Living in the bohemian woodworker’s house has been a mysterious and wonderful experience. Last week, a woman stopped by to discuss the ins and outs of rentals and leasing — and just when I needed the advice. Before long, she invited me over to see her home and left a lovely orange persimmon on my counter.

A few days later, another woman came over with pumpkin cupcakes and buttermilk scones from May Day, a bottle of red wine, and a gift… for me. The jacket of a vintage paperback edition of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. She knows how much I love Mrs D, so when the jacket fell off of her own book, she put it in an antique gold frame and gave it to me. I was disarmed by her thoughtfulness.

Tonight, I went to a movie and dinner at Salut with friends. On my way home, jostling my things on the front walk while looking for my keys, I heard a woman shout “Excuse me! Excuse me! Don’t you just love Nathan’s house?”

I turned around and saw a lovely woman approaching me. She introduced herself as P from the salon down the street and told me how much she appreciates Nathan and his artistry. She was elegantly dressed and carrying wrapped packages as though she could be Mrs. Dalloway lost in thought walking home by herself from a party.

“Are you a teacher,” she said? No, but perhaps I have a way about me. I don’t remember how, but the conversation turned to food right away. She was happy to say she recently won a guacamole contest hosted my some official circles in town. She told me about chefs she knows, the restaurants she loves, and that she prefers Chilean and Spanish wines. We said we’d probably see each other again and I went inside to check out some of the things she had told me about.

Appropriately enough, this weekend marks the 50th birthday of this charming guy Nathan who brings so many people together. A party was being held and I was eager to see who would be attending. Since I had so little extra time to cook anything, I made one of my favorite no-cook appetizers.

• cucumbers
• mixed pitted olives
• feta cheese
• fresh mint
• lemon zest garlic, oil, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes

Cube the feta and mix it carefully with the olives, lemon zest, red pepper flakes, sea salt, pepper, crushed garlic, and olive oil. (Mix the oil and garlic separately so the garlic will be evenly distributed.)

Soak toothpicks in water to take the edge off. In the meantime, peel the cucumbers, slice them in quarters horizontally, and draw the seeds out with a spoon. Chop the cucumbers into pieces roughly a centimeter thick. They’ll be a squat U shape, which is the perfect resting spot for  the plump end of an olive. Push a toothpick through a cucumber, mint, and olive, being sure to leave just about a half centimeter of space at the end of the toothpick. The feta needs to hang on, but just barely. If you push the toothpick in too far, the feta will crumble.

Pardon me and my silly iPhone picture. I was in a hurry!

Rather than placing all the spears in an organized and circular fashion on a platter, I haphazardly placed them in an old enamel bowl I got from Savers.

And that was it. I brought it over to the party with a card, a bundle of flowers, and three beautiful peacock feathers.

Lately, I haven’t been writing as much as I want to. Since I moved, I’ve been spending my time unpacking, painting, and finding all the right things I need for my new/old home. I also go to the gym, hang out with my friends, work from 9 to 5, freelance after hours, and try to follow my favorite blogs, catch the news, and read at least a few pages of good fiction before bed.

It feels like I’m always busy. To maximize my time, I haven’t been cooking in my usual style. I buy the same few things from Seward co-op and cook simply, almost sparely, with no fanfare and rarely a picture taken. No dinnertime Tweets. No facebook updates again declaring my love for beets. Just the simple act of making myself something to eat.

The other thing I haven’t been doing lately is dating, which puts a cramp in my favorite habit, going to restaurants. As I describe in my tagline, I love writing about how the city, dating, and food come together in amusing ways. For the last two years, I filled many posts with my little renderings of boy meets girl and they go out to eat. But somewhere in the middle of my extended experiment with sociability, something inside me shifted and I pretty much lost all interest.

Do I want to find someone to spend my time with? Of course I do. In so many ways, I think I’m meant to be in a relationship. But at this point, it’s been so long and the possibility feels so remote that I can only look at other people’s relationships and marriages with “bemused incomprehension,” to use a phrase from Tim Kreider’s wonderful post at the New York Times. He calls marriage and parenthood “an entire dimension of human experience undetectable to [his] senses.” When I think about relationships, I imagine a vast foreign country I may never get to visit, usually somewhere near Morocco, with beautiful, distant horizons, rare luxuries, exotic spices, roasted flatbreads, and a mutual love so sweet that even the hardships are painfully romantic. But if I close my eyes, I can almost feel it.

In some ways, I’m not concerned about the sizing-up, reckoning-day thing Kreider calls “the referendum,” where the personal choices we make in life are discreetly judged by the people we know. If I were, I’d be actively hunting for my ever-elusive partner and trying to construct four happy walls around us both. I’d also be checking the dial on my biological clock and wondering why I seem to be immune to its ticking.

In other ways, though, the referendum has come to visit. Hell, it’s set up shop in my heart and I rarely think about anything else. For me, the referendum is about finding the resolve to confront a bewildering abstraction that lives smack-dab in the middle of my life. Some people realize themselves through marriage and children. Some through buying property. Some through making a dent in the corporate world. I’ve learned that I will realize myself only through the act of creativity. For me, before anything else, I’ll be satisfied only after I find my personal expression and get it out there in the world.

I just need to figure out imprecisely what that is. I see a manuscript, a menu, and neatly folded napkins. Some white plates. Flowers flirt together in a small glass vase on the table. I’m writing at my own desk, promoting books, and cooking in a big kitchen. I’m downtown. There’s open windows and exposed bricks. There’s also an exhilarating sense of freedom because I know that the life I’m jealously peering into is my own.

I’d rather be writing about the wine shop I discovered in my new neighborhood today, curated carefully by a guy who calls himself the Cork Dork. Or about the perfect grocery shopping route that occurs between my house and the Seward co-op. Or about my new proximity to the May Day Cafe and their trays full of pastries, foccacia, and scones. Or about the delightful exchange that transpired over an empty box of All Clad cookware in the alley behind my house. But that’s not how it is tonight. As my friend Stefanie would say, I’ve had wine, and who wants to concentrate when they’d rather unwind?

Since I last wrote, I moved to Minneapolis, resolved a terribly frustrating housing situation, competed in a cooking contest, and took a trip to the Badlands of South Dakota. I also made an appearance on the Fox 9 morning news (of all things). I was invited to walk through “my” quiche recipe to promote Julie and Julia--you know, the quiche recipe I toiled over for years and faithfully submitted to the cooking contest to finally reap my well-deserved rewards. Truth be told, I never even MADE a quiche before I was asked to do it on the morning news.

Before getting to that, let’s take a photo tour of the last few weeks. I said goodbye to my lovely old flat in St Paul.

The apartment feels such another world now, like a different version of me must have once lived there.

I did that whole Fox 9 news thing. If I could figure out how to stream a video, I would. Please go here _ http://tiny.cc/H4Nti to watch me pretend like I knew what I was doing.

I practiced the two dishes I cooked at the Mall of America’s Julie and Julia contest.

Here’s the view from my cooking station at the mall. Those are my fabulous friends in the front row cheering me on. Everyone thought I was going to win–and so did I. Despite all my wittiness, stylish sauteing, and waxing poetic about local food (I bought all of my secret ingredients at Cossetta’s and Caspian Deli), I ended up in second place. Given that the event was about promotion and not about food, however, I’m not going to think about it too deeply. Besides, I was sent home with a 5-piece set of All Clad cookware and had a wonderful time.

I also turned the Bohemian Woodworker’s (er, my) kitchen from a shade of yellow…

To a more pleasing (albeit Swedish seeming) shade of blue.

So as I unpack, explore, and generally try to land squarely on my two feet again, I hope to be writing again very soon, but only after I furnish my new kitchen with a stainless steel island and a hanging pot rack. I think those things will make this house a home.

Although I can see how the conclusion might be drawn, I certainly didn’t grow up in the kitchen. I didn’t eat long, lavishly home-cooked meals at the table with my family. We ate things like meat, potatoes, corn, and peas and seasoned our meals with salt, pepper, mustard, and ketchup. The division of labor in the kitchen was just as simple as our food. My mom cooked every one of our meals. My dad’s only job was to show up, mash the potatoes, and eat.

It wasn’t until I was in my first relationship that food naturally became a major part of my life. Unlike my parents, my partner and I discovered each other through food. We subscribed to a CSA and experimented with cooking based on whatever vegetables the farm sent our way. We’d reference our favorite cookbooks (primarily Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone), write down our original recipes, and play Beatles records while we perfected the sauté.

One day, his mom asked me where I learned how to cook so well. I was so surprised she asked this question that I didn’t know how to answer. Somewhere along the line, I had learned how to cook.

I often ask myself why I like cooking so much–and every time I come up with at least 12 answers. Here’s one of them. Cooking is something I can commit myself to. I think about that fantastic scene in Julie and Julia when Julia Child, played so joyfully by Meryl Streep, and her husband first arrive in Paris. Over an impossibly charming dinner, she emphatically poses a question to her diplomat husband about how she will spend her time in France: “But what will I doooo?” she implores. All she knew was that she loved to eat.

The rest is history, I suppose. Child committed herself to cooking, transformed her life, and fundamentally changed American kitchens.

So in case anyone asks, that’s why I love cooking. Creativity, passion, and determination all come together when you set out to cook a wonderful meal. It’s also something wonderful to doooo.

Check it out — my quiche recipe is done! I have been cooking all weekend to prepare for the Julie and Julia contest — quiche for my appearance tomorrow on Fox news and two secret dishes for the competition on Tuesday.

Cook’s of Crocus Hill is getting on the Julie and Julia bandwagon with a display of everything you might need to cook like a grand dame. I took this as an opportunity to pick up a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

I have to say, it’s a weird (although charming) world in there. You don’t come to this book to eat. You come to it to learn. Food in MAFC isn’t distilled down to a sexy recipe and full-color photo on glossy paper. It is, to quote T. S. Eliot, pinned and wriggling on the wall. It’s dissected and explained. Given all the time Child spends discussing her mentors in the intro, I’m not surprised. This book makes you feel like you’re right there with her when she first moves to France and begins learning from the masters.

Here is my rendition of a classic French quiche. I used Child’s pastry recipe and adapted it to how it worked for me. The rest of the recipe, inspired by goat cheese, is mine.

Heirloom tomato and goat cheese quiche
Carrie Obry’s entry for MOA’s Julia and Julia contest

In this recipe, the wonderful flavors of a classic quiche complement tangy goat cheese and meaty heirloom tomatoes.

Pastry pans come in all sizes – from 3-inch party-sized shells to 11-inch entrée shells. If you are making quiche for the first time, consider using a modest 8-inch pan. It’s a little easier to handle the dough for a smaller pan.

Don’t be turned off by the list of instructions. Making quiche isn’t difficult, but it takes many words to describe few steps. Before you start, I recommend watching instructional videos at YouTube.

Pastry Crust (Pâte brisée)
Adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Makes enough dough for an 8- to 10-inch crust. See MAFC for additional ratio instructions.

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (plus more for dusting)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, chilled and cut into smallish cubes
• 4 to 6 tablespoons ice water

In a food processor, combine flour, sugar, and salt and pulse. Add butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal, 8 to 10 seconds.

1. With the machine running, add the ice water in a slow stream. You will know when it’s done because the dough pulls together to form ball in a corner of the bowl. The dough will take shape and be slightly sticky.
2. For the fraisage (or “final blending”) stage, flour your clean counter. Put the dough on the counter and dust with additional flour. With the heel of your hand, press down on all areas of the dough until the dusting flour is incorporated and the dough forms a silky ball that doesn’t stick to your hands. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.
3. When ready, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
4. Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a saucepan and brush the inside of the tart pan.
5. Quickly roll out the chilled dough on a lightly floured surface until it is about 2 inches larger than the pie pan. To lift the dough, fold it in half and then in half again, transfer to pie pan, and unfold inside the pan.
6. Careful not to stretch the dough, pick up the edges and drop the dough deeper into the corners of the pan’s perimeter. Gently press the dough into the pan in all areas. Trim excess dough by rolling the pin over the top of the mold.
7. Line the pastry with a generous amount of foil and fill with pie weights, uncooked rice, or beans and bake for 8 to 9 minutes. Remove the foil, poke the base of the crust 2 or 3 times with a fork (or else it will balloon up), and bake the shell again for 2 to 3 minutes.

Carrie’s Goat Cheese and Heirloom Tomato Quiche

• 2 medium (or 1 large) round red heirloom tomatoes
• 3 eggs
• 2 plump cloves of garlic, crushed
• 4 ounces goat cheese
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
• 2 tablespoons basil chiffonade
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• salt and pepper to taste
• 8-inch pastry shell

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Cut tomatoes into slices about 3 millimeters thick and remove the seeds.
3. Line the bottom of the pastry shell with tomatoes in a pinwheel shape. Save the top of the tomato for the middle of the circle. If the top isn’t good to use, cut a tomato slice into the proper shape to fill the hole.
4. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk the milk and cream. Add the goat cheese in small pieces and whisk until incorporated. After a few minutes, the cheese will get smooth.
5. Add the eggs, herbs, garlic, salt, and pepper to the mixture and whisk until incorporated. Et viola! You have custard.
6. Pour the custard over the tomatoes, being careful to leave about a half centimeter of room. (Do not use all of the custard if you have extra.)
7. Slide pastry into the oven and bake for 30 minutes until golden brown on the top. (Feel free to place it on a cookie sheet for easy transferring.)
8. Keeping the quiche in the pastry tin, let it sit for 10 minutes on a cooling rack.
9. Slice the quiche and serve with salad greens and a glass of cold Lillet.

Before I get to the quiche, let me set the scene.

If you’ll remember from a few posts down, I’m in the middle of packing up to move to Minneapolis. My landlord has been showing my place and it made me realize that I never imagined anyone else moving in. I kind of hate to say it, but I secretly resent every flip-flopped young thang who has walked through the door. Maybe I’m just getting old. I guess I was thinking that once I moved out, Apartment Z would just evaporate and all of my wonderful memories of living here would fly up like confetti and fall back down to the ground to fertilize some flowers or something. Ah, no such luck.

Given that this is my last weekend here (sniff), I was just going to mind my own business and enjoy two days of meticulous packing before I move on Thursday.

Then, as luck would have it, a quiche entered the scene.

This week, I entered the Mall of America’s Julie and Julia cooking contest. I had to submit an original quiche recipe and a witty little form about why I like to cook. And egads, I was selected as one of the 5 finalists. So Tuesday, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Best Buy Rotunda, we 5 finalists get two recipes and one hour to chop, prep, and cook — and also put our own “twist” on the recipes. Whoever impresses the judges enough gets to enjoy a lot of cool prizes. And yes, I have been daydreaming about that afternoon with Eli Wollenzien creating a 5-course menu. How much fun would that be?!

If that’s not enough, Bridget Jewell, the public events coordinator for MOA, asked me if I’d like to cook my quiche recipe on the Fox 9 morning news. Of course, I accepted. So Monday morning at 8:30, I’ll be doing a little mise-en-place quiche lesson on Minneapolis-St Paul local TV. How grand. Check out this clip of Scott Pampuch and Asher Miller promoting Tour de Farm. I can do that. I love being newsworthy!

In the meantime, my adorable mom is getting star struck and calling me to ask which famous chefs will be there. She’s on a campaign to set me up with Alton Brown (she thinks I would fall for his geeky food knowledge, and she’s right) and keeps coaching me by saying this over and over, emphatically: “Tell them you want a show.” If only it were as simple as that. Then she sent me a text message that looks like this:

how about      apples or cheese

pecans pimentos or cayenne

peppe apples     cheese

I told her what the two recipes in the competition are, so she has been feeding me ideas for the unique twist I’ll put on them. I wonder she meant by “peppe” — or why she repeated those few ingredients, but in any case, it’s clear that next time I am home, I need to teach her how to punctuate on her cellphone.

So rather than packing, which I desperately need to do, I have to prepare a final quiche and one quiche en medias res, we shall say, to take to the studio — and also personalize and master two new recipes for the contest. Wish me luck!

You might think me odd, but until last week, I could count on just a few fingers the number of times I had been to Chipotle. Now I need to add one finger — and I suspect I’ll eventually eat there enough to run out of fingers and move on to my toes. Me being me, that’s a high compliment for the national burrito chain with more than 800 stores.

I have a bumpersticker on my car that reads “support your local independent everything.” I used to twitch a little bit whenever I went to the suburbs (and sometimes still do). I’ve even gone so far as to declare that all of my favorite restaurants don’t have parking lots. That’s why I love the deliciously ironic dinner I ate last week on Chipotle’s outdoor patio overlooking the parking lot of Ridgedale Mall. Someone had to put me in my place — and that someone is Steve Ells, Chipotle’s CEO.

Why did I go? I was invited by Michael Fuller who works in marketing for the restaurant. I also went because Chipotle is no longer owned by McDonald’s — and hasn’t been for a few years. Whether or not this actually makes any difference is negligible. Even though Chipotle drew away from the cheeseburger behemoth, Michael tells me that Steve Ells’ vision of serving real food has never been compromised. Ells calls it “food with integrity.”

Learning about Ells and his philosophy fundamentally changed my perception of Chipotle. There’s a guy with a degree from the Culinary Institute of America who speaks my language at the helm of a fast food chain. Chipotle is a nationwide, publicly-traded fast food chain making tremendous progress in popularizing local, sustainable food as part of the supply chain.

The Chipotle in Minnetonka, Minnesota where I ate last week is one of two LEED-certified branches in the country. Both the front and back of the kitchen are extremely clean and tight, and not one Chipotle across the country has a freezer. As of this month, the chain’s produce buyers are sourcing 35 percent of at least one bulk seasonal produce item from local farmers, a 10 percent increase over last year. But you wouldn’t even know these numbers, as Chipotle simply does what is right without any fanfare, as reported by the Washington Post. Ells works with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms (that wonderfully upright and uncompromisable farmer from the movie Food, Inc.) and is sponsoring a series of free showings of the film around the country. (Here’s a great article by Sarah Gilbert with a video showing Ells and Salatin mucking it up with the pigs.) Better yet, Chipotle buys the majority of its pork from Niman Ranch, an alliance of 650 independent farmers and ranchers spread throughout the country. As the story goes, every time Chipotle opens a new restaurant, Bill Niman can add a new farm to his network.

Then there is the food, which is fantastic. I tried everything on the menu so now I know that the barbacoa is the best item, hands down. The meat is spicy and warms your mouth with heat and toasted cumin. I was impressed by the addictive tortilla chips, which are fried on-site every day, squirted with lime juice, and covered with just the right amount of chunky sea salt. The guacamole is fresh as green grass.

All in all, the coolest thing I read about Chipotle is this quote from Ells: “We decided long ago that we didn’t want Chipotle’s success to be tied to the exploitation of animals, farmers, or the environment, but the engagement of our customers.” This is so wildly different from the typical exploitative model of corporate America. Steve Ells is spreading good karma one burrito at a time, and that’s something I can get behind.

The last time I wrote, I was busy recovering from my apartment farewell party. While doing dishes, scrubbing the grill pan, drying stemware, and generally putting my place back to its original position, I also had to drink the remaining Chardonnay and do something about all those leftover Bahn Mi. I had so many of them! Over the past three years of cooking for big groups of people, I’ve learned that the hardest part isn’t cooking, cleaning, or hostessing. It’s knowing how much food to buy.

I bought 25 baguettes from Jasmine Deli. They were relatively short, so cut in half, I had 50 small sandwiches for 20 people. I thought that everyone would have two with a few people having a few more — but somehow this math didn’t work. Even after eating them myself all weekend, there were so many leftover I had to bring a bunch to work. Most people put bagels, donuts, and cookies in the spare cube. I put roasted beet and tomato salad, minted watermelon with pineapple, and lemongrass pork and tofu Banh Mi. I suppose every office has someone like me, right? (Don’t answer that.)

Thankfully, I had an opportunity the following week to share the leftover beer and baked chickpeas with my friends at the Pizza Farm in Stockholm, Wisconsin. Yes, it’s true. If you don’t know it already, there is a fantastic gem of a farm an hour and a half out of the Cities that serves hands-down the best pizza around.

The couple Ted Fisher and Robbi Bannen along with their kids open up their own farm to pizza lovers every Tuesday night throughout the year. They grow all the ingredients to put on the whole wheat crust, which is made from their own home-grown, hand-ground wheat. The crust is thin, the ingredients fresh, and the pizza kissed by the flames of their wood-burning oven.

There are no signs leading to the farm. In fact, there is only a series of dirt roads that make you wonder why you are driving a hour and a half to what feels like the middle of nowhere just to order a pizza.

Once you get there, it becomes exceedingly clear. The farm is beautiful and so are the people. Everyone brings what they need to create a night of fine-dining under the stars. It’s not uncommon to see a full setting with a tablecloth, chairs, wine, and a candleabra.

I had a bit of a geek out moment when I was standing in line to order. Brenda Langton, the chef behind Cafe Brenda and Spoonriver, walked by, which of course I had to declare to anyone within earshot of where I was standing. The girl taking our order said she heard the rumor earlier and asked me to point out Brenda. For better or worse, she disappeared into the crowd as Aaron and I made up things we could have said to start a conversation.

The chalkboard menu has quite a few pizzas and unique ingredients.

Orders are taken and you’re given a number. My car arrived at 5:30 and we had to wait an hour for our order. The last car in our party arrived around 6:30 or so and had to wait an hour and a half. You’re given a number as they are ticked off one by one.

In the meantime, you can drink wine and order a loaf of the farm’s own bread. You can wander around and pet the goats, cats, and cows, strum a guitar, lay around in the grass with someone you fancy, and catch up with your friends.

Angela and Courtney

Stefanie and Sarah’s daughter Elizabeth

Lisa

Aaron and his paddle. If you bring your own pizza conveyance device, I think you save a buck. Aaron brings his paddle and asks people who are done eating if he can re-use their box.

I wonder how many pizzas can fit in the infero at a time.

When your number is up, the beautiful lady in the flowered apron cuts it up and takes your cash.

And you’re left to sit in the grass and enjoy the food.

I’d love to hear more people’s opinions about the Pizza Farm. If you haven’t gone, check out this article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for more details, or send me an email if you want tips on the best way to enjoy the farm.

I guess I should start this post by sharing the bittersweet changes that are afoot. I’m packing up my things. I’m leaving Apartment Z, my beautiful vintage on the hill. See that gold valance up on the third floor? That’s the leaded glass window that spills rainbow-colored light into my living room each sunny afternoon.

The view from my couch is of those beautiful curves cascading upward at the top of the column. And hanging out on the patio, you can see the stately Cathedral and the St Paul skyline.

Inside, with the dark wood trim, tall ceilings, bright colors I painted the walls, and the open kitchen, it’s one of the most beautiful apartments I’ve seen. At one of the parties I had here, a friend called it my Gatsby flat. When I told Michael I was moving, he said, “You can’t move. You’re synonymous with your apartment.” For the past three and a half years, I’ve been so thankful for this place every time I come home to it. And it’s not only the pretty stuff, either. A lot has happened here. I learned more about myself while living in this apartment than I have in any other period of my life.

In many ways, it’s been all about the food, which somehow crept its way to the forefront of my world. Never before have I cooked so much, thrown so many parties, written about so many restaurants–or thought so much about what eating means, on a personal and social level. I’ll leave this place hoping that my next three and a half years are full of just as many discoveries (and a bigger kitchen and better water pressure!)

Along those lines, this weekend I threw a going-away party to my place for about 20 people. I was stuck on the menu for awhile, but when the thought of making Vietnamese Bhan Mi sandwiches came to mind, everything else came together too. It’s strange because I had never had one before. When I suggested it to Angela, my food-loving friend, not only did she give me the thumbs-up. She also decided to make sure that we do it right. She sent me to the website Viet World Kitchen, whose recipes I trusted. She also called Jasmine Deli and asked them to hold 25 baguettes for me on Friday morning. At a buck each, it was definitely worth the trip (which Michael so nicely made!). These baguettes are lighter than the average because they’re made with rice flour.

Bhan Mi sandwiches

• lemongrass tofu
• lemongrass pork
• sweet lime mayo
• pickled carrots and daikon radish
• jalapenos
• cucumber spears
• rooster sauce
• soy sauce
• cilantro

The sandwiches were amazing. My friends made apologies for how many they ate. I had three. The traditional bread and mayo make a solid foundation for peppery pickled daikon, tangy meat and tofu, lemony cilantro, sweet carrots, salty soy sauce, and spicy chili sauce.  Throughout the night, I found myself declaring every one of the ingredients “the” essential ingredient as I went back for more.

I’m also happy to have learned a new time-saving tofu trick. I bought pre-fried tofu puffs rather than doing it myself, but I wasn’t sure how they would take to hours of marination. They came out perfectly, with no sogginess and lots of lemongrass flavor. A lot of us preferred the texture and taste of the tofu to the pork. Now that’s a compliment to the bean curd.

Beet and tomato salad

Mmm, beets. Compliments of Martha, as always. Someone close to me tells me I have a beet fetish. I say what defines a fetish? This side is gorgeous because the beet juice coats the tomatoes and makes everything deliriously red.

Minted watermelon salad

Martha tipped me on to this one, too. The watermelon I bought was really pale inside, so it wasn’t that sweet. I sprinkled on some sugar and added pineapple for color because I couldn’t find a yellow watermelon. The hard ricotta, green mint, and sea salt are the only things needed to make this delicious side.

Baked chickpeas

Who knew? I baked them with dried chili flakes to pair well with the sandwiches, beer, and white wine. These are healthy, delicious, and really versatile. I’m eager to make them again.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of my lovely green tea sangria, which is a wonderful trick to have up your sleeve if you want to serve alcohol inexpensively to a lot of people. I brewed two pots of green tea (read: lots of mileage) and mixed in smashed ginger, honey, Looza pear juice, orange juice, and Johnnie Walker. I put it in a big Spanish glass jar next to a box of white wine for guests to mix in equal parts over ice. Since I already had the green tea and Johnnie Walker on hand, this was endless drinking for about 15 bucks.

I also geeked out with these perfectly stackable plates I got at Target. Smirk. I also love that I could count on Stefanie, my dessert-making friend, to bring a fabulous berry trifle.

All in all, it was a fantastic send-off. The food was a hit and the company was awesome. I even got a toast, which will become a nice memory as I trade my classy little corner of St Paul for a house in the refreshingly less squeaky clean Powderhorn Park.

Weekend, where did you go? I had three days off, which is just enough to set my world almost right again. I needed it, too, to get some work done. I have a new writing gig with Dine Magazine, which I’m excited about. Not only does this job promise free meals and luxuriously comped food vacations, I tell myself that surely anyone crazy enough to sacrifice her free time for her art must be passionate enough about food to be taken very seriously.

Dine is a print magazine and a blog in South Florida expanding their brand into new cities across the country. In my original vision for Edible Cities, I’ve always been a food journalist, so this goes along nicely with my plans. Bookmark TwinCities.DineMag.Net and return to it often–especially in a few weeks when there will be more indexable and commentable content.

On Saturday, I headed to the country to meet my childhood friend Carrie at her house in Somerset. We packed up her daughters Zoe and Jamie a took a trip to Fawn Doe Rosa. Look at this beautiful girl (and my new best friend). It’s eerie and sweet to see her face, given that I have known Carrie since I was two years old and Zoe looks so much like her, both then and now.

I spent the drive home daydreaming about the party I’m throwing on Friday. In my first draft of the party (the one that doesn’t take cost into consideration), I make about eighteen different “Le Cakes” as seen in Gourmet with ample aperitifs to go with them. Alas, a bottle of Lillet is 23 dollars, so my petit aperitif obsession will have to be a semi private affair. But it’s so good, especially with a Nicoise salad, and especially imagining a Frenchman serving it to me.

Sunday, Angela and I went bumming around the new Uptown Market, which I posted about on the Dine Magazine blog, so head over there to see a few pictures and sign up for the group’s facebook fan page for even more. For better or worse, we didn’t get a hot dog from the Magic Bus, as good as that might have been. We went to Bryant Lake Bowl instead. I had a colorful mess of huevos rancheros.

I’ve never been let down by the food at BLB–but I have been let down by the service a few times, hanging out for forever while all the tables around you get their food. A hip restaurant/bowling alley is not a good place to complain about practical matters, though, even though I might complain about one. The organic maple syrup offered to the table cost an extra buck fifty, and the server never says you’ll be charged. I don’t mind spending the money, but come on. It’s the principle of the thing. The crowd is a bunch of progressive urbanites eating granola pancakes–of course we want the organic maple syrup! Factor it into your operating expenses and serve everyone the good stuff. We’re discerning customers, and totally worth it, given what an institution BLB is.