This morning, I came downstairs and found my daughter eating a slice of last night's pizza - the breakfast of champions. Pizza wasn't the breakfast for me; I was thinking about how to prepare my eggs.
With more time on this weekend morning, I offered to make soft boiled eggs for her, knowing that soft boiled is one of her preferred ways to eat eggs. She said, "No" that she had already eaten pizza. I remembered some gluten free bread that we had and decided to fry an egg on toast. She still wasn't interested.
As I was getting the eggs from the fridge, I saw a package of lox. This changed it all for me - I was going to poach an egg on toast with lox. Evidently, it changed it all for my daughter too, "Can you make one for me too?"
I have an alcohol problem. As we prepared for Thanksgiving and brought many fresh herbs that we don't usually have on hand and celebratory whipped cream, I started thinking of the cocktails that I could make with those ingredients. And unfortunately, I was stymied by not having the alcohol that I needed (okay, wanted).
Several years ago, I went to a movie theater and got a cocktail. Cocktails at the movies is another thing, but it was a nice date night with my wife. I had a Bogart cocktail, that was composed of muddled sages, gin, Cointreau, lemon juice and a lime garnish. I fall on the savory part of the cocktail spectrum, so this was right up my alley.
While I was preparing the ingredients for Thanksgiving, I secreted away a few sage leaves to save for my cocktail. The next day, while we were lolling around in our food coma, I decided that the time was right for a Bogart cocktail. I started to gather my components, I discovered I was out of Cointreau! Stymied by the lack of a key ingredient, I decided that I would try another drink.
I had a growler of cold coffee, cans of whipped cream for pie and it was cold outside. Sounds like Irish Coffee weather! When we have whipped cream at our house, it is most commonly applied directly from the can into the mouth. You have to be fast to use in on pie or hot chocolate.
I warmed up my coffee, it had been on hand for my daughter to make iced coffees in the morning on the way to school, and went looking for my bottle of Jameson. I was thinking how nice it would be to sit by the fireplace, catch up on my reading and enjoy an Irish Coffee. I leaned over to go through our liquor cabinet contents and could not find my bottle. It turns out, I had finished it last winter and not yet replaced it.
My problem is that I don't have the liquors I want to make my cocktails with! If you ask my wife, she'll tell you that my problem is that I have to call it a night after two drinks (sometimes even just one, I'm such a lightweight). In many ways, she's right; I won't drink a lot or often, but when I do, I want something good. What is your favorite cocktail this winter?
Seattle has a growing craft distillery movement. Ahh, who am I kidding; there is just a growing craft movement... Craft coffee, craft cocktails, craft beer, craft (not with a K) cheese and craft distilleries. A few weeks ago, I was invited to 3 Howls Distillery in Seattle's SoDo district for a tasting and tour.
A small sample of the long line of spirits...
What I find especially neat about the craft distillery movement, really any of the craft , is that the people involved are so passionate about their craft. One of the 3 Howls owners, Will, gave my wife and I a personal tour of his distillery space. It's plain to see from just chatting with him that he loves distilling and making the perfect spirits.
Even though Will has been making a lot of rum, we got a sample of his still aging single malt whisky. I think he only had 2 or 3 barrels; this is really a small batch operation, so it was quite nice of him to share. And Heather, who isn't a whisky kind of girl, liked this single malt. It was smokey and smooth, but not overly smokey where it was choking you out. I'm looking forward to when this one is available for purchase!
A photo posted by Heather Murphy-Raines/Scouts H (@unitedstatesofmotherhood) on
I got to take home a sample of the Hopped Whisky which was nice to enjoy on this blustery weekend we've been having in the Pacific Northwest. It was good whisky, but my tastes stray from the hoppy side of things, even in the beers I drink.
Drinking my party favor at home.
If you're in Seattle, 3 Howls offers distillery tours and will share their passion with you. If you're not in Seattle and you want to check them out, they're nationally distributed by Total Wine and More. Drink responsibly, but drink well.
I enjoy drinking coffee. I'm not one of those people that needs coffee to function first thing in the morning; my first coffee will often be 5 to 6 hours after I wake up. I drink coffee for the flavors of the beans and for the art of making coffee.
I recently attended the 2015 International Food Bloggers Conference (disclaimer: this post is one of three posts I'll write in return for a discounted ticket) and a pre-event sponsored by Sur La Table and KitchenAid. I'm all about gadgets and cool kitchen cookery, so it was a great to visit the Sur La Table's test kitchens and see the new products coming out this fall. And I was quite pleased by the new Kitchen Aid Precision French Press that we were given.
If you've seen my Instagram photos, you know I love coffee and geeking out about it, maybe half of my pictures are of coffee in the making. Not only is the Precision French Press beautiful in it's stainless steel glory, it has a scale and timer built in so you can get your coffee just right every time. And because a French Press says lingering over breakfast or a baked good, the double wall construction keeps the coffee warm longer.
Photo by Parker Raines
Using the press is quite simple, especially given that it is self-contained. I warm my press with boiling water, empty it and measure the coffee with the integrated scale. The manual comes with a table for a 1:16 coffee to water ratio, so no early morning math is needed! Tare the scale and fill with water to the target weight and then start the timer, all right there on the handle. I like a 4 minute brew time and after a stir to break the crust, a gentle press of the plunger makes great tasting coffee.
Keep in mind that brewing with French Press does require a slightly coarser grind coffee, otherwise pressing the plunger will get pretty tough. I've had glass presses break on me as I've been pressing and its quite a mess, but with the strength of stainless steel, I'm not sure how this one would fail - no matter what it would be a hot mess. So, just make sure you use an appropriate grind, which is nicely pictured in the manual, as well.
Personally, I'm quite happy that the art and science of making coffee is becoming more prevalent. It's no longer the brown stuff from the can that my grandparents would drink; like wine and chocolate, the subtle flavor nuances are now being appreciated.
How do you like to make and drink your coffee? Are you on board with the craft coffee movement or does coffee help you survive the morning?
September is shaping up to be an awesome month. For one, I'm writing on my blog again after an almost 3 month hiatus.
End of Summer Backpacking Trip
September started off (well, really August ended) with a 2 night backpacking trip with my son in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. He said he wanted to go backpacking during the summer and this was the last weekend of summer. What started out being planned as an overnight, turned into a 21 mile, 2 night, multiple lake extravaganza in the woods.
We started out Friday afternoon at 4:25pm with 4.5 miles and about 2000' elevation gain to get to Melakwa lake before the 8pm sunset. We made it just in time to set up our tent in the twilight and enjoyed dinner in the dark.
During the nights (both of them), the wind and rain were both hard, but we stayed warm and dry. It sprinkled during the day were we weren't necessarily dry, but we weren't cold or wet either. Though there was some suck factor, we both had a great time.
I took my Aeropress on this trip, with the grand plan to take some of those camp stove, Aerpresss, coffee pictures against the beautiful lake backgrounds. Sunday morning, I had a great backdrop for it - we camped at Rainbow Lake and our tent door opened up to look out across the lake. If it hadn't been raining so much while I was making breakfast, well let's just say I didn't have any coffee that morning.
New Job, New Computer
I'm getting settled in my new job and learning the ins and outs of using OS X. In my case, its not such a big deal, because I usually have 4 terminal sessions open anyways. I love the fact that underneath the polished GUI is some form of 'nix. And I'll say it - "why didn't I do this sooner?"
Swim practice has started up and as I write this post, I made this tweet:
I am officially one of those people using a MacBook at @Starbucks
So, don't be surprised if you see more more geeky tweets in the coming months.
The Elysian Games
Next weekend, I am competing in the Elysian Games at Seattle Center. Taking advantage of my age, I'm competing in the Masters ( > 40) division. I didn't finish last last year, so I'm going to do it again. It's going to kick my butt, but I'm going to have fun at it.
International Food Bloggers Conference
The 7th annual International Food Bloggers Conference is the following weekend 18 - 20 September. I'm looking forward to seeing old friends, making new friends and getting re-energized about my blog. Oh, yeah and tasting some really good food.
With the legalization of marijuana in Washington, there is even a breakout session on edibles. Truthfully, that breakout is not for me, but I know that lots of people are looking forward to that session.
This will be my third year in attendance and its a fun filled, tummy filling experience.
MBA Reunion and Cal Football Game
It's been 5 years since I graduated from the Foster School of Business with an MBA and its reunion time. What's kind of cool about this reunion is that the football game that it is paired with is against Cal, our alma mater. It'll be my families first UW football game, so it'll be pretty cool to see Cal too.
September is going to be jam packed... It's funny how we had a quiet summer and then pack it all into the very end. Hopefully, I can keep writing during the month.
Recently, I wanted a treat for dessert. I knew that mug cakes were quick and easy and I wouldn't have to turn on the oven on a hot summer night. I did a Google search for Paleo Mug Cake and found this recipe. I looked at that recipe and realized that it did look good, but I thought I knew how to make it a better paleo mug cake.
Just make sure you have a big enough mug!
Now let me warn you, as mug cakes go, this is a pretty labor intensive recipe. For most mug cakes, you just throw everything in a mug, give it a stir and pop it in the microwave. This recipe has two cooking cycles and you have to add ingredients in a sequence. But don't let that deter you; its still far easier than making a cake and having to warm up an oven.
Melt 3 tablespoons chocolate chips and coconut oil in the microwave in a mug. I will set my microwave to 70% power and microwave for 20 secs and stir, multiple times. This way, I get a good melt, but without burning them. Plus, sometimes chocolate chips hold their shape even though they are melted.
Stir the coconut flour, espresso and baking soda into the melted chocolate. Then add the egg and mix it well - if you don't, you'll be left with little worm like strings of egg white in your cake, which is kind of weird.
Add the remaining chocolate chips for little fudge-like nuggets in your cake. This step can be omitted, it makes for a pretty rich cake, especially if you use dark chocolate.
Cook it all in the microwave for about a minute and a half. It should be dry when tested with a toothpick. Let it cool a bit and enjoy.
I've think I've figured out Starbucks grand, or should I say grande, plan. For years, I've maintained that Starbucks is great because you can get a consistent cup of coffee, just about anywhere. Recently, I've come to the conclusion that I want to consistently get great coffee. For me, this has meant independent cafes and brewing my coffee myself.
Starbucks recently opened their Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room, where they roast rare and small batch coffee beans. Its an experience because the tasting room is built around the roastery, you can chat with the roasters as they work. They sell beans that you'll only be able to find there, some of them even roasted the same day! There are great single origin beans and some that come from a farm smaller than a football field. Unlike a normal Starbucks, you can get your coffee from a whole slew of brew methods and if you find a new favorite, you can pick up all of the coffee gadgets you'll ever need (or want).
While this is a great coffee experience, it is only here in Seattle. But Starbucks is up to something. Starbucks has done a great job of exposing American's to good coffee, but they're going to take it up a notch. With the roastery and a few other efforts, they're exposing American's to great coffees.
I've recently started seeing Starbuck's single origin beans at the grocery store. I've not picked any up because they've always been pre-ground and I know that is sub-optimal, but its getting the idea out there in front of consumers.
Last weekend, I was driving a carpool for swim practice and was in a shady neighborhood where the Starbucks is my hangout while waiting for practice to end. I was surprised to see that they had one of their espresso machines loaded with single origin beans from Kenya. They had little signs suggesting that people order their espresso drinks with the single origin beans. I decided to have a tasting and compare the espresso made with the two different beans. It took a while to get my order right, two single shots of espresso, not one double, but the differences between the two beans were incredible and easy to notice.
At most Starbucks, instead of their drip coffee sits in the urn for up to 30 minutes, you can order a pour over. They'll use any of the beans in the store for it, opening a package from the shelf if necessary. At no additional cost compared to their drip coffee. It's definitely slower and does have an impact on the customer queue, but its one more way that Starbucks is upping the quality of the coffee that they make available.
Starbucks has been successful at getting coffee in front of almost all Americans and even convinced them to shell out big bucks for a drink with very little coffee in it. Now, with these introductions of better brew methods, distinct flavor profiles and single origin beans, they're working on stepping the American coffee drinker up to a better coffee experience. In the long run, this is great for coffee growers and the coffee industry. Its actually interesting from a business perspective where the big player in the industry is working to make the market better rather than just drive costs out.
Maybe its not a grande plan, but a Venti. What do you think?
The spring menu is coming to Shibumi Izakaya on Capital Hill in Seattle! Last week I was invited to a preview dinner of the forthcoming Japanese small plates and comfort foods. I've never been there before and wasn't sure what the evening had in store, but I was impressed.
The restaurant is beautiful and minimalist with wood accents and Japanese ceramics and clothing on display. The bar is well stocked, with a range of Japanese whiskys, sake and sochu. Always my favorite in any restaurant, the open kitchen borders on one half one the restaurant.
The bartender is super friendly. I'd never had shochu before and after chatting about how it fits into different cocktails, he brought out some samples. Quite a difference between barley and sweet potato distilled liquor. I had his take on Moscow Mule, made with his own ginger beer. He also made a vesper, substituting shochu for vodka, which was a delicious drink, too. I recommend Shibumi on the drinks alone!
Moscow Mule with house made ginger beer
Like many Japanese restaurants, Shibumi serves beautiful sashimi. And while delicious, Shibumi has far more to offer. This eating experience showed that Japanese cuisine was more than just ginger and wasabi.
Sashimi
Once the small plates started coming, it got real. The food ranged from vinegary and sweet shrimp and pickled cucumbers to savory cuttlefish stuffed with sausage. It was an eye opening evening; I don't think of sausage as a typical Japanese dish.
Soft boiled eggs are hard to come by in restaurants and I was pleasantly surprised by the soft egg with roe. The egg was perfectly creamy and the roe popped with the freshness of the sea. It's less salty than caviar and was a beautiful treat. I will replicate this at home for sure.
The chef, Eric Stapelman, came out and visited our table a few times. He shared that shibumi means always striving for perfection and it shows in his food. There was one dish that the restaurant was too dark for me to capture a picture and it was quite possibly the highlight of the evening. A piece of poached salmon was wrapped in tofu skin, packaged up as a little gift drizzled with a savory nage. Each bite was blissful, but in a later discussion with the chef, he said he was considering swapping the salmon with his house made sausage - demonstrating how he's always trying to perfect what he does.
The evening wrapped up with black sesame ice cream, beautifully served with an edible flower. The black sesame impart a vaguely coffee flavor to the ice cream and the whole sesame give it a little crunch.
The new menu launches Wednesday April 15th and will delight your senses. Stretch your eating boundaries, try a new cuisine and enjoy some great cocktails.
Disclaimer: I was not compensated for this post, but I was given an awesome dinner and drinks. As always, the opinions are mine and I'm looking forward to coming back to this restaurant.
Over the year's I've realized the benefit of slowing down and enjoying life's experiences, even if they're the small everyday things. Coffee is one of those things for me. I used to drink 6 -8 shots of espresso a day. Along with some other lifestyle changes I'll drink one coffee a day, but it will be a damn fine coffee.
There is a lot of mediocre coffee available today and people drink it up. But what is great when you can find people that really love coffee and it shows in their product. I've found a small cafe in Burien, Washington that makes excellent coffee and love the fact that at most Starbucks, you can get a pour over.
With a little searching or good friends you can find great roasters. A friend of mine from work brought me coffee from Bend, Oregon from Backporch Coffee Roasters which I've quite enjoyed of the last few weeks.
Sure, I've geeked out a bit with my purchase of a grinder and love my acaia coffee scale, but they all aid the experience in bringing out the best of the coffee.
What a difference a grinder makes! New grinder brought out so many more nuances from my @backporchcoffeeroasters #coffee
— Beau Raines (@beauraines) March 6, 2015
Starbucks has done something wonderful with coffee, too. And I'm not talking about the fact that you can get a consistent cup of coffee just about anywhere in the United States (or right across the street from you where ever yo u may be in Seattle) - Starbucks has opened a roastery just for their own Reserve beans.
They have rare beans and they roast them in the same space that they make your drinks. Its not just machine pulled espresso drinks - they have all types of different pour overs, siphons and cold brew. Now that Starbucks has gotten everybody hooked on coffee, they're going to upgrade everybody to good coffee!
Ironically, the Starbucks Roastery is right down the street from Victrola Coffee Roasters. While they've been on Capital Hill for a long time, I wonder how many people walk right past them, not knowing the wonderful coffee that has been available since the early 2000's.
Yesterday morning, as I was making coffee, my wife asked me why I was using a hand grinder to grind my coffee beans and not using a machine. I recently purchased a burr grinder and its taken my coffee making to a new level. Her question made me think some - sure the hand grinder is one-third to one-fifth the price of an electric machine, it appeals to my price sensitivity, but there is something more to it.
My answer was that I could take the grinder with me when I go camping or traveling, continuing the idea that I could make great coffee anywhere. But more and more as the day went on, I realized that it was about slowing down to enjoy the moment.
Over the last few years, there are a few old skool methods and technologies that have re-surfaced in my life. I've started to make coffee with fewer machines, just different manual brew methods. It takes more time than just pushing a button on a super-auto espresso machine or popping a K-Cup in the machine and I get to enjoy the act of making the coffee. The grinder was just another step in that direction, only adding a minute or two to the process, but allowing me time to think about where the beans came from and how they were ultimately turned into the drink I'm about to enjoy.
The same thing with shaving. Yes, shaving, something I've been doing almost every day since my late teens. I've always hated shaving, but I hate been un-shaven even more. I'd shave while I was taking a shower, taking advantage of the fact that the hot water would have already softened my beard (yeah, it grows that fast). It just became one of those things I'd do.
About a year ago, I got a double edged razor for my birthday - old skool, like your grandpa used. It takes a little longer, but the slowing down gives me the time to listen to the sound of the whiskers being cut, enjoy the smell of the shaving cream or feel the soap lathering on my chin and neck. I look forward to shaving now; it's a calming experience.
This year, for my birthday, I got a few cast iron pans. I find it amazing that cast iron pans cost less, last forever and cook better than the modern, copper, stainless steel and non-stick pans. I don't know why its taken me so long to start using them - I love them. The trade off comes in that they need to be seasoned, heating the pan and oiling it down, and entirely dried to prevent rusting. But with slowing down when taking care of these pans, the food browns better and still doesn't stick to the cookware. Fried eggs have crispy bottoms and beautiful runny yolks.
There is something to be said about returning to the classics, the old skool ways of doing things and stepping away from the push button automation or the arms race of how many blades can be squeezed into a razor. Slow down and enjoy the moment even when you're getting things.
The first month of the new year has wrapped up. Maybe you set the goal to eat healthier in 2015 and after a month, the idea is getting a bit stale or hard to maintain. Maybe you just finished the Whole 30 and are thinking about how to make some of those healthy eating changes stick. Maybe you're trying to figure out how to keep your new morning routine of working out and still get to work on time. I'll show you how easy it is to poach eggs - so easy you can do it at work.
I'm excited to be working with NestFresh, a producer of cage free eggs. On top of having plenty of room for their egg layers, NestFresh uses a network of smaller, family run farms across the US, getting you the freshest eggs. Since eggs are such a great food, I'll be writing a few posts over the next few months about how to cook eggs - there are so many ways to go beyond scrambled and fried!
And if you looked carefully at that picture above, you'll notice it is on a paper plate. I made that egg at the office!
Eggs are a healthy ingredient, loaded with vitamins and nutrients and a great source of protein. If you eat Paleo, they're a low-cost, clean, nutrient dense food, as opposed to other clean, protein sources.
Over the years, I've always viewed poached eggs as special, sort of a rarity. You have to be at a certain class of restaurant to see them on the menu, often as Eggs Benedict. Your local greasy spoon probably doesn't serve them, and if it does, your local diner probably isn't very greasy.
I will often make poached eggs on those special brunch holidays, like Easter or Mother's Day, and it is almost always for Eggs Benedict or replacing the Canadian Bacon with smoked salmon (rapidly becoming my preference). I've got inserts to cook them in a sauce pan, a special pan with poaching cups and have learned the great method to cook them just in a pot of water. Like making eggs any style, it is pretty easy, but it takes either some preparation or attention or some gadget to poach them.
But I've learned to make poached eggs in the microwave.
Ingredients and Equipment
1 or 2 eggs
Small, microwaveable container 2 - 3 cups in size
Water
Steps
Fill the container approximately 2/3 full with body temperature water. I use my finger to assess the temperature and want it feeling neither hot nor cold. Poaching in the microwave is very sensitive to the initial water temperature - beware if one of your office mates was washing their coffee cup right before you fill your container.
I've also found that the shape of the container is important, the transition between the sides should be curved, not a 90 degree angle (like in many take away soup containers).
Crack your eggs into the water and cover with a paper towel. While I've never had a yolk explode on me, I've had pockets in the white pop which makes quite a mess on the inside of the microwave. The curved corned in the container help prevent those pockets. Just cover it - you don't want to be the person who makes a mess in the office microwave.
Put the covered container in the microwave and cook on high. This step will take some experimentation, depending upon the size of your container, the number of eggs and the power of your microwave. In the picture below, I'm cooking two eggs in a 1000 watt microwave - it takes about 3 minutes. When I'm using a 1200 watt microwave and only cooking one egg, it takes about 65 seconds.
As you try this with your microwave, remember, its far easier to add more time and cook it longer, rather than to un-cook the egg. And once the egg nears being done, 5 to 10 seconds can make the difference between runny yolks and solid yolks.
Take the eggs out of the microwave and test for doneness. They white should be firm and the yolk should still be soft to the touch. I've never found that the water is too hot for me to use my finger to make this check. If they're not done, put them in for a little more time.
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Carefully drain the water from the container. You'll want to do this promptly, because the egg continues to cook in the hot water. The egg will barely stick to the container, so I often use a fork as the filter to hold my egg back and let the water flow out. You're so close, you don't want to lose the egg down the drain at this point!
Transfer the egg to your breakfast plate, with some clean sausage or bacon and my favorite, mashed sweet potatoes. Season as you see fit (I've not yet brought a salt and pepper shaker or Sriracha to work yet) and enjoy.
Once you work out the specifics for your microwave and bowl you are using, this is very simple to do. I take my eggs with me to work in the morning and a container of pre-cooked sausage and smashed sweet potatoes and make breakfast at work. Invariably, I'll get comments about what a great breakfast or on the days I bring a few slices of bacon to microwave there, how great it smells. It beats out everybody else's instant oatmeal or cinnamon roll that they are warming up.
There is a slight downside that I must warn you about. Poaching eggs in the microwave, or in a pot for that matter, is really easy and you might just start doing it every day. The cachet of a poached egg might wear off a bit, but you'll be getting a healthy, delicious breakfast.
Note: I was compensated this post, but this is the way I make my breakfast almost everyday. All opinions are my own.
Last month, a few foodies and I were invited to Whole Foods Market Interbay to enjoy oyster and wine pairings. I don't go out of my way for oysters, so it was neat to try different ones and their taste differences.
The Pacific Northwest has many great places for oysters to grow with all the inlets and beaches. They are evidently fairly easy to grow and sustainable. They need little care and help clean the water while they feed on plankton filtered through their gills.
My favorite was the Penn Cove Select, it had a bright taste but not overly like the sea. I was really impressed that each oyster had a different flavor, even though they all come from the same sea. I guess its sort of like appellations for wine.
Shucking oysters is a learned skill and requires a special knife. Professionals use gloves to prevent stabbing themselves. I hear that you can even use a screwdriver to shuck them, but leave the shucking to the pros. You can pick up oysters at the market and bring them to your next social gathering. Oysters definitely add an air of class to a party or Sunday brunch.
If you're in Seattle, Whole Foods Market South Lake Union is having an Oyster Happy Hour with $0.69 oysters on Tuesday, January 21st 2015.
Disclaimer: I wasn't compensated for this post. I was, however, plied with oysters and wine by the Whole Foods Seattle PR team. All the opinions are mine.
Last month, a group of bloggers got together at the Techlicious & TravelingMom Holiday Roadshow to share some technology and traveling tips. We had a wonderful lunch and I walked away with a Kindle Fire HD and an AT&T Unite for GoPhone by NetGear Wi-Fi mobile hotspot. While each of them is pretty cool in their own, they're like the Wonder Twins - combined they're pretty powerful.
The Kindle Fire HD 7" is a pretty nice starter tablet. It's got a beautiful screen and a fast responsive processor. Battery life is pretty nice, lasting a day off use, making it great for trips. Mashable rates the Kindle Fire (albeit a larger size) a good one to get this holiday season. This is my first table and I'm excited to leverage the larger than a phone form factor.
I'm truly interested in using it like a tablet, leveraging the larger screen for taking notes, looking at pictures in beautiful HD, and reading recipes while cooking. It's great for those things that work on your phone, but work better on a larger screen. This post was even drafted on my Kindle.
There are plenty of apps available through Amazon's App Store. Many software makers even keep the Kindle version up to date with their Android versions! Skype works nicely with the front facing camera to keep me connected, though I don't travel as much as I used to. I miss Instagram and the Google apps, though older versions can be sideloaded.
But what the Kindle excels at is connecting you to Amazon library of movies, books, music and their store. With a Amazon Prime Account it's so easy to quickly find and start watching a movie. And they can even be downloaded to watch when you don't have Wi-Fi, like on an airplane (don't be that guy with the $1,171 Wi-Fi bill).
Coupled with a AT&T Unite for GoPhone by NetGear Wi-Fi mobile hotspot, using AT&T's fast 4G LTE (where available) network, you can connect your Wi-Gi only Kindle (or up to 10 other devices) to the internet.
This is great when traveling on a road-trip or, in my case, when the public Wi-Fi at the pool
just doesn't cut it. You can have your own trusted network anywhere you are and not have to worry about anybody snooping your connection or if there will be Wi-Fi where you're going. You don't have to type long emails on your little phone keyboard, you can fire up your laptop and use the full size keyboard from anywhere!
And because its through GoPhone, you don't have to sign up for a new subscription. You buy the device from AT&T or other retailers and then add a pre-paid plan. I've been using the $25 for 1.5GB of data in a month and that's been getting me through the multi-day swim meets that end the short course swimming season.
The new Kindle also comes with a 2 year anything goes warranty, when coupled with a Nerf-like case make this the kind of device you can share with your kids. It's got multiple user accounts so you can share it with your family and everybody keeps their own place in their books. With the Free Time Unlimited, kids are provided kid appropriate books, games and videos and the parent has control of how long they can play games and how much reading must they do before hand.
Note: I was not compensated for this post, but I did receive some cool swag, including the Kindle and the Mobile Hotspot and a really awesome lunch. All the content is my own honest opinion.
Over the years, I've developed a taste for whisky. I've figured out where my tastes lie in Scotch (The McCallan from the Scottish Highlands) but I've also had to more closely manage my budget. There has been a re-birth of whiskey in the United States and I've begun to explore different bourbons. Some of them are quite good and a great price point too.
This fall, I was at a social gathering sponsored by Farmstr, a local Seattle start up connecting farmers and consumers. You can buy a flat of brussels sprouts or an organic, free-range chicken directly from the farmer and pick it up at a convenient Seattle location.
At this gathering of food bloggers, there was a delightful cider punch. It wasn't cloyingly sweet and there was a delicate hint of cloves and you could feel the warmth of the alcohol trailing on your throat. It was a very nice, subtle way to enjoy the flavors of fall and winter.
I asked the chef for the recipe (cider, bourbon and homemade clove bitters) but didn't get the ratios. And on top of that, I'm not quite cool enough to have clove bitters nor have I gotten into making bitters, but my browser search history was full of "how to make bitters" searches.
While it doesn't seem too hard to make bitters, I decided to experiment and see if I could make a similar libation with ingredients around the house.
I started by infusing some apple cider with cloves and reduced it a bit, because I was side tracked by a family card game. Then, I tried adding some bourbon until I found a nice balance of sweetness. While I made it as a drink for one, this could easily be served as a punch as it was at the Farmstr party.
So, I've noticed something else about drinking bourbon. I don't drink very much, maybe one alcoholic drink a week, but everytime I've had a bourbon drink with a particular brand of bourbon, I just cannot sleep. Its almost like when you have a strong coffee too late in the day and it keeps you awake. I've not noticed this with all bourbon brands and never with any other alcohol. Does this happen to anyone else?
Bourbon and Clove Cider Cocktail
Ingredients
Apple Cider, 1 cup (I used filtered because that was all my son could find when he was on the grocery run)
8 whole cloves
Bourbon
Directions
Infuse the cider with the cloves. Break the cloves in half and add to the cider in a pot on medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for approximately 10 minutes or reduced to about 3/4 cup. More reducing will bring out the sweetness of the apples and the cloves.
Filter the infused cider and cool. Or do it in the opposite order. Store it in a closed container in the fridge, maybe a mason jar for some extra hipster points.
When you're ready for a drink, pour 3 shots of clove infused cider and 1 shot of bourbon in an old fashioned glass and enjoy. I didn't add ice because the cider was cool from the fridge and I prefer my dark alcohol drinks neat.
From the Brooklyn based guys that brought you the Mason Shaker, Shake: A New Perspective on Cocktails is a beautifully photographed book of cocktail recipes, celebrating the seasons and seasonal ingredients in artisan cocktails.
I was given this book to review and if I have to test the recipes (read: drink cocktails) to do a little work, I'm game. And these aren't fruity, sweet cocktails either; these are the savory cocktails, focusing on the flavors of seasonal ingredients. With the cover photograph having a sprig of rosemary, I knew this book was for me.
Unlike many other cocktail cookbooks, this book is organized by season. Each recipe uses seasonal ingredients: sage and grapefruit in winter, fresh berries in spring, watermelon and stone fruit in summer and apple cider in fall. Using the freshest ingredients makes for the best flavored cocktails and the recipes were driven by what they could find in their Brooklyn farmer's markets.
Each recipe is beautifully photographed, including the ingredients artfully displayed and the finished drink. After making the Rosemary Maple Bourbon Sour as my tester drink, I passed the book to my wife to choose our next cocktail. She was unable to choose a drink, because "this book is like Instagram for cocktails."
A photo posted by Heather Murphy-Raines/Scouts H (@unitedstatesofmotherhood) on
Something else I loved about this book was that each season included a non-alcoholic drink, still focusing on those seasonal ingredients. I enjoy a cocktail, but more than one or two and I stop enjoying them and just want to sleep.
The book excerpt has a few recipes, so you can check out the drinks and decide if this is the book for your cocktail library. I'm not sure if this book belongs on my cookbook shelf or on display on my coffee table. Its a beautiful book on its own, with wonderful recipes contained inside.
As stated in the review, I received a copy of this book for review from Blogging for Books. Other than the book, I was not compensated. The opinions in this review are my own and I wouldn't have shared it with you if it wasn't a great book.
Lately, I've not been happy with the music on the radio here in Seattle. Sure, one station has started off a 2 Minute Promise (only two minutes of ads at a time), but that just gets them back to the mostly cruddy hipster music sooner. My daughter and I got burned a few nights ago: another station's DJ announced "great music right after we come back [from these ads]." It turns out we almost finished our drive home, more than five minutes, before they played some pop song that neither of us liked.
I'm always flipping through the presets in our cars, hoping that the next station will be playing a great song. And you know that the expression the grass is always greener isn't always true. But every once in a while, I get lucky and find a good song. And I'll turn it up. Loud.
I've realized that music I like falls into some pretty disparate categories. This dawned on me as I was driving back into my neighborhood with Verdi's Rigoletto playing loud enough that the ladies walking on the street could hear it.
The morning before that, as I was driving to CrossFit at 5:40AM in the dark, it was Simon and Garfunkel's Cecilia. It's got such a catchy beat and did a half-way decent job of firing me up. You've got to be awake for 6AM CrossFit.
Bend Ova by Lil Jon has gotten some radio play of late. The thumping bass, the rhythm of the lyrics, the call and response just makes it ripe for being played loud. Just about everything my Lil Jon makes me want to move and I don't have any moves. Warning, though this the non-explicit version, its pushes quite a few boundaries, so its probably still NSFW. Or when the kids are home. See, that's why I play it loud in the car.
And none of these are my favorites or even fall in the same genre as my favorites. You've got to go pretty deep on the independent radio stations around here to hear any Ministry, KMFDM or NOFX.
What song(s) are you going to turn up when they come on the radio that might surprise even yourself?
I've recently come up with a small productivity trick. I guess it can even be called a lifehack. I keep my showers short and sweet in the morning listening to music. Yes, listening to music.
I enjoy music. It really brightens my mood or helps pull me out of a funk. My family can tell when I've had a rough day if they come home and some dark industrial is playing. When I stay up way too late coding, dirty dubstep helps keep me going for the long run. I have a playlist (listen to it on Spotify its loud and probably NSFW) that fires me up on the way to CrossFit. A day doesn't go by without music. With smart phones and streaming audio services it makes it that much easier to get your music where ever you are.
I go to CrossFit first thing in the morning and return home to shower, get breakfast and get ready for my day. It's so easy to step into a hot shower and let the water massage my sore muscles and warm me back up again, as we start to get into cooler weather. I could just stand there (okay, sometimes lean against the wall) and let the hot water course down my back. I could do it until the hot water runs out.
I've started playing music (you might recall this post) while I'm in the shower and found that a shower takes less than 2 songs. So, I use that as my benchmark for shower length. Instead of falling into a blissful state of relaxation in the hot water, it reminds to keep moving.
I've been unable to get any of my kids to take on this practice and I've got kids who can just stand in the shower well after the hot water has run out (or at least that's how long they seem to me). But I think it would be a great tip to keep them on task.
Now, before any of you go out and have your kids start this, I've also figured out how to game my own system. Most of the time, I listen to punk songs, which are on the order of 90 seconds to 2 minutes long. But if I want to take a longer, relaxing shower, most dubstep songs are 4 to 5 minutes long. So, if they start listening to Iron Butterfly's In A Gadda Da Vida (bewtween 8 and 30 minutes, depending upon the version) or Weezer's Only in Dreams (7:59) as their two songs, you'll know they're playing you.
Last weekend was the 2014 International Food Bloggers Conference, where brands and bloggers got together in Seattle to network, learn and enjoy good food. With breakouts on Food, Writing and Technology, there was something for every food blogger. I had an enjoyable time and actually got to meet some bloggers in real life. Ironically, some of those I met live in my same neighborhood.
What was great about this year's conference was that there were many brands represented in the healthy space, and for me, that means acceptably paleo. Dinner last night was brought to us by the swag from these brands.
The local sausage company, Isernio's, which makes clean chicken and pork (didn't know this before the conference) sausage.
Nutiva, which makes coconut products, like coconut oil and flour
I had a hole in my tummy that was looking to be filled with waffles, so that's what I decided to make. After going through my paleo waffle recipes (thank you PaleOMG), I found that they all required coconut milk, of which we had none.
It was almost 8pm and we were getting hungry. I knew that its only an 8 minute trip, one way, to the grocery store. So, yes, I did make a grocery store run for coconut milk and a few add-ons as I dashed out the door.
Paleo chicken and waffles.
I made PaleOMG's Savory Waffles and topped them with browned Isernio's Chicken Breakfast sausage and some of Heather's spicy (homegrown) ketchup. While the savory herbs in the waffles complimented the sausage, the waffles were dry. Her recipe actually tops them with a gravy and they needed the moisture from a gravy, for sure.
What was neat about IFBC was that these were all products I already enjoyed in my clean eating and I got to meet brand representatives and see some new products (more on that later).
Disclaimer: The chicken and eggs used in this post were some swag from the conference. I ate this stuff already, so I already thought it was great before I got some free coupons! While I wasn't compensated for this post, I did receive a blogger's discount for attending the conference and this post is meeting a part of what I had to do in return for the discount.
I've always enjoyed Poached Eggs. They've always had a special cachet to them - most restaurants don't have them on the menu, unless you get Eggs Benedict, another favorite of mine. And it takes a certain caliber of restaurant to have Eggs Benedict. I used to only make poached eggs when I was making a special brunch, New Years, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day or having friends over for brunch. I have several gadgets and even a special pan with inserts to make poached eggs, which I would leverage quite frequently.
My go to breakfast: poached eggs, mashed sweet potato and bacon. Photo by Heather.
But after some research, I learned how easy it is to make Poached Eggs in just a pot of water. And now, sadly, Poached Eggs have lost a bit of their cachet, because I eat them just about everyday (which makes me happy - a net increase in happiness). Heather had posted several photos of the breakfasts I make for her with poached eggs, and one of her friends asked how to make poached eggs. I decided to make a video of the method.
Without further ado, here is my first ever cooking video! Enjoy.
If you give it a try, let me know how it works out for you in the comments, either here or on YouTube. As a teaser for a future post, you can also make poached eggs in the microwave! Think how awesome your breakfast in the office could be!
The rest of this post is about making the video, so if you just wanted to learn about poaching eggs, that's all I've got for you today. If you want to see what I learned about making a YouTube video, read on.
It's not the greatest video around, but it was my first go. In making this video, I learned how easy it is to make videos for YouTube. The YouTube editor is pretty nice for working with multiple clips and provides some reasonable editing capabilities. I shot all this video with my phone, and in fact, the last half was inverted because I held my phone with my left hand, upside down so I could reach the buttons. Little did I know that the display would be right side up, but the video wouldn't be. However, YouTube came to my rescue and I was able to invert part of the clip!
Almost a year ago, I attended the International Food Blogger's Conference and a blogging chef recommended I try out food videos. IFBC 2014 is less than two weeks away, and I've finally done it. Here are a few things I learned while making this video - its probably the quality of what would be turned in for a high school project, but the lessons are still a good foundation.
Shoot in multiple clips. The editor can help you put them in sequence, even if you need to re-shoot a portion, and trim the starting and ending points. You'll notice that the video hadn't started when I was talking about bringing the water to a full boil.
I recorded my audio at the same time as my video. I didn't script it or prepare too much for it. You'll notice I was repetitive at times and stumbled over the words and simultaneous actions. With the editor I can turn off the volume on the video clip and lay an audio track down. That audio track could even be a new video, but it will only play the audio portion. This way you can go sequence everything and even talk through the transitions. I'd plan on redoing this video with a better audio track, with some introduction speech and some voice over the "what you need" picture.
Its easier if you have a helper to actually hold the camera. When it comes to food preparation, there is only so much you can do with one hand. Talk through the shot with them before hand. I didn't tell my son that I'd want to show the eggs right after plopping them in the water, hence the finger pointing.
I thought that this was a fun medium to work with and I plan on making more of these in the future. if there are any things you'd like me show you how to make, just leave a comment!
it's so easy to quickly find and start watching a movie. And they can even be downloaded to watch when you don't have Wi-Fi, like on an airplane (don't be that 
