Pig goes BOOM!

Ok not really but we did make a 'fancypants' bacon explosion for Thanksgiving.  Since three of the four people at my thanksgiving were from the south we did a 'southern thanksgiving'.  Holy crap was there a lot of food.  My favorite part though was practicing my knife skills.  Watch out.

Making the pecan pie crust for the crabmeat cheesecake 

Crabmeat cheesecake baking

Chopping the porcinis and apples for the pork stuffing 

War zone.

That's me.  Cutting the fat layer off of the pork roast.

Butterflying the pork.

Boom!  That's what you do when you know how to use a knife. 

L smashing it to an even thinness

Layering w/ Kale

Rolled up and happy.  About to get wrapped in proscuitto

Trying to remember the proper method for tying w/ twine

Monster Chanterelles 

Crabmeat cheesecake for Turkey day brunch

Searing the pork

Buttermilk pie

Sweet potatoes w/ blue cheese and candied pecans

Whisking the grits dressing

Princess waiting for her wine.

All is right w/ the world

A thing of beauty

Sweet potatoes, biscuits, and collards!

Happy.

Grits dressing

Oooooo....

Post dinner walk for digestion

You can hike in the winter?

Who knew?  A few weeks ago I went on a 'winter hike'.  Seeing as how this is Seattle and not Aspen the ground was covered in moss instead of 20 ft of snow.  Thus the hiking.  It was still pretty cold though.  So we drove out to Little Mt Si for a quick hike.  We saw some ice cycles and there was quite a bit of snow on the mountains in the area but our hike was too low in elevation to really have anything to worry about.  This was a super easy hike but it was so pretty.  There were house sized boulders strewn around everywhere and they were all covered in furry green moss, as were the trees.  I love that everything here is covered in a green carpet.  The 'rainforestyish' area really kind of looked like fairyland.  However, when hiking, even on an easy hike, you do get warm.  Then you get to the top for the view and lunch and cool off.  And get cold.  Really freaking cold.  So take note kids, do not get overheated and then 'come down with' hypothermia.  Anyway, here are some of the pics from the day.  My next 'winter hike' will probably be snow shoeing WHICH I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT!  Seriously.  I've wanted to do that since I was about 6 and went to Colorado for the first time.

I told you the rocks were furry

Amazing day for a hike

Stay calm and pet the furry rocks...

You can't really tell but those rocks were huge

A huge rock slide

Getting near the top

The view from the top

Snow on big Mt Si

Eating lunch w/ other hikers

The clouds started rolling in while we ate

Sun on the snow

 

Sunday Funday

This was a rather cold and blustery weekend.  The beast and I were caught out in an 'ice storm'.  Something worth noting...ice storms are superior to rain storms in that you do not actually get wet.

Ice pellets on the sidewalk

Blustery clouds

Saturday I went to a fun bar, Chupacabra, with excellent margaritas and taquitos.  Gotta love a place with a late night happy hour.  

Sunday we braved the cold and headed out to Woodinville for some wine tasting.  There are so many different tasting rooms that it will be hard to make it through them all.  But today we went to a couple of really great ones.  First off we stopped at Mark Ryan http://www.markryanwinery.com/ and tried a few.  They have a great tasting room with some really fun funky art on the walls.  The wine was nice, a couple were really great and a couple were just ok.  After that we walked over to Darby http://darbywinery.com/.  Darby was amazing.  There were five wines in our tasting and they were each fantastic.  And even more shockingly, affordable.  Plus their tasting room was gorgeous so that's always a plus.

Darby's tasting room 

Awesome black metal wall in the tasting room

I want this table.

One of the wines I came home with...

Holy Fried Chicken, Batman!

As I sit here typing this blog post I feel a bit like I'm about to burst.  Good god I have found the temple to awesomeness and in this place they fry a lot of chicken. But more on that later.
First, I met a friend at this great bar (next to another great bar) where they allow dogs inside and they even get to sit at the tables!  Norm's is a fantastic and happy place, however, my big ball of crazy will not be going to Norm's b/c I'm pretty sure he'd start some kind of a doggy riot.  He's sneaky like that.  Apparently Norm's doesn't have a website (too busy paying fines for allowing dogs in a restaurant I'm guessing) but here's a link to Yelp's review. http://www.yelp.com/biz/norms-eatery-and-ale-house-seattle  Also, they make homemade potato chips w/ sour cream/onion dip.  Awesome.

I don't want to go to your happy dog bar anyway.

On Saturday I discovered eggnog lattes.  And they are fabulous.  Super fabulous.  

Tastes like a holiday

Saturday night L and I braved the violent fog (sideways fog, who knew such a thing existed?) and headed out for dinner at Lecosho http://lecosho.com/  where we ate a ton of great stuff.  The restaurant is adorable and almost on the water.  There were great windows overlooking a kind of patio area (great for watching sideways blowing fog) with twinkle light trees and an open kitchen where we got to watch the chefs at work.    We chowed on housemade sausage, grilled octopus, duck, and rabbit cavatelli and it was deliciousness.  After that we cabbed it (no uphill hikes in violent fog) to a new bar that's been getting some good press, Canon Whiskey and Bitters Emporium.  http://www.canonseattle.com/  Loved this place, the inside was great, the drinks were really good and the food menu looked like it was good but we were too full to try anything out.

Freakishly clean tin ceiling...too used to the tar grimed ones in New Orleans 

The beautiful bar.

Today after some shopping we decided to finally try out this place that we've been eyeballing for a while.  For two southern transplants the promise of a fried chicken dinner sounds like a bit of heaven.  Every Sunday night Hi-Life (no, not the beer) has a fried chicken dinner and good god it is awesome.  They bring out these plates that have half of a fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, and a biscuit. http://www.chowfoods.com/hilife/ I ate till I was about to explode and I still have plenty left over for lunch tomorrow.  Good times.  On the plus side I am currently too full of fried chicken to continue gorging on the peanut butter and nutella cookies I made this weekend.    

The bar at Hi-Life 

The largest mixer I've ever seen.

And here are a couple of fall foliage pics just for fun.