I moved!!!!

Yeah - I moved to Seattle, but my blog moved too! Follow me at http://mollyskitchen.tumblr.com/. Cheers!

Dad and Jill got married!

Yesterday, dad and Jill were married on the banks of the Willamette River at the close of a 70 degree spring day in Portland. It was beautiful. From the weather, to the raspberry cocktails, to the friends and family, the event was simply beautiful. It was wonderful to see my brothers, Jill's children, our grandmothers, and my aunts.

Jobless in Seattle

Being jobless, I thought I would come to Seattle and get a little bored or restless looking for work and moving in to our new place. But as a friend at OHSU told me before I left, "it's a beautiful time to be moving to Seattle!" All the cherry blossoms are out in full popcorn puffs, and just as Lynn advised me to do, I've been going on walks around town. Tuesday, I went to meet Phil at his work so we could run errands when he was done for the day. It's about five miles from our house to his work. I am trying to familiarize myself with the bicycle friendly streets and intersections, so that walk helped a lot.

Our place is still not quite "settled in" but we're slowly getting everything in it's place. Cooking helps. Soup helps. Eating helps everything. The market had chicken back marked way down so I bought a few pounds and made 6 quarts of stock yesterday. I read and re-read all the literature on stocks we had in the house. The Joy of Cooking suggests blending the vegetables before cooking to extract more flavor. I put them in the Cuisinart and the results were quite satisfying. This morning I scooped all the fat off of the chilled broth. Don't worry - I didn't throw it away. I tried a matzo ball recipe from Bon Appetit that called for schmaltz. The results were quite impressive. Phil and I had three matzo balls each, situated in my homemade broth, and accompanied by a large arugula salad and mashed celeriac and russet potatoes. I'm going to go roll myself over the couch now and watch a movie...

The cookbooks have a place

... So we can call it home now.

In Seattle now

A long time since posting... Phil and I are in our new place in Seattle now. I haven't been taking pictures, or documenting much, but when we get more settled, I will post pictures! So far, we're enjoying living together, and watching Kitty run up and down the stairs. We can chop vegetables side-by-side at our giant counter, and I am in love with the gas range. Right now I'm unpacking boxes, applying to jobs, and learning to navigate Seattle traffic on bike. It's a beautiful time to be in the city - all the cherry blossoms are blooming! We've joined the local co-op that's just a short walk from the house. I'd say, overall we are well on our way to becoming full fledged Seattlites. You better come visit us!

Lazy morning.

There's nothing like a biscuit sandwich for breakfast... Or three. I made a quick batch of biscuits this morning to put egg and veggie sausage on, but they didn't rise! Old baking powder (likely cause), or really old buttermilk (bought it back in mid December) were the obvious culprits. Or I just kneaded too much. Whatever it was, doesn't really matter - they tasted yummy!

Recipe: The Rest

As previously mentioned, I'm moving to Seattle. Part of getting ready involves eating as much of the food I've hoarded in my cabinets as possible. Rachel and I tend to get carried away with food (bet you didn't know that, did you?), so this has been a fun task for us the past several weeks. In one night, we ate homemade asian steambuns filled with left over spicy lentils from a freezer jar; thai lemongrass and chicken soup; and the aforementioned spicy lentils over brown rice, smothered in mozzarella cheese. Well, tonight I wanted lentil soup, and it ended up being a recipe utilizing a lot of "the rest" of stuff in our kitchen.

Ingredient list:

• The rest of the lentils in the house - red and french green
• The rest of the hot yellow curry powder
• The rest of a baggie of dehydrated onion flakes
• The rest of a Pacific tetrapak of chicken broth
• The rest of an open can of Trader Joe's light coconut milk
• The rest of my broccoli from last week
• The rest of my bunch of carrots from last week
• The rest of some celery from god only knows when
• Some ginger, Bragg's, and cumin

and of course... spooned this over the rest of the white jasmine rice in the house (only about a half cup dry left, sorry Rachel).

Pretty tasty! Lentils look pretty disgusting on camera though...