Seattle!

Today I'm off to Seattle for a few days to visit my good friend Jodi. I was there over Christmas and New Years and had a fantastic time, and I know I'll have a fantastic time this trip, too. I also know the food will be amazing because Jodi is a ridiculously good cook and gourmand, and she has a Bradley smoker on her balcony she is not afraid to use!

This is the bourbon and orange marinated hickory smoked chicken she made on New Years Day:

This was so good you'd pay top dollar for it in a fancy restaurant, I swear.

Jodi is also famous for cookie breakfasts...(yes, we ate this for breakfast - several days in a row)...


...And epic turkey dinners with enough food to feed an army (there were two of us). The turkey she brined overnight - look at the colour it has!


I'll save the fondu photos for another time because I don't want anyone damaging any keyboards out there with all the drool I'm sure these photos are creating.

And of course, there is Starbucks in Seattle! This is the original, across from Pike Place Market. I snapped some photos but didn't go because there was always a huge line-up out the door! Luckily, on the walking route to Jodi's from Pike Place, there are plenty of Starbucks to choose from and they didn't have line-ups!

The West Coast adventure continues. And...I'm also going to Seattle again in April!

Magazine Monday (on Tuesday, not to mention a record!) #68: Pumpkin Pecan Bundt Cake

Of course, just as I start getting back into the swing of things, I go away for a few days, but there will be lots to post here when I get back.

Anyway, I managed another magazine recipe for the week, which is a record: two in seven days is not the norm, as we all know. In fact, it's two in four days to be precise. Well, it was Canadian Thanksgiving here on the weekend so I made a nice dessert to take to a friend's for dinner on Sunday night, and since I have a ton of pumpkin in my freezer, and there was a special pumpkin section in the Oct. 2010 issue of Canadian Living, I just had to take advantage of all these planets aligning for me.

The recipe for the Pumpkin Pecan Bundt Cake I made is here.

OMG - this was so fantastic I barely have words. It was a huge hit, and I even had enough left over from Sunday night's dinner to serve my dad for dessert at our own little Thanksgiving celebration last night. He doesn't like pumpkin that much and even he loved it! This cake was really moist and flavourful, and the crunch of the pecans was wonderful. It was perfectly spiced. I didn't make the rum glaze, but instead served this with some sweetened whipped cream and some caramel sauce I've had hanging out in my fridge for ages. It was perfect!

Definitely a keeper!

Thanksgiving Rundown

This year it was just Dad and me because my brother & SIL were visiting family in another province. But, just because there were only two of us, we did not simplify anything and had the full-on, slap-up Thanksgiving turkey dinner we wanted. On the menu:

• turkey breast roast (my dad hates everything about turkey except the white meat, so he only buys turkey breast roasts and usually has 3 or 4 of them in his freezer at any given time) roasted with double smoked bacon & sausages made by a local butcher
• potato cakes made with garlic & Parmesan cheese; a departure for us, but this is an old dish my grandmother used to make apparently
• stuffing, gravy, yams (only dad eats yams)
• Brussels Sprouts sauteed with bacon & pinenuts & topped with Parmesan (made by yours truly)
• and for dessert, Bakewell Tart, also made by yours truly

Here is a nice collage I made of the meal:Everything was delicious! The recipe for the Brussels is basically this one from this post, only I used regular bacon instead of pancetta, and I topped the dish with Parmesan cheese.

As for the dessert, Bakewell Tart, my dad has been nagging me for this for a long time, and I finally gave in for this special occasion. He was so thrilled and so impressed and as soon as he bit into it, he said, "This is it!" I don't know why I put him off on this so long, because it was ridiculously easy to make. Alas, I'm not going to post the recipe because I want to use it for my next Bread 'n Molasses article, so you'll have to wait until January! But here is another collage:The cool thing about this year's Thanksgiving is that we're getting two of them in the family! When my brother & SIL get back from their trip, we're having another turkey dinner! This will be later this week, and I'll be making two dishes for it, too. Those recipes I will definitely share, so stay tuned!

I hope my Canadian readers are having a great long weekend!

Full Flickr set is here.

Kamloops Trip, Food Edition, Part 3

On Sunday, after a breakfast of homemade egg mcmuffins made by S, my dad picked me up and drove me down the highway to my friend Anita's place. She has a ranch style home on a large property in the countryside just beyond Kamloops. I actually lived there for a few weeks when I first left my husband in May 2005, but hadn't visited since about spring of 2006. Lots of changes, but this one was the most impressive for me:This is their brand new fridge/freezer combo: freezer on the left, fridge on the right. Isn't it amazing? Trust me, it's even more impressive in real person! I was continually drooling over this the whole time I was there!

For dinner, Richard made a Mexican dish of yummy rice, sauted peppers, BBQ chicken with lime and cumin, and sliced avocado. It was excellent, and Richard is an amazing cook.On Monday, Anita and I went into Salmon Arm to run some errands and visit Gort's Gouda. This is a really cool cheese factory on a farm and you can walk around and visit the cows and sheep, sample the wide variety of gouda on offer, and have an actual tour of the factory. We visited the animals and sampled some cheese but we didn't have the tour. I actually used to live not far from here and often went to Gort's, and I can honestly say that they make superb cheese. Apart from gouda, they also make quark, different sheep cheeses, fresh cheese curds, sheep's feta and other stuff.

There were lots of animals to see. Visitors can wander around the barn where the cows, calves, sheep, and lambs live - and who doesn't love calves and lambs? There were plenty of babies to see! The St. Croix sheep herd had many lambs, and of course they were so cute. Also, there were lots of calves, which were also very cute. Many of the animals are pretty friendly and would come up to use to be stroked or to suck on our fingers, and while I'm not a fan of animal phlegm all over my hands, I was OK with it because I always pack hand sanitizer with me. Lambs make me smile...Calves make me smile...Gouda makes me smile...I bought a small round of Italian-flavoured gouda, since the one with red pepper and cumin that I usually get wasn't available.

For dinner that night, Richard was away working, so Anita and I slapped a couple of steaks on the BBQ, made a Caesar salad, and I had a baked potato. Yum!
And who else ate well during my stay? Anita's neigbour's llamas, of course! He keeps a herd of sheep and as they graze in the back 40, he has the llamas there to protect them. Llamas love snacks - especially alfalfa and carrots, and Anita always has some on hand. The sheep are shy and don't take well to hand feeding, but the llamas got right in there! In fact, they are known to hang around the back gate waiting to be fed.

And that about sums up the food angle of my trip!

For more about my adventures, you can read this post.