Bill Mickel, 70, of East Wenatchee caught my eye as he drove his 1959 Chevrolet Apache, with a full-sized American flag attached to the back, down Mission Street Wednesday afternoon. I pulled up next to him in the Goodwill parking lot where he was picking up a very nice wood picnic table to refinish (this is a hobby of his). Bill had a sophistication about him as he stepped out of the truck wearing a pale-yellow sweater vest with a bright-white polo tee under. He completed the look with khakis and a pair of soft-leather loafers. I told him he looked very east coast with a hint of the wild west to him. I guess that was appropriate considering, I found out, he had moved here from Phoenix, Arizona just three years ago.

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I was introduced to Japanese food, beyond teriyaki, my freshman year in college. My roommate, Maddie, was Korean but had lived in Tokyo for most of her life. Her mother would send huge boxes of stuff, mostly food, from Japan. The boxes contained microwaveable containers of sticky rice, furikake, nori, instant yakisoba, red bean paste cakes, gum and lots of Japanese candy. Maddie always shared.

Since then, I’ve been a big fan of Japanese convenience food. My favorite supermarket had a fantastic supply of Asian food and by default, Japanese snack food. I loved living in Seattle because it was so easy to get Japanese food, especially if I made it to the Mecca of Asian grocery stores, Uwajimaya.

I only went to the huge Asian supermarket in the International District a few times for fun. It’s such a great place to browse around. However, I have a hard time making decisions when in the snack food aisles and when admiring the display of chopsticks.

Yesterday, when my sister, her fiance, my boyfriend and I walked down there from downtown Seattle I had to limit myself to what would fit in one grocery bag: dried bonito flakes, Pocky sticks, rice crakers, mochi, instant yakisoba, natto (more about that another time), two pairs of chopsticks and two soup spoons.

The store is definitely worth going to just to look at all the fun foods. When I’m there, to be cliche, I feel like a kid in a candy store. I kind of am.

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“Thing of the Past”
Vetiver, $14.98

I entered a world of discovery when I purchased “Thing of the Past,” the latest release by indie-folk band Vetiver: I never realized how influential Norman Greenbaum was to his contemporaries; vetiver is a type of grass; I’ve never even heard of half the artists covered on this album; and I learned that, despite my never having heard of Vetiver, this is the group’s third studio album.

After listening to a lot of the band’s work, I’d decided that it decently pulls off the sound of guitar folk from the late ’60s and early ’70s. My first thought was Harry Nilsson coupled with Roger Miller and, finally, sprinkled with a bit of Neil Young. Then I realized that “Thing of the Past” is entirely composed of covers of songs from the exact era to which I was attributing Vetiver’s sound.

As far as I can tell — for much of the record — I may as well be listening to a Simon & Garfunkel album, except one that’s not quite so frequently depressing. This idea is especially supported on “Roll on Babe,” the mellow and breezy cover of Derroll Adams’ 1975 tune, and on “Standin’,” a cover of a Townes Van Zandt 1972 release.

Vetiver’s covers span a pretty decent range of styles within the genre, from the dreamy, lilting melody of Biff Rose’s “To Baby” to the Delta blues party that is Hawkwind’s “Hurry on Sundown.” Other offerings include Norman Greenbaum’s jam band-ish “Hook & Ladder,” Ian Matthews’ country-esque “Road to Ronderlin” and the anemic cousin to the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues” that is Michael Hurley’s “Blue Driver,” that’s very good, albeit simple.

These days, these sorts of songs are so standard and familiar, they often come off sounding bland and uninspired. But Vetiver pulls it off so well, it keeps me listening.

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Here in the newsroom, we’re sent a lot of information about stuff we really don’t care about from halfway across the country. “Baby toe socks free moms of frostbite worry!” Usually, it goes straight to the trash bin. However about six months ago, we got a press release for a product called Bacon Salt which hails from the Seattle area. It’s a seasoning that, sprinkled over food, makes it taste like bacon. The most disturbing and curious thing about the stuff is that it is kosher and vegetarian-friendly.

As much as I am disgusted by nonfood food, this stuff really intrigued me and I kept thinking about it. So, I went to the product’s site a couple of months ago and discovered that it was available at Food Pavilion in Wenatchee. I made the 15 minute drive to get a small bottle and tested it out on a green salad. It wasn’t bad at all and probably contained fewer nonfood food ingredients than that neon-hued nacho cheese sauce with chips that I used to eat during free skates at the Ice Arena when I was a kid.

The bottle has been lounging in my boyfriend’s cupboard, more or less untouched, until yesterday. Brian and I were about to start watching “Black Hawk Down” when I decided to make popcorn. For the same reason that I don’t like to eat most processed foods — I like to know that my food is real food — I like to make popcorn on the stove in a pan with olive oil and butter. But last night the plain popcorn wouldn’t do. I wanted more flavor. So, as per Brian’s suggestion, I sprinkled it with Tapatio sauce. Then I spotted the Bacon Salt. Snatching it up, I sprinkled it too over the popcorn. The combination tasted fantastic. Sometimes my tastebuds win over my brain telling me how wrong kosher bacon flavoring is.

If it hadn’t tasted so good, I’d be beating myself up for eating this stuff with abandon. It has inspired me to save some bacon grease to heat with my popcorn sometime.

I really want to know what everyone else does to season their popcorn. I’ve had parmesan cheese on it with excellent results. What’s your favorite popcorn seasoning?

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I haven’t been very attentive to this blog, of late. All week, I’ve been covering the plane crash at Stehekin that killed Roberta Pitts and Dr. William Stifter, and my attention hasn’t strayed far from that tragic story. (more…)

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With the state track championships coming up this weekend, this crazy story out of Utah strikes a particular chord. Ryan McGeeney, an intrepid photographer with the Daily Examiner out of Ogden, Utah, was covering that state’s track championships and was speared in the leg with an incoming javelin. McGeeney wandered into an out of bounds area while shooting discus throwers. The javelin didn’t hit anything below McGeeney’s knee, but did take 13 stitches to close the wound.The wild part is that McGeeney’s first instinct was to capture the spear hanging out of his leg. He said that his editor’s first question when he got back from the hospital would have been, ‘Why didn’t you get a photo?’ The wildest part was that the kid that threw the javelin, Anthony Miles of Provo High, went on to win the state title later that day.

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Wenatchee High School alums Jeff Kintner, Tom Ballinger and Ben Spaun have all qualified for the NCAA Division III men’s track championships, which get underway today at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Kintner, a sophomore at Whitworth, qualified in the shot put with a heave of 53-6.25 at the Northwest Conference Championships. Spaun, a senior at Whitworth, will only compete in the decathlon at nationals despite winning the 110 hurdles, 400 hurdles and leading off the winning 4×400 relay at the conference meet. Ballinger, a junior at Carleton College in Minnesota is the fifth seed in the 400 hurdles.

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Wenatchee High School alum and two-year Wenatchee AppleSox Garrett Dorn led Linfield College to the NCAA Division III World Series in Appleton, Wis. The Wildcats will begin play in the double-elimination, eight team World Series on Friday against the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. If Linfield wins, they will likely face Trinity College of Connecticut, who garnered national acclaim this season for being the only NCAA baseball team ever to finish the regular season unbeaten (41-0).Dorn, who has a season record of 8-3 in 13 starts with a 2.86 earned run average, was chosen to the Northwest Conference’s All-League second team. Dorn pitched eight innings in Linfield’s 10-inning, 4-3 win over Webster College that send the Wildcats to their first ever NCAA final. He struck out seven without walking a batter and allowed two earned runs. 

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Cookie inspiration hit me while looking through wire stories to run in The World’s food pages. I was browsing through photos and stories and found one mentioning some terrific looking gluten-free cookies. For the last month it seems like everything’s popping up gluten-free. Coworker Dee Riggs has a story set to be printed for Tuesday on gluten-free cooking and one of my best friends was recently diagnosed as gluten intolerant. On top of this, I’ve been reading Shauna James Ahern’s food blog Gluten-free girl regularly.

So I sent myself the recipe (below) to test it out, found the original on Ahern’s blog and ruminated over the lemon olive oil cookies. Since I don’t really need to go gluten free, I only have wheat flours in my pantry and my friend isn’t here to partake of my baked goods, I went the lazy route and adapted the recipe for me, a gluten-OK girl.

I still planned on using almond flour because it sounded like it would add complexity to the cookies, but discovered upon pantry-hunting that I was fresh out of almonds to grind. Oh well, I used 2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour in place of the rice, tapioca and almond flours. I also didn’t have lemon olive oil, so I used a really nice extra virgin olive oil from said pantry. However, while on a quick foray to Top Foods, I did make a detour to the oil section and discovered that the store sells a lemon olive oil, as well as an orange olive oil. So all of you recipe worshiping purists are in luck. I also used Ahern’s advice from her blog post and added a little more lemon juice and zest to get the lemony flavor without the specialty oil.

These cookies exceeded my expectations: easy, fast and fun to make and light, cakey and delectable in the mouth. Plus I got to use my new Microplane grater. Happy times.

By the way, I rolled my cookies out to about 1-inch balls and the recipe yielded about 3 dozen cookies, significantly more than the recipe below states.

Recipe

From The Associated Press

Gluten-Free Lemon Olive Oil Cookies

Start to finish: 3 hours 15 minutes (40 minutes active)

Makes 10 large or 15 small cookies

1 cup sweet rice flour

1 cup tapioca flour

1/2 cup almond flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup high-quality lemon olive oil

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup sour cream

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Zest of 1 lemon

In a large bowl, combine the sweet rice flour, tapioca flour, almond flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a second large bowl, use an electric mixer to cream the olive oil and 1/2 cup of sugar until well combined. Add the egg and blend. Slide in the sour cream and lemon juice. Mix until a cohesive mixture has formed.

Slowly fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, a quarter cup at a time. Incorporating the dry goods slowly improves the texture of gluten-free baked goods.

Add lemon zest at the last moment. The dough will be sticky.

Cover the bowl and refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 F. Place the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar in a bowl. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Form the dough into small balls. Roll each ball in the bowl of sugar and place the dough balls on the prepared baking sheet. Bake about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes on the baking sheet.

The cookies will be soft and cakey, not crisp. Carefully transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to rest for another five minutes, during which time they will harden.

(Recipe from Shauna James Ahern in “Gluten-Free Girl,” Wiley, 2007)

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One of my favorite snacks is hummus. I started eating it frequently after finding it at the now defunct Lebanese restaurant in Downtown Wenatchee. The hummus there was so good. I loved how they drizzled olive oil on top and made it look so pretty with parsley.

When I went off to college, I even took a tub of their hummus and some nice, thick pita bread with me to stick in my tiny dorm fridge. After the restaurant closed, I tried several store-bought containers of the stuff and was never satisfied. Instead, I learned to make my own. Until this Christmas, when my boyfriend bought me one of the best gifts ever, a huge Cuisinart food processor, I had to use lots of oil and spend lots of time scraping down the blender’s sides to make homemade hummus with my blender.

Now, hummus is one of the quickest and easiest foods I make. Even better, I almost always have the ingredients for it in my pantry. I tried several hummus recipes, even one for black bean hummus, before creating my own version. I think mine is pretty good. One batch never lasts long and hummus goes well with so much stuff. Rarely do I feel more virtuous than when I eat veggies dipped in hummus. Although, I really like it with chips.

One of the most important ingredients, the one that makes hummus more than a bean dip, is tahini. Tahini is ground sesame seeds and is the same consistency as creamy natural peanut butter. I find mine near the peanut butter at Top Foods. One tub of it will last a long time if refrigerated.

If you like thinner hummus, you may use more olive oil and lemon juice. Hummus purists might take issue with what I’m about to write, but a healthier alternative to using more olive oil is to add plain yogurt, fat free or not, a tablespoon at a time and process until it reaches the desired consistency.

Recipe

Basic Hummus

1 15 oz can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained and rinsed

Juice of one lemon

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided

1 1/2 tablespoons tahini (ground sesame seeds, kind of like sesame seed peanut butter)

2 cloves minced garlic

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Chopped parsley for garnish, optional

Process all ingredients, except one tablespoon olive oil, pulsing at first, in a food processor and process until smooth. Drizzle with olive oil. Garnish with parsley, optional.

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