Delicious Bread Crumb Topping Makes a Simple Meal Special

 I have recently become addicted to bread crumbs.  Not boring bread crumbs added into things to thicken them, but reveling in the deliciousness of the crumb itself.  You can start with any base: ready made bread crumbs (Panko style is good), rye bread, white, day old pita or whole wheat bread.  I really like to use dark rye bread or Dave's Killer 21 Grain Bread.  If you want a gluten free option, you can use crumbled up potato chips instead for a decadent topping.  (Be sure to use a thicker chip, like Tim's Cascade.)

Play Date with Metal

I had a zillion things I was supposed to do last weekend but I was reckless and blew them all off to go play with metal all day Saturday at the Tacoma Metal Arts Center.

It's my friend Kimberly's fault.  She had a gift certificate for a class and asked if I was interested. I studied making jewelry at North Seattle Community College way back in my early twenties and after getting my degree in sculpture, I haven't played around much with jewelry except tinkering around with reclaimed tin and wire work.

Hosting a Blind Wine Tasting

 Hosting a regular old wine tasting is fun and all but once a year, we like to hold a blind wine tasting party.  This is when nobody knows what they are drinking and they try to guess.

It's best if you pick a theme.  You could try different varietals, say Merlot, Cabernet, Malbec, and Grenache and try to have everyone pick out which one is which.  This is harder than you think.  When we went to a tasting like this with 6 reds, only one person of 12 of us had even 3 correct!  You could pick regions to compare: a French Merlot versus a Washington Merlot, for example.

I decided on a Malbecs around the world tasting.  Now all I needed was the wine and the supplies.

True Diary of a Part Time Vegan

What's that?  How can you be a part time vegan?  Let me tell you a little story about my journey to being a part-time, nearly full-time vegan.

I started getting more interested in healthy eating about 2 years ago.  I tried off and on over the years to go to the gym, which I thought was the number one thing about being healthy.  I was in my late thirties, had just run a half marathon and realized that I actually wasn't in that good of shape and I was overweight.  Like, oh, so many other people, I joined Weight Watchers.

Making a Holiday Tree Part 1

 

UPDATE:   Check out my Making a Holiday Tree Part 2 to see the results!

Can you believe I just turned 40 and I have never, ever put up a holiday tree in my adult life?  I think I had a roommate or two over the years that put one up but I never had to deal with watering one or worrying about needles falling all over the place or the cat climbing into the branches.  I don't really celebrate Christmas except to eat a big meal with family and friends but this year I am going all out.  

We are hosting my husband's company party for starters.  And then having a big dinner party a week after that and then hosting lots of family members the actual week of Christmas.  So I decided it was time to get it together, and decorate.  

Homemade Dog Biscuits

 Dog biscuits and treats are ridiculously expensive.  And full of weird additives.  Now, I am not an advocate of cooking my dog his food or anything, but I have pondered the idea of making him his own treats for over a year.  Luckily, we taught him to like carrots right off the bat and that is always a cheap, healthy treat to give him.  (OK, maybe he doesn't even absorb anything because his poo is orange the next day but we figure it gives him fiber.)

40 X 40: Make Green Gazpacho

 I somehow always manage to choose the food items off my yearly lists and this year's 40 x 40 is no exception.  Straight to the food items!  I have felt a master of the universe as far as red gazpacho goes, but had never tried a green gazpacho.  No green tomatoes here.  This is a solid base of spinach and cucumbers and green peppers and hearty bread.


 It comes from one of my most favorite cookbooks---Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi.  This London based Jerusalem transplant owns several restaurants and they all sound delicious.  On a whim, I tried to make a reservation at Ottolenghi a couple months out.  I thought, hey, if I can get a reservation, we will find a way to get to London this summer.  No go.  This guy is as popular as Momofuku or Per Se. 

What is so interesting about this vegetarian cookbook is that it is not arranged in the typical salad- soup-entree manner.  Instead, the various chapters are made up of different vegetables and vegetable families.  Almost all of the ingredients are readily available with maybe only a few items coming from your local southeast Asian or Middle Eastern market.   I also made the eggplant dish that is on the cover and it came out as beautiful as his picture!  His other book Jerusalem (co-authored with Sami Tamimi) has meat in it and is a fabulous book as well.  Another one that is already out in Europe is coming out in the states in September and I am already on the waiting list!

 

I took a nutrition class this year (post on this coming soon) and it made me really stop and think about what I am eating.  I know I cook a lot from scratch already and use a lot of whole foods and eat a lot of vegetables.  But the class really gave me an understanding of a plant based diet which led me further down the rabbit hole in terms of vegetarianism, even veganism.  (Is that a word?  I don't think so.)  Anyways, more posts coming on that as well but for now I just want to show you how delicious this green gazpacho was.  

 I was totally stressed because one of my husband's employees--vegetarian!---employee was coming over for dinner and usually I try to impress at my dinner parties with some big fancy meat thing so this was a little test for me to rearrange my thinking.

And it went off without a hitch! 

Time to De-Clutter

 I am hitting up the Spring cleaning a little late this year, but better late than never!  At the beginning of the year we started to change our diet into a more Mediterranean style diet with a lot less processed foods and more lean meats/fish, olive oil, tons of fruits and veggies, and nuts.  Nuts.  I try to buy things in bulk and then all the little bags get stacked up and I think I am out of one nut and buy more and the other day my husband was going through the cupboard and asked, 'Why do you have 3 packages of pecans?  And not any almonds?'  It was time to take action.  Hopefully these jars will do the trick.   

While I was at it, I realized we needed to clean up the sloppy front entrance to our house.  We always wanted a nice entry way and now we have been in this house a year and a half and have a nice entry way that looks completely slovenly.  I kept thinking we would get some sort of wardrobe to put there but it never happened.   

This is a step in the right direction but I just need to keep control of the shoe situation.  

Finally, the opposite side of the entry was getting pretty cluttered too.  The fireplace screen is there to block the dog from getting to the cat's food.  But I think it just looked cluttered.   

Enter red leather bench!  This solved a whole bunch of problems.  I put all the hats and gloves that were cluttered around the shoes into the bench for easy access.  The bench has the extra bonuses that we can move it into the living room for extra seating at parties and use it to take our shoes on and off in the entry instead of tromping dirt all over the house.  We are still going to feed the cat here but I just move the screen blocking the dog in the kitchen to in front of the food when the dog is loose.  

And the cat has a new place to perch too.  Now I only have about 10 other spaces to tackle!

40 X 40: Visit Object Focus: The Bowl Exhibit

Visiting this exhibit as the Portland Museum of Contemporary Craft was a great way to start out my 40 X 40 list and get my creative juices mobilized.  This exhibit, Object Focus: The Bowl is really about trying to create a dialogue within the arts community.  They encourage you to write, draw, respond to what you see at the museum and make you reflect upon the humble bowl and how little it has changed over thousands of years.The second part of the exhibit, starting May 16th, is going to be more interactive with a bowl library and events with local chefs and the like.  I guess I will have to go back and see the exhibit again! 

 The day I went to the museum it was free to go in because they are in the middle of installing the second part of the bowl exhibit.  I bought a membership anyways because I have been wanting to support this museum for a long time.   I was the only visitor wandering around among the bowls and the docent was very enthusiastic about talking about my favorite bowl or answering any questions.

Above is a bowl made of plastic knives.  Below is a carved stone Native American mortar. 

I love all the variety of bowls but felt like they shied on the side of too few bowls and the 50's and 60's were entirely over-represented for my taste.  I would have preferred a few more made in the last year as well as some more that were over 100 years old.

The one below is a hand painted wooden bowl.  Little tiny dots.  Lovely.  The plexiglass case made it hard to get a good photo.

Scale, texture, color; when you stop to look at them abstractly, they are little tiny sculptural works of art.

Even though I like to go to this museum every year, I actually heard about the exhibit on the New York Times in a great article about the impetus to put together this show and a link to the tumblr page where you are encouraged to upload a photo of a bowl and explain why it is interesting/important to you.  You can spend a couple of hours just reading the stories and looking at all the beautiful bowls attached by readers. 

These little bowls caught my eye.

Finally, when pressed by the docent on what my favorite bowl was, I had to admit it was this little brushed silver bowl.  This surprised me a little as I came in thinking I would be drawn to an organic, hand sculpted one.  Probably made on a metal lathe, but also possibly hand forged, it is absolutely delicate and strong at the same time.  And so, so soft with that finish.  I wanted to hold it and run my hands along the inside of it.  

If you are anywhere near Portland, get thyself to the Museum of Contemporary Craft!  (But after May 16th so you can catch all the added interactive goodies!)