Life's a Banquet
'...and most poor fools are starvin to death!' ~Mame

Link: http://www.waterfrontbakery.com

It's my birthday week and that makes me extra happy! I think everyone should celebrate their life for at least a week, don't you? I mean let's face it, sometimes life gets in the way of the celebration and we forget how much fun we are having. I am extra lucky to have so many friends and a wonderful family, and I like to celebrate them during my birthday week, as much as I like to celebrate me! My Aunt Susie gave me a great idea last year and so we are expanding on it this year. She bought a gift certificate for $41 (that was my age last year) and we kept a customer count so that we could give it to our 41st customer of the day! It was really fun and everyone involved was happy all day. This year we will give out a $42 dollar gift certificate, and several other 'birthday gifts' as the day goes on. I always have free coffee on my birthday, so folks can stop by and have a cup and a chat, or just take it away and have a happier day knowing they got a free cup of coffee. If you get a chance to stop in on Thursday, that is the day we will be birthday partying it up!

Last week my friend Kat and I went to Island Jamz for a marketing meeting. It is a Caribbean restaurant in Keyport and they have some great food! We tried the fried plantains (SO tender and yummy!) goat curry, and jerk chicken. We definitely want to go back to try more of their great food! It is spicy, though not picante, just very tasty.

On Saturday we met wonderful friends in Seattle for dinner at Purple Cafe & Wine Bar. It is a beautiful, very modern, cool space with the neatest wine 'rack' I have seen in Seattle! The food and wine lists are very long and we tried many things. The standouts were the Spanish style prawns, and the absolute best thing was the lobster mac & cheese. It was better than I even thought it could be! And the portion was not so big that it would overwhelm you. I did not have that dish, and believe me I regret it. I will be going back for it!

We have big news at the cafe this week! First of all LESLIE GOT ACCEPTED AT THE CULINARY INSTITUTE OF AMERICA! The one in New York even!!!! We are SO proud of her! And jealous!!! She will be leaving us in January and we hate that part, but we are so excited for this new adventure that she is on! She has been celebrating and one of the places she tried was Burrata Bistro in Poulsbo. She says the food is great, and if you go for only one thing make it dessert. We can't wait to go try it and if you do please let us know what your favorite thing is!

The other big news is that Lori and Josh's baby Lyla came home! They are spending their first week at home as a family that is not commuting to the hospital every day and I can only imagine the bliss they are feeling. I can't stop smiling as I think of them!

Mark and I worked as vendors at the first annual Kitsap Wine Festival and I sure hope they bring it back next year. The $45 tickets were a bargain for all the tastes and food that were available and we had a ball talking to everyone! We gave out tastes of our crusty Italian bread and our excellent olive oil. We sold cookies and at the end gave out free coffee. We had so much fun! If they do it again next year, you must get your tickets early because they sold out pretty quickly!

This week we are doing the Kitsap fair for the first time ever. We haven't done a fair in ages and honestly I have only done the state fair in Monroe in the past. I have been to the Puyallup a couple of times, but I LOVE the state fair and so if we get a chance that is where we go. We are going to check it out on Saturday (after work and the Sounders game if I can find a place to watch it!) so maybe we will see you there!

So we have gotten to a couple of new places this week and yet there are so many more to go to! One place we are trying to find time for is the new pizza place called Delancey in Seattle. Brandon and Molly are minds, bodies and hearts behind this labor of love and so far all we have been able to do to show our support is send emails to them. We are trying to get out there and maybe you will get a chance to before we do! If you get to that area, go have some hand made pizza because they are using the freshest, in season and local products as they possibly can and you know we love to support that!!!

One last thing to tease you about: I am working with the KCAA on a harvest meal and tickets will soon be available. Several chefs and professional chefs will be gathering locally grown and produced ingredients to create a feast!! We will be celebrating local food, along with Farmer Nash Huber, as well as Kate Dean from Mt Townsend Creamery. Check out the link for more info and of course, I will keep you posted.

No recipe today, I have got to get in and cooking for a cater tonight and of course, it's almost the lunch rush. Keep me posted on the restaurants you try and if you have a request for a recipe, let me know!

Link: http://www.waterfrontbakery.com

We have tomatoes coming out of our ears! This is a great thing, considering they are heirloom tomatoes grown by our farmers Jared & Sara and by our very own Mark! He bought some heirloom starts at farmers markets earlier this year and they are bustin out with gorgeous tomatoes. On Saturday I went to Pizzaria Fondi in Gig Harbor to pick up some of their home made Mozzarella. YUM! We layered it with the tomatoes and tomatillos, some fresh basil, and olive oil & balsamic that I brought back from Italy were drizzled over the top. I LOVE that! This week Mark will make a tomato tart with a parmesan crust for the cafe, and we will be doing up lots of tomato salads for all to enjoy. I love tomato season!

I remember my grandfather growing cherry tomatoes in pots and the flavors were so great! That is what heirloom tomatoes remind me of: childhood flavors. Not all heirloom tomatoes are fabulous, just like every other food out there it is a subjective world. The ones we have been getting are so...tomatoey! Have you heard of the 'canvolution'? It started on Twitter somehow (I don't fully get the whole Twitter thing, even though I use it to update the web site with the daily specials) and it is a movement to get folks to 'put up' their own food. I have been invited to Shauna's later this month for a private canning event and I think I want to take tomatoes. As I understand it, this is a cooperative event: we all bring flats of produce and matching money for the food bank, and we all learn and help each other, then swap jars. I am not positive I can go yet, we have to see what orders come in, but I am going to try to make it! Do you can? Check out other local events (read: Seattle) here.

I cooked up a feast on Saturday, full of yummy roasted veggies from our CSA box (see the Jared & Sara link above). I was going to do it again on Sunday, and then ran out of steam. Mark has been wanting spaghetti carbonara and it sounded so good, so I made that. Now as easy a dish as this is, I have not mastered it and I always over cook it. The flavors are still fabulous, and since I overcooked it AGAIN on Sunday I have researched the heck out of it and I am going to give it one more try, as I am certain that I have fixed what I did wrong. My version is ultra traditional, and as always you can make changes to it. I have to recommend getting the freshest eggs that you can from a farmer's market or farm stand, rather than the store, since we are not cooking the eggs in the traditional manner. This dish is comforting, easy, and oh so good! You can vary it in many ways, and then it becomes a different dish, and yet if it's good that is great!

This is believed to be a Roman dish and did not really appear until WWII, so it is a relatively 'new' dish. The thing you have to do is trust the method and DO NOT keep cooking this, or the eggs will scramble to make it a dry dish. It's ok, really!

Spaghetti alla Carbonara

salt
2+ TBS olive oil
3/4 cup pancetta cut into a 1/4 inch dice (yes, you can use bacon, though it will be a different, smoky flavor)
8 large eggs (NOT jumbo eggs, NOT medium eggs, and definitely NOT small eggs; if you use a different size, adjust the recipe up or down accordingly)
1 cup grated cheese (I use 1/2 cup pecorino, 1/2 cup asiago, you can use parm instead of asiago)
freshly ground black pepper--a good amount of it, the flavor is key
Italian Parsley, chopped

Bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil.

Add about 2 tablespoons olive oil to a large skillet over medium heat. Add the pancetta and cook until it starts to color and become crisp. Turn off the heat and reserve.

Drop the pasta into the salted boiling water and cook it 1 minute less than it says on the package, usually about 6 to 7 minutes. Bite the pasta to check the consistency.

While the pasta is cooking, crack the eggs into a large mixing bowl. Add the grated cheeses and season with salt. Whisk vigorously until it becomes a homogenous. Season generously with black pepper.

When the pasta is just about done, return the pan with the pancetta to medium heat. Remove the pasta from the cooking water. Toss or stir the pasta into the pancetta to coat the pasta with the remaining fat in the skillet. Immediately vigorously stir the egg mixture into the pasta. Stir constantly until the egg mixture looks like a cream sauce, about 2 more minutes.

mix in the chopped parsley and serve immediately.

You will love this dish for it's ease and flavors! Tell us what, if anything, you will be canning this season, and what you love to do with your cans!

Link: http://www.waterfrontbakery.com

Have you seen the movie 'Food, Inc' yet? If not, get thee to The Historic Orchard Theater, downtown Port Orchard to see it before the last run Thursday night. The bonus is that the theater is generously donating a portion of the sales to the Kitsap Community Food Co-Op and we need them to have all the funds they can get so we can get them open! We went to the movie with our favorite nephew, Travis, and I wasn't sure what he would think about it, or if he would think it was important to know where our food comes from. He said he liked the movie and the fact that it made him think about things like that. It is not the easiest movie to watch, and yet I find that most things worth knowing about are not going to be the 'easy' way out. Whoever first said "ignorance is bliss" obviously knew enough to have to have to do things the harder way. It is important stuff to know, though, if we want to count ourselves in with the larger community of the world. Plus it is nice to have it reinforced that our eating habits are pretty darn good when it comes to finding the better nutrition, supporting the smaller farmers and producers, doing better things for the environment, and building up our local economy. Can we do better? Of course...and it feels great to be on the 'right' path.

That Thursday when it was too hot to think, we had a private wine tasting scheduled for our Old Town neighbor, friend and great customer Jason Parker, of Parker Financial, LLC. This was a client appreciation event that he had scheduled and he had 36 clients come out for it. The afternoon sun was beating through the windows and the air conditioning could not keep up with 40 of us up there. It was sort of chaotic, with everyone fanning themselves and finding it difficult to listen to the speakers who were invited to the event. Let's face it, we were all miserable and even though it was cooler by 10 degrees than outside, it was still in the upper 80's inside! Folks seemed to have a nice time in spite of all that and hopefully they went away feeling nourished and appreciated! The best thing about the evening for me was working with Bainbridge Island Vineyard & Winery. Jo Ann was a trooper and hung in there with me, going with the flow of a very strange wine tasting. I loved their wines and, with their permission, we will be featuring some of them for the holidays, and again in the Spring. They grow their grapes on BI and have done so for about 30 years! True farmers and entrepreneurs, they have really good wine at great prices to boot. I am really looking forward to getting them on the menu!

On Sunday we joined the rest of the immediate Downen family at Safeco Field for the annual ball game. You can thank us for bringing the luck for that astounding victory! We had a great time with the family and what made it extra fun was that we parked in Tukwila and took the new light rail in to the stadium. 26 minutes and it is a great way to go! I want to do the whole line, and better explore a couple of the neighborhoods that we never get to when we ferry or use the freeway, like Columbia City (the best pizza this side of NYC is there at Tutta Bella and a great Ethiopian restaurant was there years ago...). You can get on/off the train within 2 hours, and if you have a bus to catch your ticket is good for one transfer. When it goes the airport it will be the smartest choice! If only we could get Bremerton to catch up and offer long term parking; wouldn't that be great! If any of you know any other great restaurants along the light rail line, tell us about them! I know some of you Metro guys must have some ideas!

And with that we are at yesterday. Ah yesterday, such a lovely day. Mark and I attended the Small Vineyards trade wine tasting, to choose our winter lineup. The event was at a wine rep's house and he and his wife showed us some fantastic hospitality! They had a lovely view of the water, a beautiful home, the food was nicely matched for the wines and it was all very relaxed and enjoyable. We will do a tasting after the boat brings it in early November, so be looking for that. Afterwards we wanted a bit more time to collect ourselves so we got a bite to eat at the Ajax Cafe in Port Hadlock. Several of our customers have told us we would love this place, and sure enough we did! It is funky and fun with enough hats for everyone to wear one if you wanted to! Which of course, I did. It was purple (big surprise) and fabulous. I had the Portabella Taglietelle and finished it for breakfast this morning. If you find yourself in that area definitely check it out!

This lovely rain has me itching for more substantial cooking, such as a meat sauce, but it is still august and summer and I want to offer another lovely light recipe for the warmer days. And yes, we will still have a few more of those! So get to a farmer's market or a farm stand and buy up all the best cantaloupe you can find. Our farmer Paul grew "Goddess" melons for us this year and they are amazingly tasty. Then blend up this 'soup'...it is savory enough to serve as a first course and refreshing enough as dessert, or it can be the whole meal!

Chilled Cantaloupe 'Gazpacho'

3 cantaloupe, peeled/seeded/chunked
3 c plain yogurt
2 1/4 c fresh OJ
1/4 C honey
3/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne (more if you love it spicy!)

Puree it all, mix it together, chill and serve with fresh mint as a garnish. It is a fabulous taste of summer!!!