Tis' the season for cookin'

Well, Jay and I love cooking. But I don't talk about it too often because I usually have lots of other interesting activities to blab about. But with cold weather and dark nights, we don't get out as much as I'd like. So I take photos of our meals and feel proud of our healthy and tasty food! Yum!

This weekend we did hit the forests for some more chanterelles (as if we needed them after OR, but mushrooming is addicting). This is a photo of Sauk Mountain with fresh snow on the top. Jay and I actually hiked to the top-ish of this mountain back in June (or July?). There was snow on it then too - but nothing like the amount of snow on it now. Gorgeous!

Jay's birthday was back in the beginning of November. We had a great weekend! It started with a tour of the Boeing Factory (Boeing, if you don't know, builds many of the commercial airplanes you fly on). Jay loves flying and he loves airplanes, so it seemed like it was about time we took a tour of the factory. We couldn't take photos on the tour though - so just use your imagination. A giant building with a giant assembly line of...yes...giant airplanes. Cool stuff. Then we went and had a unbelievable dinner at a well-known organic restaurant called Tilth in Seattle. I didn't want my meal to end.... 

Some of the birthday fun happened the day before Jay's real birthday. For his real birthday we cooked up a real Indonesian classic - gado-gado. We whipped out our cookbook from the class we took on Indonesian cooking when we were in Bali and we made our own peanut sauce. This is not your average peanut sauce made with peanut butter. Nooooo. We took raw peanuts with their skins on them and deep fried them, like good Indonesians, and then pureed them with a ton of yummy spices and stuff like lemongrass and wham - Indonesian peanut sauce. This is traditionally served warm over greens, beans, boiled eggs, spring onions, and/or grilled chicken or tempeh. Oh my.

For dessert we made another Balinese classic - coconut pancakes wrapped around shredded coconut (the good stuff, not the plastic-like junk in most stores...you've gotta go to Asian markets for the real coconut shreds) tossed with palm sugar. In Indonesia these pancakes are actually bright green in color because of a leaf that they soak the coconut milk in; sadly, we did not have this leaf so our pancakes were a normal color. But they tasted almost as good. It would have helped to be in Bali.

This weekend we headed to the "holiday" farmer's market and spent a ton of money on local organic farms. Spending money never felt so good. We are stocked up on organic squash, garlic, leeks, potatoes, brussel sprouts, and apples. Yummy yummy yummy. I couldn't resist the gorgeous braising greens at one of the farm stands - and here they are cooking on the range and below as a finished product. We had them as a side with our chanterelle risotto (behind the greens in the photo). The greens were served with crispy fried garlic and strips of red chili. The risotto was cooked in a bolete stock we made from the boletes we collected in OR and the chanterelles were just collected today!! Needless to say, we are very happy right now.