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.)

Moroccan

If there was a competition going on for “couple who has the most awesomest weekends”, jon and I may be in the running.

I haven’t really finished talking about our weekend in Willamette on the 12th of November, then after that was the weekend with Chris and Rachel in Vermont (pictures are coming, I swear!), but this particular weekend was off to a rockin start as well.

Do you remember Puppy Play Time a few weeks back? Our friends, Heather and Tom, needed someone to watch their French Bulldog while they were out of town for the week, so I eagerly volunteered us.  I think Jon secretly had as much fun playing with Fifa as I did.  We’ll get a dog soon.  Just wait and see.

Fifa Monster!!!

Anyways, to thank us for the pup-sitting, H&T took jon and I out for a Moroccan Feast!  The Feast is a multi-coursed set dinner. I love it when restaurants take care of the ordering part for you. I’m of the camp that “you know what you do best, so give me that”, and when I’m at a restaurant I’m not there to *think*.  (okay, this could be in part because I completely lack the ability to process information once a certain level of hunger sets in.)

Photo c/o cronncc

I think that’s one thing that the Japanese do that maybe won’t ever catch on with our picky-American-palates.  Lots of nicer Japanese restaurants do this thing called omakase, which allows the chef to bring you an interesting selection of dishes, in the order that they’d recommend you eat them.  It’s a lot like the coursed out concept of the Herb Farm.  (oh, herb farm. swoon.) I *love* this style of dining. You usually get a good selection off the menu, and they usually serve it to you in the order that you should eat it.

How did Marakesh (the Moroccan restaurant in Belltown) rate compared to others I’ve been to? The belly dancer was smiley and had blond highlights, which kind of threw off the sultry-ethnic thing they usually have going, but the rest of the vibe was pretty standard. Nice fabric tented from the ceiling, pillows on the floor, eatin with your hands, etc. I love their flavour profiles – usually there’s a lot of cinnamon, raisin, dates, and couscous. Intensely flavoured but not necessarily heavy. I dig it.

Photo c/o Jeffwilcox

M’s Birthday, Part 3

Hello Team!

After wino-tasty-happiness-time, we came back home and drank…. some wine. Not just any wine, my friends, tasty pink bubbles from our friends at Mumm in Napa Valley. Sparkling wines fall into two categories: masculine and feminine. Masculine sparklings are those bready, yeasty, kind of intense wines, and their Feminine counterparts are more floral, strawberry, fruity, happytime. This rosé was fabulous – like the androgynous men that live in my neighborhood.

I think that we made a bigger deal out of my birthday this year than I have since I turned 21. I opened a couple gifts; a *fantastic* handmade iphone case from Elizabeth, and an iPod from jon’s mom and dad. I’ve been looking at these iPod shuffles for some time, and was convinced that it would be a really odd decision to get something that looked so easy to lose or accidental throw in the washing machine. Since I started running again, it seems like such a spectacular idea. I’m really excited to start using it!

I love thematic things. Because we were going to an Italian wine class in the afternoon, I thought it would be an awesome opportunity to check out the new Italian restaurant on the hill that’s been getting such great reviews.

The chef is always on the “chef’s to watch” list, and their food usually gets great reviews.

I started with anchovies in a parsley sauce with egg yolks. I asked the server to choose a wine that would go well, and she gave me something that vaguely resembled a citrusy chardonnay. The acid cut through the subtle fishiness of the fish, but the creaminess paired with it perfectly. It rocked.

One of the things they do best is handmade pasta. I were so excited to try it, that I managed to get myself a pasta-maker for Christmas so we can try again later.

Whenever the tv’s on, i can’t look away. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good show, a bad show, or a commercial. I hate that.

As it turns out, I don’t have very much intelligent to say. I drank a *lot* that day. Had a lot of great food. Remembered that I have a fantastic life. All in all, a great birthday.

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.