Cooking with wine

"I like cooking with wine,

and sometimes I even put it in the food!"

Here's a tasty winter meal if you have a few ripe pears in the kitchen. John always gives it a big thumb's up. Hey, could it be the wine?

Fancy, expensive sausages are in around here, but we think the best brand in Seattle is still good old Isernio's. The texture and flavor are fine, and only about 100 calories per dog.

Italian Sausage and Pears in Red Wine Sauce

4 mild (or hot) Italian sausages
2 tsp olive oil
1 small onion, finely sliced
2 pears, peeled, cored and thickly sliced
1/2 cup dry red wine
Salt and pepper to taste

First, cook the sausages. Put a little water in the bottom of the skillet, then cover and steam them for 10 minutes or so. Let the water evaporate, and they'll brown in their own juices. The Isernio's sausages are so lean, I have to drizzle them with olive oil.
Then set the sausages aside, and brown the onions slowly until they are very soft. Add the sliced pears and stir gently about 5 minutes.
Next add the 1/2 cup of red wine, and cook until the wine is reduced by about half.
Put the sausages back in the skillet to reheat, and add a nice blob of butter to bind the sauce.
We had them with yellow squash and hash browns, of all things. But it would be fine with pasta or even just bread to sop up the good sauce.

A swim to the gym?

Photo: West Seattle Blog

Here's a view of All-Star Fitness on Sunday afternoon, when a little creek flooded below the parking lot. In Seattle we had 3.6 inches of rain over the weekend-- a new record set at Seatac Airport. Parts of the Washington peninsula had a foot of rain, but of course the rain forest soaks it up like a sponge. It's a different story over here in the concrete jungle.

But by Monday morning, it looked like it never happened-- except for a little mud on my gym shoes when I trudged in to work off some chocolate.

Snow boat

Amanda told me The Pineapple Express cooled down by the time it got to eastern Washington, and brought them plenty of new snow. Here's Nova out for a ride in her new mom-and-dad powered sled:

She calls it her "boat."

Under the Pineapple Express

The atmospheric river was aimed at Seattle all weekend. The storm stretched up from Hawaii bringing torrents of warm rain instead of pineapples and sunshine. The freezing level climbed to 8,000 feet in the mountains, which melted the new snow pack and flooded most of the lowland rivers in western Washington. In our city, it was just sloppy, wet and muggy.

Never mind that, on Saturday morning we sloshed downtown for a few hours of shopping. First stop, Fran's Chocolates on First Avenue. President Obama put Fran's on the map when he mentioned he liked her salted caramels. John is checking out the "for adults only" top shelf. Fran gives you helpful suggestions for pairing different chocolates with Port wines. A super indulgent treat you can pay for at the gym next year.

With the bag of goodies in hand, it was only 10 am and the museum across the street was just opening. We walked over for a second look at the Picasso exhibit.
A big crowd was waiting at the front door. This is one of SAM's most popular exhibits ever, and people were advised to buy their tickets in advance. It's great to be SAM members because we just show our cards at the desk without waiting in a line.

Instead of fighting the bottleneck at the jam-packed start of the exhibit, we went to the end and looked at everything in reverse order. This is a good strategy at SAM, where they like to squeeze many people through small galleries. We had Picasso all to ourselves for a few minutes before the hoard caught up.
Lunch was vegetarian Pho soup and shrimp rolls at a Vietnamese restaurant. After that we killed time looking at Macy's and Nordstrom's for a type of scarf John had years ago, but doesn't exist anymore.
A classic winter afternoon with umbrellas and wet jackets. On the way back to the car we walked through the Pike Place Market.
Or I should say we elbowed through, because the market was jammed with tourists taking pictures of flying fish and waiting in line for hot donuts. If you've been to the market, you might remember the popular mini-donut machine that has been in operation there for decades, probably with the same cooking grease. Everyone who passes is mesmerized by the technology and only $2.10 for a bag of six.

Nope, we were saving ourselves for Fran's chocolate.

Monkey puzzles

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This tree is an Araucaria araucana, or monkey puzzle tree. It's native to Chile, and was discovered by Europeans in 1782. The name comes from the Araucarian people who ate the rich seeds inside these rough cones:



The species is so ancient it's called a living fossil, and the branches look reptilian with those overlapping scales. I call mine that razor blade tree, because the scales are sharp as knives. It has stabbed me in the posterior many times when I've tried to weed around it. I bought it years ago off a nursery sale table when it was a harmless, cute little stick. It's outgrown its pot and the space-- but tough luck, tree. I can't get near it now without a suit of armor.

You occasionally see massive specimens in Seattle front yards, planted over a hundred years ago when it was still an oddity in America. It's a slow growing, messy tree and it doesn't even produce cones for 40 years; it can live to be 1,000. They like a temperate climate with abundant rainfall (that's us) and they are fairly tolerant of cold. In the United States you will only find them on parts of the east and west coasts.

Oh yes, the origin of the popular name came from England in about 1850. The owner of a garden in Cornwall was showing one to his friends and said, "it would puzzle a monkey to climb that." And only a dumb monkey would try.

A tidier sort of mess

Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Monday
49° F | 41° F	45° F | 40° F	45° F | 43° F	52° F | 47° F	50° F | 43° F
Rain Showers 80% chance of precipitation	Rain Showers 80% chance of precipitation	Rain 60% chance of precipitation	Rain 100% chance of precipitation	Rain 70% chance of precipitation

This looks like non-stop wet, but imagine drenching rain storms followed by a tease of blue sky for an hour or so. The temperature range is boring: 43 degree low with a high of 45. In the Cascade mountains there will be 50 inches of snow this weekend-- a ridiculous 2 inches per hour. We're having a La? El? Nina winter in Seattle? I can't keep track. The Pineapple Express will probably cause flooding in the lowland rivers over the weekend.

I'm not used to being indoors so much. Yesterday I looked out the window at this soggy mess under the fig tree, and went out to clean it up while there was a break in the rain. We had pruned the top heavily last year, which just encouraged it to send up thousands of suckers at the base.
Still ugly, but tidy. Those little green sprouts in the dirt are day lilies coming back already. The old-fashioned, indestructible kind with straggly orange flowers, and they've been growing under this tree for over 30 years. By mid-January there are signs of spring in Seattle, and plenty of outdoor chores again.