Friday, June 29, 2007

adorable

Friday, June 22, 2007

lots of cooking

i've been busy trying to make the most of the summer and cooking/baking as much as possible. from the fresh berries on sauvie island to delicious meats from gartner's, gricklepants and i have been eating well.

some highlights...

the other weekend, our friends scott & pete came up for a visit and i felt compelled to show them the tasty things portland has to offer. first, we went to sauvie island to pick strawberries, which was awesome and ruling, according to scott.

scott shows off a tasty specimen:


we picked a lot:


which we put to good use (photo by pete):
that would a strawberry rhubarb pie along with a chocolate pavlova topped with whipped cream & strawberries. sinfully delicious!


the leftover rhubarb got turned into tasty drinks:
rhubarb syrup, liberal amounts of gin, plus lemon & lime juice. i have bought extra rhubarb to freeze just so that i can have this drink in the dead of winter. sometimes i am smart and plan ahead like this. just sayin'.


we had some non-berry food too:

most notably, we bought a big pork shoulder from gartner's and then cooked it up with beer. holy crap it was good. we served it with homemade bread and some asparagus. everyone seemed to like it, though it helps when you eat dinner at 11pm. i think we could've served wallpaper paste and it would've gotten rave reviews.

i think gricklepants was inspired by that weekend because the next weekend he wanted to make meatballs. growing up in the sault has spoiled him; apparently the best italian restaurants are there and every so often he gets nostalgic for some tasty italian meal from mrs. b's, aurora's pizza, giovanni's, minelli's, or suriano's.

i like it when gricklepants joins me in the kitchen. he's a good sous chef who can mince garlic like no other, but it's rare for him to take a lead role in meal prep, so this was very nice. we researched recipes online, slowly narrowing down our choices and finally chose one, knowing that this was just our first step toward finding the ultimate meatball recipe. we also decided to make the pasta from scratch too, which is always tasty and worth the effort. the meatballs turned out pretty good, though i'd like to keep tinkering and get them perfect.


the leftovers i think were even tastier:


there were other food adventures like a few batches of ice cream, banana cake, a plum galette, etc. but i think this is an already epic post, so we'll leave it at that. and we leave for iceland in one week so you'll have pictures of putrified shark to look forward to!