When Mystery Meat is meant for you.

2011 is fading into the ether, and before it goes, I want to offer a fond farewell to the year we've all shared. 2012 is coming, as is our possible demise here on this earthly plane, so before we all get washed away and John Cusack holds me in his arms just one last time, let's tackle the simple task of reviewing this last week.

On Christmas Eve, Bill's mom arrived to spend the holidays with us. We were pleased to have Seattle at its best this week, sporting its famous unfailing gloom and some unseasonably heavy rains. Here are the highlights:

The breakfast panini at Odd Fellows Lodge

1. Oddfellows Cafe, a hot spot for off-the-chain quiche du jour and hipster longing.

My box of hom bow hom nom nom

 2.  Mee Sum Pastry at Pike Place Market, serving up a savory array of hom bow that keeps me coming back. We enjoyed our buns after a walk through Discovery Park, fueling up before strolling along the Chittenden Locks in Ballard.

There is an angry jalapeno in here. If you get a mean bite,
don't reach for your beer, dummy. That's just gonna
throw gas on it. Dummy.

3. An evening at Cafe Mox, where we played Incan Gold and Carcassone, enjoyed some happy hour Nightwatch Dark Ales and a plate of wine-braised steak nachos.

Hey lil buddy, you still here?

4. Siam Pura Thai restaurant on Alki, where we ordered a late night spread of pad thai, pot stickers, fresh tofu rolls and tom khah I'm still feasting on 5 days later.

A fine slaw.

A reasonably famous sandwich.

5. Alki Cafe, a popular beach brunch spot that we hit up for lunch. The avocado chicken sandwich has a lot of cred on yelp, so we ordered with confidence,  pairing it with their less-lauded smoked salmon sandwich. With a heavy-handed dollop of "caper aioli' (feebly-flavored mayo) and a disappointing pile of salmon, the best thing about the sandwich was the rye bread, which was actually kind of dry. Sorry, guys. No love here. ...Unless you wanna talk cole slaw. Finely chopped green apples, a steady-handed amount of poppy seeds, clean mayo finish, and what? Is that toasted, finely-pulsed walnuts I hear? Probably just a walnut poppy seed dressing from Costco, but a girl can dream.

6. Wednesday we made the obvious stop at Talaricos for trivia and pizza. Forgoing my usual $2.50 pint of Mac & Jac to make way for a slice of the Coppola, I made a decision to embrace my least favorite cheese this year - I was rewarded with a 14" feast of roasted red bell peppers, garlic and goat cheese. My first public support of goat cheese, which is slowly becoming my best friend. Which I can already tell is a bad idea. I need to meet more people. Noted.

7. A spontaneous celebratory dinner at Mizu Japanese Grill. I've enjoyed hibachi once before with a special friend in Austin, and was thrilled to remember it existed again this week. Our chef was delightful, an Indonesian import with tattoos for days and tricks to match. We started with their onion soup-not much more than water and onion to the naked eye, but we tasted worlds more, and sampled their unagi before our grill got fired up. It was all a hit, fried rice, yakisoba, filet mignon, chicken, shrimp, the works. I even got a tip on how to overcome my shrimp allergy, one small bite at a time.

And that catches us up. This morning we waved goodbye to Bomba (Bill's mom's gambling alter ego) and I set out to decode a strange parcel that arrived yesterday morning.
















Which brings us to
  The Dine of the Week
A 12lb box of beef jerky, boudin cracklins and three industrial sized bottles of cajun seasoning arrived, unmarked, on our doorstep without a clue as who to thank. In a panic, I went into survival mode and decided it was a message. I'm all dried up. I'm gonna end up in a box. I'm gonna suffocate in the process of being vacuum sealed...Who would send such a message? Who has my new address? Who on my Christmas card list have I slighted recently? Ever? What's next? Seafood gumbo? Do they know about my allergy???

Who was the mystery sender then? This morning, I called the vendor, and after a reasonable wait, the lady clumsily spelled out a Filipino name I've known well since the 90's.

My friend's parents. The Lataquins. Thanks guys! When we lose power and have no way of getting through the blizzard, these dried meats will carry us through.
Really. Pounds and pounds of nutrition in here.

Now, I'm off to smoke my eyes out and don the heels, it's the second sluttiest night of the year!
See you next year, dear diners, and remember, when dining out, it's A-OK to feel disgruntled. I always do!

A Christmas List

Cast Iron Christmas Champignons
Prepared by my husband.
An eager, friendly, and patient cook.

Merry Christmas, dear readers. I hope it was memorable and filling. My Christmas morning was filled with the savory smells of mushrooms, garlic and shallots sweating together in a cast iron skillet, under the watchful eye of a handsome man. Thanks, Christmas!














I was perusing I'll Sleep When They're Grown and found 5 Things That Make Christmas Christmas: a listography challenge. It's not a race, or for a grade, but as a nod of respect to list-making, I abandoned making an important, don't-forget-anything Christmas Eve grocery list in favor of this one. Here we go.

5 Things that make Christmas Christmas:




1. Bringing home a fresh, fragrant, tannenbaum, trimming it to a pleasing shape, rubbing the clippings all over my hands, then rubbing my hands all over my body.

Best friends. One of us has sap in our back pockets.

2. Taking in the Christmas light displays. This year we especially enjoyed free admission to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens' "Garden D'Lights". An inviting stroll through a dormant flower garden hosting a bevy of LED flowers and trees and butterflies, and with more whimsy than Lewis Carroll could shake an acid trip at. We also did drive-bys past the homes of high-functioning Christmas fanatics. This year we sought out the Helmstetler Family Christmas Spectacular, which boasts approximately 60,000 lights that are programmed to dance and strobe everyone into epileptic fits of holiday fancy, set to music on a local station.

Still courtesy of West Seattle Blog and someone's debilitating Christmas mania

3. Feasting my ears on tried and true Christmas songs. I find new favorites every year. Kay Starr's "December" really played my song this season. Plans are loosely coming together to produce a White Christmas film sequence next year. With an elaborate camera crew and a tandem bike this dream could become a reality in a matter of hours.

Don't go, Christmas.

4. Christmas card fails. Every year it's always the same. I'll grab a daunting stack of cards, address all the envelopes, and stack them on a pile of good intentions, some of which never get stamped and delivered. I get in over my head with these things.

   5. Building gingerbread real estate. This year, I waited too late to get a team together so I'm the lone architect. Also designer, construction foreman, investor, permit office manager, town mayor, etc. As investment broker, I had to scan the markets for wholesale gingerbread, but as we all know, it's tough out there. I looked at my stock options and ended up investing in graham crackers, frosting and an assortment of sugary accoutrements.

1. Rally your materials

2. Measure, make plans and blueprints you won't use

3. Go. To. Town. 

4. Stick a sold sign in the yard.
 Cuz it just did.

In the spirit of the holidays, we splurged this week on a yelp deal and dined rodizio at the Amazon Grill. The buffalo at this place was A+ amazing delicious, but all the other meats came and went in a haze. We sat down with a large party at a clean table and left it a soiled mess. I was excited by the fried bananas with the first round of meats, but some time came and went between the meat visits, and at a big table of primed eaters, the absence stirred up some ill-will toward our servers. Tongs in hand, the table was growing restless with meat lust. You have never felt less like a hunter/gatherer than when you're snapping air with empty tongs meant to delicately fetch you a slice of meat that's too good to eat every night of the week. There suddenly seems an empty place by your water glass where there should be a little bell. To make them bring more meat. Then more still. It's meat fever and you've got it.
 Presented nicely with an awkward touch of cafeteria pans, the salad bar had plenty to offer, but seemed a little unenthusiastic. I guess it was a Tuesday. Ultimately, there was plenty of dining and whining to be done that night, making Amazon Grill the Dine and Whine of the week. Merry Christmas, you gave us mixed feelings and meat comas.

Dine of the week - Veggie Stew

I'm not famous for consistency, but here's something I really do want to implement weekly: The Dine/Whine of the week.
This Friday, after a long shift at the popcorn factory, (but didn't you know I've taken on seasonal, hair-net-required work?) I came home to a dark apartment with 1. A hungry man 2. an unlit, dormant Christmas tree and 3. a bounty of veggies. I set to work. "Baby, run out to the street and find some rosemary." ("No, wait, where? how am I supposed to see? what if I get hurt?" et al. until the door closed.

Lucky readers will find their very own
handiwork in our tree!
No prizes offered at this time.

I plugged in my tannenbaum to reveal it's gently-twinkling majesty and filled my nose with its woodsy bouquet. Revived, I headed to the kitchen, (and so should you, ) for it was time for veggie stew!

 Please, share in the magic. Here's your grocery list:
1 zucchini, coined and halved
1 yellow summer squash, coined and halved
1 medium onion, chopped
1 stem fresh rosemary (from the street or your unwitting neighbor's garden), stemmed and minced
3 cloves crushed garlic
1 pint cremini (or button, if you must) mushrooms, sliced
1 large can of stewed tomatoes, in puree
1 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper to taste
a crust of bread, rubbed with garlic and toasted




1. Gently saute the mushrooms in 2 tbl olive oil until tender, add the onion, fry 1 minute, add the garlic, fry 1 minute, season with course salt, fresh ground pepper and cumin, then dump the rest in and bring to a boil. (Add a half cup of water if it's looking a little thick,) and let simmer 10 minutes. Toast up your bread and prepare to sail away on this hearty, simple ship. Serves 2.
Let's break this Dine of the Week down. From 1-10, with 1 being deplorable and 10 being downright distracting for its fabulousness. For ingredients: 10 (most are readily on hand, cheap or free. Especially if rosemary grows on your street.) Effort: 10 (quick, easy, can be prepared while delirious, inebriated or otherwise decommissioned, and clean up's a snap!) This quick, fragrant, flavorful, off the chain recipe came to me back in our NYC days, when we had a pot luck and Daniel Diamond brought this dish to our attention, just before he was never seen again. Thanks, Dan.

This pic brought to you by the nick of time.

Drive Thru! The great American past-time.

Yesssss! Vampire Diaries is coming back from hiatus and so am I! I've been living la vida brokë, restraining my wanderlust, eating from my own kitchen, saving for the holidays, and grumbling on Saturday mornings when all I want is to go try a new breakfast joint. Having just returned from bright, sunny, Texas, where there's cheap gas and a friend on every corner, I'm slowly readjusting to vampire-friendly, dark, midnight-dreary-all-day Seattle.
 I was thinking on my title, The Disgruntled Diner, who dines and then whines to the blogosphere, and found that that's not really my style. Sure, I'm a frequent diner who takes no small pleasure in dressing down the waitstaff after they've walked off, but unless my food came out cold and garnished with human saliva, I'm not taking that experience home. I want to write about fabulous finds, hot waiters, cheap eats, espresso milkshakes, you know, happy things. If a server senses my displeasure, it's highly irregular, because I've been practicing unconditional niceness in customer service environments for over 10 years. I shared my feelings with my sister, who found this ludicrous.
We were going through the drive-thru at that greasy southern gem you know as Whataburger, and I was tooting my own horn about how sensitive and sympathetic I am toward industry workers. She was quick to correct me, and basically said I'm on par with my mother's unpredictable level of impatience. So apparently, here's what's actually happening when I roll up in the drive thru lane:

Driving and whining since 1994

1. The speaker asks if I would like to try a...."No. NO. No thank you. I need JUST A MINUTE. PLEASE!"
2. When I'm ready, I bleat out my order, tack on a friendly, "YOU GOT THAT? HELLO?"and, disgusted,
3. Complete my performance by snickering at whatever desert-of-the-month is offered to me and drive on ahead. Who has time to wait for their total?
Now, you saw all the please and thank you's in that replay, right? I know. My sister's such a Johnny Drama.

In summation, I'm more likely to whine while dining. Now. Let's dish. Individual links forward to my yelp review. Mostly.


For the two weeks I spent in Austin, I was always on the go, so I drove thru a lot for meals. Sure, I was treated to sit down fancy feasts at Another Broken Egg Cafe, Snack Bar, Chuy's and Outback Steakhouse, but if I was paying, I drove thru. When I started driving back in 1997, my favorite thing to do was to swing thru McDonalds and get a soft-serve cone. Remember when they used to have chocolate soft-serve? The golden days of my youth. It was so tough to decide on chocolate or vanilla, so I'd often get a twist. These days, the option is gone, so in protest I quit Mickey D's. Amongst other reasons.
Austin kept dangling Chik Fil-A in my face, and eventually I folded. Closed on Sundays for spiritual gay-bashing and bigotry, (family time?) they serve up the best, most expensive pickle and chicken sandwich I've ever had. Not to mention those waffle fries, did they invent those? Maybe they're under the impression that they've done the world a favor with those fries (true) so of course they can tell you who to marry. All hate aside, they are open to serving gays at every location, but don't you ladies go in there holding hands and talking about curtains, cuz now you're offending their sensibilities. I guess it's time to let Chik Fil-A go too.
 

In the southern states bordering Mexico there thrives a 24-hr tex-mex chain called Taco Cabana. I'd been off the plane a good 30 minutes before I was treated to Taco C. During my first few days, I naturally fell prey to some friendly drinking and had to call my sister the next day to deliver some Tex-Mex of the gods. Last week, Bill and I drove thru the Riverside location that was curiously dark. The sparkle of one of my old favorites alive in my mind, I ordered some sopapillas to snack on before hitting up Bingo. Driving off, I opened the bag to find some cold, crusty tortilla quarters dusted with cinnsugar. Whoa. The worst Taco C experience of my life. Judge that book by its cover dear readers; if the lights are off, so are the heat lamps, so proceed with caution.  My favorite Taco C combination from way back in my veg. days is a black bean taco ($1.09) and a small chips and queso ($1.99). I open my taco, drizzle a little queso on top and chip dip that black bean bargain till it's dry. Then I roll up that soft, manteca masterpiece and dunk it in the queso till it can't dunk no more. A purveyor of many fine tex-mex platters, what they're famous for is fresh cilantro, tomatoes, an array of fresh salsas and queso so runny you want to hook it up to a hose and spray it on your enemies in a food fight. Food fight? Yes.

Coach and Aunt Vicky, 2009

 One evening around 2am  in 2009, my associates and I were enjoying some Taco C on the patio when a trio of hardened ne'er-do-wells started to attract attention a few tables away. We did our best to mind our own business, but things quickly rose to a fever pitch and it was hard not to stare. Two of their party went inside to retrieve their food, leaving the third asleep on the table. Having had a rousing night ourselves, Coach went over to her and posed for a photo, but got caught as the other two returned. At this point, the ringleader, ("Magnum" to her friends,) took umbrage with poor Coach and set to threatening him. "Leave it, Magnum!" her cohort advised, "be cool!" but Magnum couldn't be contained. Freeing herself, she leaped at Coach and the whole patio went crackers. We had just come from 80s night at Elysium so we were already sweaty and ready for a dance-off. I couldn't tell you what song was playing, but with every power chord a seemingly-choreographed punch was thrown in slo-motion and flaming Corona bottles were somersaulting through the air - giving the whole number some sweet pyrotechnic cred. We took it to the bridge and flipped their table over, just in time for our 3-in-one air guitar solo that backed them into the parking lot and sent 'em running for their Ford Explorer. Shredded lettuce fluttering to the ground all around us, we resumed our meal, having stood firm and held our turf on a hot Tuesday night at the MLK Taco C.

You know you won the food fight if you danced so hard and fast you dodged all the  ballistic edibles.

Thanks for the memories, Austin. You are missed.