Meal Diary

Last night we checked out the Magnolia Thriftway and Albertson’s. Since all the grocery stores are equidistant from each other, it is important to know where to get the best deals and on what. Thriftway, for instance, has great prices on Mrs. Meyers Cleaning products. Albertson’s is selling 2 sugar pie pumpkins for three dollars.

On the way home the conversation last night went like this:

Him: We can heat up some of that chicken.

Me: Yup. We also have those roasted beets and potatoes and that salad.

Him: Sure. The risotto and roasted pumpkin was good, we can do something with that.

Me: Yeah… Though I’m in the mood for a legume. I suppose I can have the boiled peanuts as a snack.

Radio: baseball, blather, stadium, blather.

Him: We can always have a hot dog.

Me: With chili on top?

Him: and some chips.

So we stopped at QFC and bought hot dogs, chips, buns and chili. Sometimes food needs to be as big and American as it can get.

The Prince mushroom is easily identified by its meaty stem, almond aroma (like syanide), large cap and portabella-texture skin. Because it stains yellow after being picked, it’s hard to mistake the Prince for a toxic mushroom but some idiots do…

If you find a Prince, and you can confidently identify it, you must eat it. Our standard preparation for wild mushrooms is to Sautee them in garlic and shallots in butter, add salt and pepper and place them on a starch, like toasted bread and sprinkle with parmesan.

When Erik came out to retrieve me from The Ranch, he brought with him a pound of smelt. Smelt, for those unfamiliar with it, is a small saltwater fish that tends to breed in fresh water streams or near shore. They are like salmon in the fact that there are several different types of smelt with different seasons in which they run.

The fish, when small, can be eaten whole: bones, head, innards and all. Erik brought Columbia River Smelt, or Eulachon, which are a larger variety. He brought a particularly beefy example of Columbia River Smelt. So large, in fact, that I questioned them to really be smelt and I wondered if I would have the stomach to eat them whole.

Erik has a beautiful recipe for a Smelt BLT, which when he first shared it with me, made me think he was one of the most intriguing people in the world. However, the impressive size of the smelt he brought meant that the smelt were going to have to be boned and we were going to need particularly large pieces of bread.

In light of their size, Erik decided to place the puppies on the grill. This was going to be cooked garlic browned in butter and served crispy. Then the propane ran out.

In the end we had a pan fried smelt with a fish sauce vinaigrette. The result was something to be remembered. The next day when we left for Seattle, we forgot the Smelt in the refrigerator. My mother, always the humanitarian, fed them to the Magpies.