Food Glorious Food

Yesterday was spent running around pretty much the whole live-long day. It wasn't all bad. I first dropped off two boxes of clothing cleaned out from my closet. That lightened my load considerably. From there, it was time for my monthly pedicure, and that was nice.

After that it was a drive to the other side of town to pick up Big Bertha. While I was there, I learned that the problem with Big Bertha was just a build up of dirt and grime under the feed dogs, and that was preventing them from staying down. In essence, she was given an annual maintenance this time around, and this is annoying when you consider that I had her in for annual maintenance just last April...less than a year ago. In that time, I've done no quilting to speak of (none on Big Bertha...all on the Babylock machine), and so how did the machine get so dirty that it started malfunctioning? Well, the answer to that is easy: the old shop didn't do the maintenance I paid them to do, or else they did a pretty sh*tty job of it. So...I haven't actually hooked her back up again, but I did test the button that lowers the feed dogs, and that appears to be working. Needless to say, I'm really done with the old shop, which is too bad because I like doing business in my little town of Newberg. It's farther away to go to this different shop, but worth it if they'll give me better service.

And after that, I was just a block away from the grocery store, and so I picked up the staple items on my list, then home. Then, collapse in the chair and take a nap. I was tired after all that. Checking the mail, I found the remaining items I need for the February Stitch-along arrived.

The "blunts" on the left are used to blend pencil color after it's applied to the fabric. The brushes on the right are used to apply the Jacquard colorless fixative. It's all explained in Meg Hawkey's video about applying colored pencil to fabric. I'll get after that today since the stitch-along starts tomorrow.

From here on, I'm going to tell you about our evening out, and so if you're not into the food posts, there's nothing more to see here. And if you are, well come on in! This is The Painted Lady restaurant in Newberg, Oregon. You need to understand that Newberg is a small town of just over 20,000 people, and so it's impressive knowing there's a first class restaurant just down the hill from us. The chef there won a James Beard award.

We've been there many times for celebratory dinners. Last night's dinner was one of their "Experimental" dinners. Every Wednesday evening from December through March, they do an experimental tasting menu, and we'd signed up for the "Black Box Wine Pairing" menu...which is ironic because we brought our own bottle of wine.

Here's the menu:

I'll show the courses in order. First, this little Croquette of Swiss and Home-made Ham.

If you want to know how to make mashed potatoes even more decadent and delicious, simply add gruyere cheese and then deep fry it. Yum.

This next course was the mozzarella panna cotta. Those little radishes were sliced so thin they were transparent. On top is a thinly sliced red carrot, which made it look a little like bacon. Then all kinds of carrot yumminess surrounding it.

Next up was the scallop. That's a sort of pureed celery relish in front. I'm not a great fan of celery, but this was really good.

Then, the duck breast. Sometimes I'm squeamish about meat, but this was delicious. It was our favorite of all the things served up last night.

Then, the cheese course...I wasn't too fond of the hard cheese on the right. It was dry and sort of sucked all the saliva from my mouth. The rest was delicious though. There was a little pistachio biscuit there in the upper left, and that was downright scrumptious.

Finally, the "mignardises," which is a snotty French word for little sweets served after dessert. I guess technically we skipped the dessert course, but these were a good stand-in. From left to right there is a dark chocolate filled with a hazelnut liqueur. Then a little shortbread tart. I forget what it was stuffed with. Then a little tiny macaroon sandwich stuffed with white chocolate. Finally a little apricot gumdrop. Very tasty.

I'm a fan of sweet wines, and so at the end of a meal like this, I splurge on a glass of sherry or port or whatever sweet wine they serve up. This one happens to be a port from Portugal. It was very nice.

So it's a lot of courses, but not a lot of food. We were satisfied, but not stuffed when we left. All in all, a very nice evening out. We haven't been out for a nice dinner in quite some time.

Today I have a day at home. I have a couple of housekeeping chores to do, but then I'll get back to work on Cricket's pawtrait. I'm hoping I can have the collage portion finished today. Now that Big Bertha is back, I'll be able to do the thread painting that follows.