Entries categorized as ‘Around Town’
I forgot to tell about our dinner we had on Valentine’s Day! Now, I’m not a super fan of this holiday. It’s not that I get hung up on the Hallmark thing, more that I just don’t feel like I need a specific day to tell people how I feel? It’s probably bad – I woke up to Bryan handing me a very sweet, heartfelt card (I bawled reading it), and I hadn’t even made his card yet!!
We decided to visit Fresh for Sunday’s dinner. We love this place and hadn’t been in a while. While their food is great and the staff is always friendly, I like that they approach their menu seasonally and pull from local sources. This doesn’t mean they are 100% seasonal or local – there’s plenty of mango and avocado to be found. It’s the way the menu feels out taste and ingredients from the season. Even their liquors, some of those are from Washington, Oregon or Idaho!
Dinner was a five-course meal. Wow! I haven’t ever had the luxury of dining like this. It was definitely more than we anticipated spending, which I won’t even go into; every bite was savory and we were there nearly 2 1/2 hours thoroughly enjoying ourselves. First plate was oysters (yes I ate two oysters), with a little ahi sitting atop mango and avocado that had a little sesame/soy type brittle.
Next up was a soup: delicata squash – puréed perfectly. I could have sipped on this for an hour. After the soup came a salad: fig, prosciutto and frisée … mmm! Next up was the entrée (can we get some more acute accent marks in here?), I took a photo with my phone after the waitress walked by hearing me ask Bryan “what do I do with THIS!?”. I was actually kind of amazed at all that sat before me, I didn’t know where to start. She smartly remarked, “well – first you take a photo of it with your phone, then you tweet about it and post it to Facebook to let ALL your friends know, and then you dig in.” I kind of laughed her off, like yeah right I’m going to promote your restaurant, but that’s kind of what this is all about – right?
Main course: lobster, steak wrapped in bacon, sweetbreads and veggies
This dish was over the top. Beautifully married flavors of steak wrapped in bacon with truffles, there’s a sweetbreads with foie gras fritter in the back/left corner, and then front & center we have this lobster sitting on top of tokyo turnips and colorful carrots. Just a dream to eat. I took this photo with my iPhone and had to touch it up i the Photoshop app so it’s kind of grainy, but the dish was one heavenly bite after another. Except – don’t tell anyone this – I had to pass the lobster to Bryan to finish. I’m not a lobster person!! It’s partly the texture and partly the taste. I tried, and I’m sorry.
After this dish I had to sit and digest awhile. I didn’t want to move on to dessert, it was such a nice flavor in my mouth I didn’t want to replace it with something else just yet. Even if that “something else” was a chocolate cake with passionfruit glaze, baby bananas coated in flambéed caramel and with some chocolate chile ice cream. Mouthful of a description but woah, what a topper to this dinner! Fresh Bistro I love you! And I love Bryan and I love my friends, my family, and just for a few hours on Sunday – I loved Valentine’s Day for giving me this excuse to dine on tasty foods and sip wine.
-xoxo-
Categories: Around Town
Tagged: fresh bistro seattle, lobster, restaurant dining, valentine's day
February 9, 2010 · 1 Comment
About a month ago, we were involved with filming two ad spots for the jeweler we worked with for our wedding rings. Greenlake Jewelry Works is an awesome locally-owned and operated business. They make all their jewelry at their Northgate location.
If you know us, then you know how much we are in love with the ring we designed for Melissa’s engagement/wedding ring, and also how much we loved working with these guys. Bryan’s ring is pretty sweet too, but much much simpler.
Always happy to promote our favorite jewelers – here’s the video on KIRO TV’s website. (I couldn’t find an embed code w/permission to use, so check it out there!)
Penny asking us how our ring design process went
Categories: Around Town
Tagged: custom jewelry, engagement ring, greenlake jewelry works, tv ad, wedding ring
February 3, 2010 · 1 Comment
Portland is a beautiful city. I love driving around and checking out the shops and restaurants, buildings and bridges. Our last visit took me across the St. John’s Bridge for the first time. Until Sunday I had only admired its gothic arches and pale green from afar.
Bryan has some friends that live on the East side, up in St John’s neighborhood, so I’ve heard about the great parks and cute shops in that area. (Stiles, if you’re reading this, we’re sorry we didn’t call.) It was a little removed from town, probably comparable to our West Seattle neighborhood. The houses were a mix of nicer to “need some love” and overall feeling was relaxed, chill.
There is a park around and under the base of the East end of the bridge, it’s beautiful and grassy and great for sledding in the winter, picnics in the summer, and general enjoyment of the outdoors.
Just another reason I continue to love Portland.
Categories: Around Town
Tagged: city of roses, oregon, portland, st johns bridge
Fall colors are everywhere – the trees, the leaves on the ground, and in some certain foods that ripen this time of year … like pumpkins. Halloween is perfectly suited, by nature, for pumpkin carving. This last weekend we headed down to Portland for a pumpkin party hosted by the Savages. This meant a feast of foods: two kinds of chili, accompanied by two kinds of cornbread, pumpkin cake and pumpkin bread, cookies and caramel-dipped apples. Nobody left half-full.
Caramel and chocolate-dipped apples, hand crafted by Allyson Savage
Erin and Stephanie at work on their masterpieces
Kellen and his masterpiece
After stuffing ourselves with food, we carried our gourds and crafting supplies outside for some creative carving. There were a few kids present, we got a kick out of hearing their take on our pumpkins and theirs. What was spooky and what wasn’t? What “should” a jack-o-lantern look like?
Allyson and her Moonstruck pumpkin
Finished jack-o-lanterns
Categories: Around Town
Tagged: halloween, pumpkin carving
May is “bike to work month” and we’ve been doing a pretty good job of biking to work, the store, and around our neighborhood. Biking to work is pretty easy, I think it’s six miles roundtrip. The part that hurts me is this shoulder injury. Got me a kink in my neck and new back pains from it. Seeing a doc next week for that though.
Bryan and I have a regular loop we like to take. From our house, head down Avalon and cruise along Alki. Heck, on Sunday we were passing long lines of cars. Traffic gets BAD on Alki! Cut around or through housed lanes to Beach Drive, which has a lovely view of the Olympics when it’s clear out. After Beach Dr. we head through Lincoln Park and up the hill to Fauntleroy – which can pretty much lead us back home, so if we want to make the trip longer we’ll meander through the side streets and check out houses. It’s a pretty sweet ride that’s full of views and things to check out. A great way to let out steam or shake off a funk.
Bryan biking along the north edge of Lincoln Park
Categories: Around Town
Tagged: alki, bike, biking, bryan, exploring, lincoln park, west seattle
What a busy month we’ve had! Two weekends in Portland cleaning Bryan’s condo, two nights in Bend plus one day riding Bachelor. Work has really accelerated, which for no really good reason has trickled down and into my overall life. I am home from work, I need to be thinking of what to paint or sew or knit. Not plotting a project or meeting.
Bahs!
Next project coming up: storage unit gets organized. Fun never ends over here! It will be nice to have that taken care of. Right now it’s a scary pile of bags, boxes, unlabeled rubbermaid bins. Once we have it in nice and tidy order, we’ll be able to move some of the excess from our bedroom closet and office area in. Ah, the joys of condo.
On a lighter note, there is some tasty bread in the oven and our house smells warm and delightful.
Categories: Around Town
Tagged: condo, organizing, projects
