life, in boxes.

Hi Team! Michelle here, livin the hobo’s life – sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the floor, living out of boxes. Eating expired food.

What?

It turns out that a lot of our food is expired. Nearly everything that jon brought to the relationship, actually.
See, when we moved in to the house in Seattle together, he had a pantry full of things. Things, I am finding out this week, that expired two (sometimes three) years ago.

oh-seven? really jon? does that box really say “best before oh seven?!”. Jon, as nonchalant as ever just shrugs it off. “It’s a guideline, you see. I’m sure it’s still fine.“.

And THAT friends, is why we have stomachs of steel and can eat whatever we want in Japan. I’ve been in training since jon started going to the supermarket in college.

Meanwhile, I’ve got 7 short days left until I join jon in j-town. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to plan social-fun-things on 4 of those night. There are still people I want to see once more before we head out! There’s not enough time in the day! (Enter in Michelle’s addiction to Coffee and her opinion that we would certainly have saved the world by now if more people were as caffeinated as she is.)

Well kids, the Windex calls.

Fall in the city

I’ve been going through my half-written blog posts this week, and thought I’d clean house a little before we embark on Crazy Japanese Adventures Part 2. Because of that, there are a few things that may feel like they end mid-thought.  I’m… a bit scattered on a normal day, so sometimes it’s tough to pick up where I left off.

***

Today was a lovely day. Full of sunshine (not really) and cellos.

As usual, I woke up hours before Jon and helped myself to a remake of yesterday’s breakfast: oatmeal with dried fruit, brown sugar, and maple bacon ice cream. Now if only I knew how to candy bacon bits to use as sprinkles, I’d never have to leave my house. Oh, wait.

At 11, I walked down to the market and picked up some *beautiful* candy-cane beets, a quince, and some purple kale. The beats were so beautiful – I’m so excited to do *something* with them.

Our post-market plans for the day included lunch at the chowda house, and a Tchaikovsky symphony in the afternoon. For some reason, I had it in my head that all russians are terrible composers. I was totally wrong. it’s all *modern* russians that are terrible composers. While the Tchaikovsky was really fantastic (it was really sweet. The first act reminded me of kids frolicking in the hills and their parents tucking them into bed at night. no, seriously.) – the second half of the show was just shy of terrrible. seriously. after the 3rd piece (non-tchaikovsky and composed in 1971) the old guy next to me leaned to his partner and said “what the hell!”. seriously. i feel like i was cheated out of an hour of my life. I can’t unhear that!!

Ahem.

Jon and i have such a fantastic life together. Pre-symphony, we gave away donuts to people in coffee shops, and I tried really hard to give a hobo jon’s latte. (it wasn’t very good. it tasted like dirt.)

M’s birthday, part 2

After a quick trip to “The Good Marshalls”, where we were trying to find some replacement luggage for jon (don’t get me started on how much I hate TSA and how un-empowered air travel makes me feel), we hurried back to the city for a wine tasting.

Jon’s utterly fantastic. I talk about this fairly often, but I want to say again how happy I am with the person I chose to spend the rest of my life with. Here’s today’s reason: a few months back, I had found this Italian wine class, offered by a wine bar downtown. After working at Le Central & Poco, and drinking a fair amount in Seattle, I believe that I have a pretty solid base of knowledge for both French and northwest wines. I’ve always shied away from Italian wines because, quite honestly, they intimidate me. They are a mystery which I have yet to unravel. So I see this wine class, then see the price, and decide that I’ll file that away in the “boy that’s never going to happen” category.

A few months back, jon finds a good deal on wine classes at a wine bar downtown. Knowing that I have a giant hole in my wine knowledge when it comes to Italian wines, he signs us up. It was his intention to keep it a surprise, and I’m not sure that he knew I had seen it in my own wanderings around the Internet, so he was a little disappointed when I meekly suggested it.

Oh my, I can’t even describe how happy I was. Surprise or not, I was *stoked* and really anticipating the event. I heart jon for having stumbled upon the exact same thing as I had, and thinking it’d be something rad to do on my birthday.

They tasted us on 3 whites and 3 reds from Italy. The class, led by the sommelier, talked a little bit about a lot of things, answering questions as we went along. A few things that I realized:

1. Italian wines are crazy confusing because they sometimes have multiple names for the same grape
2. Italians grow a LOT of different grapes.
3. I’m not sure that you could ever have a complete understanding if Italian wines
4. If I learned anything, I learned that I know nothing at all.
5. Italian wines all tend to have a lot of acidity.  He talked about how this makes them especially good for pairing with foods – a lot of the wines from Italy taste rather flat when drunk by themselves, but as soon as you pair them with something, they often open up really well. like a flavour explosion in your mouth!

The three whites were;

1. a pinot grigio from the northern region: the sommelier said that because it was so close to the border, this tasted much like a German pinot grigio. He called it a picnic wine that goes well with everything, very user friendly, orange zest, pale colour slightly pink, VERY acidic. Because the climate is cooler than Oregon, the pinot grigios will tend to be a lot more green fruit-driven: unripened pears, green apple, etc. Oregon pinot gris tend to be much more full body, lower acidity, ripe, etc.
2. a vermentino: very sauv-blanc like but without the pink-grapefruit notes, grassy, buttery, malo but very light, citrus, slightly creamy.
3. falanghina from Campagna: (favourite) duller, more “new world” in character, very subtle, toffee, balanced with good acidity which will help the wine cut though cheese like mozzarella.

On a side note, when the heat turns on in our apartment, it sounds like there are people in the walls trying to escape. Every apartment/condo I’ve had in the past 5 years has had hot-water heating, so I should be used to this, but it still startles me. (ohmygodwhosinthere?)

The three reds were:

1. a grenache from Sardenia (but they don’t call it grenache there, they call it cannonau: if you took a bucket of cherries, buried them in the dirt, and sniffed them, that’s what this wine tasted like. tremendously earthy and musty. this was my second favourite red, and the one we ended up coming home with a bottle of.
2. a chianti classico, which was 80% sangiovese and 20% merlot.
3. oh, barolo.  Barolo is to Italy, what Bordeaux is to France. They’re the Big Boy Wines of the region.  They get a lot of the fame, and justifiably so since they taste so darn good, age really well, and command a huge price.  This wine was three times as expensive as all the others that we tasted that day. I had heard about barolos before, but knew next to nothing about them.  They’re made from the nebbiolo grape, are very tannic, brick red in colour, it really reminded me of a cab/cab franc kind of deal, the tannins softened up a lot by the end of the glass. Barolos tend to have herbal (sage) and anise notes.

So here’s an unanswered question:  do all nebbiolos taste like this? or is it just the barolos?

He talked about how wine naturally pairs well with the food that’s made in the region. Pairing soft cheese with whites and firm cheese with tanic wines. Sangiovese goes really well with the tomato-based dishes from southern Italy (the acidity matches and the fat from the cheese will help to cut the tannins of the wine).

We also talked about Amarone: a style of wine making in Valpolicella, where the grapes are allowed to shrivel before pressing. This allows higher sugar content (read: higher alcohol content), and really intense flavouring: cocoa, fig, raisin, dates, etc. He said they really need food or they just a bit too intense.

okay. that’s enough. Thanks for hangin in there.

M’s birthday, part 1

Tilth is a term that refers to soil having the proper nutrients to grow crops. Connotatively, it means that a restaurant or company cares about the land in which their products were grown.  I understand it as the the reuniting of merchant and farmer, the consciousness and care that goes into a chef’s decision to source their food from local farmers that respect the earth.

Tilth is also a Seattle restaurant that jon and I have been intending to go to for (literally) two years. Now renowned chef, Maria Hines, puts an emphasis on local, sustainable, and organic foods in her innovative and flavour-forward cooking.

Jon’s been on a biscuits-and-gravy kick lately, and we only go out to breakfast restaurants that offer it. We’re unofficially starting a “best in Seattle” race. So the b&g got us in the door to Tilth, but boy am I glad we stayed for the rest.

Starving, we started out with a fig and hazelnut scone, which was served with a spiced butter. Two things:
1. Scones are rarely scones. You know those triangle muffins you get at starbucks? not a scone. Scones are dense, dry, and are much improved by jam. Tilth gave us an awesome cross between the lifeless wedge of flour that I think of as a traditional scone, and the super-moist sbux-scone. It was rather lovely.
2. Spiced butter tastes like Christmas to me. Jon would probably prefer regular anything over its holiday-spiced counterpart.
3. (bonus!) This stuff made me wonder why I don’t keep compound butters around the house. They’re so easy to make, but add such a burst of flavour to ordinary things.

The salt (in back) and sugar that are on the table:

Tilth make this thing called the “perfect egg”, also called “eggs sous vide”. When you cook an egg at a really low temperature for a really long time (an hour), it turns into this creamy, juicy goodness. Jon mentioned that it was similar enough to a soft-boiled egg, so maybe all the extra time isn’t worth it. I thought the yolk was creamier than any egg I’ve ever had. (this may have had to do with the quality of the egg as well.)

As I’ve mentioned before, I lose all cognitive reasoning abilities when I’m hungry. Coupling that with the fact that jon *always* chooses better things than I do, we’ve fallen into a habit of him picking his top two or three choices on a menu, and then I’ll get one of those. He picked out the Pumpkin Cardamom French Toast with candied pumpkin, rum syrup, black tea chantilly. Oh, it was fantastic. We decided that it must have been baked (a technique we’ll have to try!) because the pieces were so thick, yet it was cooked all the way through.

And then there was the main event, the biscuits and gravy. The biscuits were so cheddary that they made me forget what I was eating. The smoked pulled chicken gravy was much lighter than the traditional, and the addition of preserved lemon brightened the whole dish up. It was well balanced and well prepared. I’d say for a “non tradition” b&g, it takes the cake.

All things considered, I can’t imagine why we’ve waited so long to check Tilth out. We’ll definitely have to go back for dinner at some point.

TastingCasting – Chao Bistro

A quick disclaimer:  my meal was comped here as part of a TasteCasting event, where despite marriage, I still get to be known as @grimord.

TasteCasting is a group of well-connected people I just got involved with, that eat at local restaurants, and then blog / tweet / review to promote them in the social media sphere.

Photo c/o Dianasaur Dishes

While I would have blogged about Chao Bistro regardless of my experience, I genuinely enjoyed my time at Chao Bistro in Seattle (on Pike & 12th), and will definitely be going back for seconds. Based on their so-so Yelp reviews, I was a little skeptical going into it.  Dinner definitely changed my mind.

We sat down to 17 courses and 6 beverages, ranging breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. It really was quite the spread, but since their menu is so varied, it was great to get a perspective on what they have to offer.

Highlights: edamame, chicken fried steak, calamari, crab cakes, wasabi caesar

But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

It all started with mimosas. Maybe the fact that I was buttered up with bubbles helped, but I had a life-changing experience with the chicken fried steak. Just the other day I was telling jon and tom how vile I thought the idea of CFS was. But I was right about one thing… bacon is a gateway drug. See, this chicken fried steak had BACON in the sausage gravy. It’s really quite incredible, actually. So simple. so tasty. I’m so a believer.

Photo c/o Dianasaur Dishes

There were a few things in particular that wow’d me about Chao Bistro.  First, their edamame. I know this sounds simple, but the way Chef Kevin Ayleswhorth prepared the Wok Seared Edamame left most of my group saying this was one of our favourite items.  Sauteed with Serranos, sesame oil, ginger, and garlic, the edamame had everyone wondering why on earth no one thought of this preparation before. We all decided that they oyster sauce was the secret to the smooth, rich flavour. I thought it was really cool because I had previously not been able to pin point what exactly it is that oyster sauce lends to a dish.

Another little thing that was just fantastic was the sweet potato fries. Co-Owner Tony jumps in with an anecdote: Up until about 60 days ago, no one thought to make sweet potato fries into waffle fries. Doesn’t it seem like a natural extension of a French fry?

Photo c/o Dianasaur Dishes

A great way to start, Chef Kevin.

On to lunch.

The portions at Chao Bistro are giant, and the prices are really reasonable.  Very objectively, I’d say Chao is a great value. They also have a Happy Hour, which I’ll have to check out. My first impressions of the place was that it was more comfortable than I expected it to be. Decorated simply in warm colours, Chao felt like a place I could either go to have a midday cocktail and write, or have a cozy dinner with friends.

The shoestring fries have a good ratio of crispy-to-crunchy and a good flavour.  The kitchen is very conscientious about not using too much salt, which I appreciate.  The Wasabi Caesar Salad was a cool twist on a classic.

While their menu was a little too broad in my opinion, they do a solid number of things very well. Some highlights from the dinner menu were the coconut crusted lemongrass crab cakes (all dungeness  crab: not one of those really starchy cakes that a lot of places have), the WHOLE fried chicken (omg. it was crazy big and really moist.) and the flaming dave (a spicy-happy maki roll).

Photos c/o Dianasaur Dishes

The Flaming Dave, a maki roll with habañero and eel wrapped around jalapeños and tuna.  Spicy spicy, it was a great pairing with the ultra-sweet lychee fruit sake.  I bet it would be great to share with a beer after work. I’d avoid the fettuccine but opt for the steak-cut calamari. The calamari wasn’t something that I would have thought to order, but was really happy with. Tony said it was because we were used to the tubes and tentacles of calamari, but Chef Kevin hand cuts his breaded calamari steaks and serves them with a citrus-ginger aoili.  The result is the springiest, lightest calamari I’ve ever had.

Photos c/o Dianasaur Dishes

Overall, a rad experience.  Big thanks to the co-owner of Chao Bistro, Tony, who had really neat stories to tell, Chao Bistro manager Paula, who was an impeccable server to our vocal and excited group, Diana for being our TasteMaster and coordinating the event, my new friends Joseph, Daryn, Theresa, Leslie, and all the other awesome TasteCasters that made it.