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June 11, 2007

Seattle Notes

It's been two years since I hit the road for a coast-to-coast adventure of few plans, and that was also the last time I made it home to Seattle. The weather last week was just what good Seattle-in-June weather should be - rainy, and cool, with that combination of low-lying clouds and ground mist that makes visibility while driving kinda uncertain. The excuse for the trip was my dad's 65th birthday. The party was fun, and we managed to pull off the surprise of my being there. He didn't know I was in town until I pulled up in the rented blue PT Cruiser to pick him up for the party. That surprise was great.

I spent the week at a friend's place, with the friend, his girlfriend, and his kids sometimes there and sometimes not there. It was a nice feeling - sorta like flopping at friend's the way you might expect to do in college - but at older ages and with more surrounding adultness. Hooked up for dinner with Bridget, my former MA buddy who returned to the Seattle area after surviving that program and has been in the part-time instructor saga/challenge since then. She's talking about going to Korea for a year to teach. Mixed feelings on that one - good for her, great experience to have, but I'll miss her, even though I probably wouldn't have seen much of her iin that year anyway. I spent the last night with Elana, my best friend of - well, we figured just about 28 years now. We didn't have enough time to catch up on everything, but we did get the important details covered. I hope when I am her age I look as fabulous as she does. Oh, wait. That's right. I am her age. Damn.

I didn't do all my usual touristy things while I was there, because the trip was too short and the weather not all that pleasant for a ferry ride when you packed for "summer" and got "late spring" instead. Still, there are a few things I can report.

1. Magus Books is still the coolest used book store in the country.
2. The University Farmer's Market has some of the best growers anywhere. In particular, the guy with the fabulous heirloom tomatoes should be a destination for every tomato lover.
3. Big bunches of bright flowers for $5 is one of the main reasons I so miss Seattle.
4. I am still (and always will be) a Husky, through and through.
5. Traffic in Seattle is awful - but it's worse in Everett, believe it or not.
6. Heffalumps can still cause great sorrow.

Dad and I spent Saturday bumming around the U-district and then popped over the Redmond to visit the Saturday Market where my stepmom sells her Wakky Shirts. As we're standing at the check-out counter at the University Book Store where I am buying purple Husky shirts in anticipation of the Huskies @ SU football game in the Carrier Dome on August 31 (got that everyone? The Huskies are coming to Syracuse to play football. Guess which side I'll be sitting on....) and I hear what sounds like the awesome Husky Marching Band. So I do some inquiring, and it is the Husky Marching Band, and it's on CD, and they sell the CD - so back in line I go. It was daddy's birthday, but he paid for all of the Husky stuff. What a great dad! Now I have the music that reminds me of the best days of my college life, ready to call up and get misty over anytime I want.

I bought some books at Magus, including an old (and, as Dad says "pre-mildewed") 18-volume set of the works of George Eliot (dad didn't pay for that part). And then, because the short way from the U-District to Redmond is 520, but getting to 520 meant trying to navigate Montlake Blvd. just as the gathering for Commencement was in full swing, we went around the top of the lake, and thus I could buy the fun little book On Bullshit at Third Place Books, another of the Seattle area's best places. Then, when we got to Redmond, he took me to the brand new Whole Foods Market there. OMG - a foodie's dream shopping place. There were samples of all kinds of great food, included plenty of organically grown fruit. Everything was just amazing - seafood, cheeses, meat, the food bars (including the sushi conveyor bar), the rows and rows of quality food, much of it organic, with choices in every category, and the BEST guacamole ever, anywhere. Yum. Sure, the whole organic movement is not without its critics, and there is a distrubing logic to the fact that burning the fossil fuels necessary to bring products of any kind, but organics in particular, from, say, Chile doesn't really do the think that organic "should" do. And, it's still the case that, as this particular location demonstrated so well, this kind of food shopping is a luxury of wealth. But, I think it's worth recognizing the efforts of a grocery chain to function on principles of sustainability.

All in all, it was a good trip.

Posted by cageyer at 09:31 AM | Comments (1)

June 04, 2007

This one's for academom...

Soup (loosely titled Chicken, Corn and Cauliflower soup)

1. Begin with a roast chicken. Eat what you want from it, and save everything that's left.
2. Pick off all the edible meat you can find and set aside.
3. Take the rest of the carcass - any meat remains, the bones and the skin - put it in a pot, and cover it with cold water - have the water be an inch or two higher than the chicken parts. If you want you can add a chopped onion or some chopped carrot, but the skin will bring a lot of flavor.
4. Bring the batch to a boil. Skim the foam, and then let it all simmer for at least an hour. MOre if you like.
5. Strain the batch and discard everything except the broth.
6. Chill the broth, then skim the fat. Your homemade stock is ready for use.

Oh - if you don't want to go through all this, just buy a couple of quarts of very good chicken stock (like Kitchen Basics). You'll need some of this anyway to supplement the stock you made.

Now for the "real" soup. The "list":
chicken stock
carrots
onion
frozen cauliflower
frozen corn
chicken meat
cream or half-n-half


1. Chop a small onion, a couple of carrots and maybe a celery stalk (if you have one on hand). Choose a pot big enough to hold the batch of soup you want to make.
2. Heat the pan and add enough oil to cover the bottom. I use a combination of oil and butter, but the butter is optional.
3. Saute the vegetables until they begin to soften, about 5-10 minutes.
4. Add the chicken stock you made, and at least a quart of the kind you bought. Bring it all to a simmer.
5. Add a bag of frozen cauliflower. (I used the kind that came with roasted garlic sauce, and I used the sauce packet). Simmer until the cauliflower is really tender (this is important, because blending is next).
6. If you have a stick (or immersion) blender, use it to blend the pot of soup until there are few pieces of vegetables left. If you don't have a stick blender, you'll have to process the soup in batches, then return it to the pan.
7. To the now creamy looking soup, add some fresh carrot pieces, chopped to the size you want to eat. You can also add some diced potato. Simmer these for a bit, until softened, then add some frozen corn (amount is up to you). Bring it back to temperature and cook until the corn is nearly done.
8. Add the chicken meat you picked from the carcass.
9. Finish the soup with some cream, half-n-half, or even some cream cheese. This will give it a richer flavor, and if it's cream or cream cheese, it will thicken it even more. The goal here is fullness, though, not thickening. Bring it all up to a light simmer, let it blend a bit but not too long.

That's it - add salt and pepper to taste and enjoy!

(be sure to let me know if you try this, especially if anything goes wrong!)

Posted by cageyer at 07:26 PM | Comments (2)