As most people who know us know, in a quirky coincidence we share a birthday: April 28. I often say this means we can never forget one another’s special day (though it also means someone always has to be cooking their own breakfast on their birthday morning!)

Since our birthday fell on a Saturday this year, we decided to stash the critter with my parents and head up for a night in one of our favorite cities, Vancouver, BC. We head north every couple of months – aided by our acquisition last year of the fast-track NEXUS passes to avoid the border wait – to hit up beloved sandwich spots (Meat & Bread), score some world class coffee (49th Parallel in Kits) and get yelled at in Japanese while chomping on briny delicacies (Kingyo Izakaya.)

This time, we splurged a bit on a room at OPUS, a trendy boutique hotel in the sleek Yaletown neighborhood. After checking in, we headed out to West Point Grey for dinner.

We did our usual research when looking for a restaurant worth of birthday dinner. We wanted some place a bit nicer than average, though not bank-breaking, while guaranteed to be a memorable meal. Rigorous searching turned up La Quercia, a casual Italian bistro with a focus on local and seasonal ingredients, a bit off the beaten path out on West 4th but ranked on top restaurant lists by numerous Vancouver publications. It was also nearly impossible to secure seats there, as when we called several weeks in advance we were fortunate to snag the last two spots at the bar at 9pm.

We opted for the $45, seven-course menu “alla famiglia” (there’s also an 11-course option for $60 that includes a fish course, a risotto course and a cheese course – too much!). Similar to omakase with sushi, we simply sat back and ate at the chef’s whim. We started with vitello tonnato, thinly sliced veal with a savory “tuna mayo.” This was followed by a butter lettuce with anchovy-egg dressing and then a killer bone marrow dish where the marrow was mixed with ground veal, returned to the bone and then broiled and served with pickled vegetables.

The two pasta courses were handmade radicchio and walnut mezzaluna with Gorgonzola and potato gnocchi with porcini mushrooms, followed by the main course of local lamb shoulder, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, resting atop a chunky caponata. Practically stuffed (seriously, who could manage 11 courses??) we finished with a small cake served with whipped cream and rhubarb compote.

We were more than satisfied with our choice for dinner. The service was stellar and we cleaned our plates for every course. You can also order a la carte, though if you go I’d highly encourage the alla famiglia menu – it’s such a great deal for that breadth of food.

How to recover from a meal like that? The next morning, we kept it simple with 49th Parallel espresso at Coffeebar in Gastown with a housemade almond croissant and a bacon-cheddar biscuit. After a spin through the up-and-coming shopping district of Main Street in the neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant, we made our way to Chinatown and the infamous Phnom Penh.

Thanks to research of local blogs, we knew to order the deep fried chicken wings and the Beef Luc Lac on Rice with Egg, with a Mango Moo Shake on the side. Ho.ly.Mo.ses. If you like chicken wings, this is a must-visit. Salty, peppery and garlicky as heck, it’s easy to see why they’ve earned a rabid following. The luc lac was addictive, too: savory marinated beef topped with a perfectly cooked fried egg atop a mound of rice. We waited a solid half an hour for a table at 2pm, and the restaurant never slowed down the entire time we were there.

It’s easy to obsess over the food, but part of the joy we get out of visiting Vancouver is simply driving around looking at the scenery, from the futuristic condo towers and urban soccer fields to the blossoming cherry trees and cobblestone streets. We’re lucky we live just a couple hours away.

We’ve been on a bit of a Japanese kick recently. Maybe it was all those izakaya dinners in Vancouver, or buying a bento box cookbook, or Jeremy finally listening to me and visiting Uwajimaya and then proceeding to go back four times in the next week. Regardless, we’ve been eating a lot of Japanese food and still craving more.

So when I saw that Nook was doing a pop-up soba dinner for a week in late February, I emailed in our reservations immediately.

Nook is a tiny breakfast and lunch spot on the “Ave” in Seattle’s University District. I’ve been curious about their homemade biscuits for a while now, but never made it over (and I still REALLY want to try those.) According to Seattle Met, one of Nook’s owners used to work with some chefs in Japan who own a chain of soba noodle shops. Those chefs are in town this week only, churning out homemade soba noodles daily as part of a three-course, buckwheat-based meal.

Soba, as we learned, is both the Japanese word for “buckwheat” (not actually wheat, but closer to rhubarb) and the noodles themselves. They’re eaten either cold with dipping sauce, or hot in broth.

We started with the appetizers. We had: kimpira goba, a sort of marinated/pickled veggies; soba zushi, sushi made with soba noodles instead of rice; soba chips, fried little twists of the grain; and a fresh salad full of unfamiliar vegetables, seaweed and puffed gluten.

They gave us a full chunk of wasabi to grate into the dipping sauce.

The main dish was hot soba, a choice of duck or oyster. My oyster bowl had five plump, lightly sauteed oysters floating in the rich broth. While the soba noodles were addictively slurpable, I really got after the broth that was left over – like some of my favorite ramen broths from places like Tsukushinbo, but not as salty. The main dish came with a trio of tempura: shrimp, scallop and eggplant. We were told to dip the tempura in sauce and in a sprinkling of wasabi salt, which I want to go stock up on in large quantities immediately.

For dessert, they served a buckwheat cake with mascarpone cream served with soybeans in a maple glaze, and then a mochi stuffed with more mascarpone cream and a strawberry. Yeah. Did I mention the entire meal was $10 per person?

We’ve written before about pop-up restaurants, and while I’m sometimes inclined to think it’s a trend on its way out. But then a soba night like this comes along, and it reminds me how this concept can work out quite well in the right scenario.

The Washington football team has one bye week in the 2011 season. Naturally, we decided to spend it at a college football game. We may have a problem.

In our defense, this football game happened to be played in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the LSU Tigers were hosting the Florida Gators in an SEC clash in the historic Tiger Stadium in Death Valley. Neither of us had ever been to an SEC football game before, and had always been curious to experience  football culture in the South. We were able to score press passes to the game through some of Jeremy’s connections. Add in 85-degree weather and a local scene known for not messing around when it comes to food and drink? Sold.

So here’s what we learned from our four-day swing through the Big Easy.

• Getting out of the French Quarter is worth it. Sure, we made a routine trip down the smelly, bachelor party-jammed Bourbon Street (and this was at 1pm on a weekday) and made the obligatory visit to Cafe du Monde for beignets and cafe au lait (and a random Jonathan Papelbon sighting.) But our VRBO rental was in the heart of the Garden District and we spent most of our time there and in Uptown, wandering the mansion-lined streets and drinking Abitas in neighborhood bars.
• People are friendly. No, REALLY friendly. Southern hospitality almost doesn’t do it justice. During dinner at Cochon (don’t miss the rabbit & dumplings, oyster & bacon sandwich and apple pie for dessert) we ended up chatting with not only the tables on either side of us, but even the tables next to them. When we commented on how good our neighbor’s soft-shell crab entree looked, she offered us a bite off her plate without missing a beat. No offense, Seattle, but that would never happen here.
• People are friendly, part II. After oysters and gumbo at Casamento’s, we hit up Le Bon Temps Roule for drinks and music. We started chatting with a man at the bar who turned out to be a legendary booster for LSU (as in, supplies all the team’s post-game po’boys from his deli and hasn’t missed a game, home or away, in decades.) After showing us photos on his iPhone of the alligator he’d shot that week, Mike Serio promptly invited us to his tailgate at the game the next day. By the way, this is the same guy who beat Bobby Flay in a muffaletta throwdown.
• SEC football is everything we’d hoped for and more. We arrived in Baton Rouge four hours before the 2:30pm kickoff…and sat in traffic for an hour, barely crawling even before the stadium was in view. The tailgates stretched for miles around campus, with yellow and purple-clad fans drinking, eating, blasting music and chanting “Tiger Bait!” at anyone foolish enough to wear blue and orange. After parking, we meandered over to The Chimes for pre-game drinks and then picked up some boudin balls to snack on on our way to Serio’s tailgate. He greeted us with beer and alligator sausage, plus the best barbecued pork I’ve ever had in my life.
• Oh wait, that was all just the tailgate. The stadium and game experience was just as much of a sensory overload. Our passes gave us sideline access during the pre-game, where we watched the players warm up as 94,000 fans packed into their seats. Upstairs in the pressbox, we enjoyed a thorough beatdown of Florida by LSU, capped with an acrobatic interception by the Honey Badger.
• Did I mention football is kind of a big deal in the South? We ended our weekend by joining a childhood friend of mine at a bar to watch the Saints game. Sitting on couches in a smoky bar surrounded by screaming – yet immensely hospitable – patrons in Drew Brees’ jerseys was the perfect way to cap off a decadent New Orleans weekend.

More soon.

It was a setting not unlike one you see sailing to Orcas Island here in Washington, yet I was halfway across the world.

Lisa and I began the day in Kungsholmen with coffee and kanelbulle, the ubiquitous – and quite tasty – Swedish pastry found at all cafes in town. The idea had been to take a boat out to the Stockholm archipelago, but with dozens of choices available to us, we became paralyzed by the decision. We settled on Vaxholm/Grinda, a combination that would combine the touristy (Vaxholm) with the bucolic (Grinda). Our ferry was filled with tourists from all over Europe, including a couple from Spain who snapped photos and marveled at the way the sun glistened off the water.  Over beers (this was vacation after all), we poured over our guidebooks and sketched out a plan.

Vaxholm was our introduction to the archipelago. We wandered through the streets and browsed through the stores. Lunch was an open-faced sandwich and cake on a deck with a majestic view. Everything was homemade, and we salivated over (but avoided) a platter of fresh-baked desserts the restaurant had put out on a table. Following lunch, we hopped back on the ferry and headed over to Grinda, one of the smaller islands in the archipelago. You can traverse Grinda in less than an hour by foot, and there’s just one hotel on the island. The draw is the serenity of everything. My phone doesn’t buzz with urgent work emails. There wasn’t another English-speaking tourist within earshot. We drank up the view from the beach, where a few feet away a Swedish couple was preparing to get married.

Everything was perfect.

The sun was still high in Stockholm when we returned, and our stomachs were rumbling. Because eating out is so expensive in Sweden, we bought meatballs and salads from the Salluhallen in Ostermalm, a fancy grocer in one of the city’s trendiest neighborhoods. Back in Kungsholmen, we devoured our purchases in Rålambshovsparken, a park so full of hipsters we might as well have been in Brooklyn (we gleaned that immediately after seeing a bocce ball setup and a run of American Apparel gear). The park also explained youth and Swedish culture. Taxes have made drinking prohibitively expensive in Sweden, so we noticed a popular summertime activity is to gather in parks like Rålambshovsparken, grill some food, crack some beers and check out the opposite sex, which made for some excellent people-watching.

With temperatures hovering near 80 degrees in Stockholm, what could be better?

On this vacation, not much.

Lisa and I took full advantage, spending the day about the city, hanging out with friends, drinking cold beers and grilling hamburgers. About as relaxing a Saturday as one could possibly draw up.

Our goal: secure a reservation at noma, ranked the No. 1 restaurant in the world. No, really. Renowned for its focus on Nordic cuisine sourced from the highest quality ingredients of the region, noma’s culinary cred is only matched by its exclusivity – chef Rene Redzepi’s establishment only seats about 40 people a night. Reservations open three months in advance, and would-be diners slam the online reservation system and phone line with frantic attempts to snag a seat.

Miraculously, after about 20 minutes and numerous browser refreshes, we made it into the reservation system and booked our table for two at 7 p.m. on June 7.  After taking care of minor details – you know, booking Icelandair flights and lodging – three months later we found ourselves standing outside the unassuming brick building on a quiet Copenhagen block.

At noma, the food is naturally expected to be exceptional. But the level of service is also stunning. As we entered the dimly lit foyer, the maitre d’ was waiting to welcome us. He smiled at me and said, “Welcome, Ms. Kennelly.” This was before we had said a word or made any kind of introduction. How did they know who I was? There were other diners arriving at the time. Magic. Or maybe Facebook stalking. Either way, we were impressed.

We were escorted to our table by the window overlooking the water and downtown Copenhagen. After making sure we were comfortably seated with wine on the way and checking if we had any allergies or food concerns (nope), our server smiled at us and said, “Your first course is actually in your flowerpot.”

That was about when I started giggling uncontrollably.

Those brown, stick looking things were actually “malt flowers” that tasted like crackers, meant to be dipped in creme fraiche.

As we nibbled on those, they brought out the next amuse bouche. At this early point, we hadn’t realized to listen closely to their descriptions of the food so we’d know what to eat. We heard something about “reindeer moss” and then Jeremy tentatively attempted to bite the stick. Turns out that one actually was a stick. We were supposed to eat the brown fluffy things (kind of like a savory cotton candy.)

Next was an “acidic berry cooked as a sheath” with rose petals and salt. It was a bit like fruit leather – you picked it up with your fingers and ate it all in one go.

This was followed by a platter of empty mussel shells, with two mussels remaining covered by a top shell. We were instructed to remove the top shells and consume the fried mussel beneath. It had a bottom “shell” made of dried squid ink.

Above is a “savory vinegar cookie” with duck fat and black currants.

Spring garlic with seaweed butter – you bite off the entire end up to the green part.

A crispy chicken skin “sandwich” with smoked lumpfish roe and rye bread.

Pickled and smoked quail eggs served in smoked hay.

“You can eat everything but the pot,” said our server. This is a famous noma dish – raw radishes with creme fraiche in “edible soil” made from malt and hazelnuts.

Herb toast, emulsion of smoked cod roe with fresh herbs, topped with crispy duck stock.

I should mention that up to this point, all this was brought to our table without any effort on our end. When I got up to go the bathroom, someone was at my chair to escort me there before I was finished standing up. The dishes were brought out by the chefs themselves, most of them model-caliber, strapping young men who mention offhand things like “I worked at the French Laundry for three years before coming here.”

Also, when Jeremy ordered a beer, it came from a nearby microbrewery that only makes 2,000 liters a year from birch tree sap infused with wild stinging nettles. I’m not making up a word of this. (Also, the beer was excellent.)

We were then offered the choice between a seven-course menu and a 12-course one. The 12-course included seasonal options as well as noma “classics.” It was easy to justify getting the 12-course, though we passed on the 8-glass wine pairing, mainly because combining that amount of alcohol with extreme jet lag seemed like a poor decision.

The meal commenced with a small loaf of Swedish bread, warm from the oven and painstakingly wrapped in cloth. It was paired with goat’s milk butter (left) and pork fat with apple snaps (schnapps) and topped with potatoes and onion. This was, unequivocally, the best bread I’ve ever eaten in my life.

About now is where I had a glass of champagne that I later found out cost $58.

In this bowl are white strawberries, sorrel and a vinaigrette of unripe juniper berries. I started getting really giddy and said, “I’m having a shared emotional experience withe everyone in the restaurant right now.

This is “scallops and grains” – scallops blast frozen and sliced thin, then dried, served with a mix of grains and beechnuts over squid ink with seaweed oil.

Underneath the sorrel leaves is beef tartare with mustardseed oil and horseradish. We were instructed to take it with our fingers, drag it through the juniper leaf powder on the left, then scrape it through the tarragon emulsion at the bottom.

This was one of the most amazing dishes. It’s a langoustine caramelized on a hot beach stone. The dots on the left are a raw oyster emulsion (like mayonnaise) topped with seaweed powder. This, too, we were instructed to eat with our fingers by dragging it through the emulsion.

An oyster from mainland Denmark served in a mini-Le Cruset steamed with seaweed, stones and shells. The oyster was served with beach herbs, cream and tapioca pickled in vinegar.

Next was white asparagus served in sauce made from grilled green asparagus, with pine branches, rosemary salt, lightly whipped cream and pine shoots.

Above is pike perch, a freshwater fish, grilled in cabbage leaves with verbena sauce and topped with butter foam.

“Hen and egg,” my favorite dish of the night. A sizzling skillet resting in hay was set in front of each diner. The server squirted hay-infused oil into the skillet and told us each to crack our egg into it. He set a timer for 90 seconds while the egg fried.

We then added butter and sauteed the greens on the side. The server poured a sauce made from ramps and onions over the top, and we sprinkled on salt and herbs. Finally, we topped it with crispy potato (the curly-q in the background.)

The final savory course:

Veal sweetbreads with a compote of peas, nasturtiums, pea shoots, wild chervil, grilled baby garlic and grilled leek stem.

On to dessert! By now, about 3 hours into dinner, you can see the light was fading.

Ice cream made with bitters, served with milk crisps, dried milk crumbs and sorrel.

Green juniper ice cream with Spanish chervil “gel” and rhubarb sauce with rhubarb dice.

Burnt milk custard with frozen beets, freeze-dried currants and tarragon.

We ordered coffee, thinking the meal was complete (it was 12 courses, after all.) But lo! There were three surprise final desserts:

In this packet were caramels served inside a hollowed out marrow bone. We also received chocolate-covered potato chips with fennel and chocolate-covered lemon foam truffles.

More than four hours after entering, we staggered out of a noma in a daze. It’s easy to be cynical about food-obsessed culture, and we both have a healthy self-deprecation policy when it comes to food trends and fads. But let’s put aside cynicism for a moment. Dinner at noma was truly one of the most amazing experiences, culinary or otherwise, we have ever had.

Since we didn’t have a lot of time, we had to crunch a lot of things into a few hours. Lisa and I took a walk through the magnificent High Line urban park, ate lunch at The Meatball Shop in LES, drank too much beer & wine at Marshall Stack and then met good friends for dinner of ramen and pork buns at Momofuku Noodle Bar (well worth the exhaustive hype). We capped the night with “cereal milk” soft serve from the nearby Momofuku Milk Bar, which as you can guess, tasted exactly like the leftover milk after a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

This is all a warm up, of course, to our tour de force vacation through Denmark and Sweden, with a brief stop in Iceland. We’ll be posting photos and details of our trip there when we return.

But for long-suffering Mariners fans over the past couple of seasons, the well-cultivated ballpark food (and drink) is a welcome distraction from the gloomy product on the field most games. While I enjoy a street sausage or take-out banh mi as much as anyone, I also like the option of having palatable, reasonably affordable food inside the gates. For the 2010 season, the folks at Safeco Field rolled out options like poutine (we all know how I feel about poutine), a nifty grilled salmon sandwich and a gyro, accompanying the existing standbys like garlic fries and Ichiroll sushi.

This season, they’re upping the ante even further by bringing in big-name chefs Ethan Stowell, Roberto Santibañez and Bill Pustari as part of a complete remodel of the centerfield lower concourse, formerly the “Bullpen Market,” into “The ‘Pen.” Personally I’ve always referred to that outfield plaza/beer garden area as the “Meat Market” because of the rabid singles scene playing out at most weekend games. Now it’s vastly more open, with additions like a firepit and cocktail lounge. The beer stands are stocked with mass-market brews and microbrews – obviously, you HAVE to have beer at the ballgame.

But okay – the food. I was invited, along with some other local food bloggers and media, to a tasting of the new fare. In The ‘Pen, you can get…

New Haven-style pizza made with locally sourced ingredients, cooked in a custom-made oven:

Local grass-fed burgers with fries, plus sausages cooked in beer:

Crepes – sweet and savory:

Tortas (Mexican sandwiches) made with pork, chicken or beef, plus fresh-made guacamole and salsa:

My favorite was definitely the torta. Made to order, it had a soft, fresh-tasting bun, with distinct flavor and spice, including fresh avocado and jalapeños. A lot of times ballpark food is on the bland side, a result of catering to the palate of the masses. This was good enough that I would order it outside of a stadium.

My almost-completely-eaten torta:

The pizza was decent, and at $5 for a big slice, a surprisingly affordable option for a gametime snack. The crepes were fine, although I can’t really see myself ordering a crepe during a game. You could tell the burger was made with quality ingredients, particularly the bun, though again I’m not sure I would opt for a burger at the game in general. Nor would I probably pick regular fries over garlic fries, though the garlic aioli dipping sauce with these was addictive.

Overall I was pleased to see the way the new food options and ‘Pen area reflect a certain facet of the Seattle community and fanbase. Yeah, it’s the snobby, foodie facet, but what’s wrong with that? I’d rather have a local chef like Stowell showcasing his sporty side with a local flair than some generic lackluster patty.

But at the end of my visit, what I was MOST excited about (besides the $5 beer happy hour from 4:30-6 during game days)? The removal of the chain-link fences around the bullpens. Now I could, theoretically, reach out and high-five Felix Hernandez during warmups. Sweet.

If you’re one of those people who still doesn’t like Brussels sprouts, I’m not even going to try and convince you. Go read another blog post about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

But if you are one of those who appreciates the much-maligned mini-cabbage – when prepared correctly – you’ll love this recipe.

We generally make Brussels sprouts the way I make most vegetables: by tossing them in olive oil, salt and pepper, then roasting at 400 or so until lightly browned and tender. This is a great way to start if you’ve never had Brussels sprouts before. Try Ina’s recipe.

Last week, however, I discovered a new way to cook sprouts. I joined some friends at Smith - a local restaurant known for gastropubby food, good deals on drinks and taxidermied decor – and while we all agonized over the menu, we easily agreed on a certain dish for the table: Brussels sprouts with bacon and dates. No-brainer.

The dish disappeared fast between five hungry mouths, and we started to ponder what was in it, besides the obvious. The consensus was something tangy like creme fraiche, but we couldn’t figure it out.

So I decided to go to the source and ask Smith on Twitter. And after some logistical back and forth, they posted the recipe on their Facebook page.

Though the ingredient list was basic, I was a little nervous about trying a restaurant-style recipe with no real measurements. I shouldn’t have worried; it was straightforward to prepare and easy to multiply by a few factors to make enough for a side dish and leftovers.

And, most importantly, it tasted just like the restaurant version.

Smith’s Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Dates

Adapted from Smith

• 1 lb Brussels sprouts
• 3-4 strips good quality bacon
• 10-12 dates, chopped
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/3 cup cream
• olive oil

Cut the ends off the sprouts and slice them in half lengthwise. Chop up the bacon strips and saute in a large frying pan over medium heat until crispy. Set aside on a paper towel but leave the bacon grease in the pan.

Add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan and let it get hot. Add the sprouts, cut side down, and cook until the cut sides are a deep golden brown. You may be able to turn up the heat a bit, but make sure they are caramelizing and not burning. Also, your frying pan may not be large enough to fit all the cut sprouts – if so, just fire up another pan with some olive oil and cook them separately, then add them back into the big pan when browned.

Once the sprouts are browned and tender, add the bacon and chopped dates and toss until all is heated through.

Add the apple cider vinegar and toss, then add the cream and mix again. Let it bubble for a minute or so until the cream has reduced a bit. Taste and add a bit more vinegar or cream if needed.

Add salt and pepper to taste, toss again, and serve.