What’s On My Phone Wednesdays: Lamb, Beets, Full Tilt Ice Cream, and Lots of Chocolate

While celebrating my friend Mike’s birthday at Vessel, I ordered the Lamb French Dip sandwich. Tender, braised lamb is cut paper thin and topped with pickled shallots. And the au jus! I could drink that alone. My friend Katy enviously eyed my meal but is allergic to wheat. The good folks at Vessel kindly created a deconstructed sandwich for Katy with no bread, apple butter and horseradish condiments on the side, and a bigger side salad. It was an elegant solution and much appreciated.

During a visit to Kingston, Washington, I had dinner at the Main Street Alehouse, which was offering the “Heart Beet Salad” that night. I love hearts of palm and beets so I ordered the salad despite its ridiculous name (or perhaps because of it?)

Unfortunately, a blanket of bland shredded mozzarella obliterated all of the salad’s ingredients, including a nicely balanced honey mustard dressing.

If you see me doing a happy dance in the aisle of my local Red Apple grocery store, it’s because I just discovered that it now carries Full Tilt Ice Cream. I used to live within walking distance of the original Full Tilt, and I have missed its friendly vibe and ice cream flavors inspired by the incredibly diverse community in the White Center neighborhood. While I haven’t had much ice cream lately since I’ve been on a raw, vegan and gluten-free cleanse, it’s nice to know that once again, Full Tilt is nearby.

Another favorite sweet snack of mine—Pocky—can now be bought in bulk at Costco. Pocky is a thin biscuit stick dipped in chocolate. Beyond owners of Asian grocery stores, who is buying (and consuming) this much Pocky?!

 

Join the jubilee in White Center this weekend

About a year ago my son had his very first corn dog at the White Center Jubilee Days. My husband and I didn’t know how it was going to go, and we watched anxiously as our toddler considered this new way to eat food–on a stick. Then he took a big bite and proceeded to eat the entire thing.

Jubilee Days is a great opportunity to experience new things and a neighborhood many Seattlelites may not even know exists–White Center. It’s a gritty area with a tough past and present but also tenacious residents who are working to make White Center a place they can be proud to call home.

The festival will be in full force this weekend, with events including a pancake breakfast, car show and shine, street fair, carnival and parade.

After you check out these activities, you can sample the wares of the Jubilee Days food vendors or head to one of these fine White Center food establishments:
Proletariat Pizza, Full Tilt Ice Cream, Taqueria La Fondita #2 taco truck and the Salvadorean Bakery. Better yet–try them all since they are within walking distance of each other.

Random food photos

I take a lot of food photos with my phone, but I never realized how many until tonight. I needed to clear space on my memory card and discovered I had 5 months of food photos stored. So I’m finally putting them on the blog where they belong.

The top photo was taken at Uwajimaya, my favorite supermarket in Seattle. I couldn’t believe the name of this beverage. Who wants to drink sweat? What’s odder is that I showed photo to my friend Sarah, and she was like, “Oh yeah, Pocari Sweat. That stuff is good.”

Another pic taken at Uwajimaya. Even Japanese oven mitts and dish towels are cute!

What, pray tell, is a “microroast?” Coffee fetishism in Seattle knows no bounds.

Part of me thinks it’s really cool that Costco sells Dick’s milkshake mix. The other part of me wonders why someone would personally ever need to make that many milkshakes.

Ezell’s fried chicken is a special treat that I allow myself to eat about once every three years. It’s always good.

I would like to go on a tour of Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream. Until then, I’ll just have to catch shots like this.

This spinach pizza was a late night desperation dinner. We didn’t have any food in the house except for a Boboli pizza crust, some spinach that was two seconds away from going bad and mozzarella cheese of questionable age. It turned out to be a pretty tasty pizza! Carmelized onion can right many wrongs.

Every grill romaine lettuce for a salad? I tried it for the first time this summer, and it brought a completely different flavor to the romaine. To let that shine through, I kept the salad pretty simple. I just added some artichoke hearts, cherry tomatoes, some parmesan cheese and a squeeze of lemon.

I think the recipes for all of these dishes came from Real Simple magazine. Pesto, chickpeas and radishes was something I would have never thought to put together myself. And tossing couscous in brown butter was a revelation!

If I had to eat the beet salad at Fonte Coffee & Wine Bar every day for the rest of my life, I think I might be okay with that.

Does Whole Foods really have the best bacon in Seattle?

Geraldine’s Counter has pretty food. But on this visit, everything was woefully underseasoned. It’s amazing what salt–or lack of it–can do to a dish.

Every time I see this pinball game at Full Tilt Ice Cream in White Center, I think of Lindsay Lohan.