fish tips

(pictures by Morgan Keuler for the cookbook)

Happy Friday! 

I have a cool interview to share with you today. Anders was interviewed by Epicurious and then featured in the Huffington Post in their Taste section. In the interview he gives lots of fish tips from how to know if it's fresh to how to store it once you have it home. Check it out! I'm really proud of him!

shrubbery

In which Anders cuts our laurel in the rain while I take pictures instead of help and he doesn't get mad. 

I love him!

macro

For my birthday this year, I bought myself a fun little toy. It's a macro lens for my cell phone camera that sticks to your phone with a magnet. It's the coolest little thing although it definitely takes some practice to get it right. I didn't realize that it requires you finding teeny tiny things to photograph (much smaller that I was even expecting), and it also requires a very very steady hand, which is sometimes hard and frustrating. However, I do love that it makes me look closely at the world. I'm not a very observant person, so it definitely forces me to look at things closely...like the hairs sticking out of moss or the inside of a flower. Here are a few of my favorite I've taken so far.

Happy Memorial Day to everyone! I sure do love three day weekends. We are hanging around the house today; relaxing, doing yard work, planting flowers and grilling. 

winco!

More exciting news from the Fish Market! The guys are now selling Pike Place Fish branded goodies at WinCo supermarkets all across the country (WinCo is a super cool, employee owned grocery store chain). You can find salmon burgers, smoked sockeye candy, spice blends, sauces and their rubs. In fact, the salmon burgers at the store are the exact same recipe of the burgers they sell at the shop (a recipe Anders actually created). Taho and Ryan went down to California to kick off the grand opening and toss fish around the Ventura store! Check out all the pictures here and check out the products in your local WinCo (if it's not there right now, it will be soon!)

(these pictures were taken from the Winco site as well. I wasn't actually there. Still excited, though!)

leavenworth

Anders and I celebrated my birthday this past weekend with a quick, overnight trip to Leavenworth. Leavenworth is this crazy Bavarian themed town in the Cascade Mountains just a few hours outside of Seattle. It doesn't have some impressive story about why it's a Bavarian town...the town just needed a way to make money after their logging boom ended and left them almost a ghost town. They chose a Bavarian theme because German Bavaria has the same alpine terrain, and that's how it turned into a fun little tourist destination. We stayed at the Pine River Bed and Breakfast and really enjoyed our stay. The hotel sits on 22 acres with lots of trails throughout the property, and we had a great time hanging out and relaxing.

(it was so nice of this random, road side, coffee stand to wish me happy birthday!)

doggie oasis

We have the coolest neighborhood. There is a random house not too far from us that set up a "doggie oasis" outside of their front gate. It has a water bowl for the pups, a canister of treats and a white board for leaving messages. Needless to say, this is Maggie's favorite walk.

sated

I spent my lunch hour on Wednesday walking all the way to Winston Wachter Fine Art, so I could check out Dirk Staschke's Sated exhibit. I don't know a thing about art, but with pieces called "Let them Eat Cake" and "Confectional Facade" I didn't see how I could skip it. I mean, I'm all about the dessert! The only downside is that it made me want actual dessert. Anyway, it was delicious in every sense. All I had on me was my iphone, so please excuse the poor quality photos, but you can also see the professional pictures here.