Pull Y'all Up State Fair

Last Sunday was destined to be a busy day, I planned it that way so I could get the maximum amount of fun for my time and dollar.  Let me give you a play by play of how I think it went down.

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8am - Wake up, hit snooze
8:05 - Snooze 
8:10 - Snooze
8:15 - "5 more minutes"- Jill
8:20 - F**k it...

8:40 - We get up and ready ourselves to ride to the Puyallup state fair.  The mission is simple, see the show chickens, eat ridiculous fried food and get the hell out of there.

Hairless cat being humiliated, as if being hairless wasn't bad enough

 10:10 - We arrive at the fair and make our way towards the chickens....stop to see the 4H cat show.  This by the way is not the most ridiculous thing.  Last year we witnessed a Llama agility course.  If you know anything about Llamas, which I'm sure you don't, you already figured out they aren't extremely agile.  Sure they have no problem prancing around the Andes, but jumping through a hoop doesn't strike me as something that relates to a Llamas normal life.  In the 15 painful minutes we waited around to see one Llama do one act of agility, we were rewarded with nothing but the laughter that comes along with watching a teenage girl try to pull a stubborn cross between a donkey and camel through some pylons.

Glorious chicken

10:30 - Chickens glorious chickens.  Chickens as far as the nearsighted eye can see.  A whole barn full of small chickens, big chickens, red chickens, blue chickens, featherless chickens, silky chickens, young chickens, old chickens and some silly ducks.  The roosters are amazing.  I am not sure how big they can get until I come upon a Jersey Giant. This guy isn't even fully grown and he is as big as any rooster in the joint.  I'd turn and run from one of these guys if it came down to it, I'm just glad the big boy is in a cage.
11:15 - In search of the holy grail of fried foods.  Legend was told by the Guamanian Crown Prince of a fried fowl sandwich with buns of fried dough and jelly inserted.  Glorious tales of heart stopping and mouth watering ridiculousness.

Yes, that does say deep fried butter.

11:30 - Arrive at the Totally Fried booth.  Look over options.
11:31 - Thoughts of doubt, shame and fear for health creep in.
11:32 - F**k it...
11:35 - We order fried frog legs, a krispy creme chicken sandwich and fried kool-aid.  What have we done?
11:37 - Frog legs come, two of them....really?  Two dinky legs?  Oh right, this is a novelty...probably should've asked before ordering.
11:40 - Krispy creme sandwich.  What a letdown.  I blame YOU Jude Cruz!  A partially frozen jelly doughnut and a costco brand condensed poultry disc is what I get?  Of course I wolf it down and forget to let Jill try some.  She walks away feeling betrayed.  I try to tell her it wasn't good as I lick the jelly off my fingers.
11:42 - Fried Kool-Aid.  This is actually the least disappointing item.  It's pretty much fried dough with extra sugar and kool-aid powder mixed in.  I've done worse.

Deep Fried Kool-Aid. Le sigh.

11:45 - Time to get out of Dodge.  Having wandered aimlessly through the fair last year for hours, I can tell you without a doubt we got our money's worth with our short and goal oriented visit.
1:00 - Arrive in West Seattle in time to watch opening week football with Whitney.  Decide in the first five minutes to never return to this bar.  Proceed to drink beer, watch football, and talk to Mike from San Diego.  Mike is a nice family man, a TSA employee, but not one of the pat-down idiots at the airport.  He is some sort of ferry explosion prevention dude.  Hats off.  We talk football and general topics for three hours.  I go to the bathroom at the conclusion of the games and upon my return find that Mike has left without saying goodbye to Whitney or myself...WTF Mike!?  I thought we had something special.
4:30? - We arrive at friend Robot Eric's birthday party.  I drink beers and eat the last few spoonfuls of macaroni salad directly from the bowl.  I play hot wheels with Robot Eric's son Robot Ian, who thinks my name is Jillandchristophe.

Me:  What's that ladies name?
points to Jill
Ian:  Jill.
Me: What's my name?
Ian: Jillandchristophe.

For those that don't know, I used to think DC Mayor Marion Barry was two people, so I can't be too hard on the kid.  Specifically I had it in my mind that it was a woman and man team comprised of Mary and Barry.

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I think I will leave it at that, not much else happened other than my discovery of a delicious Italian Plum tree in the Robot family's backyard.  I now have plans to return to this tree, collect a bounty and make something delicious.  At the time I was thinking simple preserves.  I was told the neighbors make chutney using the plums.  Now I'm thinking I have to step it up a little.  A plum BBQ sauce perhaps?  On friday I hope to return home with many plums and I will post a poll to decide what I should make with them.  In the meantime, enjoy more pictures.

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There were a lot of tired chickens

This little chick is just sleeping.  They kind of the pass out wherever they happen to be.

The End

Buskets of Oysters

I had the pleasure of my second and first visit to The Walrus and the Carpenter last night with Jill.  I say second and first because the first visit was cloudy due to some medications I was taking after slicing off the tip of my finger.  Our waitress on the other hand had a much better recollection of our first visit than I had.  I always find it charming when waitstaff remembers you even after one visit many moons ago.  It made me feel like one of those background characters on Cheers that actually gets called by his name even if it's only for one episode.

The Walrus is a small oyster bar located in the back of the recently renovated Kolstrand building(keep old Ballard alive!).  The building is also home to Ethan Stowell's Staple and Fancy and the Dutch Bike Company, selling bikes I can't imagine are the most practical for the hills of Seattle.

Back to the oysters.  All but one variety offered at this time are local, and the ones we tried were fresh and delicious.  We had a mix of Eld Inlet, Pickering Passage and some Sweetwaters from Lopez Island.  In case you were wondering or were interested, there are only 5 oyster species, yet the waters they grown in have a very profound influence on their flavor(culinary school nerds inside joke).

More impressive than the oysters is the man that shucks them.  Since being in the NY Times, his beard has grown, where it ends, no one knows.  There was no shell or other grit left in the oyster.  He seperates the oyster from the bottom side of the adductor muscle without moving/mangling the meat and all of the sweet/salty oyster liquor is retained.  So good is he that I might be in danger of losing Jill to him...seriously, she might be more impressed than I am.

After our oysters, Jill and I split some of their small plates.  I should mention that they the plates themselves are small, the food that comes on them is deceivingly big in quantity and flavor.  We started with a marinated swiss chard salad, which I think was the best swiss chard I've ever had.  We followed with chicken liver mouse and steak tartare.  The mousse came with curried apricots, mint, pistachios and mustard.  This was a well made mouse with no grittiness or acrid flavors.  The heat from the mustard and the sweetness of the apricots really made this dish well balanced and fun.  The tartare was also excellent but I wish we had been offered fresh cracked black pepper.  Maybe it's old school but I think it should be a law as I'm sure it is in France.  Finally, feeling gluttonous I ordered brandade for dessert.  I know what you're thinking, how can a dish involving salt cod be dessert?  Guess what?!  I got a fever, and the only prescription is more salt!

The Walrus doesn't take reservations so be prepared for a popular new restaurant wait. The nice thing is they will call you when a a table becomes available so heading up the street and grabbing a drink at any of the numerous bars on Ballard Ave makes the wait very tolerable.


Apologies for the lack of pictures.  It was dark and the camera on my phone takes bad low light pictures.  As penance here are a couple of pictures of Bacon, the chicken that stopped laying.  She's in solitary confinement for aggressive clucking, withholding protein pods and several counts of general chick-anery...I made a funny! 

Double bellied asian pastrami pig...wha?

I will not apologize for the lack of posts these last couple of weeks.  I also will not apologize to those who find the pig to be an unnaturally dirty animal.  Pigs don't go out of their way to smell, they will do what's necessary to survive and humans found out that letting them sit in their own feces on concrete floors does not harm them as it might some animals.

Last summer I had the pleasure of visiting local, sustainable farms throughout the Skagit Valley and several of these farmers raised pigs.  The pigs were allowed to eat grass and walk around large enclosures.  They were also given feed and shelter. While the pig prefers to hang around their own and close to shelter, it does not purposely roll around in it's own feces as some imagine. They roll around in dirt and mud to cool themselves.  They don't smell great, but what farm animals do?  Ever smell a male goat in rut?  Ever clean out a chicken coop?  Perhaps been on the wrong end of a cow?

Now I will apologize.  This post isn't supposed to be a rant about the pig.  It's actually meant to be about the Pig Roast that me and my unsavory group of friends just put on.

This 6th annual event featured a pig with some interesting changes I hadn't played with before.  The first few times we followed the Cuban method to a T including the marinade which features a lot of garlic and sour orange juice called Mojo.  Last year I did 3 pigs for various events and for all three did more classic american bbq flavors.  This year with the help of Sous Chef Jude Cruz, we went for Asian flavors.

In past years I've received the pig the night before in order to splay it open and marinade it.  This year I decided to give myself an extra day to let the pig sit in a cure consisting mainly of cilantro, salt and water.  The cure was rinsed off the next day but I found it did a good job of getting some salt deeper into the meat.

Another big change was the addition of a second pork belly.  The belly itself was butterflied so that it would stretch over the already butterflied big.  This gave us a huge pocket to stuff the pig with all manner aromatic and flavorful veggies including lemon grass, garlic, ginger, daikon and galangal.

Last but not least, the curve ball.  Being the great communicator that I am, I did not tell Justin(Pig Roast Host Extraordinaire) about the plans for the pig.  In uncanny Justin fashion, the man managed to get a free pastrami from the folks at Roxy's Diner.  I was promptly contacted and told to add the pastrami in the pig.  Conflicted about adding a Jewish cold cut to my Asian pig, I pushed back.  Surely this marriage had never occured before and would not work.  After some fighting that mimcicked Restaurateur v. Chef, the man with the pocketbook won.  If I were any chef worth his salt, I would've flipped the pig off the table onto the ground and stormed off in a rage of expletives, french ones at that.  It's best this didn't happen, as it turned out the pastrami was the best part according to a lot of people.  C'est la vie et merde.

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Below are some pictures.  If you feel uneasy about whole dead animals, get over it and enjoy.

 Covered inside and out with cure

 Rinsing cure off

 Butterflied

 My oh my, it's pastrami

 Massive goodies

 Belly up, double down

The finished product

Scratch is crack for chickens

In case you have no interest in reading my blog posts or reading anything in general, I will also post distractions such as this video of my chickens eating scratch.  Family fun for the bird-brain in all of us.  Enjoy my mini dinosaurs!