It's Oh So Quiet

So this week, we drew Iceland!

What is Icelandic cuisine like, you might say? Well, we didn't really know, either. Thanks to
this site and inspiration from Miss Bjork, we found some recipes to try. I was rather alarmed to find out that Icelanders eat both horse meat and PUFFINS! Cute, cuddly puffins. I'm going to pretend that it's because they can't get chicken there.


It seems that, so far anyway, many of the countries on our list have fish-centered cuisines. We had hoped to get a nice piece of cod or even haddock to bake, but Kroger, in addition to being one huge Charley Foxtrot right now because of reorganizing, had no good fish to offer. We spent so much time trying to find the ingredients we needed that we quickly settled on having salmon again. I grabbed some red potatoes for an interesting side dish - Caramelized Potatoes , and the BF picked up some pickled beets and pickled herring for Sildersalat. I wasn't convinced about the salad, and the BF wasn't so sure that caramel sauce and potatoes would go together.

This recipe was super easy. Just peel potatoes and boil until tender but not soft enough for mashing. Make caramel sauce with sugar and butter (and I had to add a little water because it got too hot too quickly), then coat the potatoes in the sauce and simmer for a few minutes. We decided to add some carrots too, because carrots and caramel sauce? Come on!

The herring salad was also pretty easy to put together, and interesting to look at. Just slice beets, apple and herring, and toss with mayo and/or sour cream or yogurt. We did 1/4 cup greek yogurt and 1/4 cup mayo, and we also added a little sliced onion and salt and pepper. Chop the pieces pretty small and you've got yourself a pink appetizer! We ate the salad with club crackers, and y'all, it was pretty good! I might make this for Soup Night sometime.

So here is our plate: salmon with a tarragon/mayo sauce, and caramelized potatoes and carrots. We also made some honey oat bread, but it wouldn't be ready until after dinner.

So you're probably wondering how those potatoes turned out? Y'ALL. They were delicious! It was so weird! Somehow that caramel sauce just went right along with the potatoes. The carrots were a nice addition, but I would've eaten this either way. The sauce brings out the sweetness in the potato, but not in a crazy way. And the salmon with tarragon was a nice contrast in flavors.

The coolest thing about this project is that we get to learn about a country and/or culture that we may not have otherwise known much about, and it's a great excuse to try some new foods. I didn't think I'd like pickled beets or pickled herring, but I was wrong. And who knew caramel and potatoes could be so tasty?

We'll be skipping next weekend because I'll be in New Orleans for the Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon , but I am looking forward to pulling the next country out of the jar.

And just because I can only go so long before I post another Sifl and Olly link (at least this one is relevant):

Around the World in 80 Plates

As if the CD Project isn't enough for me, I've decided to use this blog to document another project for 2012 (and probably beyond).

The BF and I don't necessarily see each other every day, but we talk several times a day and we always make time for each other on the weekends. Weekends usually revolve around food for us, either cooking or occasionally going out to eat. (We're still on a tight budget because he is still without job.)

Wednesday or Thursday of each week, we have the same conversation: "What are we going to eat this weekend?" Inevitably, because we can both cook pretty well (thankfully) and have such varied tastes, we often cook from a different style of cuisine every week. The BF had the great idea recently to just pick a different country every week to cook from. Our method of choosing countries? See that jar above with the slips of paper in it? That's it. We sat down and thought of every country/region we could come up with that had viable cuisine and wrote them down. We also referenced the Frugal Gourmet's "Our Immigrant Ancestors" cookbook (an EXCELLENT one to have if you can find it) and the international foods section at Kroger. Before cutting them up, I counted, and I think we have well over 70 countries and styles of cuisine in there. For some regions, such as China, we broke it down into the different types of Chinese cuisine. There are some countries in there that I don't know anything about. It will be an adventure learning how to cook recipes native to that area.

This past weekend, we drew our first pick. I was more than a little thankful that it was something relatively easy: San Francisco/Pacific Northwest. The BF didn't think it was as easy at first so he suggested we draw a backup, but when it was Hawaii we realized we were going to be eating seafood either way. I think we put Hawaii back - I hope so, because I do think that one stands on its own (and we discussed having some kind of Spam-related dish because of its prevalence in Hawaii!).

Here's what we came up with:

Clockwise, from top: wild rice, spicy teriyaki-glazed salmon, quinoa crusted scallops, and mixed green salad with dried apples, pecans and a gorgonzola vinaigrette.

We figured haute cuisine with lots of fresh ingredients was pretty representative of the Pacific NW. The quinoa-crusted scallops I copied from a dish I had at a restaurant called Andina in Portland a few years ago. It was so good I've been trying to re-create it ever since. The last time I tried it, I couldn't get the quinoa to stick. This time I coated the scallops in cornstarch, then egg, then cooked quinoa, and pan-fried them. The coating stuck on a little better and was more crunchy, but still not quite like what I had at Andina. I'm not complaining, though, because the scallops were tasty and huge.

The salmon was divine and I could have eaten a lot more of it, but as you can see that's a lot of food on that plate so I was really full. The salad was also delicious - the dressing was a vinaigrette that tasted something like a mix of honey-mustard and that ginger dressing you get at Japanese restaurants. You'd think blue cheese would have no business getting all up in there, but it was super delicious.

The rice? Well, of course we couldn't do San Fran/Pacific NW without the San Francisco treat!
It was actually pretty tasty, although these box mixes always have too much sodium.

I am excited about this adventure! It nearly solves the "what's for dinner" question for at least the next year of weekends, and gives us one more reason to be excited about the weekend. Can't wait to see what comes out of the jar next time!

Mid-February

This week's selections, while few, are a hilarious sampling of what I was into about 10 years ago. I promise, I was not a pothead. My musical taste was, though.

22. Rusted Root - When I Woke

Here is my Rusted Root story:

"You wanna go with me to Memphis in May and see Rusted Root tonight?" "Heck yeah!" - this is a conversation I had about 12 or 13 years ago. I wish I still had convos like that now, and the fun that usually comes soon after.

I think it was just before summer break in 1999, the end of my first year at Mississippi College (not exactly a party school, but we still found ways to have fun - usually involving getting as far away from campus as possible). I had become pretty good friends with this cool girl named Sally. She was very free-spirited and a lot of fun. She had an extra ticket to Memphis in May*. Seeing as school was out and my birthday was just around the corner, I needed a fun trip to celebrate.

The plan was to drive up, meet up with some friends of hers at the show, and drive back that same night. Memphis is "only" 3 hours away, so it was doable. We got there in the early afternoon and stopped off at the home of a friend of Sally's before heading downtown. After visiting with them for a while, we drove down near Beale and somehow found a place to park. I remember we managed to get something to eat at Blues City cafe, and then made our way down to Tom Lee park. This was my first visit to the festival and it was an awesome people-watching spectacle. LOADS of hippies, baby hipsters and frat boys all around. There were lots of vendors set up selling jewelry, "water pipes," you name it. I guess we eventually found her friends and settled in for some Rusted Root. We probably saw some other acts before they came on, but I don't remember now. I had not been super familiar with RR's music before this show, but it was still fun.

We headed back to Jackson pretty late, probably around 11:00 or midnight. Sally drove a blue Pontiac 6000, which, coincidentally, was exactly the same kind of car I had in high school. It was 1999, so I am not sure I even had a cell phone, and if I did, it wasn't with me. Sally had a bag phone, I think. The Pontiac 6000, while it was a nice car for a young student to drive, was lacking in one particular feature: it had no warning light for the gas gauge.

Sally and I are talking and laughing, listening to Edie Brickell and trying not to fall asleep, and we're getting closer to Clinton. Suddenly, the 6000 starts sputtering, and slowing down. We are now wide awake. She looks down at the dashboard and realizes that we have run out of gas. No big deal, it's only 2:00 in the morning and we're on I-220 near the Medgar Evers exit. Just two 21-year old gals! Totally safe.

We think for a minute about walking to the gas station that's just off the exit ramp on Medgar Evers, but knowing the area and the time of night, we decide against it. She pulls out the bag phone and we try to think about who to call. Remember, this is the end of the school year. School was out, actually. Sally was from the coast, and the only reason she was still in town was because she was an RA, and they had to stay an extra day or two for some reason. I don't know why I was still around. Probably just for this trip. Anyway, the point is, there was nobody left in the dorms to call. Except for our friend Carol, who also happened to be the Resident Director of our dorm. Carol was and is a very sweet person; so sweet in fact that we really hated to call and wake her up like that. But this was a pretty desperate situation, so we called her. About 20 minutes later, she and another friend and her boyfriend come to help us. I'm sure they all thought we had lost our minds, but they were nice enough not to make us feel worse about it. We got some gas, made it back to the dorm, and crashed out for probably 12 hours or so.

Was it worth it? Totally. Would I do that again? Probably not.

Rusted Root put on a good show if I remember correctly, but I never became a superfan. Maybe if I had been a pothead? Their music is just a little too earthy/bongo-y for me now. But I always smile when I think about that trip.

*Later, when I lived in Memphis, I learned that it is actually called "Beale Street Music Festival," but nobody down here really calls it that. (Memphis in May actually encompasses the entire month of May, because there are different festivals going on every weekend, but I'm showing my snobbery as a former Memphian and digressing. Sorry!)


23. Mix CD from 2001 or Thereabouts

So there will be several of these throughout this project. Like a lot of music nerds, I used to make tons of mixtapes. When tapes finally went out, and I got a CD burner**, it became mix CDs. Most of them I only made for myself to listen to in the car, but of course some of them I made for friends or cute boys. I always made copies of the ones I made for cute boys.

I am pretty sure this is a copy of one I made for a guy I was seeing off and on in Memphis. It was a very silly relationship that I wasted a lot of time on. But of course at the time I just knew we were meant to be, and this mixtape was going to propel us forward into the throes of mutual "like."

The disc begins with Phish's "Theme from the Bottom," a deliciously pathetic tune. I don't think I could've been more obvious. There's some obscure Dave Matthews, some Ben Harper, Ani DiFranco, Jeff Buckley, and even (cringe) some Jack Johnson. In my defense, he was just becoming popular at the time. I had no idea all his songs would wind up sounding exactly the same.

I don't know what I was thinking giving this guy a CD like this. Overall it has a very dark and dreary feel. I guess I wanted him to think I was deep? But really, I think I just looked extremely desperate/borderline psycho. Jeff Buckley singing "I know we could be so happy baby/if we wanted to be"? Poor Jeff, who had just died a few years earlier in Memphis, had to have been rolling in his grave, telling me to stop.

I will say that one line from Ben Harper's "Show Me a Little Shame" still sticks out and sums up the way my relationship was with this guy to a T. "You change your mind so many times/I wonder if you have a mind at all/And I'd rather be by myself/than to have your lonesome company come to call." I do think I put that one on there on purpose.

**I still recall going to Best Buy to purchase a CD burner and installing it myself in my tower hard drive. Still proud that I could do something like that, but WTF, really? I bet I paid nearly $100 for that thing.

When I think about my college/grad school years in the late '90s/early '00s, it often seems like it was really just a year or two ago. But then... bag phones? Pontiacs with no gas warning lights? installing a CD burner into a desktop computer that takes up half your living room? 3-day passes to Memphis in May were $36 in 1999. They are $65 today. Pontiacs don't exist anymore. My work computer doesn't even have a CD drive in it at all. So... ok, I'll concede. It's been a long time! But how fun it is to look back and see how far we have come.

Late January/Early Feb

I guess I'm a little behind so I can't exactly go by weeks anymore. But I have good reasons! I've been really busy with work and "extra-curriculars" - things like my niece's birthday, the Best of Jackson party, training for my next half-marathon, etcetera, etcetera.

Also, if you notice, I've re-numbered the discs. Thinking about just how many CDs I have, I thought it would be better if I numbered sequentially rather than starting over each post. This way, by the end of the project, I'll know exactly how many of these damn things I actually own and have listened to!

I took a trip to Greenwood, MS, for work a week or so ago, and seeing as that is a 2-hour trip one way, I got through several CDs that day. It's nice to have so much to listen to when I'm on the road. When I rent cars, I usually have Ipod capabilities, so I'll plug in my phone and enjoy Pandora or Radio Paradise. Since Greenwood is a relatively short trip, I took my own car and looked at it as a good excuse to burn through some of these albums.

One quick aside before I begin my reviews: recently Jackson lost two of its pop/rock radio stations to a format change. Normally I can live with these changes - many times the formats don't change drastically, or if they do, there's still at least one other station in town that plays similar music. But this format change was a huge blow to the Jackson radio scene. 94.7, most recently known as Jack FM, and 93.9 (or Rock 93.9) were both taken over by satellite radio stations. But it wasn't just any station; friends, it was K-Love. And while I am a Christian and I think Christian music has its place, taking over two more radio stations (we already had 2 other contemporary Christian stations and one gospel station) is a bit much. I won't take the time to delineate all of my feelings about contemporary Christian music here. But I will say that I have a problem with K-Love taking over these stations, especially 94.7. First, 94.7 was pretty family-friendly to begin with. They played mostly 80s and 90s pop, with the occasional current song thrown in, but mostly just songs that people in the 18-44 age group grew up with. Now there are no stations that play this format. Secondly, K-Love is not local. The few staff that were working at the little station on Beasley Road were probably replaced by a computer. This means no more live remotes, no more support for community events and promotion by the radio station - in fact, no community participation at all. Also, K-Love runs solely on donations, so when listeners donate money it goes to Colorado, rather than staying in Mississippi. I have a problem with that.

So, when these stations changed format a few weeks ago, I quickly changed my presets in the car and thanked God for giving me a love for all kinds of music and the ability to acquire hundreds of CDs.

14. Counting Crows - August & Everything After
It was a rainy day when I popped this album in, and that seemed to be a perfect fit. I still really like this CD after all these years. But I got to wondering what happened to this and many other bands/artists that you will find on my list. I recall Counting Crows doing some stuff in the early 2000s, but where are they now? Does Adam Duritz still have those crazy dreads?

According to Wikipedia , the band just released a live version of "August & Everything After," and they are planning to release a covers album this year. And yes, he does still have the hair. And apparently Mike & the Mechanics were an early influence?! Now all that makes me think of is last week's Portlandia.

15. Oxford American 2007 Music Sampler

There will be several of these over time that I will listen to. I began reading the Oxford American and getting the music issue especially shortly after the magazine began in the late '90s, then located actually in Oxford, MS. My cousin Jessi worked there as a fact-checker and would send me the music issues I missed before I got turned on to the mag. Those early discs were real gems. There had been nothing quite like it before. Paste followed a similar route with its CD samplers later, but those were always new artists. The great thing about the OA is that each disc was a schooling on Southern music history, while subtly introducing you to some new Southern acts as well. This particular disc starts out with the classic "If I Were a Carpenter" by Eldridge Holmes and continues on to feature legends such as Thelonious Monk and Van Dyke Parks, but also slyly intermingling current acts like David Banner and Iris Dement (although she really belongs in another century). I popped this disc in just as the Yazoo hills gave way to the flat Delta soil, so it was a perfect soundtrack.

16. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys

I think this is a "Greatest Hits" album, maybe. I copied it from my boyfriend, a Texan himself. I had never heard of Bob Wills before I met the BF, but I had definitely heard this style of music. Think Hank Williams, only a little more upbeat. Something made me think that Bob had a drinking problem back in his day - maybe the BF had told me about this, so I looked him up and the Wikipedias say that he was a binge drinker, which did affect his ability to perform. But I don't think he was an alcoholic, necessarily. His style of music was early honky-tonk, good-time drinking music in the 1950s. So it's no wonder he liked to have a beer or 12! Bob Wills' music is fun and an important part of country music history for sure.

17. Clinic - Walking With Thee

My early foray into internet radio introduced me to Clinic. "The Equalizer" was the song that got my attention, with its sample of "Iko Iko" providing the beat and the trippy lyrics. The rest of the album is kind of meh... it gets annoying after a while. But if you're in the right mood it can be a pretty interesting soundtrack. Continuing my "Where Are They Now?" theme, it seems that Clinic is still around, and their last full-length album came out in 2010.


18. Grand National - Kicking the National Habit

I wore this album out when it first came out in the US in 2006. It actually came out 2 years earlier in the UK, but we had to wait a while. I used to (and still do) listen to Radio Paradise a lot, and it introduced me to a plethora of indie bands in the '00s. Grand National was on heavy rotation in 2005 or so, and I shook my fist at the skies when I realized that I couldn't get the album in the US yet. Maybe I wore it out too much because I haven't listened to it a lot since then. It was fun to give it another spin. It's basically just a fun dance-rock album that leans a little toward annoying at times. The group got its start as a Police cover band, which makes sense if you pay attention to the duo's vocal stylings. As for what they are doing now, apparently, nothing. I couldn't find much beyond 2008. Oh well!

19. Big Star - #1 Record/Radio City

I could go on all day about Big Star. It's really too much to write here. Needless to say, this one stayed in the CD player for several days. I was lucky enough to get to see what became a tribute concert in Memphis in May of 2010, just a couple of months after Alex Chilton died. Jody Stephens was there, and it was a kick-ass show. I just got a vinyl EP from that very show a few weeks ago, and the BF and I have been wearing it out. I was a little late to the bandwagon with Big Star, only discovering them in the early-mid 2000s, but no matter. Now I never go far...


20. The Walkmen - Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone

The third in this list of discs that fall in the "slightly annoying" category. What's interesting is that I bought the Clinic, Grand National and Walkmen albums in the same year or so. What can I say? I was expanding my horizons. I think The Walkmen are actually a good band. This album has its moments, and yes, I bought it because of "We've Been Had," that catchy song from the Saturn commercial so long ago. But the disc as a whole is just not one that I want to listen to over and over. I hear they did a Nilsson cover album a few years back, and seeing that Nilsson is one of my All Time Top 5 Dead Guys of Rock, I really need to check that out.

21. David Gray - White Ladder

2001. This album takes me straight back to 2001, and grad school, and Memphis, and stupid boys. It had been a really really long time since I had listened to this one, and it was like stepping into a time machine, no joke. I couldn't help but laugh at myself. How I used to crank up the volume on "Say Hello/Wave Goodbye" and CRY and SING at the top of my voice. I didn't even know at the time that it was just a sappy cover of a Soft Cell song. SOFT CELL!

Anyway, I still have a soft spot in my heart for D. Gray. He was a blonde, British Dave Matthews for me. I saw him in Nashville during my time as a Tennessean, and it really was a good show. His cover of Randy Newman's "Baltimore" is still one of my all-time favorites, although not as good as the original. And it's so obvious how much of a Van Morrison fan David Gray is, so naturally I love him for that.