Kate F____, Girl Reporter

Yay! My brother is safely back in the states after his two month Europe trip. I was so happy to hear his voice on the phone!

Here is my favorite of the photos he has posted so far from his trip–his beard is “bristling in indignation” at the Gehry building in Prague.

Sorry it’s been quiet around here: It’s busy times in Kate-land. This weekend I went home to Oregon for my 10-year high school reunion (!!) and to throw a wedding shower for my oldest friend, Kathrin. My mom was incredibly generous about hosting at their house and preparing all the food, and she spent a lot of time scrubbing everything up all around the house and yard so that everything was perfect.

I wanted to use bright colors because when I think of Kathrin I think of reds and oranges. A couple months ago I went to Paper Source and found cute invitations with big abstract flowers on them, and then got wrapping paper with the same flowers, along with envelopes and flat cards and labels in the various colors from the paper. I used the wrapping paper to make a belly band holding the flat cards (which I printed as recipe cards) over the invitation text, and then held it together with the labels (I stamped them with a potato stamp, since I didn’t have a “K” stamp!):

Last week I went back to the store to get more of the paper so I could decorate with it for the shower. I also made a holder for the recipe cards, which all the ladies brought back with favorite summer recipes on them.

I lucked out when I went running errands on Friday to get ready for the shower. I didn’t think I’d find tulips this late in the year, but Trader Joe’s had them, in the perfect colors. We rented 48″ square tables and put them in the dining room, filling out my mom’s antique chairs with four rental ones. We rented the tablecloths and napkins, and I used the paper to make a table runner.

The dining table went in back of the sofa for the food, and the smaller table we usually keep there was moved to the side for drinks:

By the way, let’s take a closer look at those radishes (with butter and salt), because they are so lovely:

For drinks we had prosecco and Pimm’s Cups, which I love. I forgot to take a picture of the drink all made, but here are the pretty, pretty garnishes (strawberries are not 100% traditional but I wanted some color):

I made a whole pitcher of Pimm’s Cups (1 1/3 cups Pimm’s to 2 2/3 lemonade made enough for 12 people once the club soda and ice got involved), but the recipe scales up or down easily:

Pimm’s Cup
1 part Pimm’s No. 1
3 parts lemonade
Shake well and pour into a collins glass full of ice, filling about 2/3 of the way, maybe a little more
Top with club soda
Garnish with mint and cucumber (and lemon, orange or strawberry if you want)

Pimm’s is gin-based (which…I love gin, so that makes me happy) but honestly it doesn’t taste very ginny, and it’s worth a try even if you’re more of a vodka drinker. The drink is very mild on the alcohol front, and extremely refreshing for summer. Obviously I had to leave the bottle of Pimm’s in Oregon, so now I need to track down my own for Porch-top sipping.

Anyway, on to the food! My mom made grilled chicken (marinated in garlic and olive oil, with a bit of lemon at the end), asparagus with preserved lemon and a fantastic couscous from the Bouchon cookbook. I will try making that myself one of these days and will include the recipe then! It had more preserved lemon and mint in it and was amazing. Also a big salad. All the vegetables (and the strawberries) came from the farmer’s market that morning, and the mint was from a friend’s back yard–spring comes earlier in Oregon, even in a rainy, cool year like this one.

Lunch was perfect–light and summery. Everyone seemed to have a lovely time! And we finished with a goblet of strawberries, butter cookies and chocolate-covered pretzels while Kathrin opened presents.

Oh, and more Prosecco. Lots of Prosecco.

Well. I inadvertently made a meal from all Trader Joe’s ingredients:

That’s a Harvest Grain mix (israeli couscous, some orzo, baby garbanzo beans, quinoa), mahi mahi marinated in garlic, olive oil, and red pepper flakes, and a bag of baby spinach.

Doesn’t that look promising? Just wait, in the finished photo it looks even better. Sadly, this product was a total bust–the couscous and orzo, as you’d imagine, cooked just fine in the 10 minutes instructed by the bag. Any longer and they’d have been mush. The dried baby garbanzo beans? Not so much. As a result the texture was upsetting.

The fish Ben grilled according to the package instructions–7 minutes/side–and it was perfect. Juicy and very flavorful, though the marinade was too salty. Still, Ben liked it, so that adds another fish to our list! And I love mahi mahi, so I was happy despite the high sodium content. As for the spinach, I just sautéed it quickly with garlic and olive oil. Yum.

That extremely healthy dinner (if only the pilaf-ish thing had been better!) came together in about 15 minutes. Long Live Trader Joe’s!

Over the weekend we were down in Rockland County for a family event, so we decided to make a weekend of it and visit my cousin at Bard College, see a concert, and spend the night. I was stunned by how cool the Bard Campus is–it’s got about 90 buildings, many of them darling quirky houses scattered around as dorms or faculty housing. I took tons of photos of the Blithewood Mansion and its gardens. We went to a good concert at the Gehry-designed performing arts center, then had dinner at the bistro at Terrapin, in Rhinecliff. Fun place in an old church.

We stayed up in Hudson, in a really cool house/B&B run by a very fun couple, The Inn at Hudson. (Read all about the house and the owners in this New York Times story; the guest room they show is the one we stayed in.) On Sunday morning one of the owners, Dini, showed us his video (as his Drag alter-ego, Musty Chiffon), “(I wanna be) Jackie Onassis.” It was a cover of the song, which his New Wave band first recorded in the early 80s. The whole thing was amazing and I still have the song stuck in my head. You can watch the video, too, if you want…

Photos from the weekend…

I spent this weekend back up in Hanover helping my brother Tom get ready to leave for a two-month trip through Europe to absorb great works of architecture. He’s a smart puppy who won a travel grant to fund this trip. Since graduating from Dartmouth last June he designed and built a new timber-framed sugarhouse for the Dartmouth Organic Farm, worked at various timber framing jobs, and worked as a cabinet maker. He’s also a great cook!

I got up to Hanover Friday evening (after my first solo highway drive longer than 15 or 20 minutes–whee!) Tom was getting ready to grill dinner for me and for the college’s current Artist in Residence. We enjoyed sirloin, grilled asparagus, pasta with pesto and a delicious cabbage slaw.

He says he made the slaw using vegetable oil and cider vinegar with quite a bit of sugar for the dressing. I will experiment, since he wasn’t very precise with quantities! We ate leftover steak and slaw in great sandwiches the next day.

Tom has been working on a gorgeous custom fly-tying desk for a couple months, using many of the techniques he learned in timber-framing. He finished it on Friday and on Saturday we went to the woodshop to attach the top to the base and do a couple other final tasks.

Hardware and two doors will be added after he gets back from Europe. Pretty impressive, huh?

We also picked up some great book deals at the Five Colleges Book Sale, hung out with lots of Tom’s friends, finished packing up his stuff and figured out what he needed for this trip, which starts in Istanbul and finishes in Helsinki in late June. He’s packing very light (annotated version here):

Finally, almost a month ago Tom stayed at our place while we were gone for the weekend. When we came back I found this lovely handmade cutting board waiting for me–I can’t bear to use it yet; it’s leaning up against the wall in the kitchen, looking pretty:

Good luck, Tom! Safe travels…

PenFifteen, my photo blog with Bridge, is back up and running as of this weekend (after a nine-month break).

We went to Florida this weekend to visit some dear friends and their 15-month old baby, and it was a shock to the system to get back to Boston, a mere 8 hours after leaving the white-sand beach on an 80-degree day, and walk out of the airport to frigid 18-degree winds. Yikes.

Sigh.

Maybe tonight’s the night to break into the fancy peppermint-infused hot chocolate mix I bought on a post-Christmas sale at Williams-Sonoma? In the meantime I’m looking at a photo of last week’s tulips and thinking about Valentine’s menus. We’ve given up on going out; it’s like New Year’s in terms of overcrowded, rushed restaurants serving so-so fixed menus… Last year I made a classic steak and potatoes dinner, along with those overplayed molten chocolate cakes. Ben loves them and I admit they are very tasty. This year I might do something lighter–maybe a fancy pasta and a really great salad, and then something rich for dessert?

What are you guys cooking for Valentine’s Day?

On Boxing Day we all headed over to Eastern Oregon to stay at Sunriver, near Bend, and ski at Mt. Bachelor. We needed two cars, since Ben and I would drive straight back to Portland and Mom, Dad and Tom would return to Eugene.

The changing views on the drive over:

We crawled over the pass at about 18 miles per hour, passing all the Semis putting their chains on and squinting through the driving snow. It was a relief to hit the Eastern side of the mountains and see the snow taper off! We got to Sunriver in time to relax a bit in the (very nice and very large) condo before dinner.

Mom had worked many hours to prepare food before heading out. She made a big batch of Osso Bucco a couple days before we left, and brought the makings for sauteed cavolo nero (Italian kale) and a risotto Milanese (with saffron).

Lovely kale! (Meticulously cleaned and chopped by Tom; we had the stems in omelets and scrambled eggs for lunch.)

Delicious, warming winter food:

The next day I fell down and hurt my back, so instead of driving into Bend for a fun dinner out, we ate pizza at home and watched Monster’s Inc. I really, really enjoyed it, but I was also on painkillers so maybe I should watch it again to be sure it’s really that funny?

On Friday the Davidsons got to town for *their* week of ski vacation. They came over for a big lasagna dinner–again, Mom had spent hours making huge sheets of lasagna before we got to town. Yum.

We played Taboo and visited until it started to get pretty late. Ben and I were leaving the next morning to drive (3-4 hours) back to Portland and fly home. The less said about the messy 18 hour travel day with a very sore lower back, the better. Instead I will focus on the stunning landscape we drove up Highway 97 and then through the Warm Springs Indian Reservation on Route 26. (It’s a classic case of forcing Native American tribes onto harsh, arid land, but the terrain is very gorgeous to look at.)

The holidays may be the only time of year when my family’s food obsession seems normal–after all, who *isn’t* constantly cooking around Christmas? Ben and I headed out to Oregon on the Sunday before Christmas and stayed a week.

Christmas Eve we always cook at the home of wonderful family friends, the Davidsons. The menu always varies: One year it was Chinese food (I think that was my favorite) and this year there was an enormous beef tenderloin. We started with lovely salads with cheese, roasted pears, and walnuts. Along with the beef we had broccoli two ways: spicy roasted and pureed; squash, beans, roasted potatoes and sweet potato fries. (Sadly all my photos of the food were horrible!) We pulled crackers and wore the paper crowns while we ate and played out miniature plastic instruments, or read fortunes with those little cellophane fish.

After dinner all the “kids” went for a little walk in the misty, cold night:

Christmas morning we slept in a bit, and then started to open our stockings while Tom made popovers and 40-minute eggs. There was also bacon. Soooo good:

Not long after:

I played around with a very cool new present, a portable photo studio with light diffusing panels and little lights. Maybe I’ll be able to use it for finally-well-lit food shots? Here’s a test with the awesome Polish crêche I grew up with:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Side note
The little hippie grocery store near my house has great produce. Non-Pacific Northwesterners, writhe in envy at the mushroom bounty:

(Note the “Mushroom Mountain” sign)

Doesn’t Romanesco Broccoli look like an alien world or an enchanted forest if you get up close?

More to come…

Happy 2008! I have tons of photos from the trip home to upload, and lots to write about. In the meantime, here I am with my Dad, midway up Mt. Bachelor on my lone ski day last week. Shortly after this was taken I cracked my tail bone on a tile floor in the lodge and was out of commission for the rest of the trip. Sigh. Dad looks pretty hip in his snowboarder-style bandana, right?

(Photo by Sunriver Photography)

Back soon with actual food, which I know has been more than a little sparse in these parts recently. I pledge to get back to cooking as soon as possible!

(Our lovely tree, a Fraser Fir we cut down at a farm near Boston.)

Merry Christmas!! We are celebrating with my family in Oregon–I’m sure there will be food stories to come… Have a safe and happy holiday.