Amuse-Bouche

We set out today after a solid morning workout (and a light breakfast) for a five-hour adventure around the city. First stop, Built to Grill to share an order of fried calamari, our current new food interest. The calamari was crispy and delicious, drizzled with lemon and served with marinara sauce.
Then, we set out for lunch. I was in the mood for SPICY so I decided on chicken fajitas served with corn tortillas and habanero salsa. Peter went with a Bohemian goulash that he enjoyed quite a bit.

We wandered over to Deschuttes Brewery next for a couple of nitro stouts. So good! Their coffee nitro stout could very well be the finest beer I've ever had in my life, but this was mighty tasty too.

Next, we ambled over to Pazzoria to hopefully find some cinnamon-y chocolate chip cookies, but sadly they were out. So, we walked over to the Heathman to see if we could participate in high tea. Unfortunately, high tea requires reservations and had started an hour earlier. We'll definitely have to do that sometime though. So, we settled on chocolate chip cookies (which were quite cinnamon-y) at the Nordstrom cafe, sitting out at the bistro tables across from Pioneer Courthouse square and sipping coffee.

While we sipped and nibbled, sitting there for quite some time, we talked about how neither one of us are multi-taskers. We both like to do one thing at a time. I guess we enjoy listening to music while we do cardio, but in general, we try to focus on one task at a time. We wondered if this is partly because we don't have children. Maybe it's a luxury to be able to focus solely on one thing, cooking or reading or cycling or writing. If it is, it's something I enjoy about my life.

We also got talking about our new Molecular Gastronomy kit we'd received in the mail a couple of days ago. We decided we wanted to play tonight with our new toys. So, we walked back over to the Pearl, to Sur La Table, and bought some not-to-expensive little serving dishes for amuse-bouches. Then we went to Whole Foods and bought some ingredients for our ideas.

After walking home, we set to work: We juiced, we measured, we blatzed in the cuisinart. When we were done we had 5 little dishes.

Little caprese salads made from Greek yogurt, tomato and powdered olive oil.

Shrimp with a lime, olive oil, jalapeno and cilantro sauce.

Fennel, salami and feta amuse-bouche drizzled with olive oil.
And these little kiwi things that were supposed to have little beads of rhubarb juice and mango juice sprinkled on top. The beads just melted so we obviously need to get better at that, but it was still mighty tasty.
A last minute addition to our feast was frozen coconut lychee jelly (like you get at the Asian grocery store) shaved over chocolate chips.

This was one of our most typical weekend days. Exercising a ton so we can eat like kings, wandering all over the city, thinking about life and food and somehow always finding something interesting to talk about even though we've been together for nearly 14 years. You know, when we got home, we were drenched with rain, but as I was writing this I had hardly remembered that. Good food, good fun, a good friend and a little adventure could never be dampened by a few raindrops.