Seattle!

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We spent a delightful weekend in Seattle, visiting my sister and her husband. Our trip began with lunch at the very sophisticated Dahlia Lounge, where we ordered salads and sandwiches and tried the tomato soup. To my great surprise, we prefer my version, though it was supposedly the very same recipe. Our next stop was Kerry Park, for the postcard views of the city. After settling in a bit, we strolled around Ballard and its beautifully curated shops housed in charming old brick buildings. My favorite was The Palm Room, which is very much like a terrifically lush junglIMG_3242e that has just recently been swept spotless and lined with white tile. The plants – the many, many, plants – were discretely tucked into artfully placed containers.

Our destination was Shingletown, for cocktails and snacks. I had the fir-get-me-not, adorned with a sprig of Douglas Fir! We also tried the daily selection of deviled eggs (their classic picnic style and a smoked honey variety), and the brussels sprouts, which were tender and coated in a glaze that hinted at balsamic vinegar. We made a quick stop for take-away treats at Cupcake Royale, including a delicious maple sweet potato concoction, and then we were off to dinner, where I was pleased to discover that Korean barbecue is both an activity and a meal! You cook the meat and vegetables yourself, right on the grill in the center of your table!

Saturday we went to Jade Garden for dim sum, where my favorite item was either the eggplant chunk with shrimp stuck into the center, or the rice and meat rolled up in an enormous leaf. Neither was like anything I had ever eaten before, and both were delicious. Stuffed full of so many small bites of goodness, we drove through the rain and wind to the Boeing plant in Everett, destined for a tour of the facilities. The materials noted that we were in the largest building in the world, by volume. I suppose that other large buildings may be taller or wider, but not… you know, bigger. By volume. We had a friendly and informed tour guide named Marla, who was one of four separate people who declared that any and all cameras and phones would be confiscated, so you’ll just have to imagine how amazing it is to stand on an interior balcony, looking down at dozens of planes in various stages of assembly. A bus took us through the gigantic parking lot, from one end of the building to the other, and at both doors we entered long basement hallways and took freight elevators up to viewing areas. They employ 40,000 people at that Boeing campus.

On the way home we stopped at H Mart, an enormous and well stocked Asian market that reminded me that I should visit United Noodle more often. There was an entire wall of green vegetables, and seafood choices ranging from frozen tilapia to abalone and live lobster. We saw chicken feet and frog legs and dozens of some kind of eel swimming in a bucket. Conveniently, you can also buy pots and pans and kitchen gadgets there. For dinner, we returned to Ballard for sushi at Moshi Moshi, where many things tasted wonderful but the sockeye salmon sashimi absolutely stole the show. We had molten cakes and ice cream at Hot Cakes, wandered around the largest and most interesting furniture consignment store I’ve ever seen, and settled into an evening of board games.

After such a busy Saturday, you’d think we might have rested a bit on Sunday, but we didn’t even consider that possibility. We ventured into the rain for both Mighty O and Top Pot donuts, concluding in a very formal study that the Mighty O selections had a pleasingly crunchy outside and Top Pot had a denser cake. Preferences were divided, though my bias showed once it was revealed that Mighty O is a vegan bakery (the shock! the dismay!).

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The real focus of our day was a trip to Bainbridge Island. The rain slowed and we meandered along the shore, looking at boats and listening to the water splash against the rocks and piers. Everything was very jungly and green, and I thought the holly trees as big as houses were pretty neat until my sister told me they are invasive. We grabbed sandwiches at the nice grocery store in town and then explored the Bloedel Reserve, an incredible public garden with crisply maintained paths winding across fields and through fern-filled woods and down to a lawn overlooking Puget Sound. The Japanese guest house on the property looks across a garden and a small pond, and even in December it was a tumble of texture and color.

We saw the most incredible rainbow on the ferry home – the entire arch was visible over the skyline, right at sunset. My brother in law posted his picture of exactly that on Reddit and has 79,000 views and climbing, but I rather like our picture of it – the tiny green dot in the bottom right is the ferris wheel!

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Monday brought some sunshine, and we headed downtown to play at being tourists. Fueled by biscuits from Morsel, we saw a glass blowing demonstration and room after room of breathtaking colorful exhibits at the Chihuly museum, saw the city from above (and Bellevue in the distance) from the observation deck of the Space Needle, and walked to Pike Place Market. We had a late lunch at Lowell’s, watching tug boats guide a full container ship into port as we ate. We learned lots about Seattle history at MOHAI and stopped by the Gates Foundation, before heading home. This being our final night in Seattle, we experienced the “fancy menu” at Staple and Fancy, which means that plate after plate of delicious items are brought to the table based on the chef’s choices that evening. Fried oysters, homemade mozzarella, steak tartare, prosciutto, and seared tuna all made an appearance before the salad course: we were there for almost three hours!

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Tuesday morning we enjoyed blueberry pancakes at home and stopped by Gas Works Park on the way to the airport. I feel very fortunate to have such an amazing sister, who lives in such a great city.

Photo Credits: my own!

Tomato Soup

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Tomato soup of any kind is particularly good with a grilled cheese sandwich, but as a kid it was once served to me in a large warming dish with hotdogs floating in it. Whole ones. Our babysitter that summer was a teenager with younger siblings and a father who was out of work at the local paper mill (by way of either a shutdown or a union strike), so when we ate lunch at her house there were a lot of people around the table. I can’t imagine how many cans of Campbell’s went towards that effort, or of what size, but it made an impression. I don’t remember her mother being present, and it occurs to me now that her salary and that of my teenage babysitter was keeping the family afloat that sunny summer day. To my surprise, the concoction simply tasted like hotdogs and tomato soup, individual items served in one dish.

I really liked that babysitter. She had her driver’s license and access to a car, and a membership to one of those music subscription services where you placed orders by writing tiny numbered codes onto a postcard and mailing it in. She had accidentally ordered an En Vogue tape when she meant to order Vogue, and this qualified as a very exciting mistake, worthy of much discussion. She had a chatty friend with red hair whose boyfriend was about to be deployed, and to think now that they were all about 17 that summer is an odd realization.

These days, I listen to a lot of podcasts in the car, and I’ve been enjoying the Splendid Table a lot lately. I recently caught Lynne Rosetto Kasper interviewing Tom Douglas, a (many times James Beard award-winning) chef from Seattle. They were talking about a delicious and simple tomato soup, cooking through the conversation. Intrigued, I looked up the recipe, and it is a keeper. The beauty of it, really, is that with a very little bit of planning (you need cream and two 28 oz cans of whole tomatoes), a well stocked cabinet (onions and garlic, a dash of celery seed), and about 20 minutes, this recipe can be made any time. My friend Brooke enjoyed it enough at my house to make it herself the following week, and she reports back that it was a success. I suggest using an immersion blender, if you have one. Floating hotdogs, optional.

Photo, my own.

 

Aster Cafe

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Saint Anthony Main is a lovely part of Minneapolis. It’s the oldest part, the brick streets and buildings surrounding the mills that first represented the city. There’s a small movie theater and a selection of restaurants, plus plenty of park area to explore along the river. If the weather is right and you are inclined to wander a bit, there’s a dramatic dam overlook and a couple of bridges to cross, all with good views. There are festivals in the summer, and decorative lights in the winter.

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My first few times to the area, I ate at Pracna on Main. Famous to some degree for being the oldest restaurant in Minneapolis, the dark space was always frigid, and the food mediocre. Being well located and having a claim on history only gets you so far, and that restaurant recently closed. It was disorienting to eat subpar sweet potato fries in a place that opened in 1890. 

Just down the street – and the hallway, actually – is the Aster Cafe, a gentleman’s tavern to Pracna’s medieval pub (or so I imagine). The brick walls and exposed beams must be just as old, but the temperature is warm and the dim light is charming. The bartender when I last visited was wearing a jaunty vest, and the servers were friendly. Assorted lampshades are scattered around the room, reminding me of evenings at my grandmother’s house. I chose a cocktail 6898712208_6776fb72ff_mfrom their generous list of options, many of which have witty names and contain bitters or fernet. The Daylight Spender is a concoction of apple brandy and orange bitters and mint leaves, among other delights, and I would heartily recommend it. I was leaning towards the Beer Cheese Soup (a common enough offering in this part of the world, but theirs is served with Smoked Paprika Popcorn!), but I was won over by the soup of the day: the Steak Chipotle Chili was heavy on vegetables, while still true to its name.

Sometimes there’s live music, which is absolutely delightful if you like a venue that feels like a living room (it so happens that I do). There’s also a pleasant tree-filled patio, which is a truly lovely place to have lunch in warmer months. Not so many places provide equal parts cozy-fall-evening and leafy-summer-afternoon, with delicious food and clever drinks to match. Aster Cafe is one of them.

Photo Credits:

Aster cafe by Teresa Boardman (CC BY-NC-ND)

Lampshade image by Sharyn Morrow (CC BY-NC-ND)

Getting Started

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Nearly ten years ago, I had a book review blog. It was inspired by the particular boredom that comes from sitting at a desk, day after day, without having enough to do. My job was to answer the phone, sort the mail, and greet visitors, which meant that I was largely unoccupied but frequently interrupted. The philosophy in that time and place was that book and magazine consumption was of a personal nature, but staring at a screen was a professional activity. I was not permitted to read, but computer use was encouraged.

To fill the time at my desk, I began researching books and authors, determining what to read next and writing about whichever book I had just finished. Finding myself between books – and without a review to write – made for dreadfully slow afternoons, so I was reading prolifically during my breaks and in the evenings. A few months into this uniquely personal survival strategy, the collection of reviews served as the writing portfolio that helped me land my first marketing and communications position. When I changed jobs, I stopped maintaining the blog.

In 2009, my sister and I started a blog that stayed active for two years. We each lived alone, and we were cooking and traveling and spending time with friends, writing about the stuff that seemed interesting and going through the somewhat tedious process of digital photography six years ago (downloads and uploads, chargers and cords). It was a fun collaborative effort, and I still have friends and family ask about it, but continuing to post ended up feeling like a chore as our lives got busier and we had competing priorities. All 109 posts remain accessible.

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So, here I am, at the start of a new blogging adventure. Coming up with a name for the project slowed me down considerably, but I’m happy with where I landed – and why not? The pajama squid is a peculiar creature – not a squid at all, actually – and so begins the metaphor, I think. This won’t strictly be a food blog or a book review blog, nor will it be a travel blog or a lifestyle blog. This will be a place for my observations and recommendations, a writing outlet with a purpose. I’m excited to get started!

Photo credit: Pajama Squid by pacificklaus (CC BY-NC)