stack
-Highland Park
-Scheneley Park


And then I rolled over to the Quiet Storm for my weekly Scrabble bout with The Gooch. Once again, she cheated. That is all I have to say about that. Except that everyone should try the pina colada vegan milkshake. It is bomb.

I have a book club (Classic Book Club) tonight, and need to make a snack. I'm thinking of doing another white bean dip with basil oil. I loved the last white bean dip I made, but Hurd said it didn't have enough flavor, so the basil oil should take care of that. I love white beans. And, on Tuesday I have dinner at a friend's house, and I'm going to attempt Eric Gower's Maccha Truffles. Keep your fingers crossed!

counting down days

Yes, I am counting down the days until I'm going to the beach for my All Gal Beach Extravaganza 2007!!! We go to Stone Harbor, NJ, every year. Schwatts' dad has a house there that he generously lets us use for a week each summer and it's just a little slice of heaven. Half a block from the beach, two decks, lotsa bedrooms, lotsa mac-n-cheeses (what Katherine calls the bright orange throw blankets). And, we just get together once a year to chill, catch up on our lives, do workshops for one another, make and eat some tasty food, play in the ocean and bake on the beach and generally just have the very best week of the year. I'm chomping at the bit!

So, this weekend I went grocery shopping at the Co-Op, Trader Joe's, the farmers market and Reyna, (and Family Dollar for a cooler!) and stocked up with ingredients for some recipes I'd like to make in the next couple of days to take down with me. I think I'm going to make otsu, sprout burgers, wheat berry salad, crunchy/creamy beans-n-greens, chile de Arbol sauce and some mesquite chocolate chip cookies. But, I really only have one free evening until we go, so that's the goal list, and it'll probably be a little smaller than that actually, but I can take the other ingredients with me--'cause now I have a cooler! Guess whose recipes those all are? I'll give you one guess. Her name rhymes with Meidi Mwanson.

And, speaking of Heidi, I was reading her blog today and she gives a link to the Elastic Waist website because they have a video up of one of the contributors making the Straw and Hay Fettucine Tangle with Spring Asparagus Purée recipe from Heidi's Super Natural Cooking. I haven't made this yet, but Nowlze and I were just discussing alternative pestos last week, and I mentioned this one. It looks so good!

This weekend was a good time. You may or may not know that I like a good time. Friday was Gist Street (one of my favorite evenings of the month). I again did not win the eggs in the raffle, but maybe my luck is just saving itself up for a week when the chickens go crazy and make One Billion Eggs. I think that must be it.

Saturday morning the K-Bear and I met up with Zeke (my dog-sit friend) and his mom at this really beautiful dog park in Aspinwall/Fox Chapel. You can tell it's where the richies live 'cause it's super clean and unspoiled and just generally awesome. Lots of trails, a creek, biodegradable poop bags. Caleb and Zeke were thrilled to see one another. They get especially excited when things are out of context. I wanted to snap some pictures of them but they were way too busy sniffing stuff to pose. Here is a picture of some wildflowers, though.


I spent the rest of the day on Saturday doing some grocery shopping and napping. And, then Kara came over in the evening for an ice cream and game party (for two)! It all started when we were emailing back and forth about recipes, then ice cream recipes, and then we had to have some homemade ice cream! We both made a base in advance and got our ice cream machines ready, and then the plan was to play some games while the ice cream was freezing. Which was a perfect plan except that Kara's ice cream maker bit the dust. We noticed that it hadn't really frozen at all after nearly an hour, and so it had instead been actually warming up instead of freezing. Her maker was a really nice automatic Krupps one, but evidently something had gone horribly wrong with its freezing power. So, after I made mine, we tried using my maker, but the combo of it having just been used, my refrigerator not being an optimum temperature (due to all the new groceries) and it having been warmed and whipped for an hour it just never did sit up that night. But, the next day? Woah! She left it in the machine at my house, and that is like hitting the jackpot! Her ice cream flavor was avocado (and it's even raw and vegan!). Hot damn. The flavor is really...green. Like, it tastes a little like just under ripe bananas (which are my favorite fruit, but only when they're not quite ripe) and like avocado and like goodness. It's a little bit icy, but I'm thinking that might be because of the prolonged freezing process. Oh my god, it's good.


I made a rose petal ice cream. I got the recipe by googling one billion rose petal ice cream recipes and settling on the one that sounded most reasonable and rich. It's from the Border Grill:
Ingredients:
3 fragrant organic roses, petals only [E note: use organic here for sure!!!]
1/2 cup milk
3 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 cup granulated sugar, separated
6 egg yolks
1/4 cup rosewater (or to taste), available at Middle Eastern stores
3 drops red food color, optional

Directions:

Wash the rose petals in cold water and pat dry. In a heavy, nonreactive saucepan, place petals of 2 roses, milk, cream, and 1/2 cup of the sugar. Place over medium heat and heat to just under boiling. Let steep about a half hour to infuse.

[E note: there's a misprint with this recipe because they never tell you to add the rosewater. I added it when I added the rose petals.]

Combine the egg yolks and the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar in a mixing bowl. Whisk until thick and pale yellow. Bring the rose/cream mixture back to a near boil and whisk 1/4 of the warm mixture into the egg and sugar mixture. Then pour all of the egg mixture into the rose milk and place over low heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Strain into a bowl and chill on ice. Pour into the ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions. Transfer finished ice cream into bowl and add the torn petals from the remaining rose. Fold into ice cream and pack into freezing container.

Due to do the temperature issues described above, we ate it as soft serve (or, soup). It was really rich and deelish.

This is what it looked like the next day:


Sunday morning I was supposed to go to WV to visit a friend, but she wasn't feeling well, so I stuck around the 'Burgh and met a Hurd for brunch at the Quiet Storm. We got two of the specials and split them: Avocado-"Bacon" Frittata with Smoked Paprika Aoili and Chocolate Chip Pancakes with Honeyed Ricotta. (and I got some grits and she got some roasted sweet potatoes--just to make sure that we were in pain). Oh, golly. Those were good. Especially the frittata. Dang.

For dinner I made a salad that was inspired by a sandwich that Bozena brought to the after-kayak picnic. Her sandwich was avocado, hardboiled egg and argula on whole wheat. My salad was spinach, basil, hardboiled egg, avocado, sauteed pea shoots with egyptian onions in a tad bit of toasted sesame oil. The dressing was just fresh-squeezed lemon juice with sea salt and pepper. I made the same thing for lunch today. Yum.


Okay. I've also come to a hard realization, too. It is that I lost 40 pounds by eliminating the processed crap out of my diet, but now my body has acclimated to that and it's just not enough anymore and I still have 60 pounds to go. I've been just thinking (aka justifying) that as long as I'm pretty much making everything I eat from scratch then that'll do it. Because it is all good for me, but it isn't all good if you're trying to lose weight. So, I need to kick this stuff up again. I did the whole first part of my diet with pretty much only changing the way I eat, but then got lazy. So, now I need to make a commitment to exercise at least three times a week and to drink at least eight glasses of water every day. I do best with this stuff when I actually write everything down. It helps me to be aware of what I'm doing and I always enjoy a good spreadsheet. So, dear friends, help keep me honest, and that means that if I say that I think it's a good idea to get those white chocolate chip and raspberry chocolate cookies from Sand Hill Berry Farm at the farmers market, you punch me in the throat.

please see my office hours

Yesterday evening I pretended that I was holding office hours at the Quiet Storm. It all started because yesterday was the first day that my CSA subscription started, so I was going to pick it up, and meet my friend Jen at the QS to divide up the booty and get her half of our payment (we're sharing a "small share" from Kretschmann's). I was to meet her there around 6:30 p.m., so I didn't want to go home, then have to turn around and come right back to Garfield, so I decided I'd just go after I picked up the veggies and read. But, then I made a plan to meet up with my new pal Jenn for coffee in the meantime (to take our palship from virtual to real world). She's a peach! So, we hung out for a bit, Jen came by to get her veggies and hung out for a minute, then Mags and her dad, Ani and Carol came to meet up for dinner. I wish my office was the Quiet Storm every day.

And, speaking of the QS, I had an amazing dinner there. I ordered the special: "crabcake" sandwich with macaroni salad and choice of green salad or soup. I chose the chilled green pea and mint soup. First of all, the "crabcakes"? Freakin' fab! Man, oh man! Better than many "real" crabcakes I've tried over the years. And, crab is one of those things that I really miss (along with toro and bacon). I emailed the owner/chef to see if I could get her recipe or a tip and begged her to add it to their regular menu. So tasty! And, the chilled green pea and mint soup was fresh and delicious, too. All in all, one of my favorite meals recently, for sure!

And, as for my CSA box. This week we got: romaine lettuce (or leaf?), butter lettuce (?), spinach, mixed baby greens, pea shoots (I've never tried these before and can't wait!), radishes, sage, rosemary, egyptian onions (look like big green onions with flowers like scapes), rhubarb and a loaf of multigrain bread. YUM! Picking up the CSA box and seeing what we get that week is one of my favorite things ever. I love surprises, and this is the best kind of surprise!


Since I had dinner out last night, I didn't do a whole lot with my veggies last night except admire them. But, for lunch today I made a green salad and an eggsalad sandwich. Eggsalad is one of my favorites, but I haven't made it in a while because I normally put a TON of mayo in it, so it's totally not healthy. But, I made some up last night that is definitely better for me than the old-style kind. I used five organic, free range eggs (these were from the Polish Hill bee guy, Deron Johnson) and hard-boiled them, then added about 4 T. of vegan mayo (I used Heidi's recipe from Super Natural Cooking--below), 2 T. real mayo, 1 t. yellow mustard and sea salt and pepper. I like my eggsalad straight up--nothing fancy, not too mayonnaise-y. I had it with a bunch of the butter lettuce and some of the multigrain bread (lightly toasted). I tried to wait until lunch time, but I ate it around 11:00 a.m. I could not help it.

Egg-Free, Dairy-Free Mayonnaise
(makes 1 1/2 cups)
[Super Natural Cooking, p. 200]

8 oz extra-firm tofu
2 T. freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 T. extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 t. fine-grain sea salt
1/2 t. dijon mustard
pinch of cayenne pepper

Wrap the tofu in a few paper towels, then press and gently squeeze to release excess moisture. Combine the tofu, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, mustard and cayenne in a food processor and blend until very smooth, 30 seconds or so. Thin with warm water to reach desired consistency.
[Ehrrin's note: this is a great base for any flavor you want to add. I've used it to make aioli, miso mayo and wasabi mayo. So easy and so good!]

Tonight I have a work dinner at LeMont. Ellen's going as my date, and we will be hooking up some serious old-skool "fancy". I've been there once before (for another work function, different job), and the view is magnificent, the decor bizarre, and the food was very much so-so. I already know what I'm having tonight because I had to pick my menu items last month: salad, pesto pasta (the token vegetarian meal) and creme brulee. It should be interesting. This will be the first time that my worlds have collided with work peeps and friends. And, my work peeps are...let's say...odd. They're all computer genius types, so they have various levels of social skills. I find them to be endlessly fascinating, and I'm really looking forward to seeing them all fanced-up.


I need to start brainstorming some recipe ideas for my upcoming beach trip. So far I'm thinking:
-find a good recipe for veg "crabcakes" (QS wrote back, but skipped the part where I asked for the recipe. darn.)
-Heidi's recipe for "Yucatecan Street Corn with Lime, Chile Powder and Grated Cotija"
-Heidi's recipe for "Wheat Berry Salad with Citrus, Toasted Pine Nuts, Feta and Spinach"
-SarahGrams's mom's crepes with some interesting fillings/toppings
-fresh rolls
-veggie sushi

Anyone have any other good (and impressive) recipes for my 9th(?) annual all-gal beach extravaganza?