Mushroomy

Recipe 2 - Sauces, Relishes, and Dips - Marinara Vegetable Sauce

This is a great vegetarian sauce that I put over pasta that got the reaction, "mushroomy." Indeed, it does include a pound of mushrooms, which is perhaps more mushroom than I would ordinarily use. Seafood can also be added for a more sophisticated version, but I was feeling veg so excluded sea creatures this time around.

There is an abundance of leftovers -- recipe makes 8 cups of sauce -- so both J and I will be having pasta time in our cubes tomorrow. For the effort and investment, though, this is a tasty and economical dish that I would make again.

Starting out with a tough one.

Recipe 1 - Beverages - The Perfect Cup of Coffee

Usually when I brew coffee, I'm bleary eyed, unhappy to be awake, and even more unhappy about heading off to work, which is where I'm usually headed. All this sleepiness and unhappiness doesn't provide a lot of motivation for measuring, a key ingredient to the perfect cup of coffee. In fact, I tend to pour some water into the coffee maker until it looks right, in other words how many cups I'll need to make it through the day in a coherent manner. The next step is to pour ground coffee into the filter until it also looks right. According to the trusty Guide, though, this is not the way to end up with a consistent and tasty cuppa joe.

And it's true, sometimes it doesn't end up tasty. Sometimes, it ends up so thick that I have to chew and other times it ends up so thin it doesn't do the job. Yet, on special mornings, the planets align and my guesstimation results in the perfect blend, which is all the more meaningful because it occurs as if by chance and as a result of my wherewithal. Those are the days that I know will be great.

This morning, though, I measured. I gave away my daily magic eight ball out of dedication to this project. For those also new to this whole measuring thing, the ideal ratio is 1 tablespoon ground coffee per 6 oz. water. A perfect and consistent brew every time. Maybe overrated, maybe less interesting than rolling the dice, but tasty reliability nonetheless.

The project begins.

So, I'm not going to lie. J and I went to see the movie Julie & Julia last evening and this is one of many derivative blogs that are going to try -- and fail -- to duplicate the magic. With that said, it's still good incentive to work one's way through an entire cookbook -- something I've never done before -- and learn something along the way. Plus, cooking and eating is something that, try hard as one might not to do so or to do less of, has to be done on a daily basis. This seems like fair fodder for a project and a way to make things a bit more interesting.

After much debating, we have decided to select a book out of our small cookbook library to use as the basis of this project: Pike Place Market Cookbook, 1992, Sasquatch Books. There are many reasons to select this book: (1) Pike Place Market is a top destination and a place that I enjoy going to even after living in Seattle nearly a decade and despite the dense population of tourists most of the year, (2) it is a treasure trove of fun and interesting ingredients and restaurants to which we have easy, year-round access, (3) we already own this book thanks to a wedding gift from a wonderful couple several years ago, and (4) we've only cooked a few recipes out of the book so most of the recipes will be new to us.

There are 154 recipes in the book, breaking out into the following categories:

Appetizers = 10
Soups & Salads = 15
Vegetarian Entrees & Side Dishes = 24
Entrees = 23
Seafood Entrees = 13
Local Chefs Cook at the Market = 6
Desserts = 27
Breads = 9
Sauces, Relishes, & Dips = 15
Beverages = 12

This is a reasonable number of recipes but still a big project, all said and done. J and I will trade back and forth writing about where we go in Pike's Place Market, how the time in the kitchen goes, and of course how it all turns out.