Seattle 2011, part 3

On Tuesday after breakfast we drove to Tacoma (why not?) and went to a motorcycle parts shop. Fun for Kirk, tolerable for me. We drove around downtown Tacoma, which is actually quite pretty and has nice looking museums. The only thing I knew of Tacoma previously was the Neko Case song:

We drove back just after noon and parked the car at the hotel, had a little nap (another big part of our vacation ritual), and went for a walk. We walked all the way through downtown, around Pioneer Square, and back. It's about a 5 mile walk (I checked on Google Maps).

On the way back we were pretty tired and hungry, so we stopped at Petra Mediterranean Bistro in Belltown.

The decor was beautiful and it was full of nice looking, well-dressed people in their fifties, so we figured it must be pretty good. I had a glass of French white wine, and the red lentil soup to start.

Now, the red lentil soup at Nuba is my favourite and a lot to live up to. It's the kind of soup I dream about at night. This soup was really good, but not quite Nuba-worthy. Still, I enjoyed it all the same.

As an entree I had the Veggie Combo, which was piled high with Spanish rice, falafels, dolmathes, hummus and baba ganouje. Other than the rice, which was pretty dry, it was fantastic! I pretty well licked every morsel of the baba ganouje off the plate it was so good. Kirk had the spanakopita plate, which was disappointing. It had three small spanakopitas and he said it tasted like they had been previously frozen and they were dry. I felt a little bad eating mine with such gusto, and I did offer to share.

One of my favourite past times in the U.S. is to look at the selection of alcoholic beverages they sell in grocery stores (gasp!). After dinner we went browsing and I found this single bottle of organic ale at the Metropolitan Market near our hotel. The beer lived up to it's gorgeously irresistible label.

Tomorrow: Another burger bar post. Seriously, wasn't one enough? Apparently not...

This Week in My Kitchen: Veggie Lentil Soup with Herbed Tea Biscuits, Pralines & Ice Cream

Okay, "This Week in My Kitchen" is a little misleading. It's more like last month in my kitchen - I'm a bit behind. But what are you gonna do?

Slow Cooker Veggie Lentil Soup with Herbed Tea Biscuits
I'm trying to use my slow cooker more often, and a proliferation of root vegetables from Spud made veggie soup the perfect option.

 I cut up some shallots, garlic, potatoes, carrots, leeks and celeriac and added them to some dried brown lentils and veggie broth in my slow cooker.

  I cooked it on high for several hours (4 or 5 - I can't remember exactly), and served it piping hot with some herbed tea biscuits.

I use the Fancy Biscuits recipe in How it All Vegan as a jumping off point for my biscuits. This time I made them with dill, oregano, parsley and onion seeds. They were delicious and went really quickly, as usual!

Pralines & Ice Cream
I had a sweet tooth one night and had some pecans in the cupboard, so I decided to make pralines (which I made once before) to go with some So Good Vanilla Ice Cream we had in the freezer. I used the same recipe, since they came out so well before, but I used almond milk instead of soy, and I added some fresh nutmeg.

Last time I made pralines I was really wishing I had a candy thermometer. Well, I went out and bought one and used it, but it was a dud! It maxed out at about 95 degrees! I kept stirring and stirring and the temperature didn't budge. Finally, it was looking like the soft ball stage that I remembered from last time, so I got out my digital thermometer and tested it. Sure enough, 120 degrees. So the new candy thermometer went in the trash and I went about finishing up the prailines.

Pralines cooling on some parchment. It's hard to resist them!

 Pralines & Ice Cream - yum!