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Wild Kenai Red Salmon from Alaska

Friday, February 19th, 2010

A cousin of ours has a family salmon business up in Alaska called Wild Kenai Red Salmon.  They actually shipped us these beautiful frozen and  smoked salmon fillets to try after hearing about our food blog in an annual family Christmas letter.   The fillets were delivered overnight via fed-ex in a Styrofoam cooler, arriving cold and fresh as ever.

We grilled the salmon fillet on a cedar plank with a mild soy-based glaze.

It looks like they have some nice recipes for salmon on their blog too: http://www.wildkenaisalmon.com/blog/

Zach: I have never been a fan of cooked salmon (I prefer it raw).  Nor have I ever had sockeye salmon before.  This fillet knocked my socks off.  It was dense and tasted like a clean ocean spray, not fishy at all.

John: It was amazing how fast the salmon was delivered to us.  The freshness was palpable.  The fresh salmon was better than most cooked salmon I’ve had at restaurants.  The skin was actually edible and did not have that fish-sitting-on-display-all-day taste.

Les: What struck me most about the fillet (delivered frozen) was the amazing color.  I think these fillets would be an amazing foodie gift for friends and family who have it all and love fine foods.

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Out of Town: Crabill’s Hamburgers – Urbana, OHIO

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

My dad has frequented Crabill’s Hamburgers since 1955.  Crabill’s cooks their mini burger patties in a secret recipe oil. Fried on a grill in oil an inch deep makes these burgers pretty unique in flavor.   There are only eight bar stools inside but they do have a drive through and pretty big take-out service. We always leave our coats in the car so that they don’t smell like grease.

Ever since 1928 they put mustard, relish, and onion on top. But ketchup was added in 1990.

What to order:

  • A couple doubles w/ mustard, relish, and onion with the buns dipped. Then just keep ordering them until you are full.  The record is over 20 something doubles!
  • A bag of locally made Mumford potato chips, and a coke in the little bottles.

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Maine – Home Cookin’ for Xmas!

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Home Cookin’ for Xmas – New England Style +  Some Family Traditions

• Lobster is one of my favorite foods. I have to eat lobster every time we go to Maine. Eating it at home is as good as eating it at restaurant if not better!

It is currently very affordable because of the overabundance of lobster due to the overfishing of its predators.

Pull out your Joy of Cooking and boil those “lobsta’s.”  Serve with melted butter.

Click for “How to prepare lobster”.

• Gjetost Cheese Spread

Gjetost is a cheese that is a combination of goat and cow’s milk. Our family heats the Gjetost very slowly in a pot until the water has evaporated and the milk sugar forms a kind of brown caramelized paste. Then milk or cream is added to change the fat content of the finished product which looks like peanut butter that you can spread on crackers. This is a family tradition to make Gjetost around xmas time passed on by Swedish relatives from Minnesota.

• Peanut Butter Fudge from Kellie’s Belly

Tasty recipes we either prepared or had prepared for us for xmas:

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Out of Town: Portland, Maine – Foodelicious Xmas

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

• Awesome Online Portland, ME Visual Food Map: http://www.portlandfoodmap.com/

• Novare Res: Great Bier Café w/ Artisan Cheese Plates – We want this in our neighborhood!

• Breakfast: Hot Suppa! – Best Corned Beef Hash Ever!

• Cookbook Bookstore: Rabelais

Over the holidays we headed home to Maine. This gave us the chance to checkout Portland’s foodie claims that attracted our attention in this years Bon Appetit article “Portland, Maine–America’s Foodiest Small Town.” Portland has certainly changed since the last time we visited five years ago with much more than your traditional seafood spots and pubs. There are more local breweries and bakeries, quaint & kitschy cafes that highlight modern takes on comfort food, and creative fine-dining with daily designed menus offering creative interpretations of regional favorites. We also went to a wonderful bier café with a beer list of more than 200 beers along with Maine made Meed as well as featuring great mix and match artisan cheese plates.

The Portland Food Map: This is awesome. It is a visual guide to food and drink in Portland separated by category such as kind of food, bakery, and specialty food shops and so on. When you click on the restaurant name it shows you a rating number as well as a list of the reviews about the restaurant. We are looking forward to every town having one of these.

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Out of Town: Blueberry Beverages – Hawaii Style!

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

For some reason everywhere I went in Maui and Lania, they had blueberry drinks! Pretty tasty!

Serenity Blueberry Mojito

  • 1 1/2 oz. Blueberry Stoli Vodka
  • 8 Fresh blueberries (can thaw frozen ones)
  • 8-10 mint leaves
  • 3/4 oz. Blueberry Flavored Syrup (Monin Blueberry flavored syrup- instead of simple syrup)
  • 1 oz. fresh lime juice
  • 1 oz. Club soda

Muddle mint leaves and blueberries in a hi-ball glass. Add vodka, lime juice, blueberry syrup, and shake well. Pour in soda and garnish w/ lime slice and mint sprig.

Pineapple Blueberry Lemonade

  • Pineapple, cut into chunks & some Pineapple juice
  • 10 Blueberries
  • Lemonade (1/4 cup of sugar, 1 cup of water, 1 cup of lemon juice)

Cut up a pineapple into chunks and then blitz it in the blender for a couple of seconds with some pineapple juice to break it down to drinkable sizes before mixing it with lemonade or blueberries. Muddle 10 Blueberries in the bottom of a Boston shaker. Add ice, pineapple puree w/ juice, and lemonade and shake. Pour contents into a hi-ball glass. Garnish with a Lemon wheel.

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Out of Town: Morro Bay, Central Coast

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

We went camping at San Simeon on the Central Coast over the weekend and after five straight camp cooked meals we decided to give the cast iron a break.  I googled/yelped the best tacos in Morro Bay and found the Taco Temple.  The aspect of Yelp that I dislike the most are the EXTREMES in reviews.  You guessed it, the Taco Temple reviews perfectly exhibited this love & hate by many. The hate-reviews seemed to be mainly about a let-down from the hype and the fact that it wasn’t authentic Mexican cuisine but rather fusion which the haters may not be open to or may not have experienced this style of cuisine in the past.

I have to say we were psyched to have found this California meets Mexico fusion restaurant because it was a little different variety than our usual CA taco truck and taqueria burritos and tacos.  We put our name in and were seated pretty quickly knowing that the wait was a good sign. The tacos were huge and were served with fresh, crispy-clean multi-colored veggies piled atop perfectly seasoned and cooked steak, carnitas, or fish.   Their portions were larger and one taco was perfect for me for lunch and I was glad that I didn’t order two.  A friend ordered the blackened Mahi Mahi burrito and said it was very good and even saved the other half for dinner.  Three different kinds of salsas are served on the side: fire sauce, chopped jalapeno salsa and a medium salsa. Click to continue »

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Out of Town: Northern Michigan

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Our Top Picks for Northern Michigan EATS for Summer, 2009:
• Corner Market @ Higgins Lake, MI (near Grayling, MI) for: Doughnuts: “Fry Cakes.”
-These doughnuts are not like the puffy, raised doughnuts from Krispy Kreme.  These doughnuts are the old-fashioned dense cake doughnuts that are fried to delight and dipped in such toppings as cinnamon & sugar, maple glazed, chocolate glazed, and coconut-chocolate glazed!  We spend the night here at our family’s cottage on our way up north just to get the doughnuts. They told us this year that other places in the area are starting to copy their doughnuts just to compete with them; that is how good they are! Cheap!
• Riverside Inn @ Leland, MI (North of Traverse City, MI) for: Drinks on the Dock.
-We only ordered drinks to take down to the river dock.  There, we watched locals drive by in great vintage wooden speedboats and alumacraft dinghies.  In the past, I have always had a good dinner at the Riverside Inn but this year we just had drinks before our fish dinner down at the Michigan lodge-style Bluebird.  The dinners are expensive and we actually had to pay for it; maybe that’s why we just got drinks!  I ordered the Pama-Margarita from the Cocktail Menu and it made me realize that a sugared rim best complements a pomegranate margarita and salted rim for the traditional marg.’s.  The salt with the pomegranate just wasn’t working; I bet the Cosmo or Mojito is a better choice.  John had the Belgoo Magus 4-Grain, Belgian Bottled Beer that we hadn’t tried before and it had a more complex flavor, due to the four grains used in its creation.  If you like Belgian-style brews, definitely check it out.
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