friendsgiving (portlandia style)

I can't believe it - Adrienne and I just celebrated our 4th Thanksgiving in our little house!  Yes, I'm aware - we have a few days before the real holiday, which we will happily celebrate in Jersey.  But its fun to carve out our own Seattle traditions too, so we had a Portlandia-style Friendsgiving yesterday.  Uncle Mark made the annual pilgrimage down here from the Valley of the Rain, and our bestest of friends Simon and Faith came over with baby Hala to join in the festivities.

But we all know the REAL reason everyone made the trek was to nosh on AJ's food creations and imbibe perfectly paired alcoholic beverages.  See below for the menu, the drinks, and a few shots from the day.  BTW, most of the ingredients were garden-grown or homemade. 

I know...its disgusting.

a set table with things we've never used before - chargers (who knew there were plates-placeholders for plates?) and extra leaves for our table

a kitchen prepping for a feast

AJ needed me outta her hair, so she deployed me to the Seattle Car Show for 1/2 the day - unfortunately, I was a few $ shy of driving something like this home...

this is what I came home to - a menu board outlining the gastronomical day with snacks ready to go

for starters, AJ made a Jerusalem Artichoke soup with crispy-fried sage leave

wine pairing for the 1st course: 2009 v 2011 Mirth Chardonnay

light reflection off the dinner plate - art on my table!

good people - AJ, JJ, and MW

more good people, Simon and Faith and cranberry-sauce-lovin Hala

spicy lentil tarte, pureed parsnips and sauerkraut, chanterelles, cipollini, and horseradish, molasses fennel rye bread

wine pairing for 2nd course: 2009 Pinot Noirs, Cambria v Benton Lane

dessert time - pumpkin pie with tahitian vanilla ice cream

food forests, con't

I have to laugh when I look at the previous post about our mushroom outing - what amateurs!  Only found enough mushrooms to top veggie burgers?  Pathetic!

Those were the old days (yes, the old days were ONLY two weeks ago).  We are now stalking our mushroom prey with such immense success that we are making entire meals out of the stuff!  Last week, we took some friends to a couple places and had pretty good luck.  And today, we rolled out of bed and into the soggy foothills to test our skillz again - we were home by noon with $60 worth of 'shrooms.  That's about 3 lbs.

One of the coolest things about mushroom hunting is seeing all the varieties out there.  Even though we're searching almost exclusively for chanterelles, the forest is teeming with other funky mushrooms.  Below are a few of my favorite images from the past two weekends.

This one will actually kill you - 20 mins, dead.

 

the great food-forests of the pacnorwest

People ask me all the time "You live in Seattle, how do you deal with all that rain?" to which I reply "Well, it actually rains more in New York City."  I'm just sayin.

Make no mistake though, it does rain a fair bit here - but you find ways to embrace it.

So this weekend we embraced it - we donned head-to-toe rain gear and headed for the hills.  The forests here are brimming with delectable foodstuffs, so we went looking for dinner.  We just joined the local mushroom society and are taking their class - and what better way to test out our new mushroom hunting skillz than in the soggy Cascades. 

We had some luck - found some Chantarelles ($12/lb in the stores) and some other likely-edible stuff.  Adrienne whipped up some homemade veggie burgers, homemade rolls, homemade aoli sauce, homemade polenta fries, homemade french fries, and homemade coconut-ice cream with vanilla beans brought home from Tahiti (what can I say, that's how AJ rolls).  The burgers were topped with the foraged mushrooms, sauteed and super delicious.

Below are a few images from the day.

 A fall PacNorWest forest

The Forest Floor

 

AJ with the foraged goods 

Cleaned chantarelles

Cooked chantarelles

The finished product

steely blue corn!

AJ grew all sorts of things this year, including this beautiful blue corn!  I thought this was stunning - we put it in corn bread!

a quick visit to the south pacific

AJ and I returned a few days ago from the tropical southern hemisphere - French Polynesia to be exact.  We visited two of the many hundreds of islands there - Tahiti and Fakarava.  Each was totally unique.

Tahiti is a steep-sloped, mountainous island with deep valleys, giant waterfalls, and prehistoric jungle-fauna.  The entire island is ringed by perfect, surfable waves and a plunging coral wall.  The wall breaks the waves, creating a mellow, coral-filled shallow lagoon that comes right to the shore.

Fakarava's charm is entirely different.  It's a coral reef atoll - in a sea others just like it - that rises no more than 6 feet out of the ocean.  Nothing remains of the Tahiti-like island that once stood there - all that is left after millions of years of erosion is the coral wall that ringed the ancient island.  Where once stood terra-firma is now a vast, bluer than blue lagoon. The diving is spectacular.

We didn't do a whole lot on either island - but that was the point.  Still I managed to snap nearly 1,500 pictures, some of which I think convey the richness of the colors and culture  we experienced.

OUR DIGS

Tahiti

The Taaroa Lodge - our place right on the water

our beach shack and view

 view of lagoon and Mo'orea from our place; you can see the thin white-line of waves breaking on the outer reef wall

Fakarava

 Pension Kiria - nope, its not Disneyland.  Our hut is on the left.

home

view out the front door

WHAT WE DID

Tahiti

 a visit to the Grotto Marie - caves, ferns, and tropical fauna galore.  BTW, this is where Home Depot gets all their indoor plants

Tahitian religious site, a Marae

gliding over the corals while kayaking in the coral-lagoon

Fakarava

biking along the only road on the whole island

another kayaking tour

feeding frigates

OUR FRIENDS

Tahiti

AJ in the garden with Canelle and Ici - they visited often

always the geckos

Canelle and J on the porch

Fakarava

 Miki-Miki, the baby boobie - rescued from a nearby island

Boyka, the needle-toothed adorable puppy

every night, the sharks came by and cruised the reef looking for dinner.  BTW, on one of our dives, we saw ~500 sharks - they were all swimming together as far as the eye could see...


THE SUNSETS

Tahiti

near the reef wall, with Mo'orea in the distance

calmness over the lagoon

sunset through the palms

AJ and Mo'orea in the distance


Fakarava

sunset on my birthday at a fancy-pants resort where we went for a celebratory drink

the sun setting over the huge lagoon

the westward view from our sandy porch

sunset on the grounds of Pension Kiria


FLOWERING FAUNA

tiny white flowers embedded within this red

plumerias - growing everywhere!

hibiscus

bouganvillia

have no idea what these are, but they're cool


JUST SOME COOL SHOTS

corals in the lagoon

waves breaking on the reef

dusk through the palms

the colors - especially on Fakarava - were ridiculous!

palms at a pink sand beach

dog going out for a paddle

the sinister mountains of Mo'orea

check out the school of fish under this boat - crazy!

a giant pacific clam and a sea cucumber


AND A FEW PICS OF US...