My friends from work took Robert and I out for Greek food last Friday night to get us excited for our upcoming vacation to Greece. We went to a little tiny Greek taverna on lower Queen Anne called Panos Kleftiko. We started out with a bottle of retsina wine. Retsina is a white wine, made only in Greece, that has been resinated with pine tree resin giving it a distictive piney or sappy taste. Some people hate it. Robert and I both loved it. We then moved on to dinner which was really just made up of a number of appetizers (chosen from the four pages of appetizers on the menu!) We shared tzatziki, hummus and kopanisti (a feta cheese spread flavored with peperoncini and mint and topped with slivered almonds and grapes.) We also had marinated octopus, which was lemony and surprisingly tender, Greek sausages flavored with fennel and herbs, meatballs in a cinnamon-y tomato sauce, and yigantes (giant broad beans in tomato sauce). A large horiatiki salata and plenty of pitas rounded out the meal. Everything was delicious and matched perfectly the retsina (as with ouzo, retsina tastes even better with Greek food.) My favorites were the kopanisti and the octopus simply because I hadn’t eaten them before. I have a feeling there will be a strong Greek presence on elliemay.com over the next couple months so stay tuned.

I needed to buy eggs but the only farmer with eggs at last Sunday’s farmer’s market was selling duck eggs instead of chicken eggs. When I asked what the difference was, he told me that duck eggs were richer because of their higher fat content and that they had a bigger yolk. They make wonderful poached eggs, he said, and can even be used in baking just like chicken eggs. He also warned me that the eggshells were very thick and that the raw eggs tended to come out like gooey jello. Yikes! Last night, I went with his suggestion and poached some of my new duck eggs. I was a bit anxious but it ended up not being as frightening as I was expecting (some of the gelatinous egg white did trail across my entire kitchen, however, as I took my empty eggshells to the trashcan.) I followed the directions for poached eggs in my “How to Cook Everythingâ€? book and they turned out perfect – pristine whites with a velvety-soft yolk. Like a beautiful egg volcano! I served them over toast with spinach, tomato, and bacon for a luscious mid-week treat!

Hello everyone. Robert and I went on the most incredible hike on Saturday - Tolmie Peak in Mt. Rainier National Park. It was an nice hike up to pretty Eunice Lake followed by a short (but steep) climb to the lookout at Tolmie Peak. The view was beyond words and we got there well before the zoo of people so that was nice. Here is a website with some photos: http://www.attrition.ws/13/hikedetail.cfm. For lunch, I made tuna salad wraps but instead of the typical mayo-rich tuna salad I used fresh cilantro, chopped jicama, scallions, romaine lettuce, avocado, and lime juice. Along with a can of Pringles, it was the perfect hiking lunch. The freshness of the cilantro and lime juice helped the canned tuna from being too smelly. For dinner, back in the city, we went to our local pub for beers and veggie pizza and sausage grinders. After that, we watched Big Night, a good food movie that made me crave more Italian food (although I’m sure that Primo would have been horrified by the sun-dried tomato and walnut pizza that I had for dinner!)