A roundup of fall culinary adventures

Even though been a while since we’ve posted, it’s not that we haven’t had anything interesting to share. Definitely the opposite — the fall has been packed with our usual mix of eating, drinking and sporting events.

Rather than highlight any one event, I thought I’d just do a roundup and give some link love to some of those who are actually motivated enough to blog responsibly. I realize this also makes it seem like we eat all the time, but I figure people would rather read about food than the grueling Crossfit workouts, hours sweating in a hot yoga studio, or late nights at the UW athletic communications office or on the road in exciting places like Kalamazoo, Michigan.

• The Rachel Dinner, aka Foods That Scare Us, in honor of Rachel’s food phobias, including tongue, blue cheese, tendon and chicken liver. May I just say that the pigs’ ears were absolutely delectable?
• There was Chinese-Jewish (aka “Chewish”) night, that came about from some matzah-ball soup-related Twitter trash talking and evolved into a massive potluck that included standards like the classic aforementioned soup, knishes and brisket (my contribution, from Joan Nathan’s recipe), as well as more creative efforts like Naomi‘s guanciale-spiked kugel (kugel is SO much better with pork!) and Lorna’s red-cooked pork belly which is the perfect combination of melty crispiness.

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  Protest Nachos

  Thanksgiving, which I desperately wanted to be Mexican-themed but we’re not all yet quite enlightened enough. One day. It still featured “Protest Nachos” as an appetizer and five kinds of pies.In the head-to-head of Columbia City‘s pumpkin vs. my Aunt Maureen’s, the homemade version was a clear winner.

• Cookies and Dumplings, originally two events but combined into one glorious afternoon. Picture, if you can, a piano top with every inch covered by plates of cookies, from chocolate to maple to meringue to chocolate chip and chocolate chip and chocolate chip. And lest you get distracted by the sugar, noticed that dumplings of all kinds are being cranked out in the kitchen, some Chinese-inspired, some that go hand in hand with long-stewed chicken in a restorative broth. The bag of cookies I took home from this lasted a solid week.
• Latkes, which happened because every Hannukah that I’m in Seattle I make my father make latkes. No one makes them lighter or more spidery. Trust me, spidery is a very good quality in a latke. (Sorry, didn’t get any photos of them. Next year, maybe.)
• I went to The New Guard‘s holiday party, which brought together art, music and food by Poppy pastry chef Dana Cree, who re-envisioned an old-fashioned holiday meal of ham, green bean salad, homemade onion dip (addictive) and many, many kinds of pie.
  

  Breakfast tacos, I love you

• And finally (though I’m probably forgetting some things) we went to Austin, Texas, and dined on breakfast tacos every morning while managing to squeeze in swimming, biking, exploring and BBQ, of course. But really, the breakfast tacos were the best. I’ve never had flour tortillas as soft and buttery as the ones we had in Austin. Filling them with fluffy scrambled eggs, bacon, avocado and hot sauce was practically overkill. They were so good that we had to smuggle 20 extra home in our suitcases.

It’s been an incredible year being in Seattle. We can’t wait to see what we’ll do (and eat) in 2010.