Seriously?????

Ever worked in an office?  Ever worked somewhere that had a break room?  Well then you know what I'm talking about.   Because you know that working in an office oftentimes sucks ass.

Friday, I was quite late for work.  I didn't want my co-workers to find out that the reason I was late was because I pressed the snooze button until 10 minutes before it was time to leave the house.  If you know me, you know that this is the way I start my days- every day.   Morning is not my friend.  So in an effort to detract from my being late, I called my office as soon as it opened and told them that I would be there a few minutes late because I was buying treats for everyone.  This seems to work pretty well and I have used this tactic on multiple occasions.  The ladies in my office LOVE treats.  They're like dogs.  All outrages suffered are quickly forgotten with treats.

So I went to Maverick and procured a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. 

At about 11am, my morning Slim Fast petered out.  I tried my best to resist, but I decided to say eff it and have a donut.  I went to the break room to get one.  And this is what I found.

Seriously?!?!?!  I have a major issue with this.  And despite what you're thinking, it has nothing to do with the fact that I did not get a donut.  I didn't care about not getting a donut. 
For one thing, just take a fucking donut and eat it.  Take a whole donut and eat the whole donut.  No one wants a used donut. That's what's in the box now.  Used donuts.  The remains of a donut that you have whittled down with a kitchen knife, bite by bite, all morning long.  Why did you do this?  Are you trying to delude yourself into thinking that since you left a little half inch chunk in the box, you didn't technically eat a whole donut?!?  You did it.  You ate a whole donut. I know it.  Everyone knows it.  Don't make us all look at your hacked up pathetic donut chunk.  Why not just throw it away?  Did you think someone would see that chunk and think, "Gee, that's the morsel for ME!"  Au contraire, bonjour...... It's freaking nasty.

For another thing, we do not want to look at your breakfast in progress.  I see you all morning, moseying into the break/copy room, wandering around, taking a bite and setting it back in the box.  I see you pretending to be fascinated by the bulletin board full of discount bran coupons so that you can take more bites of your maple bar.  Why are you doing this?  You don't want to look like a little piggy by helping yourself to a WHOLE HUGE donut and taking it back to your office?  Guess what?  We're all little piggies.  That's why we all get a chubby when someone bring treats.  The jig is up.  Get a plate and serve yourself up a donut.  There's a whole stack of plates on the table.  Use a plate.  We don't want your germy, partially eaten donut infecting the whole box with whatever demon death virus your snot-nosed grandkids have brought home from school.  This is disgusting.

Every time there's an office treat, this is what these people do. I guess I should be thanking them because every time there's a bag of bagels or a cake or a pie or cookies, there are little half-eaten, bitten-into pieces, tainting the whole batch.  So I never end up having any.  Saves me the calories.  

Exit Row Conversations

*On the flight home from Seattle, Cody and I sat in the exit row, so we had to "verbally agree" to all the super duper mega important responsibilities that come along with exit row seats. I picked the exit row  because they have extra leg room and also only two seats instead of three, so we didn't have to sit by anyone.  Cause who wants to sit by anyone on the plane?  Not us.
 
Me:  "Do you really think we're the best people to sit here?  I mean, now we're responsible for everyone if we crash or something.  I don't even like being responsible for myself."

Cody:  "What are you talking about?    If something happens to this plane, I'm the first person out that door. Eff that noise!"

Me:  "Yeah!  You're right!  Good thinking!  It's GENIUS!!  We can bail before any of these other yo-yos."

Cody:  "That's what I'm talking about.  We'll both be gonzo before the shit even finishes hitting the fan."

Me:  "I don't even think you'd OPEN the door.  There'd just be a big hole in the side of the plane that was shaped like you running.  You'd be gone so fast...... You'd be in the nearest bar watching the crash happen on the news.  You could point at the tv and say 'I was ON that plane. It was horrible.' "

Cody:  "These are the best seats in the house, I say."

Me:  "Yeah!.....  I hope no one around us has been listening to this conversation or they'll probably vote us out of the seats."

Cody:  "I bet no one wants to sit here.  Too much potential work."

Me:  "They should have a quiz for the people who want to sit here.  Or a personality test."

Cody:  "Or  a sobriety test."

Me:  "Right?  I've been drinking since 3pm.  I can barely zip up my fly."

Cody:  "Yeah, they could have a little breathalyzer tube you have to blow into before you can sit in these seats."

Me:  "Now that we've discussed it, I definitely think we're the wrong people to be sitting in the exit row. We should be ashamed of ourselves.  We should straighten up and fly right. Heh....get it?  Fly right?"

Cody:  "Heh....yeah."

Me:  "Speaking of flying right.....Hand me the drink menu."

Savor Seattle Food Tour

Aaahhh, Seattle.  The Emerald City.  It was great to be back!  For this year's annual trip, we decided to mix it up and do something new and different.  We found a web site that ranted and raved about the Savor Seattle food tours, so we booked ourselves on the Pikes Market food tour.  What better way to see Seattle than to taste and smell it?

I might get artsy-fartsy here, but I have to talk about my love for Pike Place Market.  I love love love love it.  When I set foot in the market, I turn into a big kid in a candy store, eyes twinkling with possibility.  The market is a magical menagerie of sights and sounds, but most of all......SMELLS.  For someone who has a bloodhound of a nose (like myself), the market is the most amazing place on earth.  Every five steps wields a new, tantalizing scent.  Fresh flowers, fried donuts, cinnamon, fresh baked bread, lavender, peppers, sharp cheeses, handmade chocolates, fresh fish, curry, soaps, leather, sausages, oils, roasted coffee beans..........  In spite of the crowds, it remains one of my favorite spots on this earth.   It's like Rae's version of what heaven must surely be like.

And so, we met the Savor Seattle tour at the Starbucks on 1st and Pike to begin our food tour.

 This tour cost $39.99 apiece, which included a two hour walking tour and samples at every stop.  We also got handy little earpieces so that we could hear our tour guide from up to 150 feet away.  Let me just say, this was a top notch tour. 


Nick, our tour guide was hilarious AND knowledgeable.  He told jokes, gave history lessons, and was very very punny.  I was surprised he didn't do a jig.  And he is obviously crazy fired-up about food.  Which helps any food tour guide, I think.  He carried a pink umbrella so that he would be easily identifiable at all times and so that if we got lost like little lambs, we could find him.

First stop:  Daily Dozen Donuts.  Delectable little fried, yeasty, sugary morsels.  YUMMM.

Next, a trip to the World Spice Market.  This place is a cook's dream.  They have walls of huge jars just full of fresh herbs and spices.  This place will launch a glorious assault on your olfactory senses.  They also make some incredible teas.


 We tried the cinnamon orange Market Spice tea.  It was SO good.  I bought my mom a box.
*Note:  I forgot mom is allergic to cinnamon; so instead of a lovely gift, I gave her swollen cinnamon tongue of death.













 Stop Number 3:

 Yay!  Pike Place Fish.  The place where the fishmongers throw the fishes.  If you love seafood, NOTHING is more rad than the rows and rows of fresh-caught seafood.  Crab, oysters, scallops (OH the scallops!), salmon, halibut, shrimp...... fan-freaking-tastic.  Also, if you happen to love the smell of fresh-caught, oceaney, salty fishiness, this is the place for you.  I think it's an acquired scent. 

 We sampled three kinds of smoked salmon-  Alderwood smoked, garlic & pepper smoked (my fave) and salmon jerky (Cody's fave).  I tried to get a close-up of all three, but by the time we got to the jerky, my whole body was vibrating with taste excitement, so I couldn't get a shot that wasn't blurry.  Bummer for you, cause that thing was good looking.

After the salmon explosion.  We headed for Frank's Quality Produce, where we had some juicy seedless grapes and some Washington grown apples.  This place really has the most amazingly beautiful produce you'll ever come across.  If I could have bought a bunch and taken it home to share with you all, I would have.  Actually, I probably wouldn't have because you can buy your own damn fruit.  Plus, fruit doesn't travel well.  Except for Cody.

I had to get some shots of the produce area because it was so beautiful.  I wish my camera had smell-o-vision because you should smell the smells that come out of those fresh fruit and flower stands!  Yum!

 Next up, my favorite of all the shops.  Pike Place Chowder.  Pike Place Chowder has been featured on multiple Food Network shows as having the best chowder in the country.  This is correct.  It isn't opinion- it's fact.  This is the best chowder you are ever going to eat.  This chowder doesn't just taste good.  It gets inside your head.  It sticks to you.  Something they put in the chowder makes it so that you cannot be satisfied until you have gone back and eaten more.  We finally had to go back to stop the chowder voice inside our heads from pestering us any longer.  The line was ridiculously long and no one minded waiting in it.  This place has several varieties of chowder, including traditional New England clam chowder, seafood bisque, Manhattan clam chowder, smoked salmon chowder, seared scallop chowder...... the list goes on.  They serve it in big cups or in enormous, yummy bread bowls.  I was beside myself trying to decide.  They also have huge french bread rolls piled with dungness crab salad or bay shrimp or smoked salmon.  Next time you go to Seattle, you MUST eat lunch there.  It's worth the wait.

Chukar Cherries was next.  We had ourselves an assortment of cherry delectables and some cherry-peach salsa.  Award for the "Best Of" goes to the Honey Chocolate covered pecans.  The chocolate had crispy little honey crystals in it. 

Beecher's Cheeses was another fantastic stop where we got to see the actual cheeses being made.  This place had the most fantastic house-made mac and cheese ever.  It was even better than MY homemade mac and cheese.  And that's saying something.  It's really expensive, but it has to be because anything wonderful is worth paying for. 




We went back later because Cody hadn't ever had a cheese curd and it was either remedy that ASAP or break up because, who hasn't had a freaking cheese curd?  What is he, a Martian?

Welcome to Piroshky Piroshky!  Have you ever had a piroshky?  Neither had we.  According to Nick the Tour Guide, these are like gourmet hot pockets.  How could they be bad?  Fresh, hot buns with a myriad of different delectable fillings?  So good.  I tried to think up a clever pun for this part of the post, but I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with piroshky, so I just did it straight.   If you think of anything, let me know. 

Around this part of the tour, despite Nick's best efforts to nonchalantly direct our attention toward a large bird atop a sign, we all got the chance to experience a naked old woman strolling down the sidewalk.  Actually, she wasn't naked.  She was wearing a hat, an unzipped coat and hiking boots.

After we finished our Piroshky Piroshkies, we strolled on down the street and enjoyed a little street music.

Right about this time we got a whiff of the first and only UNsavory scent of the whole tour.  I got the whiff about 30 seconds before everyone else because of my super-human nose powers.  A trash truck was driving slowly along the street and stopping in front of every trash can to empty it.  Wow.  I mean, wow.  This was one of the foulest odors I've witnessed to date.

 Nick tried to move us to a different place along the street, but the truck kept moving closer and closer to us.  Unfortunately this truck must have been picking up carcasses or rotted buffalo or sacks of mammoth shit all morning.  It smelled like sick.

 When the air finally cleared, we had our last delicious nom of the tour.  We went to Etta's.  Etta's is owned and operated by Tom Douglas.  If you are a normal person, you have no idea who this is.  If you are an Iron Chef geek, you know him as the only man to put the smack-down on revered Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto.  I love Morimoto and I saw the episode of Iron Chef where Tom Douglas beat him.   So I know that this man is clearly a culinary genius.  He owns multiple restaurants all over Seattle and is known best for his incredible coconut cream pie.  For this food tour, however, we tried his crab cakes with tomatillo sauce.  They were, of course, stellar.  Out of this world.

Sadly, this concluded our food tour.  It was real.  It was fun.  It was real fun.  Next time we go back to Seattle, we'll be doing another tour- perhaps the gourmet tour or the chocolate lover's tour.  If you're in Seattle, we recommend taking the food tour.  We also recommend asking for Nick the tour guide.  He's really punny.

 HOWEVER...... Cody and I decided we weren't ready to be done with the food tour.  We wanted more.  We had passed a whole slew of shops we wanted to stop at.  Plus, the food tour had lacked one critical item- BOOZE!  So we continued the fun by launching the Rae and Cody food tour. 

We went to Pike Place Bar & Grill for some delicious libations.  We ordered a sampler of local beers.  And what luck!  Cody liked three and I liked three.  These were some great beers and were SO refreshing after a morning of eating but not having a frosty cold beer to wash anything down with.

Aren't they magnificent?

















The porter was my favorite, I think.

We also got a fresh shrimp cocktail.  It had this great cocktail sauce that was too hot for me, but was just the thing for Cody.  It was LOADED with horseradish.

After resting up from our walking tour and energizing ourselves with some beers, we hit the Confectionary- a chocolate and cheesecake shop featured on the Savor Seattle Chocolate Lovers tour.  Nick had pointed it out, but we hadn't gone there because it wasn't part of the tour.  But he HAD mentioned that they sell Columbian sipping chocolate there.  Uh....yum!?!  I had to try it, so we went, even though Cody doesn't like chocolate.  And no, I don't know what's wrong with him.

They offer the sipping chocolate with or without chili pepper.  Cody put chili pepper on his and it was surprisingly spicy.  I would have thought the chili would be cut down by the sweetness.  This chocolate, however, was not very sweet.  It was provided in the form that they drink it in down in South America- very little sweetness and a lot of cocoa kick.  It's so rich that their smallest size is just a tiny little shot.  If you're a badass, you can order it in larger sizes.  But that would only be if you were a double chocolate lover.  Maybe even a TRIPLE chocolate lover.

Despite not being a chocolate lover, Cody squeezed every last drop out of his little paper cup and then licked it clean.  It was so sinfully tasty!








 We also got some truffles.  They had mini cheesecakes there, which Cody DOES love.  He's a cheesecake nut.  But he said he was too full.  Instead, we got some little truffles.  We were doing the truffle shuffle.

Does it get any better than this?  I do not think so.  This was the most fun we've had on a Seattle trip so far- just eating our way through the market.

Holy crap.  I can't believe you read all the way through this super long blog.  Don't you have stuff to do? Sheesh.......
*Thanks for reading!  Are you hungry now?  Well, invite me over to cook for you then.  I'll do it.

The Can Can

Every time Cody and I go to Seattle, we try to do a few new things, as well as some of the time-honored traditions.  When preparing for the trip, I stumbled upon a cab company called Crown Black Car Service.  They are a local group of young musicians who, in addition to playing in bands that perform music that only my father could possibly like, also operate a successful fleet of black Crown Victoria cars.  And they happen to be cheaper than a taxi from the airport to the downtown area.  Here is their site.  Try them out if you're in Seattle!  They're cheap, reliable, and they'll have some interesting tunes playing during the drive.  (I realize you might be thinking of Doobie's Taxiola, but it's a little higher-class than that.  Although they ARE proud of their town.) 

But I didn't write this post to tell you that.  I wrote this post to tell you that whilst perusing their web site, I discovered a page of links to places around Seattle that these cab drivers like to hang out at.  And one in particular looked intriguing, so we decided to give it a shot.

The Can Can Cabaret & Kitchen is in downtown Seattle right at Pikes Place Market.  It's in the basement beneath a flower shop on 1st and Pike.  You can get into the club with "standing room only" tickets for $10.  For more, you can actually get a table with a server so you can enjoy dinner AND the show.  And it is one HELL of a show, I tell you what......




This was a really rad little bar with mosaic tiled walls, low ceilings, dim lights, and good drinks.  It was very small.  I suspect that if this bar were in Boise, it would attract the same sort of crowd that hangs out at the Neurolux or the Balcony.  This is one of the few bars in Seattle that sells real (supposedly) absinthe.  If you've ever tried absinthe, you know that it tastes sort of black licorice-y.  I hate black licorice, but Cody loves it, so he tried some.  He said it made him feel a little funny and a lot thirsty.  It does give you a very loopy, special sort of buzz.  Not wanting absinthe, I told the bartender I like whiskey and he made me some sort of fantastic peach-colored whiskey martini called a "Night Court" or something weird.   

The show was....... something else.  It started off with a movie of a giant  mouth- complete with rainbow braces, metallic gold lipstick, and a goatee- lipsynching to a very high falsetto voice singing a Bohemian-type folk song.  After that, there were cross-dressers, corsets, Minnie Mouse ears, fright wigs, rouge, a midget in a diaper, and a giant cardboard cut-out of a sparkly hand doing the shocker.  The man pictured in the poster above was chasing other men dressed as ladies around the stage and attempting to pinch their hineys.  He had spectacular legs, though. Don't worry, there were women, too.  They were just as scantily clad as the men. Neither of us could actually tell you what the show was about.  I don't suspect it bothered to have a story line. 

We spent the first ten minutes of the show with our jaws on the floor, the next ten minutes squinting in disbelief, and the ten minutes after that laughing hysterically and shaking our heads at each other.  During intermission, they showed a short indie-flick of two men on a beach showing their muscles and their tiny swimming trunk bulges to a lady in a red dress.  It had subtitles, but they were fake subtitles that the Can Can staff had added, so they were ridiculous and had almost nothing to do with what was happening on the screen.   It was disturbing.  It was grotesque.  Far and away, the weirdest thing Cody or I had ever seen.  We had a BLAST. And we didn't even get mugged on the way home.

*This is a photo that should give you just a sample of what the show looks like.  I did NOT take this photo.  I poached it off the internet. 

Cutter's Bayhouse

*Warning- this blog post is not short.  It contains very critical details of something very simple, yet critically important- food.  If you do not have an appreciation for food, you may not enjoy this post.  Or this blog for that matter, because it is written and maintained by two avid foodies.  Wondering what a foodie is?  Click here to find out.  Maybe you're one.....

People.....this is no time for goofing around.  This is very serious.  I must spread the word. We have just had the most sinfully incredible, fantastic, wonderful meal of our lives.  I must tell the world about this dinner because NOT telling would be doing the food a disservice.  As foodies, we must pay proper homage to the noms which have just consumed. 

One of our Seattle traditions is to dine at a place called Cutter's Bayhouse, arguably the best restaurant in Seattle. Here is the web site.  Click through, people!  Educate yourselves!
Inside the plain, unassuming exterior is a Seattle treasure.  It has warm amber lighting and candles on the tables. It has tanks of live seafood.  It has the most horrendous tacky plaid carpet ever made (but we can ignore this).  It overlooks the bay with huge windows, so you can watch the ferries go back and forth across the water.  I recommend going there at night, though, because the ambience is fantastic.  That, and the darkness blots out the fact that while it IS a nice eatery, it is located next to what Seattle natives have dubbed "Homeless Park".  This is a small grassy area with benches and a killer view of the water.  It was no doubt intended to be a nice place for tourists and natives alike to sit and reflect, read, contemplate, sightsee....... Unfortunately, it is also a hub of activity for hobos, vagrants, and pot-heads.  Earlier this same day, we stopped there after our food tour to take pictures of the view and we witnessed a homeless man lighting up the most potently smelling doobie in creation.  But the restaurant is very nice and has the most sensational food around.

When we arrived, I was devastated because they were out of the scallops I wanted to order. I ordered them last year and they were the best thing I'd ever eaten.  My mouth was ready for the scallops. I've been talking about them for a year- ask Cody.  I had to have them. I was almost disappointed enough to leave and find scallops elsewhere.  Little did I know that his was a fortunate accident. I was meant to eat other things.

For a warm-up, we both had an oyster shooter.  Cold, fresh raw oysters in cocktail sauce are not easy to top.  When you bite into them, you get this sweet, metallic taste that is just........mmmmm.  They just taste like the sea.  If you haven't had an oyster shooter, give them a chance.  So. Good.  We started the meal with a smoked beef carpaccio appetizer.  If you don't already know, carpaccio is  raw, lightly smoked beef sliced paper thin.  It is eaten on warm, chewy grilled sourdough toast points with mustard spread and cornichon baby pickles.  The beef was drizzled with truffle oil and sprinkled with fresh pepper and kosher salt.  Heaven.  Try beef carpaccio sometime, if you don't mind raw meat.  It is stellar.  Then we ordered the Mediterranean style mussels- fresh Puget Sound mussels cooked in white wine, butter, fresh basil, chopped garlic, and chopped tomatoes with the most incredible hot, thick sourdough bread for dunking.  AND the mussels came with a side of house-cut fries, which were the most insanely good fries we have ever tasted.  Our mouths were SO happy. 
For dinner, Cody ordered a whole Dungeness crab, steamed with melted butter.  He ALWAYS enjoys crab and this was no exception.  The crab was huge- about 2 1/2 pounds.  He tore into that thing like a hungry sea otter.  This was good crab.  No, this was great crab.  It was sweet, tender, juicy, and doused in drawn butter.  OMG.  So. Good. It came with fresh, tender green beans and silky mashed Yukon gold potatoes.
I couldn't decide what to order.  I never can.  Since more than one thing sounded good, I went with the appetizer sampler as my entree.  Best. Decision. Ever.

The sampler came with house-made crispy potato chips drizzled in truffle oil and coated in fresh minced garlic.  They were so great and SO garlicky!  It also came with smoked beef tenderloin medallions, grilled medium rare with spicy pineapple and a teriyaki glaze.  This beef was so tender I could cut it with my fork.  It was an eye-closer.  You know, when something is so good that you have to close your eyes to fully bask in the glory of the delicious flavor?  That's an eye-closer.  And this beef was an eye closer.  So were the enormous tiger prawns grilled to perfect done-ness and topped with rich, buttery bearnaise sauce.  And so were the crispy ahi tuna rolls.  Huge chunks of fresh, red, raw ahi tuna wrapped in seaweed and then in rice paper and flash fried.  It was served with daikon sprouts and  this chili aioli sauce that was the perfect blend of creamy and spicy.  I took one bite of beef, one bite of shrimp, one bite of ahi.....over and over just to mix up the flavors in my mouth.  Every mouthful brought with it a hallelujah chorus of taste.

This was not just a meal.  This was an event.  This was an ordeal.  We spent hours enjoying every mouthful.  We were so sublimely satisfied, we were giddy.  We were actually giggling as we ate. Just randomly giggling.  I actually felt guilty.  Like I had done something wrong just by enjoying the food this much.  Like no food should be allowed to taste this incredibly. The food was great.  The wine was great.  We didn't even bother to order dessert because we wanted the taste of the dinner to stay in our mouths all night.

If you ever find yourself in Seattle and HUNGRY-  not just hungry, but HUNGRY- you must try Cutter's Bayhouse.  Your mouth will not be disappointed.

Recreational Vehicle Hell

My mom unintentionally inspired a cartoon for this blog!  She emailed me yesterday and said "Hey, how about we rent an RV and go on a family trip?!"  Sounds fun!  But the picture in my head of my family on an RV trip inspired the following cartoon:

And so, I dedicate this blog post to my mom, just for making me tee-hee.  Love you, mom!