Oregon State Fair (= bad behavior)

We made a pilgrimage to the Oregon State Fair on Tuesday. Heres what we consumed:

1 Mount St. Helens of Twirly Fries (real name)
5 hand dipped corn dogs
1 non hand dipped corn dog
1 regular hot dog
1 notdog
1 elephant ear
2 ears of corn (1 dipped in butter froth)
1 frozen strawberry lemonade
1 giant diet coke

Probably other things too but it's too upsetting to remember. Because... after all of that, my friend Nic and I decided to go on a ride! None of our friends or boyfriends would agree to go with us, and we didn't understand why until we got on the ride and it started swirling us around, as if in an effort to kill us! It was the worst minute of my life! We cried and begged to be let off, screaming "WE REGRET IT!" and "MAKE IT STOP!". The elephant ear really made my experience horrible. I'm surprised I didn't barf, though it probably would have been a relief. Do you see the photo up there that is a violent blur of light and pain? That's us, drooling and squeezing our eyes shut. When we got off the ride, our friends

Other highlights of the fair included looking at the gift basket, scrapbook, table setting, and cake decorating competition exhibits. I am tempted to enter the gift basket competition next year. I'd like to say it would be an easy win but you know how gift basketeers are- mean and competitive.

Also I saw some pygmy goats and am 100% positive that I want two. So next spring, get ready for goat mayhem.

Music and Pork

On Friday night, the stars aligned, and yet again Kevin and I were invited to a meat filled dinner by our friend Ian. He works at Simpatica Dining Hall and this weekend he got to write the menu and cook dinner for everyone. His muse was the pig, and we ate a lot of it. It started with headcheese with spicy pickled beets and mustard. Headcheese is delicious but kind of creepy (you know I don't mind eating face, it's just the gelatin part that gets me) but I found Ian's to be very pleasant. The next course, my most favorite of all, was risotto with sugar snap peas, sharp cheese of some kind, and a big slice of caramely pork belly. If only I could have a big bowl of that right now for breakfast... The main dish was double thick pork chops that he roast on a spit in front of the restaurant (we got to stand next to it and sniff on it for a few minutes before we went inside to sit down) with sweet smokey grits. And of course, dessert was great too- caramel ice cream with pralines and candied ham chips. Ian explained that he made the ham chips by boiling them in a thyme simple syrup- then he reduced the hammy simple syrup and made an incredible caramel sauce with it. This was a perfect evening because it started with going to Lille and tasting some of Dave's chocolates, then the pork dinner, and ended meeting up with Dave again for some vermouth! I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just can't wait until I'm an old lady and can be a vermouth alcoholic.

Last night, another fateful evening of delight. We managed to scrape together some tickets to the sold out Neko Case show on craigslist! I started listening to her this winter after years of claiming to hate her, and fell in love. By now my love has grown so much, it's stupid. Her voice is SO BEAUTIFUL, and live it is unreal. She had a pedal steel player. My heart belongs to the pedal steel, especially one being played under a tasseled lamp such as this one was. She also had a large owl painting/cutout that her tour artist made for the stage, and it looks just like Jacky Scrapple.

One great moment was when Neko said "this next song is about waking up and not knowing where you are, only to realize you're in prison and have to clean toilets for the rest of your life" and her backup singer said "That's better than working in a restaurant." And the crowd when crazy. It was a service industry kind of night, I suppose.

I also liked her hair and clothes. I could not see her shoes which was a sad thing. She did not play my two real favorite songs but I was still able to squeal and say "my favorite!" a lot of times anyway (I have a lot of favorites).

And she has a running video in the background of pretty things like cartoons of little girls combing tigers fur and killer whales swimming through the sky.

I'll stop.

OMFG

I just ate a whole pizza at Ken's on my own. Dining alone, though pathetic looking and boring, has its benefits. You see, when Kevin and I eat pizza together, it becomes an eating contest that has no winners. Tonight, I ate slowly. I chose my slices based on my own desires, and not on defending property. I thought to myself things like "I think I'll take this little guy over here with all that cheese and arugula on it and save that big slice for later!". Of course, there was no later. Not really, anyway. My plans of bringing some of this beautiful, crispy pie disappeared soon after I realized that it was the best pizza I had ever eaten. I mean it. I may be fond of superlatives, but "best" is truly in order this time, so leave me alone. Anyway, I finished it. I was even praised for my appetite, which I think might be kind of insulting if not surprising.

F-

I am depressed to admit that since my failed baking trials with David, I have been a total spaz in the kitchen. I think my confidence was really shattered when everything I tried to make not only did not come out the way I planned, but in fact came out disgusting and inedible. My shaker lemon pie? It was basically a scrambled egg and lemon pie. SICK. I even messed up Lasagna the other night. My only success this week in food was buying pudding at the farmers market, and that wasn't even my idea. (Thank you Holly.)
I'll never tell what Kevin and I had for dinner tonight, I'll only say that our prowess of impersonating fat teenagers has reached another level. It was cute when we used to eat pastries in bed whilst my roommates judged us behind our backs, but now that we are on our own it's disgusting and shameful. SHAMEFUL.
Fortunately, my Aunt and Uncle cooked for us on easter. We ate so much pork that we could not even have our yearly egg-cracking contest. It's the first year we haven't done it, and all thanks to eating too much. It was worth it.

Almond Blossoms

You lucky devil's. I'm going to give you one of my favorite dessert recipes that my Auntie Jorden sent to me. She warned me to give Amanda Hesser credit because it was her recipe originally. In my mind it is a Cook family recipe, but thanks to Amanda anyway. We would have come up with it, given time.



She means it when she says don't go over the one hour mark- the key to this cake is that it is a little underdone. I checked the cake at the 55 minute mark and it seemed to be RAW on the inside, so I blasted it at 370 degrees for the last five minutes- a big mistake. Though you might not believe it, the cake will firm up as it cools and have a tender almondy texture- if you don't overcook it. If you do, it's just a regular, delicious almond cake. It lacks magic. So don't make the mistake I did!

I am sorry for the lack of posts lately. I wanted to write about Sunday, because it was nuts, but due to some family stuff I didn't feel it was right. I feel like making light of the situation today, so I will tell you.
We wanted to go wine tasting, but couldn't because everything was closed. We knew we had to do something fun to make up for the disappointment of not going tasting. It came to me in the shower that morning- Tad's Chicken and Dumplings. Tad's is an old person restaurant located on the shores of the Sandy River, and it rules. It is the kind of place where the moment you sit down they give you a platter of veggies with ranch dip and hot buns with butter. We ordered like crazy people- fried chicken, steak, halibut and extra dumplings (the size of large grapefruits) floating in gravy, and this was just lunch. Whisky poured from Kevin's flask into our iced tea, we screamed with laughter about all things inappropriate until the table next to us moved- in general, we caused a ruckus.
When we left we swore we wouldn't be able to eat for a week- so why not have a digestif at Clyde Common to take the edge off? You know where this is going. We went directly from our huge meal to another restaurant, where we ended up staying at until we felt we could eat another bite. We ended up moving from the bar to a table and eating pasta with wild boar, baby octopus with chorizo, pork rillette, and three desserts- rosemary creme brulee, chocolate and scotch icecream roulade and a meyer lemon tart. We're disgusting, horrible people.
I think it ended up being about 7 hours spent in the two restaurants- we barely saw the outdoors on Sunday. And it gets worse. Shane claimed to be driving us home but in fact he was driving us to a nearly empty strip club on Burnside. It was depressing, I won't go into detail except to say as we left a woman was getting on stage to dance to "Putting on the Ritz" by Taco. It was my friend Laura's first adventure with us since she has moved here- I can only imagine what she thinks of us.

I hope to have a fabulous staffmeal tonight- I will let you know.