By Kevin Finch on November 10, 2009
Last night the table was set for 28 guests – nearly all of them connected to the restaurant and hospitality industry. I’m sure I’m biased, but it was a brilliant evening with wonderful food from Jeremy Hansen at Sante, an amazing space compliments of the Brad and Sara Greene of The Purple Turtle, and an actual Big Table due to the creativity of Chris Olson of NOC Architects. We will post more pictures soon, but here is one from the evening.
Posted in dining, play, wine | Tagged Big Table, Chris Olson, Jeremy Hansen, non-profit, restaurant industry, Robert Karl Winery, Sante, Spokane, The Purple Turtle |
By Kevin Finch on September 15, 2009
Last night’s China Garden dinner ended with dueling fortunes.
I’m the idea guy… always up for something new and dogged by a stale to-do list of epic proportions. My fortune? “Now is the time to try something new.” Yeah, right.
Karen is all over details and nails down dates and projects with a passion. Hers? “Now is a good time to finish up old tasks.” As if.
The kids decided our fortunes were definitely reversed.
Posted in play | Tagged Chinese fortune cookie, fortune cookies, new, old, personality |
By Kevin Finch on September 2, 2009
Typically chicken would only merit mention here at Traveling Feast once it made it to a plate, but a friend and colleague, Craig Goodwin, provided us today with a notable exception. Craig is headed a different direction by providing premium affordable housing for chickens in a shaded corner of his backyard. The Goodwins and their neighbors share the eggs (payment for room and board?) but beyond this contribution to the households, these birds have a particularly sweet deal. They are free to wander the yards when the families are home and are addressed by name like other members of the family.
Their housing situation is also clearly upscale with a dedicated laying box, framed in windows, a screened porch, and roosting branches outside and inside.
If any doubt remains, the name of this fowl housing development says it all.
I must say this is a very different arrangement from every Montana coop I witnessed growing up. Friends and family in Big Sky Country certainly didn’t treat their birds as extended family, and most had decided their chickens were anything but ideal pets. To almost a person they cheerfully butchered their birds when the time came in order to stock the freezer.
No such fate awaits the Goodwin brood. In fact, Craig, in solidarity with his birds, will still eat beef and pork but no chicken.
Posted in culture, play | Tagged bird housing, chicken, Chicken Paradise, chickens, Craig Goodwin, laying hens, Spokane Valley WA |
By Kevin Finch on August 28, 2009
For a change of pace… can you explain what is going on in this picture?
Literal or creative answers welcome. Bonus points for noting one thing missing in the photograph.
Posted in play | Tagged bathroom, duct tape, toilet |
By Kevin Finch on August 27, 2009
Seattle, WA: Wine flights typically are wine tastings where you receive small amounts of multiple wines in order help those new to wine begin to make distinctions or for the more experienced who are interested in learning more about the wines of a specific region, a particular vintage, or one varietal. Yet my sister… a brilliant cook and consummate interior designer… appears to have decided to play around with the idea of a wine flight.
And I guess she considered these particular bottles something of a flight risk.
Posted in play, wine | Tagged bird cage, Kimberly Crispeno, Seattle WA, wine flight, wine tasting |
By Kevin Finch on August 21, 2009
I tend to be a bit incredulous on my way to the bathroom at most travel centers. Why? It is the nick-nacks offered for sale.
Yesterday though I decided to take a more studied approach to travel center commerce. On the way from Spokane over to my parents home on Flathead Lake, I determined to try find the MOST OUTRAGEOUS food-related item offered for sale wherever we stopped to visit the loo. I did just this, took pictures, and intend to let you vote on what you think should be #1. Yet just the idea of looking for the most outrageous item on display gave me a new clinical distance that offered up general observations as well as some real kitsch contenders.
Observations First: Travel kitsch tends to fall into categories. There are all the locally-branded items from tee-shirts to mugs and shot glasses. My favorite in this category yesterday was the Montana mug trying to impersonate a tree trunk.
Most of this seems to be made in China, but is intended to evoke a sense of place far far from Shanghai. Second there are all the vanity items embossed with your name. My son Peter’s name is always available on key chains, pens, pipe bombs and the like. Daughter Megan’s name is equally popular. It is only our third child, Brendan, who is left out. Apparently there are enough Brandons in the world to justify a print run, but the Brendans are out of luck.
The third category is the humor category: items intended to make you laugh enough to forget you have no place to put said sign or item when you get home. For some reason a high percentage of the travel kitsch in the humor category seems to skew toward the crude.
Fourth comes the cheap home decor category with a line up of items destined to gather dust on mantle pieces (much of it with a country/folk/old fashioned feel).
Fifth are the toys guaranteed not to break only until at least the next exit on the Interstate.
Sixth: jewelery.
Seventh: unique local items… often food like hot sauce, jams, candy, and a pancake mix supposedly made by Aunt Alice. In the case of western Montana, apparently the critical ingredient is a huckleberry. Maybe in Minnesota it is a walleye trout.
What I’m curious about at the moment is what categories I might have missed. The specific kitsch from St. Regis should show up for comment soon, but right now let me know what classic travel kitsch categories I’m missing.
Posted in kitsch, play, travel | Tagged Flathead Lake, kitsch, Montana, travel kitsch, vanity items |
By Kevin Finch on August 9, 2009
The twist is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in place of several squares of a Hershey’s Chocolate Bar.
Posted in cooking, play | Tagged graham cracker, Hershey's Bar, marshmallow, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, s'more |
By Kevin Finch on August 8, 2009
While on the hunt for a great local gut-bomb burger in Ellensburg WA today we discovered Rossow’s U-Tote-Em - a unique drive-up burger joint that has been in the Rossow family for three generations and 40 plus years.
On the food front they serve up some fun shakes, a long list of burger and sandwich variations, as well a few funky items like deep fried cauliflower. The menu is mostly grease and gut bombs, but this is LOCAL grease and gut bombs like the Ellensburger and the Awesome Rossow that you’ll only find at U-Tote-Em rather than in franchises at nearly every interstate exit in the country. It also matters to me that the Rossows have been serving customers since the 1960s.
But there is another reason you need to stop at Rossow’s: indiscriminate use of apostrophes. Here is one of the outside menu boards:
And a close-up:
Ah, the dread apostrophe strikes again…
And again…
And again.
Stop in, say ‘hi’ to Barbara, and order a burger and a shake. While you wait for them to come up, count how much gratuitous grammar you can find.
Posted in dining, play, travel | Tagged apostrophe, Barbara Rossow, burgers, drive-in, Ellensburg WA, Ellensburg WA restaurants, food service typos, milk shakes, Rossow, Rossow's U-Tote-Em |
By Kevin Finch on August 7, 2009
During the drive from Spokane to Seattle today, Megan told a joke that clearly would make foodies chuckle more than the general population:
Question: What did Mary have for dinner?
Answer: Mary had a little lamb.
Personally I’m in the category of people who cannot remember more than one joke at a time and my default joke goes all the way back to childhood… one about where the Lone Ranger takes his garbage. I’m not sure why that one stuck and nothing else does for long, but if you’ve got a food-related joke please pass it along here.
Posted in play | Tagged food jokes, Mary had a little lamb |
By Kevin Finch on August 5, 2009
A friend of mine, Aly Williams, has written a great book for kids. To help her shop it around to potential publishers, she asked me for a sample drawing for one of the pages. I picked one where the boy in the book imagines making a three course feast of Octopus Eyeball Salad, Squirmy Worm Casserole, and Beetle Wing Pudding. Here was the result:
The beetles look remarkably like flies, but it was fun trying to represent the menu on paper. Anything you’d suggest we add to the menu if we wanted to turn this three course feast into five or seven courses?
Posted in play | Tagged Aly Williams, beetle wing pudding, cartoons, children's books, octopus eyeball salad, squirmy worm casserole |
By Kevin Finch on July 25, 2009
Mark Hosack spent his birthday (today) riding herd on the International Pinot Noir Celebration kitchen with his monster mug. Happy Birthday, Chef.
Posted in dining, play, travel | Tagged birthday, chef, happy birthday, IPNC, Mark Hosack, Portland chef, Portland OR |
By Kevin Finch on July 22, 2009
Last year a friend who calls herself a “chef and food wrangler” invited me to spend four days working in the campus kitchen for Linfield College alongside some of the best chefs from around the Northwest. “We don’t pay you, but we give you room and board. The wine is not bad, and you’ll get to meet some amazing chefs.”
I went. The event is called the International Pinot Noir Festival and for the better part of the week each summer the IPNC folks take over the college in the heart of Oregon’s Williamette Valley. The wine is excellent and the food is as well.
Today I’m headed back for more 10 hour days in a hot kitchen for no pay and I’m looking forward to it. My friend describes it as “summer camp for chefs” and most of the other volunteers in the kitchen (who actually are chefs in their own right) agree. They keep coming back because it is fun.
Last year I kept a running record in pictures of the bottle bin in the back. I might do so again. Over the course of the long weekend it goes from empty to overflowing.
Posted in culture, dining, play, travel, wine | Tagged Ann Nisbet, International Pinot Noir Celebration, IPNC, McMinnville OR, Northwest chefs, Oregon wine, pinot noir, Williamette Valley, wine |
