Gluttony Parts II - V

As I suspected, it's been hard to find the time to document all my adventures while my Dad was in town.  He arrived safely in LA this afternoon and my BFF, Jennifer, arrives tomorrow evening so I will take a quick moment to fill you in.

One of the main reasons my Dad chose this weekend to come up was the Northwest Folklife Festival which was conveniently taking place a block from my house.  While his interests were focused on the contra and Bulgarian folk dancing, my interest was in the people watching!  I was introduced to the apropos term, "The Great Unwashed" to described all the dirty hippies in attendance.  There were lots of people offering up free hugs... I declined.  There were also plenty of people begging for "anything green" (i.e. money or pot).

In addition to the official scheduled musicians playing on various stages around the festival there were also tons of street musicians spaced about every ten feet on the walkways; playing fiddle, banjo, washboards, etc.  A lot of them were very talented and more my style than the official performers, but of course, some of them were pretty bad too. 

In addition to all the people watching and music there were plenty of eating opportunities; everything from west african cuisine to bricks of french fries to freshly fried mini donuts.  Yum!  I will definitely have to put the folklife festival on my calendar for next year too!

On Friday night my dad and I met up with my aunt and uncle for dinner at a fairly nice italian restaurant; my scallops with ravioli and saffron cream sauce were good, but not quite as good as I wanted them to be.  The best part was, of course the company!!  My dad hadn't seen his sister in a little while so it was nice that I could help bring everyone together.  We had so much fun on Friday night and had more catching up to do so we ended up having dinner at my aunt's house on Saturday night.

On Sunday, my dad and I checked out Pike Place Market, including a fabulous breakfast stop at Crepe de France.  One of dad's top priorities for his trip was to make a visit to the gum wall, so stopped by and made our contributions.  While we were there a kid was trying to throw his piece of gum so it would stick higher up on the wall.  It didn't work, but just as he was reaching down to pick up the piece of gum from the ground to try again, a bike cop ride by and shouted, "You're not supposed to pick it off the wall and eat it, you're supposed to put it on the wall!"

Monday morning we headed over to Macrina's for pastries and coffee before hitting up REI and then checking out the University of Washington campus.  Dad is considering a post-doc at UW, which I would love!  That decision is still probably a year away, but I did my best to make him fall in love with Seattle.  That afternoon we saw Caves of Forgotten Dreams in 3D.  The cave itself and the ancient paintings were amazing, but the actual documentary... not so much.  After a busy day, I just made a nice simple dinner at home: garlic shrimp with lemon-mint bulgar risotto and dad made dessert: blueberries with brown sugar sour cream (I was sceptical at first, but it was wonderful).

Unfortunately on Tuesday I had to go back to work and left Dad to occupy himself for the day, but we still managed one last amazing dinner; Cedar Plank Salmon with rainbow potatoes, forager mushrooms, pancetta, asparagus, tomato, truffle cream and blackberry honey; Seared Diver Scallops with fava bean puree, blistered green onion, bacon, apples, hazelnuts, celery, artichokes and cider sauce; and pan roasted Alaskan Halibut with fresh basil, midnight tomatoes, fried leeks, and a creamy pesto sauce.  We made sure to just order half portions of the entrees so we could save room for molten chocolate cake with roasted strawberries and rosemary pana cotta with huckleberry reduction.

Tune in next week for Gluttony parts VI - IX.

My Daddy collecting spilled Jelly Bellies from his cargo pocket