Batter-Splattered

Now that I've settled into summer and everything is all big and green, I've come to the conclusion that my new house ... I still think of it as new -- I've only been here seven months -- that's new, right? I think you have to inhabit a place for a full year and see all four seasons before you can stop calling it new.

My new house is like a little oasis in the trees. My goal in life when I was a kid was to live in a house where, when you looked out the windows, all you would see is trees. A lofty goal, I know -- you guys can go be doctors and lawyers, I just wanna live in a treehouse. No neighbors. No buildings. Just green, green, green.

I've attained my goal. And if everyone would stop all this incessant talk about foreclosures, I might actually be able to sleep through the night without lying awake, worrying about every little penny I spend.

I guess I should be looking around for a new goal. But I don't really feel like pursuing my other childhood goal which was to be a forest ranger. Or a fish and game biologist (I had a thing for fish hatcheries). I didn't pursue those goals. I think there was too much math and mathy-science involved. So in the alternative, I just take lots of hikes and commune with nature in my own way. No math involved there. Unless you need to use a compass. Oh geez, the compass with its true north and magnetic north and adding this and subtracting that. I carry the compass and some instructions on how to use it ... probably wouldn't work for a fish hatchery though, like if suddenly all my fry started to die and I said, Wait! I have the instructions right here in my pack.

My birthday was this week. When I told my husband I wanted a porch swing for our rather sparsely-furnished screened-in back porch, he whined and said, "Oh, don't get a porch swing... I need to replace the heads on my pickup."

He's a peach, isn't he? Not only would he begrudge me a porch swing, but notice how he also expected I would be the one to go get said porch swing. For myself. On my birthday. I told him he'd better come home with a cake or he was a dead man.

Not to worry though -- mom gave me a fat gift certificate to REI and I loaded on frivolous purchases aplenty. Sunglasses. A pair of pants to yoga in. A pair of very frivolously priced pants to live in. I love Patagonia. And ordinarily, I'd be clinging to that gift card, waiting for sales and coupons but I don't know what came over me. I was there in the store and decided to go crazy and buy stuff. FULL PRICE stuff. Unheard of, for a thrifty gal like me. I was livin' large that day.

Recipes, you say? Wait, you come here for food and recipes, not just girl talk?

Well okay then. Let me tell you about camping food.

I spent this past weekend camping at a public use cabin up near Fairbanks. The Glatfelder Cabin on Quartz Lake.

There were raspberry bushes growing from the roof!:

How fabulous is that?

But poor Charlie Glatfelder had a rather dismal story. He was living in California and one day he pulled out a map and drew a circle around a blue dot right in the middle of Alaska. That blue dot was Quartz Lake.

 

He loaded his military surplus jeep and drove up and got a homestead claim on the lake and lived the first winter in a walled tent on stilts (to avoid bears?) The following summer he dug a root cellar and lived in that the next winter. Then the next summer he built himself a cabin. At first, everything went great -- he had a garden and traded fish or worked for other stuff he needed. But then eventually he lived on just the fish he caught in the lake, pike mostly, and became malnourished. In the 50s, some U.S. Marshalls went to Quartz Lake looking for a missing person and found old Charlie crazy as loon, convinced people were trying to poison him, and they shipped him off to an institution in California where he recovered but never returned to the lake.

Grim, huh? Yeah. Luckily it doesn't get dark here at night in the summertime, otherwise I might have been thoroughly spooked by the history of the place. Some of the people who wrote in the cabin log book said they awoke in the middle of the night to find faces pressed up against the windows, staring in at them.

View from one of the windows:

 

I took one look at the inside of that outhouse (only three walls and overlooking a hiking trail, hhmmm) and decided there weren't enough moist towelettes in the world to fight off dirty like that. So I employed the bushes that weekend -- and from the aroma while employing the bushes, I'd say pretty much everyone else did the same. When camping, you just have to yield to the dirty.

Anyway, the window-faces were geocachers apparently. It's a good thing they didn't come around the nights I was there because I'm pretty sure I would have jumped through the glass at them and run into the woods screaming, "Glatfelder's back! Glatfelder's back!"

I felt especially bad for poor malnourished Charlie because, boy, did we ever eat good that weekend. I felt a twinge of guilt every time I sat on a stump and  tucked into yet another wonderful meal, all cooked in foil packets, the king of campfire cooking methods.

The only thing not packeted would be tbone steaks cooked on a grate over that very fire. Otherwise, it was salmon with roasted red bell peppers, red onions, and portobello mushrooms all drizzled with sesame oil. Fresh vegetables and fresh herbs drizzled with olive oil. Scrambled eggs with vegetables and salmon or sausage. My mouth waters just thinking about it.

If you should find yourself planning a camping trip, I promise you can't go wrong with the following recipes. I hope you have as good a time in the great outdoors as I did.

Bundle of Veggies

Serves six

Feel free to use other vegetables and herbs. I added asparagus and sprigs of fresh herbs like thyme and rosemary.

• 8 ounces whole fresh mushrooms
• 8 ounces cherry tomatoes
• 1 cup sliced zucchini
• 1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon butter or margarine, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon salt or salt-free seasoning blend
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 dash pepper

Pile vegetables and herbs on a double thickness of heavy-duty foil (about 18 in. square). Combine the remaining ingredients; drizzle over vegetables. Fold the foil around vegetables and seal tightly. Grill, covered, over medium heat for 20-25 minutes or until tender.

Earth, Sea, and Fire Salmon

Serves eight

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 (8 ounce) salmon fillets
• 4 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced
• 2 large red onions, sliced into rings
• 1 jarred roasted red pepper, drained and cut into strips (I did this at home before the camping trip because it's kind of messy and oily) 
• 8 ounces portobello mushrooms
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon or more of sesame oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. On doubled-up sheets of foil, arrange potato slices in a layer. Season with a little salt and pepper. Place a layer of onions over the potatoes, then a layer of roasted peppers, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper as desired. Place salmon fillets over the vegetables and season with lemon juice, salt and pepper. Place whole mushrooms over the fillets, and drizzle them with sesame oil. Seal foil tightly and roast until fish flakes easily with a fork, and potatoes are tender.

Cod and Cauliflower and Whale-Watching

Last weekend I went on a day cruise in search of gray whales migrating north on their way from Baja, California up to the Bering Sea. It was a very rare sunny day in Seward, Alaska -- the captain said it had been raining for two weeks straight -- the luck I have, I tell you.

 

That sea lion on the top there? That's how I feel on this long holiday weekend. Just lolling about.

In the end we didn't spot any gray whales. But we did see a humpback whale and we got to float about and watch a pod of killer whales feeding on fish. My friend Annette took that particular opportunity to argue with some of the many small children on board the boat, particularly one talkative little boy trying to share his knowledge of marine mammals.

Little boy: "See that one over there? The one with the tall straight dorsal fin? That's a male."

Annette: "No, it's not."

Little boy: "Yes, it is! The females have shorter curved fins."

Annette: "No. That's not true."

Little boy: "Well, that's what my marine mammal book says."

I was all like, I don't know, Annette. He seems pretty sure of himself. And he has a book.

He slinked off, thoroughly dejected.

He must have been pretty stoked though later when the captain said over the intercom: "And if you'll look at the killer whale at two o'clock, that's a male. You can tell by the long tall dorsal fin."

After watching those whales feed on fresher than fresher fish, I came home with a fierce hunger. Luckily, I had some fresh cod in the fridge just waiting to be cooked up. And along with it, I made an old favorite, this cauliflower salad with white beans, feta cheese, fresh rosemary, and tangy vinaigrette dressing.

The original recipe is here. Their version calls for thinly-sliced Belgian endive but I usually leave that out, partly because it's good without it and partly because the markets here are hit-or-miss when it comes to finding something so exotic. Exotic for Alaska, anyway.

My favorite step in this recipe is the first -- you saute chopped fresh rosemary in olive oil till it's nice and fragrant then set it aside until you're ready to throw all the other ingredients together in a big bowl. By then, the whole house is full of that lovely aroma of olive oil and rosemary.

I usually make a huge bowl of this, even though there's only two of us to eat it (even my meat-loving other half loves it). That way, I can take leftovers to work with me for lunch -- because the cauliflower is uncooked, it stays crispy for days.

The cod recipe is here. It has a tasty shallot-lemon vinaigrette that you're supposed to split between the fish and a salad of fresh herb leaves. This time around, I just made a half recipe of the vinaigrette though and skipped the herb salad.

The flavors of these two recipes go together so nicely and they're both so easy to prepare.

Cauliflower, White Bean and Feta Salad

Serves six

1/3 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 1/2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 medium head of cauliflower, trimmed, cut into small florets (about 3 cups)
1 (15-ounce) can white beans (such as Great Northern or navy beans), drained
2 large heads of Belgian endive, trimmed, halved lengthwise, then thinly sliced crosswise
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese (about 3 ounces)

Combine oil and rosemary in small saucepan. Stir over medium heat just until fragrant, about 1 minute. Cool.

Whisk lemon juice, vinegar, lemon peel, salt, and pepper in small bowl.

Combine cauliflower, beans, endive, chives, parsley, and rosemary oil in medium bowl; toss. Mix in cheese. Add lemon juice mixture and toss to coat. Season salad with salt and pepper. 

Sauted Black Cod with Shallot-Lemon Vinaigrette

Serves two

Mix in small bowl to make vinaigrette:
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup minced shallots
1 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Sherry wine vinegar
1 teaspoons (packed) grated lemon peel
Salt and pepper to taste

Sprinkle with salt and pepper:
2 6- to 7-ounce black cod fillets with skin

Heat in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat:
1 tablespoon olive oil

Cook fish until just opaque in center, about 4 minutes per side. Arrange fish on plates and spoon vinaigrette over each.   

Portland fast-forward

So if you ever find yourself in Portland, here's my list of highly recommended spots to go, culinarily-ly speaking (it's a word, look it up):

Papa Haydn for dessert:

We had a really good salad there too, but you should go for the dessert -- I mean, look at all those accolades slapped on the front door in the photo above. We had the cossata -- a many-layered kahlua and espresso-soaked sponge cake with bittersweet chocolate ricotta filling.

Did I mention we ate like kings in Portland?

Plus, Papa Haydn is on 23rd. Excellent shops.

And there's some sweet thrift stores there too, including one manned by what I decided to call the 'thrift store trollops.' These two 20-something girls were working the front counter and there was quite the line ahead of me and in the line were all these 20-something guys who, I'm pretty sure, had heard tell of the thrift store trollops. The young men's fumbling attempts at conversation were met with the hungry eyed gaze of said trollops. Those girls would stop what they were doing to toss their dreads aside and fix an undressing-you-with-my eyes gaze upon those boys. It all made me want to impatiently call out, "Get a room!"

Go to Trader Joe's for just about anything -- everything is SO cheap and SO good -- including $5 wine that's good enough to make you cry because you know you'll never be able to find anything like it for anywhere near that cheap when you return home.

As we sipped, we were torn: on the one hand, such good wine, and on the other hand, growing more and more resentful knowing it can't be found at home. This Trader Joe's is a mere few blocks from Kelly's place, that bitch. Great. Now I resent her AND the cheap and wonderful wine.

Breakfast, courtesy of Trader Joe's:

We also got this great yogurt there. It's by Spega in Italy and it comes in these darling little jars that I packed home to use as little bud vases. It was so good it also made me a little resentful about having to come home to my regular old mix-it-yourself yogurt.

Trader Joe's, if you move to my neighborhood here in Alaska, I swear to god, I will throw my panties at you.

You have to go to Simpatica Dining Hall for Sunday brunch. Don't even ask me why. Just go.

Here's my fried chicken and waffles:

And other brunch shots:

You should also go to J & M Cafe in Southeast. That's where I had my first of many brunches and it was oh-so-good. You get to choose your own mug from the mug tree and help yourself to bottomless cups of Stumptown Coffee and should you decide to sit for a couple of hours and catch up with an old friend (hi Kelly!) and a new friend (hi Kristi!), the waiters will not care in the least. And the food's good too.

Oh yeah, and I went to Sur La Table, which is like my idea of heaven on earth.

power of voodoo

You remind me of the babe

What babe?

the babe with the power

What power?

power of voodoo

Who do?

you do

Do what?

remind me of the babe

David Bowie rocks. Didn't Cary Grant and Shirley Temple sing that song too, or some version of it, when she was teenager-ish?

Hey guess what? When I was in Portland I made a trip to Voodoo Donut on a Saturday morning, a hallowed place revered by those in the know -- a source of Swahili lessons, weddings by ordained ministers beneath a Holy Doughnut sign and a velvet painting of Isaac Hayes, and best of all, donuts with names like Grape Apes, Butter Fingering, Triple Chocolate Penetration, and glazed with things like nyquil and filled with pepto-bismol (if only the FDA would let them continue making those particular drug-laden delicacies) (but I don't think it'll happen anytime soon considering you need a DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION to get Advil Cold and Sinus in Oregon -- a lesson I learned the hard way when stricken by spring allergies because everything but everything was blooming there) (sweet, sweet Advil Cold and Sinus. I will battle the meth-heads to the death for my right to pop your sinus-clearing, non-drowsy formula. Don't ever change, my sweet).

But where was I?

Voodoo.

It was awesome.

My friend and I shared a maple bacon bar and a voodoo donut -- it only seemed right to order the signature donut.

While standing out front wolfing them down, my friends were trading tales of people trying to steal the voodoo signs and a girl who worked there was standing about on a break and she happily regaled us with tales of sign stealing escapades including one, if I heard right, by a person dressed as Homer Simpson. I think that's what she said. I was so consumed with consuming my maple bacon bar that I only listened with half an ear. Sometimes my tastebuds take over and my other senses suffer for it, if only temporarily.

I thought it was funny that every young guy in line wanted the cock and balls donut. Just because of the name. There was lots of young-guy-snickering happening in that line. According to the website, that one's also popular by the box for bachelorette parties.

I think I'm gonna try to make my own maple bacon bars using storebought maple bars and cooked-just-till-crispy strips of bacon. I'm so far away from the real thing but maybe my own creations will do. Till I can get back to Portland to have the real thing.

Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)

Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)

Put that magic jump on me

Slap that baby, make him free

portland

My goodness.

No, I haven't died and no, I haven't moved to Portland. But my weeklong vacation there has thrown me for a loop. I've been back for a week now but my suitcase still isn't unpacked (although it rather looks like it exploded all over the bedroom floor) and I simply cannot get back into the swing of posting posts no matter how hard I try. I haven't even tackled any recipes until this afternoon (more about those later).

I did, however, manage to clean both bathrooms, the refrigerator, and that rather neglected cabinet under the kitchen sink where we keep the trash and recycling bins -- if only we were the types to brew up all those coffee grounds I vacuumed out of there, we'd be in java for weeks! Oh and I bought some lovely arctic dwarf willows to build myself a hedge out front. I do love a hedge. Two lilacs. A mess of herbs and vegetables. That greenhouse is doing its job this weekend. And I had a million and one Portland photos to go through and touch up.

So you see, I haven't just been navel-gazing. I've been busy. And that's why you've been staring at that darned creamed woodchuck recipe for over two weeks. My apologies.

Maybe I'll ease myself into things gently by writing about one swell Portland restaurant per post, interspersed with photos taken here and there around and about town.

Here goes...

See those dark clouds? We got rained on alot in Portland. Thank goodness for Marmot, taped seams, and cinching hoods, that's all I can say.

So apparently, all the freaks who lived in San Francisco in the early 1990s have migrated north to Portland, Oregon. My fellow gen-X-ers during that period in San Francisco could have been summed up in one word:

Smelly.

I'm pretty sure I was the only one who'd showered recently. If loving a daily shower is wrong then I don't want to be right.

That's why San Francisco reminded me of Portland. So very many freaks. But not as smelly.

Part of the Portland freak problem was that I relied so heavily on public transportation: freak central.

Pretty produce in a market on North 23rd.

But I ate well. Oh, did I ever eat well.

We ate here twice:

That's Angie there at the end of the line, waiting with other devoted followers for Apizza Scholl's to open on a Friday night. This was our second visit. God bless you, Apizza Scholls.

The pizza there had a siren song we could not resist. Even though we had a long list of highly-recommended restaurants to visit in Portland, we couldn't get this pizza out of our heads. Once bitten, twice as hungry. Our first visit was so good it had Angie on the phone afterwards, sharing an in-your-face!, guess-where-I-just-ate? conversation with a friend who learned about this place on No Reservations and who really really wants to go. HA! In. Your. Face. Or something more gracious.

Between our two visits, we had the apizza 'margo'rita, the apizza amore (with capicolla, or cured pork shoulder) (yum), the sausage pizza (with housemade sausage), and best of all, the tartufo bianco, drizzled and dripping with truffle oil. It had me licking my fingers and my plate. When they brought that pizza out and we got a hit of the heady aroma of that truffle oil... Oh my!

I'd like to build some bamboo fences like these ones we saw at the Japanese Gardens.  In fact, I want one of everything we saw at the Japanese Gardens

Those were some lovely leftovers too. In fact, while waiting (and waiting and waiting) for my bus to show up so I could go home and dig into those leftover slices of heaven, I must admit I got rather impatient. And indignant. Freaking buses. Holding me up. Don't they know I have pizza waiting for me at home... all that may or may not have been muttered loud enough to make the bus stop freaks back away from me.

Aahhhhhhhhhh, Apizza Scholls. Your thin, slightly charred crust (both crispy and chewy) and lovely, simple toppings have ruined me for any other pizza on the planet. Seriously. I ordered some at Fletchers the other day and all I could think was: "Not Apizza Scholls."

An aside: I like that restaurants in Portland have rules. Some people might not appreciate that. They're more of that totally ridiculous ilk that believes the customer is always right. If I had a restaurant, there would most definitely be rules and any diner who didn't like them could take a hike.

For instance, at Apizza Scholl's you can only have three toppings. And only one of those toppings can be meat. They're the experts. Trust them. And they make their dough daily by hand from four simple ingredients, flour, water, salt and yeast, letting it ferment over 24 hours with a minimal amount of yeast. Once they run out of dough, they're out. As their website says, "Some days we may simply run out of dough... there is nothing we can do about that."

See what I mean?

Rules.

bon voyage / creamed woodchuck

I'm off to Portland for a week -- my camera's packed and I'll be back soon with plenty of photos to share and tales to tell about the beer, the donuts, the thrift stores, the ocean, and brunch here.

 

I'll leave you with this recipe for Creamed Woodchuck my cousin just emailed me along with the question, "What do you suppose a 'kernel' is?"*

Creamed Woodchuck

Originally Published November 1942

Skin and cut a 6- to 8-pound woodchuck into serving pieces (being careful to remove the kernels under the forelegs and in the small of the back). Soak the pieces for at least 3 hours (overnight is better) in salted water to cover. Wash the pieces well, rinse them in several fresh waters, and drain thoroughly. Put the meat in a stewpot with boiling water to cover and let it boil violently for 15 minutes. At the end of this time the original quantity of water will be reduced by half, and the meat will have retained all its juices. Reduce the flame, and let the meat simmer gently until it is tender. Add 1 generous cup heavy sweet cream, 2 tablespoons butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Note that this is the first time that salt and pepper have been added. Simmer for 5 minutes longer, then thicken the gravy with a little flour, stirred to a paste with cold water. Serve the creamed woodchuck with baking powder biscuits and boiled yams.

*just in case you're wondering, kernels are little red glands -- you know I couldn't leave that un-Googled.