Finicky food guy

Poutine Mongolian Sauce pineapple glaze

2010-12-01T15:08:00.000-08:00

Just to make things silly, we coated some pineapple strips with the poutine gravy turned Mongolian sauce and grilled 'em up on a George Foreman grill!

Was really really tasty! The caramelized bits could make for a good hard candy.

Wait! I have an idea!

Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company... I'm a junkie!

2010-12-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

She's heard the stories ad nauseum. Hyperbole on my part? Skepticism is warranted.

This coffee makes me so friggin excited!

My usual order. Three of the most high octane roasts and blends that they make.

For my brother who loves anything and everything Kona.

Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Co.
1330 Pacific Avenue Santa Cruz, CA 95060 (831) 459-0100

This is my favorite coffee place. Period. Central Coast California knows how to roast beans for straight up drip coffee. This is something I really have yet to see in Seattle. Everything is espresso roast here and many places are very good at it, but when I find a light roast here it's always a little sour and, well, kinda nasty.

The Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company isn't the only place in the Bay Area that knows how to roast beans properly. There are probably dozens of places that do it well for drip purposes. Blue Bottle being the one that jumps to mind first.

Blue Bottle Coffee

66 Mint St, San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 495-3394

The thing with both of these roasters and their cafes is that they serve "pour over" cups of drip coffee. It's literally drip coffee. A melita filter is filled up with grounds and hot water is poured over the coffee and into your cup. Gravity, moisture and heat. It really doesn't get more simple than that! And if you want to get yourself very much wide awake, this is the best way to do it. It affords a level of control over your coffee that you just don't get via any other brewing method.

Want your coffee a little weaker? Pour it quickly.

Want your coffee a little stronger? Pour the water over the grounds in small, slow waves.

Here. Watch how it's done.

Onion for breakfast!

2010-12-01T10:16:00.000-08:00

So Kasia and I managed to pick up the plague from the niece and nephew. They're so adorable though that we've forgiven them for threatening our lives in a microbial fashion.

Yesterday we had spicy Mongolian style sauce with fried tofu and curried rice. Today, we're starting out on an equally onion-y, but more raw style.

Tomatoes and cucumbers with sliced raw, yellow onion with black pepper and salt. I literally licked the plate when I had finished this. I love onion!

TOGO'S!

2010-12-01T08:41:00.000-08:00

Togo's #9 with extra mustard and pepperoncinis.

Eating said sandwich on the beach along hwy 1 north of Santa Cruz

Togo's Sandwiches! A California staple. Amply packed sandwiches filled with all the sandwichy goodness you could ever want. When I moved to Seattle, this was one of the first things I began to dearly miss.

I was a vegetarian from 1989 to about 1997 (thank you Minsk), so my Togo's sandwiches of choice was their egg salad with extra mustard and cheddar or the cheese and avocado. My friend Brendan likes the #9. Hot pastrami with extra mustard and pepperoncinis. That's why the above photos were taken. He's in Oklahoma City now with no hope of having a Togo's #9 within 1500 miles, so I torture him with this.

Now, Togo's doesn't have the best sandwiches going. They are quite good and you get a lot for what you pay. Tasty soft bread, quality ingredients. It's like Subway or Quizno's.... only good.

Peanut butter chocolate soy ice cream!

2010-11-30T19:24:00.000-08:00

I ain't screwin' witcha! This stuff is actually quite tasty!

Hazelnut milk!

2010-11-30T18:55:00.000-08:00

Where have you been all my life?!?!?!

How to turn poutine gravy into Mongolian sauce

2010-11-30T17:35:00.000-08:00

Take yesterday's chicken stock based poutine gravy. Add hoisin and plum sauce as well as soy sauce, red pepper flakes, chopped green onion, Sriracha sauce, red pepper and a ton of black pepper. Add some more stock and bring to a boil so it's no longer a gelatinous blob.

Cube up a bunch of firm tofu

Fry up the tofu in vegetable and sesame oil with soy sauce, black pepper and salt

Cook up some jasmine rice with red pepper, black pepper and curry powder

Fry the tofu until brown and crispy on the outside. Extra firm works better.

Add caption

Pile the tofu on the rice.

Add reconstituted and spiced up sauce and chow down. Make sure to have some sort of milk handy. This stuff was a serious slow burn.

Scandinavian food in Seattle and why I'm so damned finicky

2010-11-30T16:37:00.000-08:00

Me gloating over my "made that day" lefse from the Scandinavian store in Ballard.

Nom!

Scandia Lefse

I love lingonberries. A lot like cranberries. Smaller. A little less tart and a whole lot more expensive.

This is the kind of crunchy cinnamon toast my grandma used to have in her pantry all the time. Apparently, it was a bad year for lingonberries as an 8oz jar of the stuff was going to set me back almost $15. I settle on Danish raspberry preserves instead.

I'm born of a Minnesotan Swede and a Norwegian Wisconsonian. I'm 6'4" tall. You'd think with this genetic and cultural makeup, I'd be prone to eating raw meat and gelatinous cod. Well, you'd be wrong. We moved from Minnesota to Los Gatos, CA when I was seven.

When we got there, I was introduced to Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Ethiopian, Thai, vegetarian... you name it. I realized food could have flavor and that spicy was a flavor I really really liked. Sorry to all of my Minnesotan relatives, but black pepper does not constitute spicy.

Weird thing though. Ever since I was a little kid, I didn't like large chunks of charred meat. Now, grind it up or slow cook it in some sort of broth for days and I'm good, but a good cut of meat? Never have been able to stomach it. Literally. Give me a good chuck of meat, cook it properly and chances are that it will trigger my gag reflex and make me vomit.

Weird? Certainly!

To top it off, I have severe seafood allergies. Shellfish will make me vomit profusely and fish in general will make me very sick to my stomach. People often tell me, "You don't know what you're missing!" They're right! I have no idea what I'm missing. Haven't been able to eat fish or shellfish since I was 8 when some of my aunt's famous clam chowder made me puke all over the place.

I wish I could enjoy all these culinary delights that all of my friends enjoy, but as you can tell from the above, my system just ain't havin' any of it.

I do eat well though! That is really the purpose of this blog.

Fancy ass poutine!

2010-11-30T16:01:00.000-08:00

Potatoes with paprika, salt, olive oil and pepper. Sauteed red onion. Chicken stock gravy with garlic, red pepper, black pepper and salt.

Closeup of onions and gravy

Green onion for garnish

Closeup of gravy boiling. Thickened with corn starch.

Closeup of onions caramelizing.

Add fresh Beechers Cheese Curds...

Drop in some caramelized onions...

Add gravy and garnish with green onions. Voila!

Coopers Sparkling Ale

2010-11-30T15:28:00.000-08:00

Coopers Sparkling Ale

In addition to good food that doesn't trigger my highly sensitive finicky-meter, I'm a fan of beer. Living in the Pacific Northwest really is an advantage in this regard. Over a decade or so ago, I used to brew with several friends. We brewed a crap-ton of beer over the course of about three years and even held our own Oktoberfest two years in a row. Josh and I specialized in Pales and IPA's while Darin focused on darker and more European style beers.

In my many years of sampling beers, I have developed a taste for lighter bodied, hoppier beers. Coopers Sparkling Ale lives up to the light bodied and dry end of the spectrum. Almost seems as if it were carbonated with or possibly even fermented with champagne style yeast. Very vibrant and bubbly with a fruity, apple-y after taste.

All around great beer, especially if it's hot!

Miami French sandwich shop. February 2009

2010-11-30T15:09:00.001-08:00

Two days after leaving Atlanta, we made our way to Miami. The drive was fascinating as I had never been to Florida before. The landscape was almost alien to what I was familiar with on the west coast.

We did our thing at the Miami VW dealership and then headed out to South Beach. I wanted to try some Cuban food!

However, two of the four of us were in their early twenties and not terribly adventurous cuisine-wise. They wanted to eat at all the places along the strip. Prime rib, steak, etc. etc. Tourist fare.

Well, Cuban food would be a no-go. I was determined not to eat on the strip though. I wanted to eat where the locals went. Being a stubborn sort, I insisted that the group give me 15 minutes to find somewhere to eat. Having never been to Miami and not knowing my way around, I resorted to my tried and true method of exploring new cities... get off the main drag and look for non-touristy types.

A little bit of exploring led us to this French sandwich shop. There were biker types outside, so I figured it was a reputable local establishment.

Boy howdy! Fresh made sandwiches. Perfect portions. Dane had the good sense to keep half of his and eat it the next morning. If I hadn't been so ravenous that night, I would have done the same.

OK Cafe. Atlanta, GA. February 2009

2010-11-30T14:22:00.000-08:00

One thing we tried to do on this trip was to try out local specialities. Favorite places from the locals.

In Atlanta we struck gold with the OK Cafe! Wehad good and bad BBQ in South Carolina. An awful, heart attack inducing mess of a hot brown, my first White Castle experience (not good), killer pizza in Chicago, so I was prepared for the food in Atlanta to be anywhere from bad to decent.

Well, well, well... Atlanta knows how to do down home, southern cooking! I got the best chicken pot pie I've ever eaten. Creamy sauce, lots of vegetables and chicken that falls apart in your mouth and topped with flaky puff pastry! Droooooool! Had corn, corn bread and collard greens for sides. Never had collard greens before. Didn't strike me as the greatest thing I had ever tasted, but it was decent and I suspect it's an acquired taste. Would totally try it again and again.

Then in walked decadence... caramel sauce covered banana bread pudding. Now I loves me some good bread pudding, but this was ridiculous. Moist. Dense. Not too sweet. Rife with banana-y goodness!

Food wise, this was the highlight of this trip.

South Carolina hot sauce! February 2009

2010-11-30T14:16:00.000-08:00

Maurice's BBQ. Couldn't afford the space to take any with me when we left, but I made sure to try out as much of it as I could while at lunch. You can order online!

Somewhere in South Carolina. February 2009

2010-11-29T16:24:00.000-08:00

I managed to not take pictures of the Hot Brown that we had in Lexington, KY. This is a good thing. It was an abhorrent nightmare of a food. It sounds good on paper, but what we got was awful. Though we did find a decent one in West Seattle of all places a couple of months later.

Anyway...

We're on our way to Myrtle Beach, SC and hungry. We're also in the south, so we figured we'd try out some BBQ. Are we ever glad we did! We picked Maurice's completely at random, but the food was excellent!

I got a pulled chicken sandwich with hush puppies and french fries. Just to complete the experience, I tried some real southern sweet tea. I think I developed diabetes from a single sip. Most southerners who drink this must have some hummingbird DNA in their makeup if they can get this stuff down.

Somewhere in Indiana. February 2009

2010-11-29T16:20:00.000-08:00

So, we had this incredible pizza in Chicago from Giordano's. I wasn't yet in the habit of taking pictures of all of my food just yet.

For example, here we are in the middle of nowhere in Indiana at a truck stop diner. I'm having this amazing turkey club sandwich and what do I take a picture of? Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce.

Cranberry, PA. Snowed out

2010-11-29T15:44:00.000-08:00

After Philly, we hit up Washington D.C. Nothing notable food wise as we were in the suburbs and busy beyond belief catching up on work. Mostly coffee and pastries and fast food.

We made our way past Pittsburg , PA and were determined to make a good go of things. When we were about 20 miles past Pittsburg, we watched a series of cars spin out into the ditch and realized we weren't really in the mood to die, so we pulled off in a little rest stop town called Cranberry.

I had a bunch of work to do, so I asked the guys to get me a simple turkey sandwich.

What I got was absurd... yet tasty. A turkey sandwich with french fries AND cole slaw! A Pittsburg Sandwich it was called.

At first, I was horrified by the concoction, but as I too a bite, I was very pleasantly surprised! Efficient and economical!

Philadelpphia. February 2009

2010-11-29T15:38:00.000-08:00

So, after 2 hours of sleep in NYC, we pack up and move on to Philly. We had 2 stops at VW dealerships today, but the guys at the first dealership said we couldn't leave until we'd had cheesesteaks at the place that beat Bobby Flay in a throwdown.

Enter Tony Luke's. The cheesesteaks were good, but not the greasy mess I was expecting from Philly. The Italian peppers in oil and vinegar were fantastic though. Also... the garlic cheese fries! The garlic cheese fries!

Pizza in NYC. February 2009

2010-11-29T14:19:00.000-08:00

So, after our night of two hours of sleep and driving from Portland, ME to West Springfield, MA to do two shoots at VW dealerships, we decided it would be a good idea to head into Manhattan to spontaneously shoot some footage of the Jetta in Times Square.

After several hours of talking to drunks about hybrid vs. modern diesel technology and John running a red light, we decided to go get some pizza in NYC. It was 2am. Not much was open, but we found this place. Can't remember the name, but it was warm inside and had dough slathered in sauce and cheese.

It was decent pizza. Nothing to write home about. It was definitely more a matter of convenience than it was a planned and researched effort to find great NYC pizza.

February 2009, Portland, ME... and then there was coffee!

2010-11-29T13:48:00.001-08:00

After 2 hours of sleep, we get to the site of the shoot very, very early. It's something like 12 degrees outside and there is no one at the VW dealership.

Dane and I shoot b-roll for the project and try to stay warm.

At about 7:30, the dealership owner arrives with a box full of bagels and coffee for all of us.

I've never spent much time on the east coast, but have many friends from there. They go on and on and on about how much better the food is there.

Years ago, I used to play a little game at parties. When a group of people from Chicago were talking with a group of people from New York, I would mention pizza and then watch the chaos ensue. Of course, being a Californian, I got the hell out of dodge before they realized who started this mess.

This snobbery applied to bagels as well. Granted, this is Portland ME and not NYC, but I do have to admit, I'd never had a proper bagel before coming to Maine. The coffee was bland at best, but damn if those weren't good bagels.

It was a cold day... February 2009

2010-11-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

It was mid February 2009. I was on a cross country video blog project from Portland, ME to Portland, OR. We left Seattle at 5am and finally made it to just outside of Portland, ME at around 2am. It was cold. Very very cold.

The only thing available along the way so far was a Burger King somewhere along the turnpike. We were tired, cold, hungry and grumpy. This night, we would get 2 hours of sleep after 21 hours of travel!