office food

office food
Originally uploaded by deepfry

how can something this gross be oh-so-good? one of my coworkers actually observe, reaching into the bucket for more, "this smells like my dog's vomit."

i didn't know they still made these things. i remember my parents getting one at some point in the mid-80s and thinking that it was just about the coolest thing since sliced bread. ...actually, since i was about ten at the time, i probably thought it was the coolest thing since poprocks or jelly shoes.

$100 sushi

$100 sushi
Originally uploaded by deepfry

last sunday, i wanted a quick dinner and had a hankering for sushi. ~r and i drove out to sushi domo . . . and it was closed. we headed back into town to sushi station . . . and it was closed. "Do you want to just get pizza at Mezza Luna?" he asked and I said no, suggesting we try Misako. . . which was open.

Now, normally, when ordering sushi, one order = two pieces. But that's not always the case. And, at any rate, the menu tends to say either way. The menu at this place looks like this:

ebi (shrimp) 1 2 3 4
tako (octopus) 1 2 3 4
ika (squid) 1 2 3 4
.....

no price listed. I assume that, given the options, '1' meant one piece. I pick out a few and circle the 2, thinking that would get us two pieces of each. And we get a few rolls.

Our order comes out AN HOUR LATER (slooooow service) and there's a curiously large amount of sushi. I realize what's happened. The '1' on the menu is an order of two pieces; '2' on the menu means four pieces. So instead of eight pieces, we get sixteen. I try to catch the waiter before he brings out the rest of it. "Oh yeah," he says, "I usually warn people of that, but somefolks, they really like sushi!" which i guess means that I look like some sort of sushi-inhaling monster. As he's explaining this, the rest of our sushi comes up and since it's already prepared, we have to take it.

So we pound through our sushi dinner for ten and actually finish almost all of it. We're both stuffed to the gills (pardon the expression) with sushi. I mean, who stuffs themselves on sushi?!

the waiter brings out our bill and instead of the $15 pizza dinner that rick suggested, we end up with a $93 bill! for two people! for a quick sunday night meal. goddamn!#*&!*$#@&(!*$^(&!$#@%

I was very sad. The menu was misleading! He should've said something! We got screwed! And to top it all off, the service took foreeeeeever!

And now i will never go there again. In fact, I may never eat sushi again...except for in a few weeks when I'll be splitting a party platter at Akai Hana with cindy and our moms. And maybe grocery store sushi. But aside from that, never! ever! again!

Sigh.

$100. lame.

dining for one

borscht
Originally uploaded by deepfry

a certain beet-hating dining partner of mine was flattened by some sort of toxic, stomach-crunching illness over the weekend. i took advantage of the opportunity and made a big vat of beet borscht ("New York Deli Style," according to the Joy of Cooking, with some slight changes: broth instead of water, onion instead of garlic). i was naturally heartsick over the absence of my usual dining companion, but, I tell ya, that soup was good. how can so many people hate the beet? it's delicious, filling (amazing that one bowl with a scoop of plain yogurt can serve as an entire meal), pleasing to the eye and did i mention that it's delicious? even my cat likes borscht and he's allegedly a carnivore.

not to mention how very simple this soup is: grate in your fancy, new food processor: a bunch of beets, an onion, a few carrots. put in a pot and cover with broth. bring to a boil and simmer until the veggies are tender. salt and pepper to taste, garnish with plain yogurt or sour cream and enjoy. if you have beet greens, you can mix those in, too. i'm sure they're a wholesome healthy addition. if you have it, a thick slice of pumpernickel is a lovely addition.

eating local

local dinner
Originally uploaded by deepfry

for just this one little week, r and i are eating only locally grown/raised food. our "local" means the state of oregon. pictured is one of our dinners. we've also had peppers stuffed with pork and feta, roasted chicken with mashed potatoes, some really awesome salads, lots of cheese sandwiches (Hideaway Bakery use "as many local ingredients" as they can find, so we're counting them so we can eat bread), lots of oregon beer, a peach rasberry cake and a crawfish boil with crawdads we caught in the siuslaw. we even got a pre-view 1/2 pound of prosciutto from my favorite gourmet grocery so r could have cured meats on his birthday. we each chose one cheat and get to share them; i picked coffee and r picked fizzy water...its funny what foods/beverages people can't live without. and we decided salt was allowed.

i'm surprised at how hard it is to find local foods in the grocery stores around town. we live in the willamette valley, after all. we're surrounded by organic farms! but we've found only two grocery stores that offer any substantial amounts of local produce: Kiva and Capella's. other grocery stores offer bits and pieces of local foods (or at least foods that are labeled as local) so if we don't make it to Kiva or Capella's, we have to go 'round to several grocery stores. We can also get local foods at the specialty stores: Long's, Newman's, etc. Luckily, i stocked up on produce at the Saturday Farmers' Market and we were able to stop by the Thursday Farmers' Market to replenish.

on the other hand, putting so much planning into meals leads to excellent results. we've been eating wonderful, well-balanced, multi-course meals. this is partly because we probably chose the best month of the year to engage in this little eat-local exercise but also largely because we're just thinking so much about what we eat. not bad at all.

tart

E's dramatic tomato tart
Originally uploaded by agfachrome25

we are firmly sitting in the middle of tomato season and the livin' is good. all i want to eat are tomatoes: tomato sauce, gazpacho, salsa, tomato sandwiches, salads, you name it. i went to l&s's house for a potluck last week and we had accidental Iron Chef Tomato Battle: most of the guests brought tomato-based dishes. I brought this lovely tomato tart. I don't make pie crust enough to achieve any sort of expertise, but it was a competent attempt. I think next time I'd like to put a bit of cheese or maybe pesto (ooh!) as a bottom layer under the tomatoes to give it a bit more moisture. But even if the taste wasn't *exactly* what I wanted, it sure looked pretty.

happy passover!

gross
Originally uploaded by deepfry.

after a four month hiatus, i return to blogland to announce that i just consumed an entire jar of gefilte fish (in liquid broth, NOT jelly) over three days, day one being the first day of passover. i was out of horseradish but found a jar of jalapeno jelly in the back of my fridge. turns out it's a deeeelicious topping for gefilte fish. it also all goes quite nicely with matzah pizza, my favorite passover treat.

one jar of gefilte fish down the hatch. i'm kind of proud and kind of appalled.

Thanksgiving in two parts

This year was my first ever Thanksgiving away from family. i was a bit nervous about it, but, while i missed the fam, i had a lovely time. That april came in from bend certainly added to the fun of the holiday weekend. Thanksgiving was so much fun, in fact, that we did it twice.

Part One:
Thursday night, april and i went to bruce and ron's for thanksgiving dinner. we brought appetizers and soup: a biscuit-topped mushroom cobbler, crudite with sesame ginger dip, cranberry brie, artichoke dip and squash (acorn and delicata) soup. bruce served duck with cardamom and honey, braised cabbage, wild rice, fresh Hideaway Bakery bread, a pear pie and a pecan pie. the end result was, of course, quite non-traditional, but very seasonal and tasty. bruce has the magic ability to cook up anything without a recipe. he doesn't need 'em, doesn't use 'em. so, weather its baking a pecan pie or roasting a duck, he just fires from the hip and miraculously pulls it off every time. i'm deeply envious. i can do a lot of cooking without recipes, but baking? a mystery to me. i suppose years and years of baking and i'd, too, have a chance of success. in addition to bruce's general cooking know-how, he also has the nicest equipment of any home cook i've ever seen. pictured is his set-up. talk about deeply envious. i covet that gas range stovetop. and his pots and pans make me weak in the knees. sigh.

Part Two:
On Friday, april and i cooked up a more "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner. Because I'd probably melt or just keel over dead if i didn't have jello at least once a year. Since the smallest turkey at Long's came in at 15 pounds, we went with a whole chicken. We roasted the chicken with potatoes and onions, made chestnut mushroom stuffing, a jello mold and cranberry sauce. and wine, of course. we'd planned to make a pumpkin cheesecake but forgot, which is probably for the best. we baked the chicken upside down (oops!) but, stuffed with fresh sage and rosemary, it would've tasted good baked upright. actually, propped up on a beer can, it would've been a real classy treat. i love cooking with april even though we're both sort of type-A in the kitchen. i have the most fun making and then eating these elaborate meals with her.

lunch of champions

yuppie crack: fine meats and cheeses
Originally uploaded by deepfry.

with a pile of recipes to mark-up and a house full of distractions, i had no choice today but to head to Provisions to do work. it was roughly lunch time so i figured i should get some food. i ended up with a sort of Atkins-gone-wild meal: beet salad and, pictured, a meat and cheese plate. sopressato, prosciutto salato and four precious slices of culatello with a small wedge of mimolette. if atkins ate like this, its no wonder he died of heart failure. honestly, i tried to do it, but i just couldn't for the life of me get through that plate. it was so rich and so wonderful. i ate all four slices of culatello because it was melt-in-your-mouth goodness. it had the most perfect balance of saltiness and creaminess. the mimolette was initially appealing for its deep bright orange hue. as the cheese ages, it apparently darkens, eventually becoming almost completely black. it's a perfect complement to salty meats, strong enough to hold its own but not too stinky and pungent as to over-power. mmmm....yuppie crack!

perils of childhood

i'm at my favorite place to study and its bustling with holiday shoppers. thankfully, not a peep of christmas music to be found in provisions -- which pretty much forever secures my love for the place.

at a table across from me sits a girl who must be about seven years old. she is eating a giant chocolate chip cookie. or attempting to do so. her two (or maybe four, actually) front teeth are missing so she's shoving it towards her remaining back teeth and gnawing away. it's a crispy, crispy cookie, so it must hurt a bit to cram it against the side of her mouth. her left cheek is covered in melted chocolate. she occasionally takes a break from gnawing and licks the cookie for a while. it is completely adorable. but i vaguely remember being without front teeth and attempting to negotiate such terrific problems such as cookie consumption. ooh, and ice cream, so tasty, hurt so much against the exposed roots before adult teeth began to emerge. man, sometimes its tough being a kid.

favorite post-dinner party breakfast

favorite post-dinner party breakfast
Originally uploaded by deepfry.

as soon as i get my pictures up, i'll blog about my wonderful thanksgiving dinner. for now, since, i'll post a photo of my breakfast from a few days ago: cold, leftover artichoke dip with crackers or olive ciabatta.

mmmmm.......

artichoke dip so good that my cat will eat it. uhm, not that one should necessarily rely on one's cat's taste as a measure of culinary success. but my cat does have a very sophisticated palate.

frozen dinner.

dinner.
Originally uploaded by deepfry.

as my regular readers (i.e. my mother) know, sometimes my cooking activities lean towards the lesser end of the culinary spectrum. last night i did some preliminary thanksgiving shopping at Trader Joe's and Albertson's. This year is my first thanksgiving away from the family. Luckily, i've been invited to what will be a fabulous dinner with good friends and a. is coming into town, which makes any weekend more fun. since we're doing a non-traditional dinner tomorrow (duck, scallops, no turkey, no pumpkin pie, etc.), a. and i are making a more traditional dinner on friday. and what says tradition more than jello? nothing that i can think of. So i went to Albertson's to get four boxes of jello (lime, orange, lemon and strawberry) and four containers of cool whip.

i was planning to drop my groceries at home and go to Provisions to try their pizza. but then, wandering down an aisle in albertson's, i spotted a DiGiorno's garlic bread pizza (new!) sticking out of someone's shopping cart. i feel strongly that a single person living alone should do his/her best to avoid frozen pizzas at all costs. it's a gateway quick dinner. too much frozen pizza and next thing you know, you're eating Hungry Man t.v. dinners, then soup out of a can and eventually your dinner is nothing but a bag of doritos and a 2-liter of coke. i'm also incapable of eating a reasonable amount of frozen pizza...it's just slightly too processed to taste like real food so it doesn't actually feel like i'm eating a dinner. but i caved. that pizza looked too good to pass up. i will say, in my defense, that i spruced it up a bit with some fresh red and yellow peppers, red onion, basil, oregano and parmesan cheese. but mostly i enjoyed it in all its scary processed glory.

George T. Stagg

buuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...............

received a very thoughtful last minute invite to a gathering of foodies and wine nerds last night. i had committed earlier that day to a night of work on the final (group) project for one of my courses, but it was in my longterm Eugene foodie interest to attend the party. and besides, i have a weak will when it comes to good food and drink. okay, this late in the semester, i have a weak will when it comes to anything other than homework.

so i suited up and biked through the rain to the party, hosted by my Provisions friend and his lovely wife. the food was terrific, the wine divine. folks from soriah, marche, the downtown wine shop (Oregon Wine Tasting Room??) and so forth, swirled around sampling pinots and so forth. everything was going swimmingly and it occurred to me that i might do some homework when i finally returned to my apartment, refreshed.

and how did it happen? maybe it was the ham and biscuits. or the deepfried yam fries. but suddenly, our host was bringing out his rather varied collection of bourbon. at this point, things grow fuzzy. i remember tastes (smokey and almost soaplike, sharp, vanilla) but very few names. only my favorite, George T. Stagg (second bottling, no longer available), which had that lingering flavor of vanilla. i didn't feel like i'd had any significant amount, just a few small sips of each. maybe a few extra sips of the Stagg. but i tell ya, when i started bicycling home, it occurred to me that my head was just ever so slightly tingling. and things were spinning ever so subtley. and then when i went to bed, i could not for the life of me fall asleep. actually, i fell asleep but woke up completely refreshed just a few hours later. i read some of my book, watched the rest of a movie i'd started earlier that day, and even contemplated the pile of dirty dishes in my kitchen (didn't wash them, though -- i wasn't that desperate). even though it's a depressant, i can only blame the bourbon for my insomnia. i'm not sure why i blame the bourbon...i guess i figure its some sort of divine retribution for drinking on a school night.

anyways, now i'm at work and i'm exhausted.

bite-sized pizza

last night we consumed Lou Malnati's pizza, sent frozen and packed in dry ice by my wonderful and caring mother. At the very same moment, 2500 miles away, my parents and my brother were also eating a Lou Malnati's pizza (probably with sausage and onions, maybe garlic). Image that. What synergy!

I had a few friends over and we all enjoyed our bite-sized slices. Because I'm a selfish bastard, I ate two pieces, the second while hidden away in the kitchen, away from everyone else. Its just that there was one extra piece and, well, dividing it up would have been nonsense. And leaving it would have been unacceptable. So, what could a girl do? A girl who regularly pines for and is so painfully denied the crispy cheesy perfection of Malnati's? I had no other option.

The frozen malnati's pizza is a far cry from a fresh, steaming hot pizza right out of the malnati's oven. Mmm...pizza that you have to cut a piece at a time because the cheese will melt across the pieces, essentially gluing them together. and perfectly crispy crust that must have cornmeal in it. I must figure out how to make Malnati-style pizza. The first thing I need, no doubt, is a 40 year old deep dish pizza pan, perfectly seasoned from decades of use. If you have one, I'll buy it from you. But, you know, I'm confident that with time, equipment and thoughtfulness, i could recreate most dishes. Not easily, necessarily, but eventually. But, I am fairly certain that no matter how hard I tried, I could never actually make a deep dish pizza that tastes like Malnati's. It just doesn't seem doable. Malnati himself is a second generation Chicago pizza man, being the son of Uno Pizzaria's original chef, Rudy Malnati. Sigh. Has anyone ever made a good, realistic deep dish pizza.

p.s. I am currently having a big fight with my friend about Chicago style thin crust pizza. He insists that Chicago can't claim both deep-dish and thin crust. He's from Iowa. He's just jealous.

House of Noodle

I've eaten at House of Noodle, the Vietnamese and Chinese place down the street from my house, two nights in a row, both times with lovely company. I'm fighting a cold and if I eat pho at least daily, I might just beat that cold down. I think I might go there for dinner again tonight, if only to support them. I'm a bit afraid that House of Noodle isn't doing very well. On both Wednesday and Thursday night, we were at one of two or three occupied tables in a room of empty booths. They're downtown, so I'm hoping they get good lunchtime business. I was a bit bitter that they changed their salt&pepper squid recipe, but I still think it's a great place. If they're really struggling financially, one can't criticize too harshly for strange menu inconsistencies. And the woman I assume to be the owner is so sweet and concerned, and leans in closely over you to inquire after your meal. She reminds me of my grandmother. So, if you live in Eugene, please eat at House of Noodle. Do it for me!

p.s. I stole this photo from Flickr. I have no shame.

fall omelette

fall omelette
Originally uploaded by deepfry.

i am currently enjoying a delightful overstuffed, well-done fall omelette. leeks and rainbow chard from the market, cheese from the fancy cheese shop and mushrooms from my downstairs neighbors who picked them yesterday. and, er, well, fake sausage. i love fall produce for its colors, its heartiness and its versatility. anything that is perfect for soups or omelettes is a food for me. this omelette is so good that i just realized, just this second, that i didn't even to make coffee, so caught up was i in my breakfast.

i love sunday mornings. i wake up around 8am, lay around in bed until 8:30am (gosh, i'm getting old--"sleeping in" until 8:30am!). finally get up, put on some sunday morning music (today: jenny toomey), throw some slippers and a sweater on to go grab the newspaper from the front stoop. then come back in to make a big overstuffed omelette and some coffee to enjoy while reading the paper. it's possible that celebrating this makes me a 60 year old man, but whatever.

yesterday was the last day of the market this season. technically, it will move over to the lane county fairground for "holiday market," which goes until the end of december. some will argue that this means that saturday market isn't actually over, but i, only three blocks from the outdoor market and about a mile and a half from the fairground, beg to differ. i haven't made it to the fairground market, but i know its not the same. fall is the best time of year for saturday market. how lovely to bundle up, trundle down to the market, stopping to get coffee on the way, and wander around the stalls, surrounded by beautiful apples, squash, leeks, and more. so i guess i love saturday mornings, too.

you know. i guess that i just really love weekends. yay weekends!!

delivery!

delivery!
Originally uploaded by deepfry.

my mom rocks! look what i got in the mail. two frozen chicago style deep dish pizzas, which are now safely tucked away in the freezer. she sent it to my office so it wouldn't sit all day defrosting. doug, in the mailroom, put the pizzas (in a giant box) into the loading dock freezer and duct taped it shut since things have disappeared from that freezer.

i have two pizzas: one cheese, one veggie. so now the big questions:
1. when do i eat them?
2. do i share them with friends?