Sunday Walt

I love it when he delicately drapes his paws over the edge of something:

What does he think about in that little brain of his? Cheeky lil’ bastard.

Sunday Walt

Walter models his purple coat. The days and nights are getting chillier!

What’s next – booties?

Incommunicado

The cabin where we are staying this weekend has no internet and no cell phone reception, so the blog will be going dark for a day or so while I chill out here:

What I’ll be eating this weekend

This weekend marks the reprise of Camp Squid! Instead of going to the ocean this time, we are packing up and heading for the mountains, where there will be a firepit, a hot tub, and, hopefully, some snow!

A cozy weekend calls for cozy food, most of which will be supplied by Daniel, natch.

But I am not completely useless in the kitchen, so I will be making a specialty of mine – smoked salmon corn chowder:

Although I love a good New England chowder, this is a more Northwest version. It isn’t thick and creamy like New England clam chowder, but milky and briny. The stars of the soup are salty, smoky salmon, and sweet corn, with tender red potatoes and celery. Sometimes I add carrots too.

Like most good soups, there isn’t really a “recipe” because it is so simple, but here is my ingredient list and simple description of how I usually make it. I have no idea how much of each ingredient I use; that is something you can just eyeball as you put together the soup. If you want a really indulgent chowder, increase the smoked salmon and add some heavy cream. If you love potatoes, add more! If you like the way some of the potatoes disintegrate and thicken the chowder, try adding some starchy potatoes like russets in with the waxy red potatoes. This would be great with fresh corn, but frozen is perfectly acceptable, too.

Smoked Salmon Corn Chowder

• 1 onion, 3-4 stalks celery, and 1 carrot, all diced (carrot optional) (mirepoix!!!)
• some fat – butter or bacon fat are best
• maybe some white wine would be nice in here…
• about 2 tbsp flour
• 8 oz. smoked salmon (or more! It is delicious with more!)
• half a bag of frozen corn
• 4-6 cups chicken stock (if you want to be a BAMF, warm the chicken stock in a separate pan so it is not cold when you ladle it into your mirepoix-roux).
• waxy potatoes, cut into 1/2″ dice (red potatoes add a nice color)
• half and half (milk is ok if you don’t have cream, but don’t boil it!)
• salt (never forget the salt!)

In a big pot, melt the fat and cook the mirepoix over medium heat until the carrots are mostly softened. Now, I would normally salt here because it helps the veggies release their moisture, but since the salmon is probably pretty salty, just give it a little sprinkling of salt.

At this point, you can deglaze the pan with a little white wine. Then stir in a little bit of flour and let it cook until it is golden. If you don’t let the roux cook a little, your soup will taste floury. (The flour coated veggies will look pretty gross right now. I am pretty sure you aren’t technically supposed to make a roux with veggies in the pot already, but do you think this honey badger cares?)

Once the roux is golden brown, slowly ladle in some of the chicken stock. Whisk the stock around so it is absorbed by the flour with no lumps. Scrape the bottom on the pan to get all that good fond off.

Pour in the rest of the chicken stock, then add your salmon, potatoes, and corn. Bring to a boil and let the soup gently simmer until the potatoes are soft, but not disintegrating (maybe 15 minutes). At this point, it is best to turn the heat way down (or off) and just let those flavors sit and mellow. Salt the soup!

Just before you are ready to serve, turn the heat back up and add the half and half. You don’t want to boil it once the half and half is in, but you can simmer a little. Taste for salt one more time, and serve. Daniel the garnish king suggests topping the soup with some chives for maximum pretty.

Bring your dog-ter to work day

Last week my boss let me bring Walter to work with me for a day. Walt was a big hit at the office and he was such a sweet boy all day. The only thing that doesn’t really work is that there is NO grass within a 5 block radius of my office, so Walt had a hard time finding a suitable place to pee.

Basically, that is what his day looked like: sit around, roll around with his mouse rat, lie around and nap. I wish I could do that at work!

Here is a little video I made of him:

Are you sick of all the Walter posts yet? Too bad!

Contrast

Today when I was bored at work I decided to take some pictures of my hair. The way I had my hair pinned up made my wild white blonde streak lay right next to the dark hair by the nape of my neck, so I wanted to capture the color contrast. Sometimes I think my ashy, dark blonde hair is pretty boring, but I do have some pretty cool natural color variations:

Check out those highlights – it’s like it’s 2002 again!

(By the way, this is how you know I am having a hard time coming with stuff to write about every day: I start taking pictures of random crap.)

always more Walter

Well, since everybody likes the new couch, how about a video of Walter being hilarious on it?

Sunday Walt

Can anyone tell me why my dog lays like this? Why does he splay his little legs out like that?

Happy little guy doesn’t even know how weird he is.

nails

So if you know me in person, you know I love painting my nails. I keep them short and squoval, and I paint them bright, bold colors every week.

But last week I decided to try these new nail polish strips, and I think they look pretty cool. At $10 a pack, they’re not as cheap as my normal home manicure, although since my nails are so short I can get two manis out of each package. But I do like this glittery fishnet pattern and I like how they lastd a long time without chipping. They were pretty easy to apply, and I’m sure I will get better with practice. It was kind of a pain to take them off with nail polish remover because they are pretty thick, but it wasn’t as bad as removing glitter polish.

I think these will find their way into my regular nail rotation. What do you think? Pretty cute, huh?

new couch

Recently, we were forced to get a new couch. We bought an Ikea Karlstad sofa 4 years ago when we moved into our last apartment. I really liked that couch – it has nice clean modern lines, and it looked great with the metal legs we bought for it. But it was getting lumpy and saggy and not fun to sit on anymore, and then the whole frame started sagging really bad:

The wood is completely broken, and since it is broken in a place where we already made some repairs with gorilla glue a few years ago, it was going to be really hard to get in there and repair it again.

So we went to Macy’s, opened the obligatory Macy’s account to get 10% off, and two weeks later:

Classy new couch! We even sprung for the 7 year all-inclusive warranty so that this doesn’t happen to us again.

Of course, Wally had to test the thing and give his seal of approval.

In case you can’t tell, he is running back and forth and rubbing himself all over the couch. I highly recommend clicking through and viewing at full resolution.

Of course, we haven’t gotten around to getting rid of the old couch yet, so it is just sitting in our living room blocking the closet. Does anyone want a cute but saggy sofa?