Tonight (a Monday): Leftover spinach and spicy lamb from dinner at an Indian restaurant last Friday Leftover roasted cauliflower from Saturday Leftover Morrocan spiced spaghetti squash with pine nuts from Sunday All with a glass of 2005 Two Barns Oregon Pinot Noir opened tonight. I know, not a leftover. But, after sniffing the bottled opened [...]

A friend alerted me to an unusual event in West Seattle, Friday March 12. Pig Breakdown Class. What? The Swinery, a pig-focused (duh!) butcher and food establishment has been renovating its shop. To help fund the project, they hosted a class on how to butcher a pig. Chef Gabriel, a friendly and enthusiastic character greeted [...]

I went to the relatively new Trader Joes in my neighborhood this week. I haven't shopped in this store for years. I don't understand why it is so popular. I found the produce section to be tiny, with no indication of where the produce came from (those red bell peppers likely shipped all the way [...]

Tuesday we joined friends at a new-ish restaurant in Seattle, Cicchetti (http://serafinaseattle.com/cicchetti/). It is a small plates joint (do we really need another in Seattle???), many hit the mark, but not all. One unexpected hit was a Moroccan carrot salad. Last night I made up my own version: 2 carrots, peeled, and then either grated [...]

2009 Solstice Celebration and Tree Olympics, by the numbers 57 people attended the Glosten/Stutz SCTO this year, ages 4 to well over 50. With 6 per team, 5 teams ran "Team Tree", with Team 5 taking the gold. Twenty one folks attempted the Caber Tree Toss; the longest distance 24'5", the shortest, minus 3'. Twenty-seven [...]

Le Pigeon, in southeast Portland, has a warm, pleasantly disorganized atmosphere with its open kitchen, stacks of preserves on the wall and dessert menu on a chalk board. The room has several tables, some clearly communal and shared by several parties. About 1/3 of the seats are at the bar. My husband David, and I [...]

A group of friends and I celebrated my husband's birthday at Sitka and Spruce. It is the second time David and I had been to this wonderful restaurant hidden in strip mall on Eastlake Avenue. We started with "hot olives" - a dish of warmed olives with herbs and spices. I was amazed at how [...]

No one needs another food blog, but why not? I enjoy food and eating and trying new recipes and learning about food chemistry. culture and politics. And I enjoy writing about it. So there you have it.

I so enjoy it when I go to a restaurant and the following two things happen. First, I am inspired to go home and make a similar dish or type of dish, and second, that I have something that I'd never make at home. Both of these things happened when I joined my husband and [...]