A Song for Your Supper

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Dirty Gifts

I've been given lots of gifts from the garden lately. Basketball-sized sweet onions pulled from the field just for me, eight perfect stems of chard and a ruffled ball of butter lettuce. Strawberries from the foothills of the Blue Mountains that I roast with ground pepper and balsamic vinegar, a lentil chili made meaty with barley and a giant, prideful zucchini. Such simple, thrilling gifts.

Blog Resurrected for Easter!

The great thing about having a blog nobody reads is that you have a platform for talking about things nobody would otherwise listen to. For Easter Brunch I made lox from scratch. I used this recipe from April's Food and Wine magazine. I was especially taken that it was a recipe from the chef of Sitka and Spruce, a restaurant in Seattle I always mean to visit but never do. Meanwhile, favorite pubs are hit repeatedly. Resolve!

So, here is my photo-journal of Eden's attempt at lox. I was pretty happy with the result (and really, really happy that nobody reported food poisoning).

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20th, 10 PM: Brine that mother!

I gathered fresh mint, parsley, cilantro and dill from the Portland Farmer's Market and spread the sprigs across the amazing marbled wild salmon I got for an arm and a leg from Whole Foods. Resolve!


One makes a salty mess with shallots, dill, anise and coriander seeds, and garlic, and drowns the salmon (well...).


You drape the mess in paper towels (or if you're a hippie like me, you don't have paper towels on hand so you use a very stained flour towel that you had planned on throwing away long ago).



You wrap the entire thing in plastic wrap. I refer to this step as the Salmon Mummification Project, but Food and Wine calls it something much less interesting. Pop it in the fridge and wait for 36 hours.

SATURDAY, APRIL 23rd, 9 AM: Peel that mother! Unwrap from the plastic, burn the flour towel and recover the dressed fish with (recycled, unbleached) paper towels that you sprung for, embarrassed that you ever thought using a flour towel was appropriate. Mentally apologize to Food and Wine (and, your guests for brunch tomorrow). Rewrap in plastic, place back in fridge.

SUNDAY, APRIL 24th, 9 AM: Hehasrisenhehasrisenindeed. Peel that mother! Again! Scrap the dressings off of your lovely fish and place it on a bakers rack in the fridge to chill out for two hours. The goal of this step, disturbingly enough, is a fish that's "slightly tacky". 'Where is that flour towel?' you think.


SUNDAY, APRIL 24th, 12:00 PM: The reveal! Of course, I failed to take pictures at this critical point. A picture of Andrea, protesting that she can't eat another bite and then stacking a bagel with more lox, is the best I could do -- and good proof, I think, of the project's success.


(THE REST OF THE MENU: besides the lox, on Kettleman's bagels with whipped cream cheese, red onions and capers, Easter brunch included a spinach and goat cheese quiche, a rhubarb jam with red chile and lemon, a sweet cream cheese with honey and hazelnuts, a fabulous dressed salad with crunchy greens, and plenty of mimosas with raspberries.)

Creepy Christmas TO YOU.

Recently my sister complained that I hadn't updated my blog in sometime. I'm thinking that this writing platform might've run its course. The good news is not that I've stopped writing altogether, but I am busily writing more substantial things - articles, short stories and of late, even a (short) film treatment. Exciting. So, just to keep the masses happy (and by masses I mean my only reader, my sister, who refuses to comment on my blog except as her dog) this photo. Merry Christmas, all.

Fall 2008

Fall 2008
Originally uploaded by Eden from Sweden

Sweet summer.

Seriously, that's it?

This will go down in history as the summer that never was (my East coast friends had the opposite problem, it was the summer that was Too Damn Hot.) That said, I did have some nice moments, even if I was wearing long sleeves when I had them. I'm listening to the rain fall outside in the pitch black (even though it's only 8pm) and I know I need to face the facts. Summer's out, Fall's in. And, against all common sense, I'm a little excited.

So, here's scenes from my too-quick, too-cold summer in redux. Onward!

(top to bottom, more on my flickr page) A week in Maine with my favorite people; Newport, Oregon with my mom; a documentary on the cemetery shown in the cemetery; Hitchcock's Blackmail shown on the rooftop of the Hotel Delux, looking over downtown Portland; A lovely spur-of-the-moment day trip to Seattle with my sister, and a hike to Falcon Cape (near Cannon Beach, Oregon) with Canela the Explorer.

Dinner, July 18, 2010

Dinner, July 18, 2010
Originally uploaded by Eden from Sweden

How do I forget again and again that cooking makes everything better?