use real butter

Recipe: seafood andouille gumbo

Thanks to all of the good folks who entered to win a Wii console and a Wii Fit Plus package! While we normally have Kaweah pick our giveaway winners, we gave her a break this time. Actually, it’s because we weren’t sure if the Kaweah Method would pass muster with the law-talkin’ guys at Nintendo. But honestly, if you’ve ever met Kaweah, you’d realize right away that she is truly random.

truly

So let’s get on with it! Random.org gave us 393 out of 516 comments. Our winner is comment #393 – Karna! Congratulations Karna! I’ll contact you via email to get your mailing address so Nintendo can FedEx your cool and exciting new system to you! I have to say I was really impressed that so many of you want to get active and fit. Even if you didn’t win the system, I still encourage you to get out there and do something. Whether you buy a Wii of your own or just start walking with friends, doing some exercises in your own home, trying out some yoga classes, or signing up for some sports teams to get you engaged and moving – it’s good for you. I’m cheering you on from here!

I was feeling pretty good on Friday, then had a big crash and burn Saturday (I am told it is not uncommon to hit a wall on the third day after surgery). Reality never seems to be able to keep up with the plans I have in my head. By the way, thanks for all of your sweet recovery wishes. I think I’m finally on the mend. At least I was feeling good enough for us to run a few errands in town and meet up with friends at The Kitchen Upstairs (part of The Kitchen) for Tasting Hour.

jeremy tried a flight

two of my favorite things: food and friends

Cold, fat rain drops plopped on my head as we stepped into a gray and wet Pearl Street. I like the rain. I guess I wasn’t this enthusiastic about it when I lived in Ithaca, NY. There is such a thing as too much rain. Here in the West, the rain is a nice change up from our typical gorgeous and sunny weather. Boulder is right at the transition into Spring where that bright green fuzz you see on the trees will burst into full on leaves in the next week. I drove us home in the rain, then the slush, then the snow. When we let Kaweah out for the night, it was snowing at a good clip.

takes my breath away every time i see it

What better weather for a hot bowl of gumbo? I’ve had this recipe dog-eared for a long time and I figured I’d make it when I thought to look for fresh okra. Lo and behold, I found it at H-Mart last week! Considering that I don’t even know when okra season is, this was a magical thing. I grabbed a pound of the stuff. I call it the stuff because I’ve never cooked okra before and I’ve only had it on three occasions – once by accident (the NASA Langley cafeteria – that was interesting), once in a sushi bar (tempura fried, can anything be bad if it is tempura fried?), and once pickled because my friend Melinda is crazy about pickled okra.

onion, pepper, green onions, okra, tomatoes

okra looks happy, doesn’t it?

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: spicy tuna stuffed squid tempura

**Note**: Daring Bakers, it came down to the wire and I chose sanity over the DBs yesterday. Forge ahead and hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a great one. xoxo

I expect most everyone is in a complete state of food coma at this point. Am I right? We are actually quite happily not in food coma over here just because I’ve sort of had it with food lately (the making, the eating, the documenting). December is less than a week away and that entire month is about FOOD, so we gave ourselves a little break. Plus there was work to be done this morning. We had to pick a winner for the scarf giveaway.

your mission, should you choose to accept it…

Kaweah loves to participate in picking random numbers as long as the motivator is food. Try throwing a ball and she’ll run after the ball, then run right past it, then keep on running, until you wave a dog biscuit in the air and holler, “TREAT!” So the set up was to place ten pieces of paper numbered zero through nine around our great room with a bit of carrot on it. Then we let Kaweah into the room and recorded the first number she ate. Jeremy had to police her because the last time we tried this, Kaweah ate one number and then mowed through four more before we could stop her. Then we repeated this twice more. I’m sure some of you are thinking if she hits the first number, she’ll just return to the same place each time. Nope. Our good pup isn’t that bright. Seriously. She is totally in the moment.

jeremy chases after kaweah to make sure she doesn’t eat the rest of the numbers

our crazy random number generator gave us 983

We took 983 mod 221 (I know a few people said they weren’t entering, but anyone leaving a comment is considered entered because it’s too much work for me to remove them) and got #99. Congratulations to Dani of Dani Dishes! You win the scarf and you get to pick the colorway of your choice! I’ll be sending an email shortly. Thank you to everyone who shared what Thanksgiving was about to you. Food was probably the biggest along with family, and some of you really tugged at my heartstrings especially remembering those who aren’t with us anymore. It was so nice of you to share with me.

Our Thanksgiving was very low key foodwise because we are both swamped with work. I kept our “meal” simple, but special. Mostly, we just wanted to have a quiet day including a nice walk before sunset. I’m thankful for the little things as much as the big things in life.

this snow will likely last through the spring

someone was particularly happy and well-behaved today

definitely thankful for these two

What we ate for our Thanksgiving meal (it’s too early to be called dinner, too late for lunch) is known as Tiger’s Eye at our favorite sushi restaurant in South Pasadena. It is spicy tuna stuffed calamari that is tempura fried, sliced, and served with ponzu sauce. I didn’t have ponzu sauce on hand, so I had to make my own. The recipe I use calls for bonito flakes. I never have bonito flakes on hand either (although you can buy them in Asian markets and I recommend this – or better yet, just buy ponzu sauce). However, I did have a giant piece of dried bonito.

it looks like driftwood

pouring lemon juice and rice wine vinegar into the soy sauce and bonito flakes

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: dragon roll sushi

The Daring Cooks are making sushi this month! We have done quite a bit of sushi making (and more eating) here at urb so I was quite excited for the selection. Even with the familiarity, I was hard pressed for time to get this done. Because of that, it is with great sadness and yet relief that I am withdrawing from the Daring Cooks. This will be my last DC challenge.

daring cooks – one last cha cha cha!

I really have to thank the ladies of the DARING KITCHEN: beloved Lis of La Mia Cucina and sweet Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice. These two fine women give and give and give to all of the Daring Cooks (and Bakers). I don’t know how they do it, but I admire them for their love and enthusiasm, and especially for their friendship. Thanks, you beautiful babes!

Here’s the official line: The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge.

And once again, I colored outside of the lines which is probably why I should be leaving the DCs… I didn’t use their sushi recipe, I used the one I always use because we had a very small window of time to get this done. But I still learned a new technique and the sushi totally rocked (because it always does). I decided to try my hand at tempura frying based on this recipe from Allison who does all things sushi-related.

i thought the egg and ice water looked neat before mixing

whisking the wet and dry ingredients together

I think the biggest barrier to making tempura for me has always been the mystery of how to do it. Allison’s recipe is SUPER easy to throw together and so the true hurdle in tempura is the frying. I hate frying, but the more I do it, the more I lose my dread of it. We decided to tempura fry some alba clamshell mushrooms, asparagus, and shrimp. I didn’t have any softshell crab on hand, but tempura shrimp in a roll is another favorite of mine.

ingredients including: alba mushrooms, masago (fish roe), quail eggs

the goods: maguro (tuna), large dry scallops, wild-caught gulf shrimp

**Jump for more butter**