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Here’s a little non-sequitur for you- I’ve decided on a new way to eat oranges. Of course, I’ve done this before when making breakfast or fruit salad, etc, and certainly this is not unique- we’ve all seen this at Eggspectation; but I think this is going to be my thing for eating oranges. So you can see the gallery above, but what I’m going to do is eat my oranges in sliced thirds, peel-less. For the following reasons:

• Less messy than peeling an orange
• Easier to eat
• Tastes better
• No loss of orange like in slices

Weird, I know. But I remember that Dad used to eat apples with peanut butter and a knife- and it just tastes better. You have to have a unique way to eat fruit!

And there you have it- my new thing, eating oranges a little differently.

A Valentine’s Day Story

Last weekend, Ben and I were stumped as to how to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day.  My gift was lost in Package Limbo, and all I had gotten for Ben were some Twilight-themed chocolates in a heart-shaped box.  Then, as so often happens, it was NPR to the rescue.

Specifically, it was Food for Thought, which was baby-themed for V Day.  One of the foods cited in this celebration of that term of endearment was a Dutch Baby, a type of pancake that can be found at the Original Pancake House.  I was intrigued, and, knowing how much Ben loves breakfast, began to set my plan in motion.

Since my gift was decidedly uncool, I decided that the rest of my gift would be to make a list of options from which Ben could choose as ways to spend our Sunday together.  (One of our biggest troubles seems to be getting out of the dinner-and-a-movie rut…also, making decisions.)  I included the Original Pancake House, the Crab Pot, P.F. Chang’s, and a variety of theatre/museum/film options.  (Okay, so this is obviously not a major step away from our normal weekend routine, but since all of them required driving to Seattle, it was a step in the correct direction.)  Stuck on the ship on Saturday duty, I emailed him the list.

He chose pancakes, and a stop by a market to get fresh seafood.

Arriving home early Sunday morning, I used the powers of Internet and found the nearest Original Pancake House.  There’s one in Ballard, in the northern part of Seattle, across the 5 from the University district.  In a flash of pure brilliance, I recalled the existence of the Ballard Farmer’s Market, and with some savvy Googling found it was five minutes from our chosen restaurant.  In a few mouse clicks, I had not only found a way to justify driving 45 minutes for pancakes but also obviated the need to drive to downtown Seattle, pay for parking, and battle the Pike Place crowds.

The Original Pancake House is everything that other pancake houses aspire to be: hip, crowded, and delicious.  I went with the Dutch Baby that had inspired the trip, while Ben chose a massive five-egg Spanish-style omelette topped in marinara sauce.  Our waitress forgot to bring our banana appetizer and so knocked the cost of our beverages off the bill.  And we were entertained by the incredibly colorful patrons (although Ben was a bit concerned that one of the hipster breakfasters had chosen to wear his plum-colored tights sans culottes).

We then make our way down to the Sunday market, held in the middle of Ballard’s impossibly chic streets full of one-off stores of boggling variety.  While hardly a blip on the map next to the gargantuan Pike Place Market, the Ballard variety is dog-friendly, totally organic/seasonal, and, in short, entirely delightful.  We were able to pick up gorgeous multi-colored potatoes, fresh cod and mussels, liver-and-peanut butter brownies (a treat for Winnie), just-cut pasta, and everything else we needed for Ben to perform feats of culinary mastery.*

Then it was a quick stop at Miro Tea for drinks for the road, and we headed back to our rental in Blandsville.  But I do believe that we will always remember with fondness our Valentine’s day in the land of hippies, hipsters, Bohemians, and poets.

More photos of our day:

*Except for tomatoes, which we could have bought dried but not fresh–that whole seasonal thing.

Talking to Ben when he was here a few weeks back, I realized that while I theoretically prefer one-off restaurants to chains for…let’s call them Bohemian reasons, I rarely eat in them since my return stateside.  Seeking to correct this, and remembering the magic of Gourmet Shish Kebab (a hole-in-the-wall with amazing Middle Eastern food in Laurel, MD), I have tried a new hole-in-the-wall two weekends in a row.

Last weekend, I finally braved Marimba.  It’s gaudy orange storefront had put me off as often as its promise of ‘Caribbean and South American Cuisine’ had tempted me.  Had there been parking in front of the library, I may not have gone in, but as it happened there wasn’t and by circling the block I ended up right in front of the restaurant.  I parked.  I walked in.

Charming, once you brave the citrus exterior.  The simple interior consisted of several small tables with various brightly-hued tablecloths, funky Southern Hemisphere music, and a friendly waiter who gave me my choice of tables (I was initially the only customer there).  They had several vegetarian appetizers, a vegetarian sandwich selection, and a vegetarian main, my beloved chile relleno, which I quickly ordered.  As I ate, I had a fantastic view of the street.  I was joined by one of my friends from work, which gave me a chance to order an appetizer (mashed and fried plantain chips, the name of which escapes me) and the flan, along with a cup of incredibly strong drip coffee.  It was completely delicious.  I can’t believe I waited literally months to try it.  In fact, the waiter asked me if it was my first time there and when I responded in the affirmative, said, “Thank you for coming in, senorita.”  So polite.

Tonight, craving Indian food, I considered returning to the Indian restaurant to the south that I have ordered from on multiple occasions, but didn’t feel like hopping on the interstate for the purpose, so I Googled ‘Indian restaurant, Everett, WA’ and discovered that just down the street from Marimba is a restaurant by the name of Curry Bistro.  While reviews were somewhat split, I decided to take the chance and hopped in the car, initially intending to grab something to go.  When I got there, I found a tiny restaurant with a total capacity of 26 people and decided to stay, ordering a pot of chai, vegetable samosas, a vegetarian Kashmiri dish, and some whole-wheat roti.  It was spendy, but no more so than other Indian restaurants in the area, and the leftovers will make one or maybe even two more meals.  Again, I had great service and delicious food.

The only bad part about giving these two places a try was realizing that I am clearly not the only one shunning independent eateries for the more predictable chains.  Never at any point was there more than one other table of clients in either restaurant.  Meanwhile, I’m sure that the chain restaurants were full, perhaps even had waits (I visited Marimba on a Saturday afternoon around 2:00 PM and Curry Bistro on a Saturday evening around 6:45 PM).  It makes me worry that fantastic places like these two and Gourmet Shish Kebab won’t be around for very long, unless the word is spread.  So I’m spreading the word.  And encouraging everyone–if you want an adventure, try an independent restaurant!  Sure, sometimes you may strike out…but isn’t it worth it for the chance to strike gold?

Gourmet Shish Kebab:   3495 Ft. Meade Road, Laurel, MD

Marimba!: 1405 Hewitt Avenue, Everett, WA

Curry Bistro: 1907 Hewitt Avenue, Everett, WA

According to Frommer’s guidebook, there are three types of people who travel to Amsterdam, those who smoke pot, those who are horny, and those who who appreciate art.

I am glad to say that we fell into the category of those who appreciate art, as none of us were interested in pot (though you can’t really get away from the pervasive smell in Amsterdam), and prostitutes were too expensive had the thought even crossed our minds (which it didn’t, except for the mild curiosity that there didn’t seem to be any male prostitutes)

Amsterdam as a whole is a very nice city, and if I was an artist, maybe I would choose to have a few years stint there. It’s got canals, bridges and near-nudes to paint to my heart’s content, and museums and art galleries to offer inspiration. While we were there we visited the Van Gogh museum, which was actually a lot of fun, and more conventional then the Hash Museum and Erotic Museum we visited in the red light district. We walked by the Anne Frank House, visited a flea market in the Jewish Quarter, walked through the flower market, and visited the picturesque residential area of Jordaan. Amsterdam is so small that we pretty much circled downtown Amsterdam before we even got on the canal cruise, which had commentary in four languages (out of a potential 13). Truth be told, I was nervous about going up to anybody to ask a question, because I didn’t know what language to use! You can’t really tell the difference between French, Spanish, Dutch and English people as easily as it is to tell apart Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, and I didn’t want to be an arrogant American and just automatically assume everyone speaks English (even if they probably do).

We only had one language difficulty, and that is when we went to a restaurant Ben picked out from the guidebook called “Elf”. (Elf=Eleven in Dutch) The guidebook said that visiting this restaurant is the perfect end to a day in Amsterdam, being on the 11th floor (hence its name), you can get an amazing view of the city. We followed the map to the restaurant, but were a little unsure of ourselves because the area was covered in graffiti, was right next to a huge empty construction site, and the first floor of the building looked like a run down apartment building — definitely not where I imagined a highly-rated restaurant would be. However, Bethany saw signs for Elf, so we got in the dilapidated elevator and pressed 11. We would never have even thought we were in the right place had not a couple been waiting for the elevator, and seeing our puzzled expressions asked us if we were looking for Elf. We were.

Apparently, we had come in through the back door, and had to walk through this enormous dining room and bar to get to the front. The walls were expansed by enormous screens on which was projected artsy images of heads in water blowing bubbles, which changed by the end of the night to a video of a man make different percussive sounds with his hands and mouth. It was definitely an artsy restaurant, gritty, nouveau art. After we were seated, the waiter comes up to us and says “goede avonde.” I hesitantly respond with “Good Evening,” and he immediately switches to English, to our relief. He’s a chatty guy, asks about us, and takes our drink orders… but leaves us with a menu entirely in Dutch! Jaci pulls out her menu reader, and we begin to get to work translating the menu so we actually know what we are ordering. We quickly pick out the words for prosciutto and artichoke, which look the same it Dutch and English, but others words are more difficult. Our waiter finally comes back (after maybe twenty minutes) and asks us if we are ready to order. Ben starts out tactfully, “we have a few questions about the menu, maybe you could help us out..”

“Oh! How about I get you a menu in English?” says the waiter when he finally realizes we can’t read Dutch. We have concluded that either very few tourists actually find this restaurant, or our waiter was playing with us, or just slow. The tragic part is, even when I had the menu in English, I still unwittingly managed to order testicles! Alas.

I’m well into my second week in Beijing, and hope that last week’s frenzied e-mailing of resumes will pan out this week. I’ve been told that I need to make job searching a full time job, and not to get discouraged if it takes a while, which is kind of hard to do because it is discouraging being ignored, and so boring doing nothing but sending e-mails all day.

On the other hand, I’ve taken the opportunity to be quite domestic. I’ve cooked every night, and have even thrown a dinner party. For my first dinner party in China I cooked nothing other than Chinese food. Andy has a cookbook for wok cooking (in English, fortunately), and I picked a few dishes, invited a few Guinea Pigs, and voila, a Chinese dinner party.

Although none of the dishes I made really resembled the pictures, I think I did a rather good job. The honey chicken and braised bock choy (bai cai in mandarin, and its only 1 kuai for a huge bag!) turned out really well. However, either I don’t know how to pick out meat or I cooked it wrong because the spicy lamb and eggplant stirfry and beef and asparagus with oyster sauce were a tad tough to eat, the meat being a little too grainy.

I went to an outdoor market close to my house to buy all the ingredients, where vegetables are super cheap (I paid 11 kuai (1.50 ish) for a huge bag of asparagus. The meat market is a little overwhelming however, in terms of smell and abundance of animals parts you never knew animals even had. I had to do little mime dances to find out what part of the body different hunks of meat were from. They would tell me, and I still wouldn’t know if its what I really needed. I ended up buying back meat mutton and flank meat beef.

I think most of the shouhuoyuans thought I was an idiot because I didn’t know how much meat I needed or what kind. The lesson I learned was that I will probably be sticking to chicken, since buying huge hunks of beef and lamb is a little unnerving and too complicated. At least I can self identify chicken parts.

There was also a barbecue on Saturday hosted by two other friends, and my contribution was apple crisp. It’s so wonderful being able to cook. Although I’d much prefer a job where I will be too busy to do so.