Cake Decorating 101

My wonderful friends M. & J. gave me such a sweet birthday gift last year. They bought me a cake decorating class! How fun. I've never really decorated a cake, and it was harder than I thought. Here are my two final products. What do you think?

The flamingo was not my idea. In case you were wondering. The instructor had a rather bizarre obsession with flamingos for some reason (the classroom was decked out with every flamingo-related item you could possibly imagine), so she taught us how to create...flamingos. The cupcakes look a little better, no?

Mummy? Yak? Mummy? Yak?

Hello loyal fans! (sound of crickets) Sigh. Well, hello me. I know I haven't posted in a while...it's been a busy year. Rest assured, there have been plenty of great meals.

But what better way to start off a streak of posts than with...yak candy?! Ok, looks...pretty harmless, right?

WRONG. This "candy" is quite possibly the most foul thing I have ever tasted. When you open up this cute little package, it looks like this:

So what is it, exactly? It's sweet yak meat, wrapped in dried cod. That's the truth - could I possibly make that combination up?! It tastes like...dead mummy. Well, I can only imagine what a 1000-year old mummy would taste like, but if I knew, I'm sure it would taste as putrid as this "candy."

Here's a novel idea: instead of waterboarding, why not use these as form of torture? Stuff a few of these in someone's mouth and I guarantee they'll start talking.

Hog Island Oyster Company

A friend and I recently had a lovely picnic up in Marshall at the Hog Island Oyster Company. Here's a picture of a worker hauling off the oyster bed:




For $10, you get a dozen oysters, fresh from the farm bed - does it get much fresher than that?! These are Kumamoto, Atlantic, and Sweetwater oysters.









We also packed other picnic items, including walnut levain from Acme Bread, grapes, green olives, salami and a slab of boucheron, washed down with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale:

Exquisite meal at Boulevard Restaurant

There are many restaurants that simply don't live up to their hype. However, Boulevard isn't one of them. In fact, it exceeded my expectations.

I went there for lunch recently, and I savored every last morsel of my meal. To start, I had a salad consisting of delicate organic mixed lettuces with an herb vinaigrette, juicy snow queen peaches, and Mad River Roll goat cheese, with sprinkle of roasted hazelnuts and hazelnut pesto. For my entree, I had pan roasted Hawaiian Walu, with a summer vegetable relish, carola potatoes, wild arugula and a piquilllo pepper coulis.

It was so good I don't want to talk about it - it's like a dream I didn't want to wake up from.

Hot tamale!

Behold, the famous green corn tamales at El Cholo Mexican Restaurant in Los Angeles. This photo is admittedly terrible, but...there's not much I can do about that.

Anyway, these tamales have achieved cult status among Angelenos. They're made with fresh corn off the cob, corn masa, cheddar cheese and 0rtega chile, then steamed in its own husk. It comes with beans and rice but once you've gotten through the dense tamales themselves, you barely have room for anything more. Sweet and savory, these tamales are only available May through October and are worth the wait. However, the same can't be said for their other dishes. That is, of course, you like heavily cheese-laden, densely sour-creamed, highly Americanized Mexican food...which is a shame, because a lot of authentic Mexican food has a plethora of really subtle and beautiful flavors that shouldn't be masked.

Ballard Farmers' Market

The bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables at the Ballard Farmers' Market in Seattle, is simply astounding. When food is that fresh, just picked off the ground moments before being displayed on the tables, it just smells and looks different - more succulent, more fragrant, more everything! Check out these heirloom tomatoes - exquisite!


And how cute are these radishes? You can lick the dirt right off of 'em. Kidding.


I couldn't resist taking a photo of these gorgeously lush peonies, which happen to be my favorite flowers.

Tantalizing Tartine

Tartine is...how do I say this gracefully...gastroporn. It's an amazing bakery filled with the most luscious pastries, breads, and everything in between. When my friends E. and A. visited me last month, they had one food destination in mind - Tartine. Since the bakery is small, we took our treats to go and had an impromptu picnic at Dolores Park. I had 2 toasted slices of their fresh country bread, with butter and jam. A. had a decadent bread pudding, topped with fresh, ruby red strawberries. E. had a ham quiche, where the butter was dripping off the crust. Now that's a sign of a good crust! And the gluttons that we are, we also shared a sticky bun that was delicately flavored with orange zest. Se magnifique!