Anytime I come to see Tracy and Kelly, I’m gaurateed to eat really good and interesting foods and to visit some outstanding galleries and such. The photos in this post were taken at the Fry Bread Lounge, next door to the Native Market in Scottsdale.
Tracy and I are showing off our turquoise and silver rings. (Tracy’s has coral, too). Many, if not most, of the art in the market were made by local artisans. It was cool to see their photos and to read the bios. Not your usual tourist trap.
The Fry Bread Lounge is native owned and operated, as is the market. The drinks were so good and unusual. We’re going to try to replicate our favorite when we get to Sedona.
There’s me giving some love to Kelly and a couple of shots of the food. The”fry bread flight” came with different sweet and savory dips. I can’t remember the name of the plate, but it was a wonderful mix of hominy, wild rice and vegetables.
If you ever get to Scottsdale, don’t miss the opportunity to visit these outstanding businesses.
Missing from this post are photos of the first restaurant visited when I just got in from Portland. Extraordinay Chinese food at the “Big Buddha”. Not your typical American Chinese food at all. The orange chicken was not drowned in the usual flouresent orange sticky sauce, the egg foo young was … well, how can I describe it? The chop suey was indescribable, as well. Can I just say delicious and surprising? I can’t believe I didn’t take any photos of the food and of the giant Buddha. You know what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words.
Then last night, we drove to Alhambra to eat at the “El Tiburon” (The Shark). Kelly’s sister Mo joined us. This took me right back to Mexico. The building, the colors both inside and out, the dark lighting and disco club flashing lights, the two guitarists standing and singing the music of Juan Gabriel, Rocio Durcal, Marc Antonio Solis, and Pedro Infante.
The outside of the “El Tiburon” is painted turquoise and was festooned in white lights. If Tracy’s friend had not recommended this place, we would never have found it, because how would we know? We ate giant oysters with discs of pulpo (octopus), avocado and fresh salsa, fish fillet smothered in butter, fish tacos in blue corn tortillas, shrimp and octopus cocktails (in glasses the size of a child’s head)… beer, margaritas, and piña coladas.
One marked difference from restaurants in Mexico is that the restroom had toilets with seats.
Why, oh, why did I not take photos? I promise to do better.
Since temps are reaching 111° – 113° daily, here’s us in the pool.
I don’t know why, but lately, for some reason, lots of Cajun cooking shows have been coming up while scrolling. I guess the universe knows that I love Cajun food, music, and such.
So, today, the clouds rolled in and it’s a good time to make a pot of cannellini beans with andouille sausage with lots and lots of chopped peppers and onions, celery and garlic and even some shredded cabbage.
First, I’ll saute those vegetables in some bacon fat until soft. Then in goes the andouille, to infuse the vegetables with that good smoky flavor. After, pour in the cooked beans and let it simmer until dinner time.
Along with that, to freshen things up, I’m making pickled beets and a chopped cucumber salad.
All I need now is a Cajun man and a barn dance with music played by a Zydeco band. I’m always so jealous when I see these Louisiana folks dancing to a live Zydeco band, bodies bumpin’.
I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with eating white beans with andouille sausage and playing some music on the stereo, nice and loud.
This inevitably happens with Yum Yum and me. There was a march of heavy rain storms today with a few cloud breaks. Yum Yum and I dressed in our raincoats and went out to walk, of necessity.
After half a block, the clouds opened and drenched us while Yum took her time carefully, sniffing out a perfect spot to relieve herself. By the time we were back in the house, we were sopping wet.
I had decided to fry some cod for an early dinner. I prepped the fish and decided to make a beer batter. These days,opening cans or bottles is best left to Han or Nori, but the fish I wanted wouldn’t wait.
I held the bottle of IPA in my right hand, as tightly as I could, while I tried to pry off the cap with my left. The cap popped off surprisingly. I could easily predict what happened next…. my hand holding the beer, uncontrollably lurched to the right spilling the beer onto the counter, into the tray holding the toaster and coffee pot, then spreading a river onto the floor.
Fortunately, there was just enough beer to make the batter… but that’s not all. While reaching for a large bottle of oil in which to fry the fish, I misjudged the height in which to clear other objects in front of the bottle. It squarely hit the pour over cone, holding this mornings coffee grounds. Not quite dry, the grounds spilled out onto the counter, then bounced down onto the floor, spreading grounds here and there and everywhere.
By this time, I felt hot and sweaty and had lost my appetite for the fish. I cooked it anyway, but it held little charm. I ate a few pieces and now only want to clear the dishes and go to bed. Maybe that’s the safest place for me.
Today, I’ll make lemon pudding, I thought. I’ll squeeze the fat fruit. I’ll scrape the bright rind. I’ll stir the cornstarch and sugar together with the zest then I’ll pour in the juice. I’ll stir in sweet milk and when it begins to thicken, I’ll add in the creamy butter.
Then there came a memory like they are wont to do.
A lemon tree stood alone in the yard, scarce of leaf, bent and rough of bark, unexpectedly laden with fruit.
That old tree brought me joy on days when I tired of rice and onions. I’d go to gather the flawed, dimpled, sun-like yellow fruit to make pudding.
All I needed then was sugar, an egg, a lemon and cornstarch to stir until thickened. Lemon desserts aren’t lemon to me unless they make my jaw hurt from the tartness.
Now that I have the luxury of butter and milk, it doesn’t diminish the sweet and tart lemon pudding I made when I was poor… more poor than I am now.
The old lemon tree is far away but I’m sure it still stands. Why would anyone dare to cut down such a bountiful tree. But then who knows for sure what others might do. At least in my memory it still stands.
Now, I buy lemons from the bins at the store, the same store where I buy the butter and milk. I don’t know where any of them have come from or how far they’ve traveled.
I’d prefer anyday to go out and gather lemons from the old lemon tree. I’d fill my pockets with the warm fruit, heavy with juice and make the simple pudding that makes life good.
How was I to know she would be offended. I thought this would honor her. But it affected our relationship, negatively, from that day forward .
It was decades ago and we had moved from Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound, off the coast of Washington, and into the astoundingly and equally beautiful Columbia River Gorge in Oregon.
We lived on the Island for about 7 years. During that time, we met some very interesting people. Among them were Magdalene and her husband Ivor. They had both been born to Ukrainian parents in the same refugee camp in Germany after WWII was over. His family was then sent to England and hers to the US to begin again.
Their families didn’t know one another. But later, once both Ivor and Magdalene were grown young adults, by happenstance, they met in New York City and fell in love. I won’t continue their story since it’s their story to tell.
How they ended up on Whidbey Island with 2 children in tow, I can’t recall. We moved to the Island because we were promised a house and a job. An old high school friend of Jack’s was pastoring a church there and had connections.
It was at this church that we met Ivor and Magdalene. Now, when I look back, it was the friends that we made that made being in a toxic environment seem worth it. I still have a couple of friends from that time. Fewer, of course, because whenever you leave “the church” being ostracized is the norm. But I digress.
The Borscht
I’m no expert, but from what I learned, borscht is an everyday, common soup/stew eaten in many countries of the world. Mainly made of beets, which gives it its distinctively rich, red bordeaux color and the tomatoes, fresh or canned. It takes on unique flavors based on the meat used for the broth and the addition of other mostly root vegetables. Some cooks add cabbage and others add saurkraut. Dill, fresh or dried, is sprinkled in liberally.
Once the meat is seared with the onions and garlic, water is added to cover and then left to simmer until the meat is fall off the bone tender and the broth is rich and savory. Various meats can be used… like I said, this is not a “precious” soup. Its kinda like a “what’s in the fridge” kinda everyday soup. Anyway, this is what I was taught.
Then carrots, potatoes and other vegetables of your choice are added and cooked until very tender. The meat always used in this recipe was pork short ribs. Once everything is red, dyed by the beet juice and it fills the kitchen with a delectable fragrance, you should dish up huge full ladles into big bowls. Forget about small bowls.
This is a main course soup eaten with crusty, white bread or other breads of your choice. I can imagine a dark rye sliced into thick slabs smeared with soft butter. Never mind if your bread is a day or two old. This soup is made for dunking bread in.
The finishing touch is a large dollop of sour cream, sprinkled with cayenne pepper and more dill. This soup quickly became a staple in our household even though the children wouldn’t eat it. Why, I’ll never know because they’re advenurous eaters and have always been. Even to this day they turn their noses up in disgust when I offer to make a pot of borscht.
So, I’ve kind of roughly given you the recipe for what I learned to make from Magdalene. While living on the Island, we would often go to their house after church to eat with them. More often than not, there was the delicious pot of borscht on the stove. I could always eat bowl after bowl after bowl.
I was so enamored of this soup, I asked Magdalene one day for the recipe. She gladly told me how to make it just like I’ve told you here. She would say things like, “pork short ribs or spare ribs or left over roast, whatever you have”. And the same for the vegetables with the exception of the beets and she always used saurkraut and so when I began to make my own pots of borscht, of course I always used pork short ribs and there was always the saurkraut. I wanted mine to taste just like hers.
The theft of the borscht recipe
As I mentioned before, even though the kids didn’t like the soup, I still made it often enough to make them complain. I didn’t change a thing that Magdalene had taught me.
It seemed only natural when a morning TV show, that I watched almost daily, had a cooking contest. They were asking for recipes with a $25, or was it a $50, prize for the one chosen as the most delicious and desirable. Within a month my recipe had won the prize and a check arrived in the mail and the recipe connected to my name was announced on the morning show. To me this was just good fun. And even though I knew how good the soup was, I wasn’t really expecting to win, so it was a wonderful surprise to hear my name and the name of the recipe announced.
Excited, I called Magdalene to tell her and to tell her I would share the money with her or that I would give it all to her since it was her recipe. She responded in a way that I never expected. She was mad. She was offended. She wanted nothing to do with it or with me. She hung up on me right then and there.
From then on there was a rift between us. We never saw one another again even though she had moved to the eastern part of Washington and we had moved into the Gorge. We never even talked to one another on the phone again.
Occasionally, I saw her posts on Facebook. She had survived cancer and had grandchildren. She looked wonderful and I missed her as a friend. This morning, another mutual friend told me that Magdalene had died 2 years ago after a fight, I assume, from another bout with cancer.
Then the memories of the borscht theft came rushing in. Without doubt, every time I make borscht, I remember Magdalene and the infamous theft. Thank you, Magdalene, for the wonderful unintentional gift of borscht. I’ll never forget you.
We planned on going to the beach today. It’s going to be 95ﾟ here in Portland and 87ﾟ on the coast.
Why would we decide to go to the beach this weekend in particular, I don’t know? Being 3rd generation Portland resident I know what going out to the beach from Portland to any of the beaches on the Pacific coast looks like.
It means that on the 1st hot day of Spring, it will be most assuredly bumper to bumper traffic on both highway 26 and 30. If there’s an accident it will surely make a 90 minute trip and push it into 3 or 4 hours.
When it’s a sunny and warm day in springtime after a long, dark and wet Winter, everyone will be heading to the beach. Well, not everyone but a lot of people. On top of that, its Mother’s Day weekend.
So we decided to stay home. There will be plenty of time for us to go to the beach when it’s not going to be a major holiday.
Also I’m born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. We’re not used to hot and sunny days on the coast. We’re used to waking up to a thick fog or mist hanging on the Coast Range and burning off… maybe, later in the day. In the summer we bring sweatshirts to the beach and long pants to change into after we venture out into the ice cold Pacific Ocean. Even putting your toes in this water can cause them to turn blue, as well as your lips.
So because we didn’t want to fight traffic, we stayed home. Jesse came over, Hannah bought groceries and Jesse put his chef talent to work on a Spanish tortilla. As you see from the photos, it was a beautiful sight to behold and a marvelous gastronomical experience.
Jesse, with his extraordinary knife skills, cut potatoes to bake partially in the oven and broccoli to par boil and onions to caramelize. These ingredients were layered in a cast iron skillet. Then he mixed eggs and almond milk and all sorts of herbs and spices to pour over the layered mixture. While we’re all waiting, he cooked the bacon and the sausages in the oven.
It was well worth the wait. Since Jesse is a chef you can’t say that breakfast would have been better in a restaurant. We had our own restaurant type brunch right here at home.
I love being with the family: my two children who are here in Portland minus Tracy who is in Phoenix and my 2 grandchildren. And to my surprise they ordered me a new pair of Birkenstock sandals.
I don’t think we missed out going to the beach at all. No one was the least bit disappointed.
We ate all but one slice of the tortilla but I’ve noticed, when I looked in the refrigerator, that that one piece is disappearing bite by bite.
It was April 5th, 2023 at 4 o’clock in the afternoon when happy hour began. It was just 8 and a 1/2 hours before the pink moon arose at 12:34 am on the 6th.
Coincidentally, I awoke just at 12:34 without prompting. There were no bells that rang. There were no sounds outside of the house nor light that entered my room. I simply awoke.
I wasn’t surprised that it was at just that moment that I stirred and sat up. These things often happen to me. They probably happen to you too and if you’re paying attention you will notice them. Perhaps you look at the clock just at 11:11 or 3:33. I often wake up at exactly 12 o’clock midnight. Always in my mind, the thought arises, and I say, “it is the witching hour”. I don’t want to think those words but there they are.
Without intention, my friend and I planned to get together on this date a week or more before, never occuring to us that there might be significance. Perhaps it did occur to her being that she is deeply knowledgeable in astrology. If she did, she didn’t mention it to me.
I texted her early in the morning wondering if we were going to meet at her house or go out for food. It was then that she said she wanted to go to the Sapphire Hotel having never been there before.
I was excited by this prospect having been there several times previously. I knew the food was good, maybe even better than good and I knew the drinks were exceptional and extraordinary.
The hotel is squeezed between a coffee shop and a framing shop at the end of a busy business district known as Hawthorn. It’s one of those areas filled with bars, restaurants, bookstores, ritual shops and grocers. There’s only a small sign on the window painted in gold announcing it’s location. The windows were dark but I could see the small candles that burned inside and the brooding ambient light, the only evidence that it was open.
The Sapphire Hotel has a dark and shady past, having once housed a brothel. Such is the history of Portland, Oregon. Like most, if not all port cities, they hold deep and dangerous secrets hidden in their past.
We were the 1st to enter. We left the daylight behind us and chose a table tucked against the wall, a candle on the table, already flickering in the dim room. The dark wooden walls and floors, the oriental carpets and red velvet drapery alluded to the mysteries that lay dormant.
“How many of the people who come here know of its history”, I wondered. I could name many hotels and restaurants with seeedy pasts that housed whores and entertained criminals. But Portland has become a city of transplants. Not many anymore have been around long enough to care about its past.
We pondered over the drink menu with its many strange names. Finally I settled on a “Wai Fai password”. Mango with dark rum and heavily spiced. She ordered an “Aquarius”, astringent with Campari, reminiscent of a Negroni but sweeter. We ordered salty, mapley bacon wrapped dates and Korean bbq wings so spicy it took two before my mouth and lips got used to the heat. We lingered over these, leaning into each other, as we shared what we had been reading, studying, doing and worrying about since we last met.
Time passed as we enjoyed each other’s company. Maybe it was an hour when we decided to order our entree. It would be a medium rare steak with chimichurri sauce, roasted and seasoned potatoes and steamed fennel laced broccoli for us both. It is a rare occasion for me to eat beef but knowing what I knew already about the food here, I gave it a try.
The steak was thick and tender, slightly pink in its interior with a spoonful or two of the chimichurri so as not to overwhelm the flavor of the beef. This was one of those times that I thanked the universe that I had given up on veganism.
Still the conversation simultaneously and continuously wandered from topic to topic in some organic way that only we could follow, as again we lingered over our food and our 2nd drink. Perhaps another hour or more passed, we weren’t counting the minutes.
Because my friend had named our dinner out, “fuck it”, having been through a bit of suffering lately, we added dessert and a 3rd drink. Dessert was a dark, appearing almost black in the candle light, lava cake on a large plate surrounded by a scoop of vanilla ice cream, more than a dollop of whipped cream and a drizzle of caramel. We wanted coffee drinks to counter the sweetness but my Spanish coffee was laden with rum, kahlua, tuaca and another coffee liqueur but I declined the whip cream. Her drink of choice was a surprising Campari laced coffee with a whip of Negroni cream. “What?”, You might say, but it was extraordinarily pleasant leaving the mouth slightly dry.
Again, we lingered. We had drunk and eaten to our pleasure limit. By now we had spent 4 lush hours and we weren’t done yet but we gathered up our coats and bags and reluctantly departed. We slowly made our way to the car while petting dogs along the way: The big, black 12 year old, with his muzzle turning mostly white, with cloudy, rhuemy eyes and the one year old meat head pittie who wiggled and jumped on me to my delight.
We had a wonderful time at the Sapphire Hotel. But all things must come to an end. If like Buddha says, “Life is suffering” this was a pleasant reprieve. Thank you, my dear friend, for this respite.
For those of you who know me, you know that I am a pleasure seeker. I love lushness in my surroundings, my fragrance, my food and my drinks. Well, once, I got this lucky, Lucky Strike that is.
Lucky Strike is a small lush place serving stunning Sichuan food. Dark brown walls, lipstick red chandeliers, plush purple chairs that invite you to sink into their plushness. The art is oversized and encourages you to stare. And the food… well, is hot!
We had Dan Dan noodles thick and chewy with a layer of ground pork, peanuts and scallions.
The pork filled pot stickers had a heavy yet silky wrapper and were plump, barely fitting into the pot filled with mouth watering deliciousness.
We also ordered the green beans dotted liberally with red chilies and Sichuan peppercorns that slowly exploded in our mouths leading first with citrus, then flower blossoms and then a tongue and lip tingling sensation, leaving us numb and helpless, begging for more.
Do you like chilies? Why, yes I do.
The pineapple rice is not meant as an entree and is pretty bland. The sazerac was too sweet and it took the bartender at least a half hour to make our drinks. I can sit peacefully for an hour waiting for my food if I have a gorgeous sazerac in my hand. Our pleasure was only interrupted by his inattention.
But all in all, I was fully satisfied and left exhausted with pleasure.
When the doors were open.
Unlucky for you, this incredibly decadent restaurant’s doors are permanently closed. And unlucky for me because I only had the pleasure of indulging my desires there once. Lastima!
Can a restaurant be described as sensual, sexy? Yes. Yes it can.
eyeamdust 