Archive for June, 2009

You Need a Beach Vacation. I Have One to Give You.

Okay, Nerd’s Eye View, let’s tell the readers what they can win! (Cue game show music…)

That’s right, it’s time for you to take a summer trip out to the Washington Coast! There’s the Westport harbor, a lively fishing port. There are windswept rugged beaches (no, seriously, I know that sounds like florid touristy hyperbole, but check out the photo, it’s from our last trip out there!), oyster farms, cranberry bogs, and more oyster farms!… continued…

Leningrad, 1990

It was 1990. Things were changing crazy fast in the Soviet Union. There weren’t a lot of tourists in Leningrad and there certainly wasn’t much infrastructure for us. Did we stay in a hotel that was mostly brown? Was the dining room full of hookers in the early evening? There was brown bread for breakfast, sour tasting, and I had to navigate a lot of rubbery meat.  I was hungry a lot of the time because I’m mostly a vegetarian.… continued…

Be’s

Be's Restaurantcontinued…

Seattle’s Honore Bakery

Honore

It’s official, I’m a snob.

The reason for this epiphany? The baked goods at Honore. Now, granted, I didn’t try everything. Only four things: the cannele — a tiny custardy bundt shaped goody with gooey insides, the chausse de pomme — essentially an apple turnover, the koign imman — I’ll come back to this, and the almond crossiant.

For the record I get that there are different styles of baking and that just because an almond crossiant is one style, doesn’t make it better.… continued…