This is a family recipe, but I’m really not sure where it’s from. I’d sort of assume The South, but who knows? From a random sampling of my friends, though, I’ve determined that it’s not exactly a common dish… or one that they think sounds even remotely tasty… but once I’ve cooked it for them, they agree: it’s absolutely delicious. And it can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, or your midnight snack. It’s the every-hour meal!

Fried Egg Sandwich

Two slices sourdough bread
1 Tbs Mayonnaise
2-3 garlic pickle slices
2 eggs
1 Tbs butter

1) It’s pretty simple, really. Fry the eggs in the butter over medium heat. Break the yolks, or you’ll have one messy sandwich! Make sure it’s firm, but not brown at all. Flip it if you need to; grind some pepper in if you feel like it.
2) Toast the sourdough; spread mayo on one piece.
3) Place the pickles and eggs on the bread. Make a sandwich. Eat it.

I’ve probably eaten about a hundred of these in my life, and I never regret it. It’s tangy, savory, wheaty, salty… entirely satisfying.

Just sayin’.

It’s all part of PETA’s re-branding campaign for fish, which I think is ridiculous… and adorable. Of course, my Shelly’s a monocerotic rhinestone-studded tiara-wearing badass and can pretty much take care of herself by skewering anyone who comes near her. So she probably doesn’t need PETA’s help.

This is such an angry song! Why do I love it so much??…

“I hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to save us
I hope we come out with a failsafe plot to piss off the dumb few that forgave us
I hope the fences we mended fall down beneath their own weight
And I hope we hang on past the last exit
I hope it’s already too late

And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here someday burns down
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
And I never come back to this town again
In my life
I hope I lie
And tell everyone you were a good wife
And I hope you die
I hope we both die

I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow
I hope it bleeds all day long
Our friends say it’s darkest before the sun rises
We’re pretty sure they’re all wrong
I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn’t over
And I hope you blink before I do
And I hope I never get sober

And I hope when you think of me years down the line, you can’t find one good thing to say
And I hope if I found the strength to walk out, you’d stay the hell out of my way
I am drowning
There is no sign of land
You are coming down with me
Hand and in unlovable hand
And I hope you die
I hope we both die.”

After posting the invitation to the open picnic both on my blog and on Craigslist, I got so few replies that I was ready to throw in the towel on Friday morning, but at the last minute, several of my friends opted in (and recruited others), so that by the time Saturday afternoon rolled around, I had seven people attending. The lovely M—- helped me transport my goods to sunny Ravenna Park, where after a brief search, we found an open picnic table at which to set up. I decided I couldn’t really do fancy food on paper plates, so I purchased some relatively cheap alternatives: Bambu plates, which look outdoorsy without being really expensive, and then reusable (but cheap) Tag glasses, bowls, cloth napkins, and place mats. Everything was green and purple.

When I started planning, I had a few things in mind for the menu. First, my dishes had to be things that I wouldn’t be afraid to cook — that is, nothing that I’d be likely to ruin, like a custard. Second, they had to be things that I wouldn’t have to cook there, since cooking facilities would be nonexistent unless I was prepared to pay a $140 shelter fee (and even then, it’d just be a grill). And third, I wanted to play with summer Seattle flavors. I made a list of ingredients that I think are especially summery: heirloom tomatoes, fresh spearmint, avocados, blueberries, cilantro, cucumbers, goat cheese. Then I simply started searching/brainstorming interesting recipes. Here’s what I came up with:

The week of the picnic, I put in a large order to Spud, and they provided pretty much all of the fresh vegetables. They delivered a ton of Purple Cherokee heirloom tomatoes, which are very mild and sweet, and went perfectly in the Bruschetta and Caprese. I served the Crostini and Caprese family-style and just let people dig in before I started piling courses on them. I liked that skewering the Caprese made it easy to transport and serve, but I’m not sure it was the optimal way to serve Caprese otherwise.

The Gazpacho was an easy call, since I could make it the night before and simply chill it until I served it. The Gazpacho recipe I chose was from the Herbfarm Cookbook, and it was amazing — I highly recommend it. Very zesty, very flavorful; the fresh herbs all managed to shine without overwhelming each other, and the green color was bright and cheerful.

The Mushroom/Asparagus Risotto was also based on a recipe from that book, but I was not as impressed with it. I like the idea of a mushroom risotto, but the asparagus wasn’t that exciting, and the trio of mushroom/asparagus/lemon thyme flavoring just didn’t work for me.

The Seared Ahi was based on a recipe from the same cookbook, but I changed the salad up so that it had a few tablespoons of lime juice, a little olive oil, a little salt, four avocados, two cucumbers, and a handful of chopped cilantro. Coriander and cilantro, as they are sold here, are two parts of the same plant, so that shared flavor tied the Ahi and the salad together.

Finally, the Goat Cheesecake was based on Abbey’s infamous cheesecake, which was featured by the Daring Kitchen, and therefore, by food blogs everywhere. It really is a great recipe; I used goat cheese for half of the cheese, and instead of using graham cracker crumbs for the crust, I crushed up some lavender shortbread that I’d made about a week before, so that there was a subtle lavender flavor in it.

Now, to answer the question which I got seven times that day: What is a coulis? A coulis, as I understand it, is some type of sauce which is made by forcing fruit or vegetables through a sieve, so that any particular materials (seeds, skins, etc) are either crushed up unrecognizably or strained out of the final product. At any rate, that’s how I made mine. I gather some people puree and then strain these sauces, but I didn’t really want lots of dribbly seed bits getting into mine, so I didn’t puree the blueberries. It’s very simple, and you wind up with a sauce that is 100% fruit, has a light syrupy consistency, but it hasn’t been cooked and has no added sugar. The blueberry went great with the lavender and cheese flavors, so I’ll definitely be making that again.

A final note I’d like to make isn’t about anything I cooked. As you may or may not know, public parks in Seattle do not allow alcohol unless you restrict the consumption to a covered shelter and pay some kind of huge - like $300 - fee for it. Now, I’ve seen people openly drinking, a lot, at parks all over the place, and I’ve never seen this enforced, but I didn’t particularly want to tempt fate, especially since this would be going on my blog. So while I’d normally serve wine with a dinner like this, I couldn’t. What I wound up bringing instead were: plenty of still water, Pellegrino, and a couple bottles of Golden Star Tea. At $12 a bottle, it was not exactly the cheapest drink choice on the block, but it was a big hit! It complemented the food well, was refreshing in the hot sun, and delicious. So if you’re looking for a no-alcohol alternative to wine, check this stuff out. We gave it two yums up.

For those of your who are familiar with Seattle, last Friday night (July the 3rd) saw the Red, White, and Undead Zombie party in Fremont. They broke the world record for most zombies in one place (3,848), had several zombie walks during which they humorously terrorized local citizens and businesses, and performed an enormous performance of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” dance. I went, not for the brains, but for the photos and fun.

I loved the folks who dressed up not just as “zombie,” but as, “_____ zombie” — Lady Liberty zombie, priest zombie, Marilyn Monroe zombie, etc. — not to mention the adorable zombie flower girls and puppies. I took about 500 pictures, of which these ones are pretty much my favorites:

Seriously. Flower girl zombie. SO CUTE.

Mmmmmmmmm, cheese. I’ve always liked nibbling on various sorts of cheese, but it’s only recently, as I’ve become significantly more gastronomically adventurous (I blame Anthony Bourdain), that I’ve become really interested in trying and enjoying cheeses that I previously would’ve found too stinky or scary-looking. Oh, I’m not abandoning my old favorites: fresh mozzarella, a simple swiss, and a soft chevre all have permanent places in my heart. But I’ve found some others that are pretty excellent contenders. Here are some recent, favorite discoveries:

Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam - probably the best Triple Cream I’ve had. I couldn’t get over this stuff. It weighs in at a somewhat balk-worthy $18 for a small round, but a little goes a long ways, and every bit is worth it. It’s buttery, nutty, and subtle, and has a flavor that somehow blossoms as you let it melt in your mouth. It’s also got an extremely creamy, soft texture (even moreso than your average brie). Slice up a good baguette with it, open a rosé,* and you’ve got yourself a delicious meal. If you like creamy, brie-style cheeses, you’re going to love this.

Cypress Grove Midnight Moon - This is an aged, firm goat’s milk cheese with a lot of zingy, goaty flavor. It’s better with fruit or preserves than with bread or crackers, because the sharpness of the flavor and drier texture plays well against sweet, juicy things; I could see it going well in certain types of pasta sauces or in salads, though.

Beecher’s Blank Slate (Honey) - From Beecher’s (Seattle shout-out!) comes this very soft, very mild honey-flavored cheese. It’s really spreadable, and goes beautifully with sourdough, though I’ve also used it in salad (see recipe below). It’s remarkably friendly, and will go with practically any fruit or soft bread… and I’d like to try making a cheesecake of it one day.

Blank Slate Salad
This is a sweet, summery salad, which makes a nice end to a meal.
Makes: 4 side salads | Prep time: 30 mins.

1 6 oz. tub Beecher’s Blank Slate (Honey) cheese
2 medium red onions
2 soft, semi-firm peaches
1 head green-leaf lettuce
1 1/2 Tbsp champagne vinegar
3 Tbsp walnut oil
2 Tbsp almond slivers
1 Tbsp olive oil
dash of salt
salt and pepper to taste

1) Heat olive oil in a large frying pan on medium-high heat. Slice onions into semi-thick rings, and throw them into the pan. Throw a dash of salt on top of them. Break up the rings and let them start to fry; keep moving them, but give them plenty of time to cook down. The goal is to cook them until they’re cooked through and don’t have too much spicy-onion flavor, but not to the point where they’re limp and browned all over.
2) In a separate, small pan, heat about 1/2 Tbsp of the walnut oil on medium-high heat and roast the almond slivers in it. These will brown fast, and you want them to get golden-colored on the outside, but not to smoke or have any burnt flavor, so make sure to have a small bowl ready so that you can get them out of the frying pan as soon as they have reached the right color.
3) Wash and tear lettuce; wash and slice peaches.
4) Mix together the remaining walnut oil and the champagne vinegar as a dressing.
5) When the onions are done cooking (it takes 20-30 mins), assemble salads: a bed of lettuce, then the sliced peaches, then the onions, and the almonds. Crumble the cheese on top of each, dress them, and salt and pepper them to taste.

* This post wasn’t supposed to be about wine, but I can’t let this go without mentioning that I’ve recently fallen hard for rosés of pinot noir. Pinot’s such a meaty grape, but dry enough that when you make a pinot from it, you get a light, friendly, but entirely tasty (and not too sweet) lunchtime-y wine. In this field, C.R. Sandidge makes a reliably good Great Gams, although earlier years have been better. This weekend, I also tasted a lovely pinot rosé from Elk Cove, which makes such an amazingly fine reserve pinot (warning: that one’s not a $20 bottle) that you know they have a good feel for the grape overall.

I don’t understand why pundits criticize “salad bar” conservatism or “salad bar” liberalism. Why should we be carbon copies of one another? It widens the divide more to say, “You have to do this because you are one of Us, and this is what We do,” than it does to ignore the views of the opposition because that is Them and that is just what Someone Like That would do. In either case, though, you wind up pigeonholing someone — but in only one case does that stereotype self-fulfill and limit the actions of what you and your own party can accomplish.

Any teenager who’s been warned off drugs and sex knows the overplayed theme of peer pressure; it’s only natural to trust someone that you identify with more than someone you don’t. Unfortunately, it’s a heuristically obtained ad hominem fallacy: someone can agree with you in nearly every respect but one, and on that they can be right, and you can be wrong. I fear that the prevalence of Jungian archetypes in our collective consciousness has undermined our ability to view people as individuals rather than as just another copy of Personality A, or B, and so on. Speaking only of our two largest political parties, I suspect that if you could boil away the unconsidered dogma and spectrally analyze what’s left, you’d find a wider range of difference within each individual party than you would between them.

One hears this sort of rhetoric in a religious context as well, although my argument with that is different than it is with politics — one of my main concerns there is that this sort of dogmatism discourages religion as a living tradition at all, or as any kind of journey for human souls beyond the individual one which has been set as a precise path, like the labyrinth. I like labyrinths, by the way. It’s very peaceful to walk them. There’s a lot to be gained, and there are times when you need to find that kind of calm. But if you have questions and are not satisfied by the answers, then I am not really sure that you should be calm. Without some sort of spiritual unrest, you will not be driven to learn, explore, change, or grow. Perhaps more importantly, though, if you do not question what you are told, you will likely end up doing something that is simply wrong, but you won’t take proper responsibility for your own actions, because you have taken someone else’s word for it (cf. the Milgram experiment).

Still, inasmuch as any religion has an internal consistency as a system of beliefs, you may or may not be able to pick and choose without contradicting yourself; you can’t believe that Jesus was God but simultaneously disbelieve it because another religion has said that. But you can pick and choose certain practices, devotions, writings, and lines of argument that make the most sense to you, and they can compliment each other, even if they’re in the tradition of a religion that you do not wholly embrace.

In both the political and the religious spheres, there is more sawdust blown around than meat served. Instead of discussion, we have reaction, and then reaction to the reaction, until it all becomes either a ridiculous shouting match or a refusal to even pretend to listen (cf. Judge Sotomayor not even being granted an audience with Senator Inhofe). I find myself hungry, and wish that someone would step up to the plate and indulge our country now and then in a little intelligent discourse. A little goes a long way.