Some of My Favorite Food Photos

The Barcelona, Spain Market Place. The nut stand.




Lettuce in the Grandville Island Market. Vancouver, B.C.

An Orange

Cottage Pie On A Cold Winter Night

Looking for an easy to make comfort food for dinner? Here is one that is a favorite around our house. Having a son-in-law who happens to be a Brit helps.

We were in Wales with family and friends a couple of New Years ago. Nick and I were tagged as the dinner maker for New Year's Eve Dinner. We decided to make a Shepherd's Pie. Making it with lamb is considered Shepherd's Pie, with beef is a Cottage Pie.

Turned out we had all the ingredients except for the tomato products usually added in--usually catsup and or tomato paste and sauce. I suggested using Daddy's Sauce, a sort of A-1 Steak Sauce tasting concoction, which we did have. This is what we came up with. It was delicious. Daddy's Sauce is available here in the States but it is pricey!

2 pounds of ground beef or lamb
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 handfuls of peas (frozen is fine)
1 clove of garlic, minced
3/4 cup of Daddy's Sauce
1/4 cup of beef broth

options:
1 stalk of celery, diced
8 ounces of mushrooms, sliced
salt and pepper
5 pounds of potatoes
1/2 stick of butter
1/ 4 cup of milk

Peel potatoes and cook in salted boiling water until soft. Drain and put back in the pot. Add milk and butter and use a mixer to blend into potatoes until they are mashed. Salt and pepper to taste.Set aside.

In a skillet, add veggies except peas and add meat. Cook until meat is browned and veggies are nearly cooked through. Drain oil from pan. Add in Daddy's Sauce and broth stirring into mixture. Salt and pepper to taste.

In a 9 X 13 casserole pour meat and veggie mixture into the bottom and smooth out filling the bottom. Pour mashed potatoes over the meat mixture and spread uniformly across the top. With a fork, rough up the top of the potatoes leaving small peaks. These will brown and caramelize as the casserole bakes. Place in preheated 350 oven for 45 minutes or until the top of the potatoes are browning.

Enjoy!

It Just Makes No Sense

Senator Gabriella Giffords, the Republican Congresswomen from the 8th Congressional district in the Tucson, Arizona area, is shot in the head by a deranged, lone gunman with a record of violent and disruptive behavior. So violent and disruptive that he is permanently banned from his college campus. His parents knew of his issues yet apparently remained in denial and did little or nothing to help this disturbed young man.

Giffords, a crack shot with her Glock hand gun and a representative of a part of Arizona where most of the constituency would rather die with their gun in their cold, dead hand than to allow any gun control laws, was the latest victim in a nation that just can't seem to agree on what to do with the problem of her mentally ill and the issue of gun control.

Jared Loughner is also the victim here. He is a member of the invisible part of our community that desperately needs help but either doesn't get it or has no one to advocate for him to get it. We live in a society that has chosen to toss aside our mentally ill and homeless (often the same people). Instead, we cross the street rather than walk past them, avert our eyes when we have to stop at a light and one of them stands with a sign in their hand not 10 feet from our car asking for help. Many of these people are sick and often through no fault of their own, they are unable to get the medical help they need. The system is too broken and convoluted for most of these folks to be able to navigate through the endless and complicated maze of bureaucratic red tape without giving up and slipping into the dark abysses of society.

What to do? The Supreme Court has rendered it almost impossible for persons who are mentally ill to be kept against their will in any confinement. Hence nearly all of the horrid mental hospitals made infamous by the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are closed. Most of those institutionalized today are there due to criminal offenses. Their commitment was after the fact. In other words, they had to commit a crime before they were 'locked up.'

Nothing can be done for these people with our current societal attitudes towards taxation (a whole other blog entry). However, when we do finally tire of innocents like 9 year old Christina Green being murdered for no other reason than she was at the wrong place at the wrong time, then there are some answers.

1. Streamline the system, beefing up the staff of the governmental organizations who are tasked with helping the mentally ill.
2. Assign the ill to an government advocate who has a case load that is easily managed to help monitor these people, helping them with their medications, homelessness, jobs, reconnecting with family, etc.
3. Increase government funding to and for homeless shelters. The individual's advocate can also act as the inspector to these shelters to make sure they are being run effectively.
4. All of this will, of course, take money. When we as the fellow citizens of those who have no voice are finally sickened enough by the violence and the growing throngs of the disenfranchised all around us, perhaps we will elect to do something positive about it.

Until then, who among us is next? Where will the next random act of violence take place? Whose niece, grandaughter, son or daughter will be the next senseless victim?

A New Jazz Club in Town

Last night, January 5, 2011, I attended the grand reopening of the Bellingham art gallery The Blue Horse Gallery Cafe and Wine Bar as it debuted as the newest jazz club in town.

The Mike Allen Quartet featuring pianist phenom Miles Black, talented bassist and singer Adam Thomas and local celebrity drummer Julian McDonough.

Mike, a well-known jazz sax player from Vancouver, B.C., was recently hired as the jazz studies coordinator at Western Washington University. He brought along his quartet to not only help teach at the school but also to promote the program through demonstrating their combined talents out in the greater community.

Last night, they wowed the Bellingham community when they took the new stage at the Blue Horse. I love Mike's quartet for lots of reasons--they are all obviously masters at what they do. But most of all it is their obvious love for the music. They have so much fun when they play together and my life is lifted to a much better place when I listen to them.

The gallery is a great venue for music. It has a very open feel, yet it is intimate with warm colors, lots of wood and great acoustics. There was plenty of space in the main room for the 50 or so attendees to sit at tables and chairs yet the adjacent rooms allowed conversations and roaming through the gallery's ample art display while still easily hearing the music playing in the next room.

As I sat listening with friend Mark Fuller I leaned over and mentioned, "Who needs New York City when we have this to listen to?"

The cafe and wine bar plan to open with regular hours soon and music is planned as a regular event as well. You can see and hear Mike Allen and Julian McDonough every Wednesday night with guest musicians playing with them, Miles and Adam will join them every other week. They play from 7 to 9, though last night they played until 10. Be there!

Pulled Pork for Chritmas Dinner?

It was a request from our son-in-law, Nick, who loves anything pork--bacon, sausage.

So the menu went like this:

Pulled Pork Sandwiches
Caramelized Onions and Peppers
Cole Slaw
Pan drippings and Porter Gravy
Potatoes Au Gratin
Cranberry Fluff Salad
Pineapple Cheese Casserole
Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce

The upper right corner of this entry shows the pork in the process of cooking.

4-5 pound pork shoulder
2 bottles of dark bear
salt and pepper
green onions

For BBQ Sauce:

1 cup tomato catsup
1 cup apple cider vinegar
3 T brown sugar
4 T yellow prepared mustard
1 T molasses
1 T red pepper flakes
1 t cayenne
1 t salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and stir until blended. Set aside for a few hours until ingredients have a chance to marry. Pour over shredded pork or over individual sandwiches as you choose.

Cut off any unwanted fat off the pork shoulder. Coat with salt and pepper. Brown off all sides in a skillet. Set up a crock pot. Turn on high. Place browned off pork into the crock pot and pour two bottles of good quality dark beer around it. Add a few stalks of green onion. Cover and braise for 4-5 hours or until the pork shreds easily.

When pork is down, drain all but a bit of the beer out of the crock pot. A baster will do this well. Using a fork, begin to break up the pork until it is either in chunks of shedded. Pour BBQ sauce over the pork and blend it into the pork. Serve pork over your favorite roll or bun. Spoon a few of the caramelized onions on top or some cole slaw. Pour some of the gravy over the pork if you like for an open face sandwich.

Du Jour Bistro to Close

The end of an era will occur when Du Jour Bistro closes its kitchen on Cornwall Avenue in downtown Bellingham at the end of the month. One of the small handful of restaurants in the Bellingham area that offer a consistently exceptional dining experience, Du Jour had the special distinction of also being a great place to purchase a bottle of wine and then enjoy it at your table. The Vines is the in-house wine shop for the Bistro.

On more than one occasion I and my guests have walked out with several bottles of a wine we were especially impressed with during our dinner. With a very modest $5 corkage fee, and a wide variety of wines at retail price, as opposed to highly marked up restaurant prices, a nice bottle of wine with your dinner becomes very reasonable.

But the food has always been a fabulous reason to visit Du Jour Bistro. The French influenced bistro with a Northwest flair offers locally sourced organic foods whenever possible. Chef Mike Petersen, highly knowledgeable about wines with plenty of suggestions and ready to make special orders, has great talent with his saucing and creative combinations of fresh northwest seafood, lamb, beef and locally grown vegetables.

I am especially partial to the bacon-wrapped dates and the wild mushroom risotto small plates.

The Lamb Osso Bucco is so moist and flavorful. My wife's recent flat iron steak special with a soy-chipotle marinade was melt in the mouth. I have enjoyed a tomato sauce with succulent scallops and shrimp as well. It's just all good and too sad that it has to come to an end.

My advice, get over to the Du Jour Bistro at least one more time before it closes its doors for the final time. You won't be disappointed. And take home a bottle of wine or two as well.

One Very Impressive Thanksgiving Holiday!

About 12:30 pm last Thursday, our daughter, Kate, her husband, Nick, and their friend Sally, pulled up in front of the house and with their gear in tow, walked up the drive way and into the house. We stood with the door open and our arms open wide as the ascended the steps. The ground was covered with a beautiful snow fall. About 3 inches had fallen over the past several days and it made the trip to our house rather treacherous.

We were so happy they had arrived safely.

In the door and up the stairs to the rooms we had prepared for them they went, Kate and Nick into their regular room and Sally just placed her things out of the way in the office since she would be sleeping downstairs in the family room.

Not long after, in walked Richard and Jeanette (he is French and therefore his name must be pronounced accordingly). They moved into the office upstairs and then joined us with Thanksgiving preparations already well underway.

In fact, Mom and I had been preparing for the past several days. Mostly small things in the beginning, but over the past couple of days preparations got a bit more frenetic.

We cut up fresh veggies for the crudite platter, a 20 pound turkey was roasted off, sliced and laid out on a platter, and the day-before parts of several dishes were put together and stuck in the fridge.

By the time our little extended family had arrived, we had another, 25 pound turkey stuffed and in the oven and casseroles of dressing and green beans were awaiting their turn.

Everything was as ready as it could be when Kate and Nick entered the kitchen to begin production of 15 pounds of mashed potatoes! We wanted to be out of the way when they needed the kitchen.

Potato peels flew, potatoes were sliced and diced, popped into their water baths and the special ingredients brought to enhance the mashed potato experience were prepped--bacon, exotic cheeses, butter and cream were readied for their addition to the pots of creamy mash.

By about 4 o'clock others began to arrive and bring their contributions to the festivities. Friends from as far away as Oregon and just around the corner kicked off their shoes, poured a glass of wine and relaxed. Folks we didn't think would come due to the snow actually made it. In the end only 2 (Later about them) didn't make it of the 23 who originally said they'd come.

Everyone brought food. Though most were asked only to bring one dish, most brought two or three. Before long the dining table groaned under the weight, the piano bar was covered with wines and other beverages, the coffee table displayed an assortment of nuts and other pre-dinner goodies. Every counter top was covered, even stacked, with dishes of yams and salads and favorite, wouldn't-be-Thanksgiving-without-them dishes until it became nearly impossible to know what we had or get it all out on the serving table.

By about 4 o'clock we were ready and everyone gathered around the table to pile their plates high. Within minutes every nook and cranny in the living room and family room was occupied with the quietest group you ever heard all enjoying the yummy dinner.

By 6:30 some folks were already drifting out the door to head home for a long winter's nap (the carbs had had their effect). The inhabitants of our home remained surrounded by the remains of the day.

Seven loads of dishes later, the kitchen began to look somewhat normal again. The fridge in the kitchen and out in the garage however, were stuffed with plates and tubs and bowls and casseroles of leftovers awaiting the midnight snack and left over lunches sure to happen over the holiday weekend.