Anticipating Early July

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The beginning of July is perhaps my favorite time of year.    Sandwiched between Canada Day and Independence Day is my birthday.  We spend this span of celebratory days at the lake.  

There is so much that I look forward to in these precious days away from work and the city.   We will spend hours in the outdoors, boating, swimming and lounging in the lake with family and friends all around.  We will sleep in tents on the lakeshore and roast hot dogs, veggie dogs and marshmallows on a nightly bonfire.  On the fourth of July we will drink gallons of Koolaid and eat an impressive, all-American spread at my family’s annual fourth of July Pot luck.  There will be plenty of joking with cousins, Uncles and Aunts, and there will perhaps be a competitive all-ages game of volleyball with plenty of serious showing of bravado with spikes and high-fives.  In the evening, Bjorn and I will venture into town with my cousins, spread out blankets on the grass, and eat candy and popcorn while we watch the fireworks.  These are our traditions, some life-long, and others, new.  The mood is celebratory, welcoming and lighthearted, and the attitude is “the more the merrier” when it comes to inviting guests, savoring summer pleasures together and finding new ways to have fun.  This year we’re planning to dance up a storm at the Park Rapids street dance and rodeo dance during my cousin’s band Tree Party‘s nightly gig.  This is our way of celebrating our two countries, my birthday, our family and our friends and savoring the simple glories of summer.  These are the days that make our lives rich.

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Above are photos of my Mom’s flower garden and potted plants taken a few weeks ago.  I am looking forward to morning tours of my parents’ garden and yard with a cup of coffee in hand.   I can’t wait to see how things are growing and in bloom.  I am hoping that a green thumb is hereditary.

Celebrating our 3rd Anniversary at Chase on the Lake

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We’re celebrating our 3rd anniversary today.  It is fun to look back on our wedding day which was such a perfect, awesome and fun-filled kick-off to our married life.  We worked hard to fill the day with thought and meaning.  We were surrounded by awesome family and friends who traveled far and wide.  It turned out to be one of the greatest days–special from start to finish.  It was pretty much perfect–except for my bangs in the above picture… not sure what happened there.  What has followed has been wonderful.  Married life is a fun adventure!  Thank you Bjorn for 3 great years!  I am grateful for every day I share with you.

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A few weeks ago, we found ourselves in Walker, Minnesota for a friend’s wedding.  Walker happens to be the town where our wedding reception took place at a historic resort and hotel, Chase on the Lake.  With our anniversary approaching Bjorn suggested that we have dinner at Chase to start the celebration early.  Good call Bjorn! Our meal was fabulous.  We dined on the patio overlooking Walker Bay on beautiful Leech Lake, and had one of the best restaurant meals we’ve had in while.  We started with a 2009 Pinot Noir, which has proven to be a good vintage.  Bjorn had Surf n’ Turf– a New York Strip steak bathed in herbed butter and served with garlic mashed potatoes, roasted root vegetables and an impressive pile of crab legs.  Bjorn cracked into the crab legs with gusto.  We learned in Croatia, the only way to approach the shelling of shellfish is with gusto.  I had a brightly flavored pesto fettuccine with veggies and a caesar salad.  The meal was tasty!  We enjoyed being in the place where the celebration began and raising a toast to all the fun we have ahead.  Cheers!

Mandilli de Saea al Pesto with Peas

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I started out my last post saying that summertime “is a season to avoid being booked and busy as much as possible, to allow time to be free to savor summer’s simple pleasures.”  A few nights ago, I came home intent on making Mandilli de Saea al Pesto with Fresh Garden Peas –this supper is one of the reasons I avoid being booked and busy.  I have been waiting since January to roll out Silk Handkerchiefs or Mandilli de Saea and, cook them gently, and  coat them with a stunning, bright green, fragrant pesto made with basil from our garden.

I began by shelling a pound of farmer’s market peas.  Just-cooked, freshly-shelled peas rounded out our simple supper perfectly. 

I have rolled out fresh pasta in various formats, and made pesto a time or two, but I don’t claim to be an expert on either, though my technique has certainly gotten better over time.  I first learned to make fresh pasta at a cooking class I took at the Chopping Block Cooking School located in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago that my sweetheart gave me as a Christmas present a few years ago.  I will shamelessly admit that everything I have learned since I can attribute to watching cooking shows on T.V.  I usually follow Lidia Bastianich’s recipe for fresh pasta which is simple, using a food processor, readily available all-purpose flour and a little olive oil which makes a silky dough.  I came home from work and immediately got to work using our handy-dandy food processor to mix up a half-recipe of pasta dough—two people don’t need 1½ pounds of pasta sitting around.  Thank you Lidia for making your dough in the food processor.

Lidia’s  Pasta Dough – Yield 1½ pounds of dough

3 cups all-purpose flour
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
7 tablespoons very cold water, plus more as needed

Process:

Measure the flour into the food processor, and give it a quick buzz to distribute air throughout.  Crack eggs and measure liquid into a separate bowl.  Start the processor on high, and stream the liquid ingredients into the processor.  Once combined, the dough should form a ball at the end of the processor’s blade.  If it is crumbly, add cold water one tablespoon at a time until a ball forms.  If the dough is sticky, knead in a small amount of flour until the pasta is smooth.  Form the dough into a disk, wrap in saran wrap or a clean towel and let rest for 30 minutes.  After resting the dough, cut the disk into 8 equal pieces (or 4 if you are making a ½ recipe).  Begin by rolling the dough through the largest setting of a pasta machine, fold it once, and then roll through the largest setting again.  Roll the dough through each successively smaller setting once, until the noodles reach the desired thickness, which for Mandilli de Saea, should be thin enough to be semi-transparent.  I rolled my pasta through settings 1-6 using the flat pasta rolling attachment on my Kitchenaid Mixer, then used a rotary pasta cutter to slice the long sheets of pasta into squares of roughly the same size.  Perfection isn’t necessary.  One of the beauties of homemade pasta is its humble nature.  Italian Grandmas aren’t measuring each square with a ruler.

I placed a clean, lightly floured dish towel on top of a rimmed baking sheet, and laid the handkerchiefs on it, side by side.  Once one towel was filled, I gently layered another on top of it, filled it with squares of pasta, and continued to layer pasta between towels, one on top of the next until all of the pasta was rolled.  I covered the top layer with an additional towel to keep the pasta from drying out too fast.

Paolo Laboa’s Genovese Pesto

15-20 Leaves of Genovese Basil, Soaked in cold water to reduce Chlorophyll
2 Cloves of Garlic, peeled
A small handful of Pine Nuts
Approximately ½ Cup of Grated Parmesan Cheese
Ligurian Olive Oil, or Light Olive Oil
Pinch of Sea Salt

I follow Chef Paolo Laboa’s Chow Network tutorial on creating the perfect pesto as closely as possible.  In the past this has involved attempting to grind and mash the ingredients together by hand into a creamy, perfectly-emulsified green paste using my mortar and pestle.  This week, there was an unfortunate freak accident in our kitchen, which involved an old kitchen drawer that was mounted to the wall and used for years as a shelf falling (or leaping?) to the floor.  Apparently, one of the screw-in hangers was stripped.  When the shelf came down it took with it its contents, about half of which were smashed to smithereens.  My precious Mortar and Pestle, Butter Bell butter crock, the stopper to my vintage vinegar bottle and a tiny lidded pot de creme vessel all met their demise along with a full bottle of balsamic glaze.  The incident left kitchen cupboards and floor and the inside of an open drawer splattered with sticky, syrupy balsamic glaze which affixed the jagged remnants of the broken crockery firmly to the tile floor.  It will take several more rounds with a bucket and sponge to get every glued-down shard out of the grout between the floor tiles.  Sadly, everything but the balsamic glaze was a Christmas or anniversary gift.  Though I am a little heavy-hearted having several gifts broken to bits, these things can be replaced.  In the meantime, it gives me a good excuse to use the food processor to make pesto which isn’t Paolo Laboa’s way, but it is much easier.  

Grate approximately ½ cup of Parmesan Cheese into the bowl of the food processor.

Add a handful of pine nuts, a sprinkle of sea salt, and two peeled cloves of garlic and pulse ingredients together to form a paste.

Add 15-20 leaves of Genovese Basil which have been soaked in cold water to reduce the chlorophyl.  Chlorophyl gives plants their verdant hue, and it improves the basil flavor to have it taste a little less “green.”  Add a small amount of olive oil, and pulse, stopping to scrape down the sides of the food processor.  When the ingredients have become a thick paste, stream in additional oil while running the processor until the pesto has a smooth texture.

Cook the pasta handkerchiefs in a large pot of boiling, lightly-salted water for 1½- 3 minutes, until al dente.  I cooked the peas in a separate saucepan of boiling water and drained them after 1½ minutes.  In a large bowl, mix the pesto with a small ladle-full of hot pasta-cooking water to melt the parmesan cheese, then added the pasta and peas to the bowl.  Gently stir the hot sheets of pasta and peas through the pesto to coat each surface with warmed, melting sauce.

We sat down immediately to eat at the table on our patio that faces the garden.  All of the senses are engaged in the preparation and enjoyment of this meal.  The process is completely justified by the result.  There is no way to duplicate the fragrance, colour, texture or flavor on this plate using frozen peas, jarred pesto, or pasta from a box.  We enjoyed the meal the only way it should be made– totally from scratch, in season and eaten al fresco.  A fresh plate of Mandilli de Saea al Pesto, piled high with sweet, fresh peas is a wonderful summer-only dish.

Happy Friday!

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I find it somewhat ironic or at least interesting as a person who spends plenty of time thinking about, preparing and writing about our weekend and evening meals that Bjorn and I eat about 10 meals every week away from home.  We eat these meals in our cars, at our desks in our respective offices or in an empty conference room with co-workers.  We don’t eat shabbily.  I make an effort to make even the food I pack for our breakfasts and lunches something to enjoy, while being easy to prepare, healthy and portable.

The fact that we spend a lot of time at work is a fact of life.  It is also a fact that I don’t like to think of the alternative of not having stable careers.  I snapped these pictures of my simple breakfast of avocado mashed on top of a reheated slice of garlic bread that I ate at my desk this morning.  This was  a TGIF moment.  As much as I appreciate my job, I love heading home in the bright sunshine with the weekend ahead.  Enjoy!

Cheeseburger Salad and Deviled Eggs with Dill

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Summertime is a season and a mindset for me.  It is a season to avoid being booked and busy as much as possible, to allow time to be free to savor summer’s simple pleasures.  Over the weekend, this included a trip to the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market, a meal outside on the patio at a favorite restaurant, picking a few weeds in the garden, inviting my cousin over to hang out in our back yard, working up a sweat doing yard cleanup, going to the pool for a swim and sitting in the sun porch listening to rumbling thunder and watching rain pour down, giving our garden a thorough soaking.

The summer mindset is also reflected in the food we eat.  We like to eat outdoors in our back yard on the patio as much as possible.  The availability of a great variety of fresh produce at the market and from our garden shapes our menu.  We make frequent use of the grill.  Grilling has the multiple benefits of allowing us to cook outside on the patio, avoid heating up the house and further influences our food choices toward simple, classic summer fare.

One classic summer food staple that I’m thrilled to see back in vogue are deviled eggs.  Why wouldn’t these re-emerge and get trendy?  They are perfect, tasty bites, extremely simple and they can be made with all kinds of interesting ingredients.  I’ve seen deviled eggs with crab meat, bacon, capers and even caviar-topped deviled eggs on food blogs and restaurant menus.  I like a classic deviled egg the most, and I don’t follow a recipe.  I boil, cool and peel the eggs, mash the yolks and mix in minced onion, a little grainy Dijon mustard and just enough light mayo to make them creamy.  I attempted to pipe the filling back into the egg white halves from a pastry bag, but I chose too small a tip to allow the filling’s grainy mustard to squeeze through, so the piping experience started out with a few pretty, piped deviled eggs, then an explosion, followed by me filling the rest of the eggs with a teaspoon.  Garnish is a must, especially with the teaspoon egg filling-method.  In the off-season, I’m still a fan of a sprinkling of paprika, but in the summer, chopped chives or dill are my go-to garnish.  I call the dill from our garden “Electric Dill” because it is so bright and fragrant, and the dill flavor just pops- electric!

Today was one of those days that I was half-way between two dinner ideas.  Bjorn had thawed some lean ground beef raised by his uncle, and I had a hankering for a veggie burger with all of my favorite burger toppings, but also a salad.  From what I’ve been reading, it is better not to eat bread and high-glycemic, addictive [delicious] carbs at every meal.  The idea of a Cheeseburger Salad was born.  I am sure I’m not the first to think of it.  Mine ended up somewhere in the realm of California Burger meets Mushroom and Swiss, but the topping possibilities are only limited by your imagination–avocado, fried egg, pickles, sauerkraut and crispy bacon all come to mind.  The basic premise is to deconstruct your favorite burger, up the veggie count, leave out the bun, and have yourself a great salad. 

Bjorn grilled up a burger for himself, and a veggie burger patty for me, and topped both with thinly sliced provolone cheese.  We sautéed mushrooms with some onions on the grill’s side burner, and served the burgers and sautéed mushrooms and onions on a bed of lettuce leaves with sliced tomato from the market.  As a dressing, we used a little leftover creamy taco sauce that I mixed up for another meal which consisted of smoky chipotle and garlic salsa mixed with a little light sour cream.

We rounded out the meal with a few bright red radishes from the farmer’s market.  We are both obsessed with farmer’s market radishes at the moment.  They are brighter and spicy, and of no comparison to most radishes I’ve tasted from the grocery store.  I’ve been keeping a bowl in water in the fridge so that they are ready for snacking and ready to be served at any meal, including breakfast!  I cannot wait until radishes from our garden are ready to eat.

I’m sure I’ll make Cheeseburger Salads again, and will certainly make more deviled eggs.  Even with the richness of a deviled egg, and melted provolone, the meal felt just little lighter.  After the deviled egg filling vs. piping bag incident was cleaned up, the meal came together quickly, giving us time to sit back and watch the cardinals hanging out in the grass.

Planting Our Garden

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Soon, I will begin sharing a series of blog posts about our recent trip to the Czech Republic and Croatia.  I am currently winnowing the photo count down from somewhere in the upper 800’s, so it will be a few more days before I begin posting about that excellent adventure.  For now I will share what we’ve been up to days since we’ve been home, other than eating Hoagies at Davanni’s.

It can be a little bit of a hard landing to return to reality and normal life after a trip to a far-away place.  Every day of our trip was filled with complete freedom and enjoyment of our friends and new sights and experiences.  We dove into days of complete leisure with reckless abandon.  When I faced the reality of coming home and returning to work, knowing it would be time to plant the garden was my saving grace.  This is my third year planting veggies in raised beds using the square foot gardening method, and I love it more every year.  In 2010 Bjorn constructed 3 raised beds.  From the start I had a great experience raising vegetables following this method.  It is low maintenance and great for a relative novice.  I knew from minute-one that 48 square feet of veggies was just the beginning.  Last year, Bjorn constructed three more 4 foot x 4 foot beds which brought our veggie gardens area up to 96 square feet.  We found that was the perfect amount of space for a veggie garden for two people.

Even though I cleaned and prepped the beds in anticipation of our return, about a million weeds managed to spring up with remarkable speed.  Pictured above is a stinging nettle that came up in a few beds.  I know that I could have used it in a soup or this interesting Nettle Pasta, but frankly, I haven’t completely recovered from my experiences with stinging nettles from childhood, so I’m not finding that soup or pasta idea too enticing.

I weeded the beds and mixed in a healthy heap of organic compost.  Already up in two squares are chives, a perennial herb I transplanted from my Mother’s garden that comes up in early spring and has already appeared on our plates in scrambled eggs, on baked potatoes and in salad dressings.  I am planning to dig up the grass and earth around the edge of each bed and bury bricks at ground level this year.  It helps to have at least a few inches of space around the edge of each bed where nothing will grow because it is difficult to mow grass right up to the edge of the bed once plants grow up.  I have considered expanding the plant-free edging further using crushed rock or paving bricks.  I haven’t had the ultimate design idea come to me yet, so for the meantime, the bricks sit on top of the soil.

I was surprised to find a crop of some sort of mushroom sprung up in the grass when I cleaned up the beds for planting.  It might have had something to do with the fact that it rained a lot while we were away, and the grass went a few weeks without mowing.  For the record,  I am not having all of the fun in the backyard.  When we bought our house, I wanted a vegetable garden, and Bjorn wanted to build a patio, or “partio” as my neighbours have called it, affectionately, we hope!  (Oops, sorry neighbours.  We think you are great!).  We both had our back yard wish come true in the first few months of the first spring in our house.  Thank you Bjorn [and some of our friends for help on the patio] for getting it all done.  Now, we live in the back yard during the free moments of our waking hours from May-October.  It just keeps getting better and better.I had great intentions of starting tomatoes, peppers and maybe other plants in the house in the late winter this year, but I didn’t get that undertaking off of the ground.  Instead, I bought seedlings at the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market which was a huge improvement in selection and in price over seedlings I have purchased from local greenhouses in previous years.  I bought most of my seedlings from an older man and his wife who filled several paper bags with plants, gave me a ton of gardening tips, threw in a few extras herbs and flowers and only charged me $20.  I  might try starting seeds in the house next year, or, I might go find the guy and his wife at the Farmer’s Market who gave me more encouragement, healthy little seedlings and advice than $20 can typically buy.  My cousin Alice (above), inhaled a deep whiff of fresh herb fragrance and exclaimed for about 3 minutes straight.  That is how great our herb seedlings smell. 

Bjorn is adept at building climbing structures and critter protection for our raised beds using electrical conduit, rebar, chicken wire and zip ties.  The design of the climbing structures is based on the book All New Square Foot Gardening with our own improvements (chicken wire, zip ties) that we arrived at as our best strategy last year, after some trial and error using string and lighter-duty netting.  The 4 x 4 beds are spaced 3 feet apart and are surrounded by chicken wire with a tall climbing structure at the back.  They give our yard some organization and symmetry– these characteristics don’t come naturally to gardens I plant.

I have gotten smarter with experience.  Alice has been helping with the garden since the first year it was planted, but this year when she offered to help plant the garden.  It made planting way more fun to work together on our own little community garden.  As the saying goes, many hands make light work.

The square-foot beds are a visual contrast to the mishmash of my planting methods I employ throughout the rest of the yard.  I thought about switching the grid lines from screwed-together lathe to string, but at the end of last season the lathe grids folded up into a neat, compact fan so I decided to keep them.  

In total, planting was a two-day affair.  The second day involved planting all things that come from seed packets.

Now, all we have to do is keep things weeded, watered and pick whatever is fresh and ready to eat.  While we wait for things to grow there is no end of outdoor summer fun to enjoy in the Twin Cities.  After a long sunny day of planting, we drove to the Minnesota Zoo to see Feist.  

The last time we saw Feist live was in 2006 or so, before The Reminder came out when she performed at the Fine Line in Minneapolis.  Here, Feist is performing Cicadas And Gulls with Mountain Man who are touring as her backup singers and includes a Minnesotan among them (Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, to the right of Leslie Feist).

Getting the garden planted followed by a great outdoor show?  I couldn’t have asked for much more beautiful summer Saturday.  Life is good.

Davanni’s Hot Hoagies to Welcome Home

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We’re back!   We spent time abroad, off the grid –away from email, Facebook and our blog–with some of our best friends, seeing a fascinating new corner of the world.  We came back revived, our eyes opened, and something I am calling our “sea mind” awakened.  We had a superb vacation.

We remain fully inspired by our travels upon arriving home.  At the same time, an 18 hour travel day to get here, Bjorn’s suitcase spending the night in Paris without us and diving back into work jet-lagged has had us in “catch up” mode for a little while.  Our “welcome home” meal was a good old sub sandwich, a Hot Hoagie from Davanni’s, to be exact.  Davanni’s is a low-key pizza and hoagie joint that started in our neighbourhood in 1947.  They deliver, so we are frequent customers.  This particular evening, we dined in.  We both ordered our go-to sandwich, a Turkey Bacon Chipotle for Bjorn and a Veggie on wheat for me.  We enjoyed these tasty, simple sandwiches served on a plastic plate and washed them down with a bottle of 3.2 beer.  Travel and time with friends clears out mental fog, reminds us of who we are and want to be, renews appreciation and gratitude for friends, our house and garden, our lives, our hobbies, traveling, jobs and family time immeasurably.  I plan to share it!  To make that easier, in development are a dedicated Facebook page, a private host for the blog, and a renewed desire to enjoy life to the fullest and keep it simple.  We’re glad to be back.

A Taste of the Birchwood Cafe

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Birchwood Cafe – 3311 East 35th Street, Minneapolis, MN Telephone:  (612) 722-4474

I think a taste of one of our favorite neighbourhood restaurants will serve as a fitting end to this series of posts of our recent restaurant experiences.  I am reasonably certain that Birchwood Cafe is one of the most-mentioned local restaurants on this blog.  That is because we like it, we go there a lot and we find the food at the Birchwood to be reliably good and often inspiring.  The Birchwood is just the sort of restaurant we are so glad to have only a few minutes from home.

The Birchwood Cafe is nestled in the Seward neighborhood, a primarily residential area just across the Mississippi River from our neighbourhood in Saint Paul.  In addition to its quiet neighbourhood vibe, there are a few things that make the Birchwood a major draw for us.  They use and highlight local produce, they serve great local beer and they offer inventive, in-season food that suits a vegetarian-omnivore couple to a T.

The Birchwood’s permanent decor is spare.  There are a few quotes that aptly convey Birchwood’s philosophies permanently visible on the windows and wall.  Otherwise, the walls are plain white, and display works by local artists that are rotated periodically.  Currently on display are paintings by WACSO, an artist that I recognized immediately from a few posts that have appeared on Heavy Table, a wonderful Twin Cities blog about restaurants, food blogs and all things food-related in the Cities and around the region. 

WACSO stands for Walking Around Checking Stuff Out.  WACSO’s art captures Twin Cities places and happenings and the people enjoying them in brilliant colour and just enough detail to accurately convey the motion, mood and feeling of the moment portrayed.  I hope I’ll own a WACSO some day, or at least be one of the sketched figures in one.  I recommend checking WASCO art while it is on display at the Birchwood if you are in town.

We do quite like the Birchwood.  While the list of the Birchwood’s merits is long, there are just a few characteristics about the Birchwood that aren’t necessarily my favorite that I suppose I will mention.  The first is, you stand in line and place your order at the counter.  Maybe the Birchwood has chosen not to serve customers at the table due to space constraints.  I can see that.  I can also understand having customers come by the deli counter where there is a moderate selection of prepared salads, artisan-quality grocery items to take home and ready-to-eat items that they want you to see.  For me, I always order something from the menu, very often the nightly special, and so there isn’t a lot to gain, and some relaxation is lost in the experience of standing in line to order, paying, getting my drink, not forgetting my table marker and finding a table and then settling down to enjoy being out to eat.  I will say that the servers who bring out your food almost make up for the lack of table service by being consistently efficient and friendly.  The other issue we’ve run into and learned from is that the place is popular and rather small so it gets pretty jam-packed.  This has all but eliminated us as breakfast and brunch diners on the weekend — we just aren’t people who enjoy the madness of waiting for a table while others slurp their orange juice, Surly Coffee Bender and down their muesli and perfect scrambled eggs in order to clear out and give us a seat.  At the end of the day, I compare a good neighbourhood restaurant to a person you love who isn’t perfect (meaning everyone) — you take the good with the bad, you accept idiosyncracies and unique attributes and overall you are always way more pleased to have them in your life than not.  Great people and restaurants don’t have to be perfect to be exceptional and well above average.  

What in the world am I waiting for?  How about the great meal we had recently at Birchwood’s weekly Saturday night Pizza Party!?  The deal is this:  2 pizzas and a pitcher of beer or a bottle wine for $30. These are artisan-made pizzas with fresh, local toppings and high-end local brews, so let me tell you, this is a great deal.  Above is Bjorn’s delicious pizza, topped with house-smoked turkey breast, carmelized onion puree, mushrooms, cauliflower, kale, cheddar and provolone.  I thought it looked yummy, cheesy and full of plenty of interesting toppings.  Bjorn thought it tasted as good as it looked.  

My pizza was topped with spring vegetables: fiddleheads, asparagus, red beets, garlic spread, cheddar, provolone and a sprinkle of tangerine oil.  I loved this pizza.  Other than garlic, I have never tasted any of the ingredients on a pizza before.  Cheddar and provolone are two of my favorite cheeses, they aren’t on pizzas very often, but they really worked.  It turns out that they all belong on a pizza and they all make me want to top our homemade pies a lot more irreverently.

The most noteworthy of the toppings on my pizza were the fiddleheads.  Fiddleheads, ramps, and morels are all the rage in the Twin Cities foodie-world and blog universe.  I have yet to try ramps.  I have eaten morels, and while I love going to check my secret spot for spoils, I don’t honestly love them as much as other mundane mushrooms.  Fiddleheads?  Now that is a wild crop that I can get behind and seriously work at foraging to eat.  I’d describe a fiddlehead as a tiny curled end of a fern about to unfurl; roasted on a pizza it had the flavor of mild asparagus and texture more pleasant and tender than roasted asparagus or green bean.  One more reason to get going on transplanting some of my Mom’s abundant ferns from her garden to ours!

As we walked away from the familiar Birchwood Cafe onto a quiet neighbourhood street, I thought of how glad I am to end this series about our recent restaurant experiences at one of our regular spots, that I confidently recommend and am glad to have close by.  The Birchwood Cafe does vegetarian and omnivore-friendly local food right, and we’re so glad to have this place in town.  If you are one of our regular readers, thank you.  It will be a quiet few weeks while we voyage far and wide to see good friends and new horizons.  Come back in early June to see what we have to share!

Mother’s Day Breakfast

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Lest my readers think that I’ve quit cooking, I am taking a break from my series on our recent restaurant experiences to share a peek at our breakfast this morning.

I am one of the lucky kids who got to be with my Mom in person this weekend and because I really am one of the lucky ones, my Dad and Bjorn were there too.  My parents and I have always been a tight-knit little trio, and I’m thankful every day that Bjorn has made us into a fabulous foursome.  We get along well.  My parents drove us around town yesterday helping us finish some last-minute shopping for a big trip we depart on this Wednesday.  We enjoyed some nice meals out, good talks, some time in the yard and somehow when they left, the house was a little neater and better decorated.  I have a wonderful Mom!  Thank you!  

This is a day that we make a point of showing the precious women in our lives– our mothers, grandmothers, friends, cousins, aunts, mothers-in law and grandmas-in law — how much we love and treasure them.  I dedicate this post to all of the kids celebrating their Moms today, and to all of the Moms who I hope are feeling loved and getting treated to something special.  For my Mom, the woman who lives an inspired life and spends her time making it beautiful and going to the end of the earth for the people she loves — thank you for showing me how I want to live.  Thank you to all of the Mom’s in my life for being the true examples of love, courage, generosity, inventiveness, selflessness and of course, awesomeness!  I know some amazing Moms, and I have one!  You are all a blessing!  

Being a good daughter is easy with my parents.  Sometimes when they visit, Bjorn and I prepare a fairly elaborate repast so that they get in on our cooking adventures.  In contrast, one of the highlights of this weekend was recovering from the shopping expedition (shopping is not my forte) with beer and Cheetos and chips and salsa on the patio.  Not only do we get along, but my parents like to do pretty much the same thing we do on a Saturday afternoon.  They are easy-going which makes them good parents and good guests.

Even with a pre-trip fridge-purge going on I still managed to make breakfast.  It is Mother’s day, after all.  When I got up, I ran out to the yard and snipped some things that went to seed last year and grew up on their own:  dill, chives, lettuce and a radish.  I won’t get the veggie garden planted until after we’re back from our trip, but that hasn’t stopped it from shaping our recent meals of its own doing.  

I rinsed the garden produce and let it dry and decided to make a salad.  For the salad,  I rinsed and drained a can of chickpeas, sliced a cup of grape tomatoes, a ball of fresh mozzarella and a few bunches of baby spinach from the farmer’s market that I had washed and dried and torn into bite-sized pieces.  I tossed the veggies, cheese and chickpeas in a quick vinaigrette made of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped chives and dill, a shake of Mrs. Dash, and some fresh ground black pepper.  

I made some cinnamon-raisin toast and poached eggs.  I also made bacon in the oven, which is the best food preparation idea since sliced bread.  You simply place bacon on a rack on top of a rimmed baking sheet and place it in a cold oven.  Turn the temperature to 400 degrees farenheit and check the bacon after 12 minutes.  Between 12 and 20 minutes the bacon will be done to crispy perfection, or at least that’s what the omnivores reported.  

This afternoon I headed out to the back yard to hang out with the bright red cardinals to let the growing things be my muse.  

We aren’t sure what we are doing to attract these noble red beauties to our yard, but we love their company and their song, and we hope that we won’t scare them away.

One of the things I picked up for our trip when I was shopping this weekend was a watercolour sketchbook and a small handful of watercolour pencils.  I haven’t done anything more than doodle in a margin for ages, so hopefully I can shed some rust and relearn a few tricks from high school art classes.

Our Iris are doing well.  My iris is truly an heirloom.  The Iris were first planted in the yard in the house where my Grammie was born, they moved several times with my Dad’s family in the 1960’s and ’70’s before being planted in the back yard of the house I grew up in.  They bloomed there for about 18 years and then they moved south to my parents home on the lake in 1995.  Last summer I transplanted 20 or 30 bulbs to our back yard.  

You won’t be hearing from me much or at all for a few weeks, but when we’re back, we’ll have seen some new horizons and have stories and inspiration to share.  In the meantime, above is a sketch and an observations of our Iris.  You never know, I might manage one more post before we leave…

Here is a little peek at how things come together around here.  We live, I snap a few pictures and sometimes sketch one in watercolour and then put it all on the laptop with my words and thoughts and hit “publish”!  It is a fun and happy life.

A Taste of Madison, Wisconsin – Ian’s Pizza, Graze, The Tipsy Cow and the Student Union

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I’ve been posting about restaurant experiences we’ve had in recent months, the series wouldn’t be complete without a road trip.  Recently, I needed to travel to Madison, Wisconsin for a work-related reason, so of course, we made a fun weekend get-away out of it. 

Ian’s Pizza 115 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin Telephone:  (608)257-9248

Our weekend in Madison began where our previous visits ended:  at Ian’s Pizza on State Street, eating a huge slice of Mac & Cheese Pizza.  Our previous visits to Madison took place when we were still students, extending our adolescence as far into our 20’s as possible.  Our good friend Jenn brought us to a Badgers homecoming Football game in 2006. Yes, we wore red, and yes we did Jump Around.  We experienced as much of the glory of a Big Ten homecoming as we could pack into a weekend; highlights included being in the crowd when the Badger’s football team won Paul Bunyan’s Axe from the rival Minnesota Golden Gophers, the sheer madness of State Street and an end to the evening that seemed totally appropriate — a slice of pizza topped with Mac & Cheese.  A year later in August we stopped for the evening in Madison en route to Milwaukee to see the Brewers play the San Francisco Giants with Bjorn’s brother and our friend Mark.  Again, our night ended with a stroll down State Street singing our best rendition of Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl by Broken Social Scene and a legendary late-night slice of Ian’s Pizza.  To be sure that we still have a finger on the pulse of what is hip in Madison, we began our recent visit to Madison by recruiting Bjorn’s cousin Patrick who is a second year student at UW to show us where to eat.  We met him at the Student Union, and sure enough, he guided us down State Street to Ian’s Pizza.  The big discovery I made this trip to Ian’s is what an amazing salad they can toss together.  The salad is made-to-order and served perfectly dressed in a bowl with your choice of fresh vegetables and salad toppings, including cheese or meat.  The thin slices of tender, milky, fresh mozzarella in my salad at Ian’s was some of the best I’ve tasted in recent memory.  Bjorn and I enjoyed a bottle of Lake Front IPA, a hoppy brew from Milwaukee with our meal.  It turns out a big slice of pizza covered in creamy white sauce, Macaroni noodles and melted cheddar cheese is still as good as it sounds, even in the early part of the evening.

It seems that I missed out on how pretty Madison is in my earlier visits, probably because I was only out on the town at night.  This trip I was amazed to see the gorgeous tulips and daffodils that were blooming all over the city.  The tulips above are planted outside of the Capitol.  Different colour combinations are planted outside of each wing.  I have to imagine that the colour-combinations have a certain meaning, but I don’t know it.  All I know is that Madison is a beautiful place to visit in the daytime.

Graze — 1 South Pinckney Street  Madison, Wisconsin Telephone:  (608) 251-2700

The next stand-out meal that we had in Madison was lunch at Graze, a farm-to-table restaurant right outside the Capitol in the heart of downtown Madison.  We also have Patrick to thank for this recommendation.  The restaurant’s name is a nod to the proprietor’s shared belief that animals should be fed grass and allowed to roam.  A map of Wisconsin by the restaurant’s entrance points to the sources of the locally grown and produced fruit, vegetables, cheese, meat, fish and poultry used throughout the menu.  The lunch menu contained a variety of salads, snacks and sandwiches.  Bjorn ordered the Perch Sandwich, described as Great Lakes panko-breaded perch with avocado, tomato, onion, lettuce and chipotle aioli on ciabatta bread served with mixed greens, SarVecchio cheese and Champagne vinaigrette.  I ordered the Beet and Walnut burger and a cup of pureed celery root soup.  Having had very little experience with celery root I expected the soup to have some bitterness, something like a turnip.  Instead, it was smooth with a pleasant, mild celery flavor.  The Beet and Walnut “burger” patty was deep a magenta hue, and was soft, and moist without being crumbly and had a pleasant beetiness.  It was topped with veggies that were tasty and noticeably fresh including cherry tomato, cucumber, red onion and arugula as well as feta cheese, lemon Greek yogurt and oregano vinaigrette, all piled generously on a pepita-topped eggy brioche bun.  The feta, Greek yogurt and vinaigrette were a bright flavor contrast to the mellow beet, and a soft counter-point to the vegetable’s crunch.  The Beet and Walnut burger was fabulous and I want another!  I would love to see a Beet and Walnut burger replace the ubiquitous, tired and unexciting Garden Burger where it stands as the stalwart vegetarian option on menus at countless restaurants.  It was simple, delicious and the options for topping it would be virtually endless.  We have some wonderful farm-to-table restaurants in the Twin Cities, I only wish more of them were as casual, affordable and accessible as Graze.

Every day in Madison we seemed to walk past and sometimes through the capitol building.  We live in Minnesota’s capital city, and the contrast between the capitol building’s place in the capital cities of Minnesota and Wisconsin is hard to ignore.  Saint Paul’s impressive capitol building faces up toward the residential Summit and Crocus Hill, and towers over downtown and the river bluff below.  While it is focal point when you are downtown it is an island, removed by several blocks from any of the action of the city.  In contrast, Wisconsin’s Capitol building is the heart of the city, and streets leading out from each wing in all directions are alive with museums, shops, businesses and hundreds of restaurants.  The capitol grounds serve as a central park.  There is constant pedestrian traffic, movement and activity at the Capitol in Madison; you feel the city’s lifeblood emanating from this central spot.  In Minnesota’s defense, Bjorn tells me the inside of our capitol is actually more impressive in its art, marble and architecture than Wisconsin’s which I thought was quite nice and adequately opulent.  I have never been inside our capitol.  (oops).  It seems that people who grow up here or in states nearby visit our capitol on a 5th Grade bus trip (even kids from Western North Dakota, like Bjorn) never again to return.  For as many times as I’ve driven by our capitol, looked at it from the end of Summit Avenue and thought that it is breathtaking to have the beautiful Cathedral and capitol building standing in stately prominence in the middle of my very own city, in the 9 years I’ve lived here I have managed not to enter it, while I entered Wisconsin’s capitol building at least twice in 3 days.  I should make a point to get inside one of these days.

The Tipsy Cow — 102 King Steet, Madison, Wisconsin Telephone:  (608) 287-1455

One of my favorite things about Wisconsin is its enthusiasm for beer and cheese.  A cab driver recommended the Tipsy Cow for a mid-afternoon snack so we decided to check it out.  We must have blended into the wall for at least ten minutes after being seated before anyone acknowledged us.  We probably managed to catch the servers during the time that usually represents the afternoon lull.  We shared cheese curds and sampled Hopalicious APA by Ale Asylum which was an easy-drinking hoppy beer that seemed to be the hottest tap in town.  To be honest, the curds at the Tipsy Cow were only okay, certainly not the best that Wisconsin has to offer.

We saw a lot of Madison on foot.  Here are some scenes from State Street.  With UW and the crowds of students who are unmistakably present in Madison, we spent a lot of time reminiscing about our college days.  I don’t think either of us would change a thing about our undergraduate experiences at state schools in smaller cities, but we could definitely see the appeal of being an undergraduate student here where the university dominates the town.

The next surprising discovery we made in Madison was what a cool place the UW Student Union is to visit.  It is a hang out for students and the entire community.  You can sign up for a guest pass and gain the privilege of buying a pitcher Hopalicious beer to enjoy while seated on the waterfront.  How has no one told me about this before?  Every University of Wisconsin alum I know is fairly convinced of the superiority and awesomeness of their university experience, and I’m starting to understand why.  Sitting on the lake in a crowd of people who are all out to relax and enjoy the spring sunshine was one of the highlights of our long weekend in Madtown.  As much as Minnesota and Wisconsin have their rivalries, there is no denying that Madison is a vibrant city with a lot to offer a visitor or a college student.  I highly recommend a road trip.