An Open Letter to the Couple We Sat With at the Best Burger Joint in Seattle

Us: Two raucous, hungry, occasionally verbally inappropriate couples with one falafel quinoa burger with Satan's Tears ketchup; one buffalo burger with sweet chili mayo, maple bacon, and whole milk cotija cheese; one beef burger with caramelized onion, Havarti, and 7-pickle dilly sauce; two orders of tater tots (one with bacon salt), two orders of twisty fries, two Boston Creme shakes, one chocolate cherry shake, and one Heath toffee mocha shake.

You: The wide-eyed, charming, easy-going couple who was forced to sit with us for body warmth due to the sub-zero temperatures and was happy to join in the discussion about Democratic Debate drinking games and beet bundt cakes.

We found you delightful and we would like to see you again. We're sorry Sam discussed bodily fluids several times during the meal. Next time you go to Lunchbox Laboratory in Ballard, track us down.All photos attributed to Sara A. and Michael E. on Yelp.com.

I know, this is all well and amusing but something special happened this day at The Lunchbox Laboratory. While Sam and I sat with our friends Bob and Meghan, each couple consuming meat and veggie burgers respectively, we chatted it up with another couple who, due to lack of space, were forced to almost sit on our laps. We never learned their names but we learned what they were eating, which Democratic nominee they preferred, that they liked videogames and Battlestar Galactica. Food brought us together and created a social connection.

It started out with eyeballing their meals and asking what they had ordered. We then shared other favorite restaurants and brunch opportunities with each other. From that point on, it felt weird NOT to converse with them. As they left the restaurant, I could tell the four of us wanted to blurt out something to the effect of, “Wait! Can I have your number?!” But that would be a little too strange, no?

Our (the two couples’) favorite pastime on weekend mornings is to either find a delicious brunch joint or invite each other over for whole wheat pancakes while wearing pajamas. So far the winner has been sitting at a cozy table, early in the morning, with mugs of steaming coffee in Senor Moose in Ballard. They have the best authentic Mexican breakfast food (don’t let the name fool you). I think I died and went to heaven when I ate their bowl of savory tomato broth with strips of tortilla and two poached eggs. Meghan never gets anything other than Chile Aquiles and Sam swears by their homemade chorizo and scrambled eggs. Bob always orders a side of cactus leaves.

I’ve never had so much fun with Bob and Meghan than the time we sat around Senor Moose, waiting for our food, and drawing on the butcher paper-covered table with crayons. Each of us sketched out how our food would make us feel. My drawing consisted of my fork, spoon and knife sporting mohawks and singing in a hardcore band about Mexican food. It was silly, fun, and social.

Beets in my bundt

I love unusual recipes. I came across this one when I was searching for ways to use six lovely, small beets I received in our farm share box.

My friend Meghan loaned me her crazy bundt pan last night and I got to work. The result? Deliciousness! Sam and I can't stop eating this thing.

Beet Bundt Cake - Submitted by Vermadel Kirby on Allrecipes.com.

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened, divided
• 1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
• 2 cups pureed cooked beets
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• confectioners' sugar

Directions
In a mixing bowl, cream 3/4 cup butter and brown sugar. Add eggs; mix well. Melt chocolate with remaining butter; stir until smooth. Cool slightly. Blend chocolate mixture, beets and vanilla into the creamed mixture (mixture will appear separated). Combine flour, baking soda and salt; add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Pour into a greased and floured 10-in. fluted tube pan. Bake at 375 degrees F for 45-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack. Cool completely. Before serving, dust with confectioners' sugar.

Enjoy!

***Airplane food be damned***

Sam's mother is really wanting us to fly out to Dallas in the next couple of months. I'm antsy to get out there as well. Sam misses his nephew and I have yet to meet the little guy. The flight to Dallas stinks, though. There is usually a layover some place such as Denver or Houston and while those are fine airports, I guess, their food selections leave much to be desired. And at the risk of sounding like a bad 90s comedian, what is the deal with airline food?

The only pleasant, high-altitude dining experience I've ever had was on a Belgian airline. The server was a strapping, multilingual Adonis who kept me in perfectly steamed halibut and single serving bottles of wine the whole way to Nairobi. How that man managed to respectfully refer to me as Mademoiselle while I guffawed my way through Nacho Libre like an American buffoon will forever be a mystery to me.

All other airline meals have been a total bust, if I'm "lucky" enough to even get one. I may have a solution to this dilemma, however. This past week our class has been exploring bento box lunches. While the discussions of how a small, seemingly trivial thing such as a child's lunch in Japan is closely tied to larger issues such as motherhood, gender activities, socializing, and politics are incredibly complex and fascinating, I found myself focusing on my gut reaction to these meals.

I get the bento box. Everything about it is appealing. The appropriately sized portions, the variety, the attention to color, texture, and nutritional value, and the effort put into them seem right and good to me. I love the idea that you can put together a comforting and satisfying bit of home to sustain you through long, dreary, and at least in my experience on campus, lonely stretches at work or school. The thought of someone, ahem Sam, doing this for me and individualizing my meal with a memento or style unique to him and home damn near makes my toes curl with delight. I think everything could go wrong in the world on a given day; I would open my bento box to find a goofy vegetable likeness of him and find something to smile about.

My attempt at a bento lunch box.
Smoked salmon onigiri, edamame, little fish tube things, pickled radishes and beefsteak plant, nori, some sort of yellow onigiri seasoning, broccoli, pepper thing, soy sauce.
Photo taken by Ann Anagnost.

Flying sucks. I hate the feeling of being herded about and suspected of potential criminal acts and being fed a cold, stale meal of pretzels and lousy juice. The next time Sam and I fly to Dallas, I will put my new bento-making skills to good use and pack hearty, healthy, homemade meals for us. Airlines can go ahead and make the whole experience as unpleasant as possible but I will take a little bit of home and comfort to the skies with me.

Zucchini Bread: Hijacked and Adapted

Professor Anagnost was kind enough to bring in some zucchini bread during our last class and it coincided with a current zucchini bread roll I've been on. I wanted to share my recipe which I borrowed and adapted from Allrecipes.com.

Makes two loaves.
Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• a pinch of nutmeg
  
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup Trader Joe's apple or apricot sauce
  
• 2 1/4 cups white sugar - feel free to replace with raw cane sugar or mix white and brown
  
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups grated zucchini (make sure you peel it first and don't squeeze out any liquid)
  
• 1 carrot, grated
  
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or pepitas

Directions

1. Grease and flour two loaf pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3. Beat eggs, oil, fruit sauce, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl (you can easily do this by hand with a wooden spoon if you don't have access to an electric beater). Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat (or stir) well. Stir in zucchini, carrots, and nuts/pepitas until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean (best to begin checking every five minutes once you have baked for 40 minutes). Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

***Chicks and the City***

Urban chickens would be so cool. This is what I thought about as my Anthropology of Food class toured the UW farm. Keith Possee, tour guide and farm co-creator, mentioned the group's current struggle to obtain permission to keep chickens on the campus farm for the ultimate goal of creating some amount of closed circuitry in the garden. I felt his pain. For years I have harbored an intense desire to decorate my front lawn with a coop of saucy hens. I frequently picture a half-dozen of those plucky gals making soothing cluck-cluck noises as they maneuver between a robust rhubarb and tomato pots. I want warm, green eggs, damn it!

One morning, before going to visit Ann Anagnost’s chickens, I called my mother in Olympia with the hopes that she would share some chicken stories with me. You see, before my birth and until I was very little, my family had a farm of sorts. We mostly owned a couple of horses but some close family friends did the whole farm thing nice and proper; pigs, cows, horses, goats, chickens, ducks, etc. My mother was given several chicks and put them in an empty aquarium equipped with a heat lamp. When the ladies got bigger, they were put in a chicken coop built by my father. Dad knew the area was patrolled by foxes and coyotes so he ran the chicken wire deep under the coop. Mom became very attached to the hens and named them all, of course. She never had any intention of turning them into chicken soup.

One day, mom’s favorite chicken, Singer, hopped up onto the wood pile below the kitchen window. She began pecking, waiting for a handout as she usually did. Mom went outside after feeding her and was dealing with one of the horses. She turned around and didn’t notice Singer pecking about between the horse’s legs. Out of the corner of her eye, my mom saw the chicken go flying and knew the horse had given it a swift kick. She and dad spent the next hour trying to spot Singer under the porch and they were sure she was dead. However, Singer, very much alive, was eventually hauled out and put back in the coop to see what would happen. After a week of recovery, Singer was back to her usual antics. The only exception was that her head now dragged close to the ground at her side.

The other story mom had to offer was about the night she was awoken from her sleep by the sound of frantic hens. Sleepily, she peered out the window and saw a chicken go flapping past, closely followed by a fox. Mom woke dad and together they set the dogs (a German Shepherd and a Great Dane) free, thinking they would make quick work of the fox. The dogs dashed out, did their doggie business on the trees and came racing back in. Miraculously, the chickens were not harmed and all were located the next day in a tree down by the creek.

All this chicken talk began to remind me of two other childhood incidents. My sister, Noelle, who is thirteen years older than me, was often left in charge of her annoying little sister. One day she’d had enough. I think I was following her around while she was trying to be cool and teenager-y with her friends. Noelle dragged me into the barn and ushered me into a hay bale house she and her buddies had created earlier in the day. She gave me a smooth, round rock and said, “If you sit on this and keep it warm, it’ll hatch. If you get off of it, it will die.”

I think I spent the better part of three hours on that rock until finally bursting into the kitchen in search of a hammer to crack it open and speed up the process.

Noelle also had me convinced, for the majority of my childhood, that Cadbury Crème Eggs were filled with real, raw egg yolk. I am still demanding reparations for years of unwittingly handing over my grandmother’s Easter gifts. So far, Noelle has not complied.

I have never owned an animal that produced food. Since I like food and I like animals, I’m sure my desire to own chickens comes from a marriage of the two likes. I am a fan of eggs yet I don’t eat them enough to constantly buy 12-packs of them. I would love to have a couple fresh eggs for daily purposes and only resort to grocery store eggs when I’m baking. Also, Sam has a love-hate relationship with eggs. His doctor ordered him to lay off unless it was just the occasional egg white. I am of the firm belief that an egg white omelet is a food of the devil and not worth making. Plus, my heart breaks a little if I have to toss an egg yolk down the drain. I do indulge him, of course, but it has become easier to just not eat eggs very often.

Here is one of my favorite bread recipes involving eggs. Please note, these are completely and deliciously unhealthy. Enjoy!

Brioche Beignets (Makes four 1-pound loaves of Brioche bread or three million Beignets)

1.5 cups lukewarm water
1.5 tbsp yeast
1.5 tbsp salt
8 eggs, lightly beaten
.5 cup honey
1.5 cups unsalted butter, melted
7.5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp water)

1. Mix yeast, salt, eggs, honey, and melted butter with the water in a large (5-quart) bowl.

2. Mix in the flour without kneading, using a spoon or a mixer. The dough will be loose but will firm up when chilled.

3. Cover (not airtight), and allow to rest at room temperature until dough rises and collapses (2 hours).

4. Chill the dough. It can be used as soon as it’s chilled or kept in the fridge for five days (beyond this, freeze it up to four weeks).

5. When ready to bake, tear off a grapefruit sized portion of dough and quickly (less than 60 seconds) shape it into a ball, stretching the surface and bunching it up on the bottom.

6. Tear smaller chunks off of this and punch your thumb through the middles, stretching to make doughnuts. Be aware that you need to make the holes absurdly big since they will puff closed.

7. Allow the doughnuts to rest for 15-20 minutes.

8. Fill the saucepan (I use a wok) with three inches of vegetable oil and bring to 360-370*F.

9. Drop the beignets in 2 or 3 at a time. After 2 minutes, flip them over and let the other side lightly brown. Drain the doughnuts on a paper towel.

10. Dust generously with powdered sugar or a cinnamon/sugar mix.

***Goat, guacamole, and green oranges***

In the fall of 2006, strange events culminated in a two week trip to Uganda with my boyfriend, Sam, of only a few weeks. We'd been friends for nine years prior to this trip so it wasn't as insane as it sounds but still, it was a test of sorts. My father was, at the time, working for the UN and had been transferred to Entebbe from the Republic of Congo after enduring five years of tanks, tear gas, and teens with stones and good throwing arms.

The entire trip was life changing for me and I could fill many posts with food stories. For instance, the night we arrived we were treated to the best tasting BBQ chicken I've ever had. Scrawny street-roaming chickens that feed off piles of trash and get crispified on car grills have a disturbing yet delicious je ne sais quoi. I kid you not. I also tried goat for the first time in Uganda and was pleasantly surprised. Goat stew with matoke was comforting and reminded me of my grandmother's goulash. Sam and I frequently and fondly recall the greatest guacamole and chapathi chips we have ever consumed when we spent the better part of a day at Bujagali Falls, relaxing under a thatched roof and gazing out over some incredible rapids.

I have yet to taste tilapia as fresh and delicious as the stuff we had on the beach of Lake Victoria, flash fried and whole, no utensils needed and doused in hot sauce. Sam encountered a jar of Salad Cream which thoroughly freaked him out (something I was familiar with when growing up in Canada) and we were both perplexed by something in the Belgian delicatessen called Children Salami. The papayas and avocados were as big as our heads. We were spoiled.

On rainy days like today I try to brighten things up with citrus fruits. This morning I squeezed some Valencia oranges and a pink grapefruit with the hopes of stickin' it to the clouds. It worked in part because I was transported back to one sunny day in Uganda when we stopped at a roadside produce stand. The women running it were eager to let us sample the wares and tempt us into stocking up. I was handed what I thought was a green lemon and urged to eat it. My father's wife, Pasco, explained that it was actually an orange, that their skins never actually turn orange in that region.
With some trepidation, I chomped down. Oh my goodness, that thing was amazing! The juice was both tart and sweet, with much more richness that anything we get in the U.S. I almost felt like I could taste the rain, the humidity, and the red earth packed into that little orange. I handed over a wad of shillings (pennies, really) and went home with half a dozen of them. They were gone in three days as I would sit on the warm, stone steps of my father's home each mid-morning, letting the juice run down my arms and the seeds fly out onto the concrete where dad's dogs loitered, hoping for a morsel of something more canine-friendly. If I ever manage to get back to Uganda, the first thing I will purchase will be a sack of green oranges and a bottle of ginger beer. Edible sunshine.

Omens

The superstitious part of me that gives in to chills when a streetlight flickers off as I drive beneath it or prompts me to toss a pinch of salt over my shoulder when I topple the shaker is rearing its ugly head as I write this first food blog. In the spirit of creating this blog and taking an anthropology class about food and culture, I decided to make bread yesterday. Not just any bread, artisan bread. Putting it in italics makes it fancy, see?

I received a beautiful, glossy cookbook from my mother last week for my 27th birthday, called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking, which claims I can put forth a mere five minutes of effort and treat myself and loved ones to warm, artisan bread everyday. The first chapter of this book drew me in, teasing me with Da Vinci Code-like promises of great yeasty truths and crusty secrets waiting to be unfurled within its pages. I stole my mother's pizza stone and got to work.

The creation of the dough was uneventful and, surprisingly, as easy as the authors claim. The baking of it was the ominous part. Ten minutes into the high-temperature baking of my lovely French bread with perfectly executed scallop-slices in the crust, I heard a horrible crack. The poor old pizza stone didn't withstand the 500 degree temperature. The bread had already formed a crust, perfectly steamed and crackling, so I was still in good shape.

Now I hunt for a suitably sized saltillo tile to replace the stone since I can't fathom shelling out $50 for what essentially amounts to $.83 of clay. The search has been fruitless thus far but a plain old cookie sheet under the one pound loaves I have made since seems to be adequate.

I need to make another loaf and get better photos than the one I have offered. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks have been good excuses to slice off a slab of chewy bread and slather it in warm, gooey egg yolk, leftover roasted chicken, or raw honey. So far the bread has been disappearing before I can get in there with my camera - a good sign, perhaps? Maybe all will be well, after all.