I fucking hate Vegas

Photo courtesy of cannonsnapper

As he was walking through the casino, I could make out his t-shirt miles before I could make out his facial features. It said, "I like boobs."

Actually, if I were more precise I'd type it all in caps: “I LIKE BOOBS!” because nothing in Vegas is said in a whisper, and that applies to overpriced souvenir t-shirts with deep statements such as this, just as surely as it applies to squealing girls in casino bars. I mean, c'mon, like you need a t-shirt for this? Makes much more sense to me that gay guys should wear a shirt that says, "Boobs? Eh, not so much."

I won’t lie about my thoughts on Vegas. Lying looks as good on me as that two-sizes-too-small dress did on that middle-aged woman, hell-bent on living out her prostitute fantasies at the expense of our eyeballs. When I lie, my untruths bust out awkwardly at the seams and it's obvious to everyone that there’s some gaping holes in my story. And I think you know what I mean.

I. fucking. hate. Vegas.

I don’t mean I fucking hate Vegas because I lost big, or got my heart broken or because the weather sort of sucked (though it did). When I say I fucking hate Vegas it’s because I sense that the “Strip” while surely “Fun®” for a great number of tourists, seems to represent the worst that America can be: plastic, obnoxious, all bells and whistles, no substance; a concrete and neon bubble trying to contain people's warped saccharine dreams of wealth and power and fashion, all set to a Celine Dion soundtrack, with swaying jets of water from the Belaggio fountains.

It's an uncomfortable concept that my hatred of Vegas makes me strange bedfellows with evangelical Christians, teetotaling early-to-bed-early-to-risers, and abstinence educators. It’s not that I don’t love a good time or the rush and buzz of big cities. Set me down in NYC and I feel the adrenaline and elevated heart-rate of a woman in love.

Work with me a second through this dime store psychology degree I got in Vegas. Here goes. I blame Vegas-hating on - wow, this is hard to admit - the fact that I must not have been exposed to enough glitter when I was a child. Or maybe I had some Go Fish or Gin Rummy trauma at the hands of my brothers. Or more disturbing to contemplate --- perhaps I have sequin-envy.

Whatever the cause, when the weather is bad and you don’t gamble or smoke or pimp or cheat or sell your soul or litter or abuse your body and you're on a budget and the wine goddess is trapped in lectures and wine exams all day, what’s a Vegas-hater to do?

People watching, or as my friend Marc says, "giving free evaluations," is always an option and one, in my opinion, best exercised in Vegas. Drinking is usually prescribed, heavily, and I did as the doctor ordered, which made for some well-lubricated and enthusiastic evaluations. Por ejemplo, “look at that douche in the big sunglasses trying to hold up that wasted girl in the thong.”

Photo courtesy of discopalace

Eating well is another option and for visibility and profitability some of the best restaurants in the world are in Vegas. For our budget, we sought out off the Strip and into the strip-mall, well-regarded spots such as Raku.

You won't find sushi rolls here, they specialize in food from the aburiya, or grill.

All the same, the sashimi was excellent.

Many thanks to my friend Henry Lo for telling me about this place. He kept asking me if I tried the foie gras udon, and I meant to, really, but I kept forgetting about the foie in favor of the tofu. That's right. That's not a typo. They had me at the tofu. Made in-house, it was creamy, rich, like a dense, soft cheese. It was so good it seems like a complete disservice to call it tofu because I know what you are thinking. You're thinking of those cold bland cubes giving you the evil eye, daring you to transform them into something good, or at least better. At Raku, you should have the tofu 2 ways. Way #1 is served right out of its little bamboo mold, served with their house salt (a mixture of Japanese sea salt, shiitake mushroom powder, green tea powder, and kombu powder), bonito flakes, scallions, and fresh ginger. Way #2 comes to you later as agedashi tofu with ikura (salmon eggs), lightly fried and served up in the richest dashi I've ever had the pleasure of tasting. On the lip of the bowl is a side-swipe of chile paste to mix in as you wish.

Go to Raku. Eat tofu. Now.

For our last night we splurged and cabbed to Mandalay Bay to dine at RM, Rick Moonen's eponymous restaurant where (thank you very much Jon Rowley for the introduction) we were treated to a rather special 10 course tasting menu based on sustainable seafood - the one green spot in a sea of rainbow-hued neon and cheap, artificial perfume.

oh my god, he's touching me.

Rick Moonen is exactly how you'd think he'd be if you are familiar with him from his appearances on television. He's charming, passionate and hyper, chatting one minute and then laughing with his staff and dashing off the next. He has this dish at the restaurant, a dessert of perhaps 20 ice creams and sorbets with a corresponding chart. If you guess all the right flavors, the dessert is free. It was fun watching a couple tables tasting and contemplating. These kind of Vegas games, I can get into.

The stand out dish for me was a piece of bigeye tuna sashimi with the freshest most luscious sea urchin (uni) on top, scattered with daikon sprouts and garnished with a surprising paper-thin dehydrated (perhaps candied?) ginger chip. The plate was gorgeous, with a line of parsley oil in contrast to the burnt orange of the uni and the deep red of the tuna.

After dinner, Chef Moonen took us back to the kitchen for a little tour where we started a rousing high-stakes game of "Guess that Spice" (aka: what food and wine nerds do for fun in Vegas). Basic premise is that you close your eyes and someone sticks a spice under your nose and you're supposed to guess what it is. It's a game I love to subject my dinner guests to when they come over to our house. I like to think I'm pretty good at it.

I'd be thinking wrong.

I started off on the right path by guessing part of the Z'atar spice blend by correctly calling out thyme, but didn't get the sesame seeds or sumac part. Nailed garam masala, tanked on oregano (calling it herbes de Provence, like a big dummy) and coriander (saying weakly, rose petals?), suggested shallot for vadouvan (which is sort of right) and bombed on sassafras by saying, "licorice?" while our friend Emily, who is a master sommelier, says "sassafras" at the exact same moment April says "root beer!"

Bitches.

Good thing I didn't bet. I would have lost my shirt, and then Rick Moonen would have had ample reason to call the authorities. Oh, wait, stripping is okay in restaurants in Vegas, isn't it?

In summation, I like boobs and I fucking hate Vegas.

Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager

Spend any time with me and Langdon and you'll feel like you've regressed to some 70's suburban living room scene, with siblings lovingly spatting, trading barbs and one-upping each other. I keep telling him he's the little brother I never wanted. Turns out, he's older than me. Not that he acts like it, mind you.

Introduced by a mutual friend, he's one of those people that I felt instantly related to, in the comfortable familiarity we share, in our mutual love for a tall tale, and a meal earned through harvesting it yourself.

When I have a wild hair and a yen for adventure, my "younger brother" is on speed dial. Take, for example, my recent foray into wine-making. One phone call later, we were meeting on the shores of Lake Washington, catching up and foraging for ripe, luscious berries to ferment later that day. I'll let him tell you the whole story on his blog Fat of the Land when the time comes.

Here we are strolling the tide waters of south Puget Sound looking for
oysters, clams and mussels. Too bad you can't see how
particularly cool my wellies are.

I'm lucky enough to have incredible people in my life. No scratch that. Make that: incredibly TALENTED people. I'm not a restaurant reviewer or book reviewer. Yet when someone I know or respect puts out something truly different or fabulously well-crafted I'm more than happy to write about it. And shit, let's cut to the chase, I'm just proud of him because half the time I'm putting him down and teasing him and despite all that, he's gotten the better of me by putting out a book that is one of a kind, so solid I can't blow holes in it (though surely I tried).

Fat of the Land: Tales of a 21st Century Forager is tightly written in a way that many memoirs these days aren't. Langdon is a writer first, a forager second and as you follow him and his quirky pals through tales of mushroom hunting, squid jigging and huckleberry picking, you are first struck by the writing, his sly sense of humor, and his ability to paint a picture and to build your emotions right along with his. In his chapter on ling cod spear fishing, I felt my anxiety and claustrophobia building as the weight around his waist pulled him deeper into the inky waters. When his spear missed the target, I winced and held my breathe and was almost literally pushing him on to get to the surface for air.

"Even after you locate a truculent ling, the game has only just begun. Stealth is paramount. Above all, you cannot reveal your real intentions - no sudden movements, no clumsy maneuvering. You approach as if you have no idea the ling is there...dumpty-dum---looking away, minding your own business, keeping your swimming strokes to a minimum, careful not to blow an excitable storm of bubbles. Who knows what the ling sees in you: part foe, part ungainly curiousity. Often it's best to come up from below, arms and legs motionless, allowing your natural inclination toward the surface to carry you forward like a piece of drifting flotsam, your spear already cocked and pointed forward."

Excerpted from Fat of the Land: Tales of a 21st Century Forager with permission by author

When an author's words pull you down and then bring you back up again you are in the presence of excellent writing.

Here we are along with Amy Pennington sharing a beer and some of our legal limit.

I found his book to be a modern day Huck Finn romp, educational, boyish, full of life, adventure and passion. You are left, not with a map to his best mushroom spots (damn him), but with the satisfaction of a story well told, a skill seemingly lost in our attention deficit society. There are more books in Cook, waiting to come out. It matters not to me the topic.


A final note:

Last time Lang was over, we were racking our blackberry wine and planning future endeavors. He was putting the finishing touches on one of his blog entries so I let him use my computer as I puttered about the kitchen. He checked in on his Twitter account and made sure to mention out loud that he better remember to log off because he didn't trust me not to hijack his account.

The moments while I waited for him to pick up the phone as he was driving home were delicious. "Guess what you forgot to do?" I breathed into the phone, then cackled menacingly. He was silent on the other end of the line. "Oh," I pondered to him audibly, "what would I say if I were Lang in under 140 characters?" Crickets. "Oh, what's that? I AM Lang, for the next 5 minutes??" Turns out my little brother said the following,

"Becky is such a marvelous wine-maker. I learn SO MUCH from her every time we hang out."

Thanks Lang, that was extremely generous of you.

My omnivore's dilemma

Looking out at the hen house from inside
the poultry processing shed.

(The following post discusses the slaughtering of animals, in some detail. You may want to put down whatever you are eating.)

On September 8th, I followed through with a strange promise to myself. It went thusly: that, no matter what fear or trepidation I might have, I would kill - with my own hands - some of the animals I was choosing to serve for a farm to table dinner at Dog Mountain Farm, in Carnation, Washington. I asked the farmers, Cindy and David Krepky, to raise the Pekins for my 72 seat dinner and Cindy graciously agreed to teach a few of us how to slaughter, scald, pluck, and eviscerate them. The ducks were 7 weeks old, about 3 pounds each, white with yellow beaks. In the short time since they'd been in this world, they ate feed, waddled around, drank water, quacked along with their fellow ducklings, thought their duck thoughts and successfully avoided death by hawk attack or other means.

Until we walked up one warm fall morning (cue iconic gun-slinging cowboy shoot-out music).

I think my expression here says a lot. A shot of tequila
at 11 am didn't do much to ease my discomfort.

And here is where my thoughts, emotions and writing sort of gums up. I am struggling with how to express the complexity of my thoughts about how these ducks lived and then came to meet their "one bad day" at my hands, because truthfully, any words I use are rife with cliches, despite all attempts to avoid them. Frankly, I don't want to use words, yet know I must because interpretive dance would be silly and still wouldn't communicate how twisted up this experience has left me (though perhaps it might, on second thought).

The scalder is on the left. We dipped the ducks in here
for about 60 secs. to loosen their feathers. Then they went into the
"plucker" which has many rubber "fingers" that pull the feathers off.

I don't know what these ducks are capable of feeling or sensing but I would be a liar if I pretended I think animals are incapable of emotions. Anyone who owns animals as pets knows that they experience emotions (and I'm smart enough to know that just because we call them "pets" doesn't confer emotions onto them, it just makes us acutely aware of their existence).

The ducks were scared when we approached them. They were in a crate, scrambling around, attempting to get as far away from our hands as possible. They were making noises that seemed stressed. I did what any compassionate person would do and held "my" duck and stroked its feathers and seriously wondered how my compassion would allow me to go through with killing this animal.

Being in a group with 3 others helped ease some of my nerves. The macabre mood inspired much gallows humor, our laughter being matched, call and response style, by the gobbles of neighboring turkeys.

We held the ducks firmly around their wings, inverted them into a cone attached to a wall, so that their feet stuck out of the top and their heads hung below at the bottom of the cone. Cindy instructed us in how to hold their beaks firmly and locate the tiny arteries that ran on either side of the trachea. Using a small, hooked, sharp knife we punctured through the skin and severed, with a quick pull, their carotid artery. It took about 6-8 minutes for them to bleed out.

It was. really. really. really. hard.

3 really's are such a poor, insufficient and repetitive way to express myself and yet, that's all I've got, for now.

After the ducks were killed, we saturated their down with water to aid in removing their feathers and moved into the shed to begin processing them. It was extremely hot in the tiny, confined space with the scalding tank on and the 5 of us packed in there shoulder to shoulder, feathers on the walls, blood drying on our aprons. We went about our work, dipping, plucking, gutting as Cindy patiently guided us each step of the way.

Angela Garbes, Amy Pennington, and Katie O.

And then, at some point, we were done. Angela, Amy and Katie went home and I began to break down the 40 ducks into legs and breasts, much more comfortable with the individual pieces, as familiar to me as the blood and death were unfamiliar. I cut and stacked the meat, started a stock and sharpened my knives and operated in a sort of robotic, unfeeling manner. Maybe I was in a mini version of shock, but I realized I had a big dinner to do and a lot of work in front of me and I didn't even know what I was feeling so there was no time to ponder the unknowable.

I used every last little bit in the stock that wasn't destined for another use.
Heads, feet, gizzards, heart, carcasses, necks made it in
the pot, which cooked for 8 hours.

The dinner was a huge success, a 6 course affair where the ducks were featured in every course from duck pate and smoked duck, to confit, seared breast, cracklins and stock (given to guests in small containers to take home). Oodles of generous volunteers helped me get the food to the table and pour the lovely wines from Alexandria Nicole and I am deeply grateful to all of them for their help. I'm especially appreciative of the farmers, Cindy and David Krepky, for their graciousness, generosity and hard work.

But back to those sneaky emotions, that eventually, a few days later, started to surface.

Essentially, I think it's safe to say that I feel altered by taking an animal's life for the purposes of eating it. It's messy and somewhat brutal, especially when a novice like myself, is holding the knife. In the hands of farmer Cindy, it was quicker and cleaner. I feel, on the one hand, it is what my omnivorous DNA is programmed to do. It is undeniably a very natural act for an animal to kill another animal.

And yet.

And yet part of me knows I can survive and thrive without making this choice. I don't know exactly how I will be able to reconcile in my twisted brain eating meat at all or as often in the future. Vegetarians and vegans will certainly take issue with me, and perhaps they should, but I doubt I'll go the route of cutting meat out of my diet entirely. My 10 years as a vegetarian are certainly pulling at me even as, in the week's since I killed the ducks, I've ordered chickens from Cindy and David to teach a butchering class and prepared more duck for an event at our house. I'm not sure how I would answer the question: how, after that, can you justify eating meat?

I think I need more time to think. Or to forget. And the later thought brings up another wave of analysis.

I must admit that looking down on these gorgeous vegetables David and
Cindy grew was a nice emotional break from a day that started with blood and death.

Gorgeous pic taken by Ashlyn Forshner of the duck confit course
with farm tables in the background. Ashlyn barely had time to
snap it, busy being my sous chef for the day.



Another nice pic from Ashlyn. This course was inspired by a dish they make at
Tilikum Place Cafe. We grilled Italian chicory and served it with caramelized
grapes and pistachios with balsamic and dolce gorgonzola. On top are duck cracklins
made from rendering all the fat from the ducks.

There will be no neat conclusions to this story. Nothing is getting tied up all pretty and I suppose that's appropriate and to be expected. I'm not sure how all of this will settle out and I suppose it's ultimately a personal decision, left up to the individual to sort out. I do encourage you, though, if you are a meat-eater to consider witnessing or killing an animal yourself and draw your own conclusions, as murky and convoluted or as clear and true as they may be.

A view towards the Cascades as you approach the farm. Only thing missing
in this photo is a brown retriever named Shelby loping down the road to greet you.

A final word: Farmers teach their children not to name the animals destined for slaughter. When an alien race of carnivores that fancies an occasional human animal for lunch lands on Earth, I hope that they choose me as a pet and not a snack.

Please call me "Fluffy" from here on out. Thank you.

Mission: Sustainable

duhn duhn DA na duhn duhn DA na duhn duhn DA na
duhn duhn DA na. DA-NA-NA. DA-NA-NA. Duhn NUH!

There's this game called "I never." Most people know how to play, but for those who don't, you sit around in a room and say something (usually something fairly funny or shocking) such as: "I've never had sex with a pygmy goat from Afghanistan." If you or anyone else in the room can't honestly say that's true, you drink. If some dude you didn't invite to the party takes a sip from his drink to my particular example here, I advise you get up, place your drink down carefully, and then run screaming from the room tout de suite.

There's another game. Let's call this game, "I'd never." It's just a simple contraction "I" plus "would" along with "never" signifying the future. We all play this game in our lives.

My particular version of this game has involved sitting around having a conversation and someone says, "would you ever want to be on television?" I say, "I'd never!" which feels true, but I'm finding that if you treat life in this fashion, as if you can read all future versions of yourself and how you'll react to any circumstance with perfect accuracy, you really limit yourself. I've said this for most of my life "I'd never want to be on television." Especially now, with all of these reality shows, with all their drama and stress. I wrote about whether I'd want to be on Top Chef or not, and truthfully a lot of it came down to fear. Fear of failure. Fear of being judged. Fear of not being liked. But the biggest reason I didn't want to be on television was because I didn't feel like it was important enough to me to wade through these fears.

Until along came something different. Something so good, something much, much, bigger than little me and all my fears. Something I could get behind. Something that might land my sorry ass on television after all.

Education is my passion, and food is my muse and along came a television show concept that would allow me to reach a larger audience and teach people how to possibly make the world a slightly better place, by respecting food and who produces it and therefore the environment and community, in a way that is not the norm. The show is called Mission: Sustainable. It's produced by the charismatic and idealistic Rose Thornton. It's an idea built on a dime with an all-volunteer pilot cast of supremely fun and interesting people. Like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy meets What Not to Wear meets a little Extreme Home Makeover for a person who wants or needs a green lifestyle makeover. A show where a person's life is examined and consultants are brought in to lovingly, snarkily, teasingly, sensitively, firmly guide the person to make different choices in their lives, all the while educating the public about reducing one's carbon footprint to- excuse my cliche - make our world a better place (feel free to hum "we are the world" right now).

In short, this is a television show that I can get behind.

For more information, including cast bios and videos check this out. I'm thrilled to be working with such an amazing gaggle of talented experts and plan on looking carefully at my own life to see what changes I can make to live more lightly in my own loafers, so to speak. If anyone reading this is inspired to nominate someone for their green makeover and you live in Seattle, nominate them here. If you are inspired to volunteer along with us to get this pilot produced and then pitched to the cable networks send an email here.

Thanks to St Sandwich, Flikr photo credit

And just for the record, I'm still comfortable saying, "I'd never have sex with a pygmy goat in Afghanistan".

Damson plums make the best jam.

NYC Union Square Farmer's Market, Photo Credit: j_bary

There are many possible paths to take if you contemplate the life cycle of a piece of fruit. A biologist sees flower, pollen, pollinator, fruiting body, seed dispersal. A farmer sees drought cycles, fertilizer, pests, hybridization, ripeness, seed saving. A poet sees the developing fruit, a blush of color appearing on the skin and then turning to rot, and how it makes them think of rebirth and love and death.

A lover of food sees pies, sauces and jam and hopes that they will catch that fruit at the apex of flavor. I am a lover of food, no doubt, but I am more so a lover of people. When I contemplate the life cycle of a piece of fruit, I taste it in my mind but I also see it passing from one hand to another; I am as interested in the string of people that have touched that fruit, and their cascade of stories, as I am in the fruit itself.

"I have a friend on a Damson plum quest," said my friend Zoe, typing on her computer in Washington, D.C., "do you know how to secure some?" Her friend and colleague is British and was having a homesick craving for this particular type of plum and the jam it makes, supposedly the best. Damsons are easily available in Britain, but after a month of searching in Seattle it felt like I'd sooner spot a hairy-nosed Wombat skulking around my neighborhood than find one of these plums. People had heard of this plum, they thought - vaguely - but no one had ever tasted it or seen it.

This made my quest even more obsessive and the subsequent jam it may spring forth necessarily more incredible in my mind. It is nearly impossible to separate our emotions and our stories from what our taste buds are experiencing, or in this case, may someday experience. I can't imagine contemplating pizza, for example, in a complete emotional vacuum. Impossible. Pizza, the food, is on the same neural pathway as pizza, the memory; grease sliding down the inside of my arm, walking with my brother out of Ray's in NYC, the neurotic buzz of the city rising like steam from the molten cheese.

Whether or not Damson plums truly make the best plum jam or not is purely academic. What is more interesting to me is that when they find their way into this woman's hands, she will be holding on to a piece of home in small tart plum form, and therefore her experience of this jam will be quite different from anyone else's. If I ever taste this jam, mine will be too, just for being on this quest. Of course, it can work the opposite way. Long anticipation and/or work can disappoint you if the final product is less than stellar. This also proves my point, because perhaps you would have been more pleased had you not personally put the sweat equity into the final product. I'm thinking here, right now, of the blackberry wine Langdon Cook and I are working on right now, as I watch it bubble and ferment every day. You can bet, after all this work, this wine will either be the BEST blackberry wine in the world or the very WORST blackberry wine in the world.

But back to plums: I trolled the internets for a local source and came up empty for about a month. No one knew where to find the coy Damson plum, the little bastard being grown somewhere, but not here. Or so it seemed.

And then along came Jenny. She writes a blog called Purple House Dirt, happened to be breezily, innocently mentioning on Twitter how she had some (oh my GOD) Damson plums given to her by a neighbor. I then asked her - someone I didn't really know - if there was any way I might have a small amount from her neighbor, another complete stranger.

Before you consider this forward of me, you must understand that the Seattle Food Twitter world is full of strangers becoming fast friends over staccato bursts of food conversation. These random acts of culinary kindness abound and you need only tap into it to find it. And, whatever, I wanted the damn plums so leave me alone.

As it was, it was my lucky day.

There they are, the sneaky little bastards

There were still a few pounds left and Jenny could meet me at the Queen Anne Farmer's Market to drop the goods - aka the plums that would come from her neighbor Emma's old boss' 10 year old tree on Lake Washington. From the boss to Emma to Jenny to me, in exchange for my gratitude and a pint of raspberries, and a story.

As it turns out (and this is the very sad part of this story) Zoe told me that her colleague is taking refuge in cooking and jam-making because her husband is very sick. I shared this with Jenny as I took the fruit and prepared it for shipping.

Six pairs of hands will touch these plums before they are turned into jam. My hope, beyond simply that everyone's hands were clean, is that some small piece of refuge will come to this woman in DC that I don't know, that Jenny does not know, that Emma does not know, that Emma's old boss does not know. Zoe tells me she will send some jam back to me for my "troubles" which I will share, in turn, with Jenny and Emma, and Emma's old boss. Perhaps we will sit together, now no longer strangers, slather it on toast with butter, and follow the trail of hands in the life cycle of these Damson plums.

They say it makes the very best jam.

For the love of oysters, sushi and nephews

I remember eating my first raw oyster just as surely as others remember their virginal lake dive, hands pointed together in prayer, toes death-gripped to the splintery edge of the dock, knees knocking together like that obnoxiously fun kid's toy Clackers, moments before cracking open the still black surface of the water. I approached the oyster with the same knocking knees, sure that my culinary plunge into raw shellfish would mark my very last bite here on earth.

Truth be told, my first oyster was a culinary half-step. I couldn't quite get myself to tackle the beast itself, so I licked shyly at the liquor. Surprised at how delicious it was, I then drank it with gusto, letting my friend eat the oyster itself, while she puzzled at my strange workaround. When I finally sucked it up and went whole hog, I soon realized all that fear and trepidation were for naught. The lost oyster years, as I call them, were to be found at the lake bottom sharing sand with my pride at having finally overcome my fear.

A little fear before trying something new is to be expected; but surely it is the wise who know that working through that fear as quickly as possibly can lead to a lifetime of (culinary) enjoyment.

It was my oldest brother and sister-in-law that offered me my first bites of sushi. I was a teenager, maybe 18 and I insisted on eating the sushi-with-training-wheels, aka cooked fish rolls. It took me until I was 22 or so to start eating my fish raw. I'm still due at least 4 or 5 whole wild sockeye salmons worth of sashimi to make up for those years.


Just as memorable as my first oyster was the first time a meal made my eyes well up with joy and trust me when I say, I'm not the crying type. It was at Tojo's, an icon of a sushi bar in Vancouver, British Columbia. We had ferried my other brother and sister-in-law up there as a gift, a mecca to one of my favorite restaurants, where closing your eyes while eating is a prerequisite. It was a lobster hand roll that caused my emotional undoing. I remember opening my eyelids for only a moment to look to my right and catch the glint of a tear in the corner of my brother's left eye just as one was forming in my own.

I have never before or since been moved to a tear because of food.*

Meals like the one at Tojo's are rare, once in a lifetime sort of experiences. Hard to know if it can be attributed solely to the freshness of the food, the artistry of the chef, the seamless service, the company you're keeping, the mental state you're in or a combination of several of these things. Frankly, it almost doesn't matter.

My family and I share more than our dark dark hair, our fondness for word games, our penchant for collecting things, our profoundly nonexistent rear ends. We share a love of food and a notable spirit of culinary adventurousness. To wit: my nephew has been eating me under the sushi table since he was 1. I truly don't know where he was putting it, but it was clearly putting his parents in the poor house.



So it was with a fat wallet and an empty set of stomachs that he (now 14 and even hungrier) and I showed up at Mashiko the other night to test out Hajime's evolving sustainable sushi menu. I'll save the reviews for others though I encourage you to check out this restaurant, especially since - as of August 14th, it is the first established sushi bar (in the world) to go totally sustainable. What I'd rather talk about is the joy bestowed on me that evening as I watched my nephew eagerly slurp down his very first raw oyster, declare it "delicious!" as he moved happily along to geoduck, rainbow trout sashimi, raw spot prawn with lumpfish caviar, chuwan mushi with shrimp and other bizarre and unusual delights. When the spot prawn's head appeared in front of him, crispy antennae tangled, black eyes empty of light, he had only this to say, seconds after popping it in his mouth: "I ate the brain. It was yummy."

That's my boy.


Later in the evening, my stomach threatening to propel the button from my jeans into an unsuspecting diner's eye, Alex leans over to me and tells me the rice was fantastic. I encourage him to tell Chef Hajime, as a great sushi chef is nothing if his rice is less than perfect. Hajime graciously bowed his head, genuinely complimented that this very hungry and adventurous young man appreciated its quality.

We left the restaurant, giddy from our sushi high, Alex sporting his new button proclaiming the Mashiko doctrine that "Soy sauce is not a beverage." I left with mine in hand, "Boring food sucks." As we were leaving, he tells me in a stage whisper that's he's burping the most excellent sushi rice burps.

The Romans would have been (almost) as proud as I was.


* A note: Recently a friend and I were talking about the audacity of monikers like "foodie" in a day where so many people go without food. It is true that the obsessive focus on all things food in our land of obesity and excess is in bitter contrast to the way most of the world lives their lives. However, another tragedy, in my opinion, would be to eat blindly, scarfing down food on the way from point A to B. If I am so lucky and privileged as to be able to make the trek to a restaurant where a chef cares so much about his food and his art that my eyes uncontrollably shut to isolate the perfection of that moment, than what am I, if not absolutely appreciative of what I am lucky enough to be able to experience? The enjoyment of food, prepared beautifully, from the hands of a master - this I will not take for granted. I am lucky. I know this. I close my eyes to respect this moment.

Cookbook Title FAIL

The problem with getting blog inspiration from self-deprecating personal disasters (see the tart story from 2 weeks ago) is that if you have a pretty good string of days, where total humiliation has eluded you, you might find yourself lacking in material. And when I say you, I mean me. Some people call it writer's block. You could call it Blogger's Block but that sounds dumb, so we won't. And when I say we, I mean you.

So it was within this context of feeling the brain freeze of writer's block, that this post was born. Ironically, while my brain chilled, it hit 103 degrees in Seattle, breaking all previous record highs here, ever. EVER. Seattle-ites hazily stumbled around in moist, cotton-sticking t-shirts mumbling about Otter pops and air-conditioning or the lack thereof. Mostly the lack thereof.

With no material, no inspiration and an elevated core body temperature, I let the compressed molten air shove me forward into a freezing cold wi-fi cafe where I set up my computer. I was heat-adled and fuzzy, hell-bent on finding something, anything to write about. It took an hour in the artificial chiller for me to trip over inspiration.

I kid you not. This one above is the real deal. Wow.

What if you could play a word game with some of your favorite writers? Wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't that be grand? I posed (on Twitter) to a sea of food writers and food lovers a word game of sorts. The name of the game was: Failed Cookbook Titles

That was it. There were no rules.

Some played off of existing cookbook titles. Others just made up their own. Either way, I soon found myself laughing, at first quietly to myself, then a little snort would sneak out, later a guffaw and finally I had to use my hand as a self-muzzle to prevent embarrassing noise explosions.

Behold, below, the artistry and creativity of some of my Twitter friends. If you find that you must join this crazy community I've become a part of, please do (or run, screaming, now).

Here were mine*

*but, first, a word to my family (who reads my blog) you see, sometimes I can be a little, uh, dirty? Is that the right word? Yes, that probably is the right word. And, uh, sometimes I appreciate the dirty humor of some of my friends. So, feel free to go do something else if your image of me will be forever tarnished. Oh wait, it probably was long ago tarnished. So, in that case, shit, go ahead and read away and add your failed cookbook titles!

@chefreinvented

"The Anorexic's Pantry"
"The Ins and Outs of Aspic Cookery"
"The Art of Eating Out" by M.F.K. Fisher
"Vegan Cooking for a Few People"
"An ass-ton of butter, a shit-load of cream: Lite recipes from my kitchen to yours" by Ina Garten

And here are a sampling of some of my favorites. To see them all, do a search on Twitter for #failedcookbooktitles.

@RebekahDenn chimed in with the classic book "Tender at the Bone: Donner Party Dinner Recipies"

@Podchef with a title for rural youngsters "How to kill and cook your 4-H pet"

@Voraciousgirl mentioned the lesser known title from the famous restaurant "Dirty French Laundry"

@lferroni shows us that one person's umami is another person's "Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweat!"

@sensitivepantry with that down-home favorite "Nascar's Cookin' on Your Hemi!"

@edibleseattle and @berry_k noted the British interpretation of the original title "Fanny Farmer Cookbook" A fanny farmer indeed!


@katflynn delighted us with several offerings, including these sure bet IACP winners:

"A Great Rack: Top Italian recipes for lamb, beef and pork rib cuts" by Giada DeLaurentius
"No Way You'll Ever Cook This Stuff: Overly Complicated Recipes With Lots of Glossy Photos by (insert celebrity name)"
"The Man Who Ate Nothing"

@MarcSeattle wins in the x-rated failed cookbook title category with:

"Salt-Licked Beaver and Other Wild Game Recipes"
"The Frugal Gourmet: Touching is Free"
"The Bearded Clam : Sustainable Seafood for Today's Conscientious Cook"

@glutenfreegirl was the people's favorite, showing a smuttier side of her personality with:

"Anthony Bourdains Les Whores"
"Charlie Trotter's Meat"
"The Chef in My Pants"
"Sunday Orgies at Lucques"
"Chez Panisse Vegetable Sex Toys"
"Mastering the Art of French Kissing, Volume 2"

@wrightfood penned the racy tome "Cucumbers: Beyond Salads for the Single Home Cook"

@kittenwithawhip with the Ithaca, NY's famous "The Mooseturd Cookbook" and sure to go into paperback, "Staff meal at Wendy's"



@pnwcheese chimed in with a frightening tome "Seitan for the Holidays"

@mamster with the Donner-party esque "Feast on Nigella Lawson"

Here is where I leave it up to you to join in the game.

If you wish.
If you dare.

Until next game.