birfday!

oh, bloggy, so many great things have been happening, but we've been so busy, and i 've been on a plane every week so far this month. so for now, no more pictures of kitchen experiments (but oh how delicious the boozy homemade maraschino cherries were!)

my birthday was saturday and it was a full weekend of celebrations. i flew back to pdx on friday night and gricklepants and i decided to have date night and go out to dinner. we went to farm, a place many people have raved about and so it was time for us to try it out ourselves. in a word: deelish. in two: deelishous.

we shared an appetizer of figs stuffed with gorgonzola and drizzled with honey and balsamic vinegar. it was phenomenal. i ordered the gnocchi with a fire-roastd red pepper sauce and gricklepants got the halibut off the specials menu. the halibut was the bomb-diggity. the gnocchi were a little heavy, but the sauce was supreme. we ended the meal with a slice of marscapone cheesecake topped with a blueberry sauce and it was so light and fabulous.

saturday morning meant a trip to the dmv since my license expired. having some previous experience with the dmv on a saturday we decided to awake painfully early. it wasn't awful, but it wasn't exactly fun either. and nobody wished me a happy birthday. i wouldn't have expected it but at the airport all of the security people wished me a happy birthday (i guess they actually do carefully read over your license!)

we got out of the dmv around 9am so went for breakfast. i wanted to go to le pigeon since it's rumored they have the best eggs benedict. sadly, i will never know because they are no longer open for breakfast. the doug fir was a tasty backup. then we went shopping! gricklepants gave me his wallet and left me at mabel & zora, my favorite shoppy store for girl clothes. i was pretty good and didn't go too overboard. oh! and at some point in here i opened up my present from gricklepants: a whole new set of pots 'n pans! i am super stoked.

after a nap we met up with jeremy, vera, jonathan, and arlie at thatch, a tiki bar i had read about. there was a tiki crawl going on so the place was full of people in bright outfits. it was fun. we were tucked away in the back in the tiki "hut." the drinks were good 'n strong and the food was surprisingly good (though, i can only really compare this tiki bar to the alibi, which is decidedly not known for its food.)

it was an awesome day! can it be my birthday everyday? please?

berry season

this past weekend i went out to sauvie island - twice - to pick fresh berries. came home saturday with a flat of blueberries as well as some cherries from kruger's market. on sunday, gricklepants and i joined verabee on another jaunt to the island, this time to columbia farms, where we picked another flat of blueberries as well as a flat of raspberries.

i guess i got a little carried away because i'm not really sure what to do with all those blueberries. i knew i'd freeze a bunch, but man, there's a LOT. blueberry crumble cake from gourmet was made yesterday, and blueberry buttermilk pancakes this morning... i've been looking for new blueberry recipes since sunday but i'm a little overwhelmed. and i leave tomorrow for 3 days. so many blueberries! maybe i should feed them to pancake. do cats even like blueberries...?

so i made a cherry pie instead. that's more straightforward and does not overwhelm. still, i decided to experiment just a tad. i kept a few cherries back from the pie and decided to make mini pies with them. i rolled out some leftover scraps of dough, cut 1-inch circles and placed them in the bottom of a mini muffin tin. then i placed half a cherry on each circle and topped with a second dough round. i think they came out alright for being a last minute "hey, what would happen..." sort of thing. they do look a little like open clam shells, or pac-mans.

monster island

wow... iceland is the most awesome place on this planet. our 5 days there simply wasn't enough time to see it all (even though it's a very small island.)

we landed right around midnight on saturday night and the sun was just touching the horizon, casting long shadows on everything; and on our bus ride to reykjavik, gricklepants commented that the lava field landscape would be perfect for a godzilla movie. this is true. when godzilla tires of crushing tokyo under his feets he should consider iceland. there he would have the extra benefit of the geo-thermal springs in which to bathe. i imagine even godzilla would appreciate the hot springs of iceland.

there aren't really words to explain just how awesome a place it is. we spent half our time in reykjavik livin' it up with our friends and hosts, tyler and korka, going to bars, seeing icelandic bands play (we saw múm!) and general exploring. we spent the other half driving around the countryside, which was unbelievably amazing.

aww hell, you should just look at our pictures here