One of the restaurants I've wanted to visit since it opened, plus it made that top ten list I am so woefully behind on.
I will not attempt to give Poppy a review as there are many many reviews available by people who are much better writers. I will say that I enjoyed it and if you have not been it is worth a visit. Lots of great flavors and it is fun discovering all the dishes served on the Thali platters. Desserts very yummy!. Vegetarian friendly.
If you are thinking this is the herb farm "light", don't. This is a unique restaurant (not that I've been to the herb farm yet-but I have salivated over the menus)
Visit, let me know what you think.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Easy Fall Soup
Curried Carrot Orange Soup
1 tablespoon oil
2 teaspoons curry powder (more or less depending on your like of curry)
1 garlic clove pressed
1 teaspoons grated ginger root
1/2 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 pound carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch-thick rounds
1 medium bay leaf
3 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup canned coconut milk (lite)
Add the spices and garlic to the oil. Cook about 1 minute. Add ginger, onion, carrots, bay leaf and broth. Cook until carrots tender. 15-20 min. Blend in batches or use hand held "blender stick". Return to pot and add OJ and coconut milk. Reheat and serve warm.
Serve with a salad for a nice lunch or light dinner. I served with an salad of lettuce, spiced pecans, apples, blue cheese and a homemade honey vinegar dressing.
The recipe is easy to adjust for a crowd, I quadrupled for a work lunch.
1 tablespoon oil
2 teaspoons curry powder (more or less depending on your like of curry)
1 garlic clove pressed
1 teaspoons grated ginger root
1/2 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 pound carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch-thick rounds
1 medium bay leaf
3 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup canned coconut milk (lite)
Add the spices and garlic to the oil. Cook about 1 minute. Add ginger, onion, carrots, bay leaf and broth. Cook until carrots tender. 15-20 min. Blend in batches or use hand held "blender stick". Return to pot and add OJ and coconut milk. Reheat and serve warm.
Serve with a salad for a nice lunch or light dinner. I served with an salad of lettuce, spiced pecans, apples, blue cheese and a homemade honey vinegar dressing.
The recipe is easy to adjust for a crowd, I quadrupled for a work lunch.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Fall Treats
Time for some fall sweets.
Pumpkin Cheesecake.
This is the first cheesecake I ever made. I made this in the fall of 1991 from the November issue of Gourmet. I wanted to see if I could make it look just like the picture. Today the picture of the cake looks about the same, wish I could say the same about pictures of me.
Chocolate Cheese Cake w/oops topping.
After learning that cheesecakes were much easier than I thought, I started making many different flavors. Chocolate tends to make people happy! The topping was my oops as it was supposed to be a wrapping but was a little too thin. Somehow I don't think people will mind
Red Wine Carmel Apples. From the October issue of Gourmet.
Pretty easy, though a bit sticky.
Pumpkin Cheesecake.
This is the first cheesecake I ever made. I made this in the fall of 1991 from the November issue of Gourmet. I wanted to see if I could make it look just like the picture. Today the picture of the cake looks about the same, wish I could say the same about pictures of me.
Chocolate Cheese Cake w/oops topping.
After learning that cheesecakes were much easier than I thought, I started making many different flavors. Chocolate tends to make people happy! The topping was my oops as it was supposed to be a wrapping but was a little too thin. Somehow I don't think people will mind
Red Wine Carmel Apples. From the October issue of Gourmet.
Pretty easy, though a bit sticky.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
H1N1-Not food related
I needed a place to post this. A message from a local hospital to the staff. Trying to combat some of the misinformation out there.
=============================================
As you know, all employees, medical staff and volunteers are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated for novel H1N1 flu as soon as possible as vaccines become available. (Please see our Flu Vaccinations page for information about when and where you can get vaccinated.)
Young people are being hit especially hard by novel H1N1. According to the CDC, 78% of those hospitalized for novel H1N1 from Aug. 30 to Oct. 10 this year were under age 50.
If you are in this age group or have family members who are, please read the message below.
One doctor’s story
The email below was written on Oct. 13 by an ED doctor at a Midwestern hospital, who sent it to one of our board members. It was written to one of the doctor’s relatives, who had received an email rumor that said taking Vitamin D is as effective against H1N1 as the vaccine, and that also questioned the safety of the vaccine.
(Both the doctor and the parents of the child have given us permission to share this story. However, to protect their privacy, names and identifying details have been removed.)
I got forwarded your email about what I thought of the [H1N1] flu vaccine. First, some data so that we're on the same page:
H1N1 (swine flu) is has a transmission rate of about 30%. What that means is that this virus is incredibly infectious. If you contact someone with swine flu, you have a nearly one in three chance of picking it up from that one contact. Multiple contacts obviously increase that chance. A whole winter in malls and restaurants and offices. . . Bottom line, you and your family WILL get H1N1 if you do not get vaccinated—unless you move to a cabin far in the woods and have no contact with anyone until next summer. You WILL get this. Period.
The average person who gets H1N1 gets a high fever, headache, cough and feels horrible for about a week. Then they are fine. H1N1 has a mortality rate of about 0.2%. That's one in 500. Not too bad odds for betting. Fairly low for any one person, but approach it this way:
If there are 500 kids in [your daughter]'s school, one of them is going to die from swine flu this winter. Odds are, she will know this person.
Now the really nasty part.
H1N1, as of last week, has caused 79 deaths in children since April of this year. Nineteen of these deaths were last week. Average for an influenza season is 70 to 80 deaths. So, we are already passing what is normal for a year, and we haven't even started the winter.
More so, the rate of kids dying seems to be speeding up: 60 from April to September and then 19 in the first week of October. The number now is at least 80. How do I know this? Have a look at the attached photo. [Photo shows a young boy and girl in a pool.]
The girl in the middle of the pool is your niece. The little boy on the right is dead. Influenza caused an encephalitis and ravaged his brain, and he was pronounced dead at 7:20 a.m. today. His father is one of my partners. Yesterday I stood over his lifeless little body in the Pediatric ICU at Minneapolis Children's Hospital while his mother cried in my arms. Today I will help his father figure out where to bury him.
People these days are afraid of vaccines. Why? Because they haven't seen the awful things that vaccines prevent. Parents these days have not seen polio, mumps, measles, smallpox, etc. They hear stories of autism and listen to [actress] Jenny McCarthy, and they fear the boogie man they can see; they have completely forgotten about the one that our grandparents eradicated for us.
Never mind that there is absolutely NO accurate information—people are choosing to listen to Jenny McCarthy and not the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People are choosing to listen to the same source of information that produced the stories about spiders underneath your toilet biting your behind and killing you. People fear documented vaccine complications like Guillain Barre disease, never mind that the risk of this has been documented to be one in 1 million.
The risk of dying from swine flu is one in 500—higher for our children—but we instead try to avoid a one in a million complication risk from the vaccination? Your lifetime risk of death in a car accident is one in 84, yet how many times did you buckle your baby into the car seat to run some pointless and unnecessary errand? Please take the time to open this article and look at the risk chart. Look at what is number five.
The [email containing the internet rumor about Vitamin D] you were forwarded makes claims about the production of the new vaccine that are patently untrue. Please read the CDC’s website on this issue, especially "Will this vaccine be made differently than the seasonal influenza vaccine?” The answer is: “No. This vaccine will be made using the same processes and facilities that are used to make the currently licensed seasonal influenza vaccines."
There are no easy answers. There is no Vitamin D cure. There is no global conspiracy amongst doctors and big pharma.
My prediction is this: Thousands of children will die unnecessarily this winter because their parents took the word of Fox News and scare tactic emails and their accountant friends who proclaim to know "the truth" about vaccinations.
I apologize for the tone of this email, but it reflects the fact that I am sitting here alone in a cold house because I have sent my family away. I am unwilling to risk bringing home a disease from work that killed my friend's baby this morning.
When you make your decisions on this, do the research. Do not take the advice of any one source, including me. But please, for the love of God, do not make decisions about the well-being of yourself and your children based on the unsubstantiated, uninformed recommendations of an unsolicited email or a newscaster.
Stay up to date
staff, physicians and volunteers in the NWSA can stay up to date on flu through our internal Flu Resources website. Be sure to check our Flu Vaccinations page for information about getting vaccinated.
Thank you for all you are doing to protect our patients and community and to stay healthy during flu season.
Best wishes,
=============================================
As you know, all employees, medical staff and volunteers are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated for novel H1N1 flu as soon as possible as vaccines become available. (Please see our Flu Vaccinations page for information about when and where you can get vaccinated.)
Young people are being hit especially hard by novel H1N1. According to the CDC, 78% of those hospitalized for novel H1N1 from Aug. 30 to Oct. 10 this year were under age 50.
If you are in this age group or have family members who are, please read the message below.
One doctor’s story
The email below was written on Oct. 13 by an ED doctor at a Midwestern hospital, who sent it to one of our board members. It was written to one of the doctor’s relatives, who had received an email rumor that said taking Vitamin D is as effective against H1N1 as the vaccine, and that also questioned the safety of the vaccine.
(Both the doctor and the parents of the child have given us permission to share this story. However, to protect their privacy, names and identifying details have been removed.)
I got forwarded your email about what I thought of the [H1N1] flu vaccine. First, some data so that we're on the same page:
H1N1 (swine flu) is has a transmission rate of about 30%. What that means is that this virus is incredibly infectious. If you contact someone with swine flu, you have a nearly one in three chance of picking it up from that one contact. Multiple contacts obviously increase that chance. A whole winter in malls and restaurants and offices. . . Bottom line, you and your family WILL get H1N1 if you do not get vaccinated—unless you move to a cabin far in the woods and have no contact with anyone until next summer. You WILL get this. Period.
The average person who gets H1N1 gets a high fever, headache, cough and feels horrible for about a week. Then they are fine. H1N1 has a mortality rate of about 0.2%. That's one in 500. Not too bad odds for betting. Fairly low for any one person, but approach it this way:
If there are 500 kids in [your daughter]'s school, one of them is going to die from swine flu this winter. Odds are, she will know this person.
Now the really nasty part.
H1N1, as of last week, has caused 79 deaths in children since April of this year. Nineteen of these deaths were last week. Average for an influenza season is 70 to 80 deaths. So, we are already passing what is normal for a year, and we haven't even started the winter.
More so, the rate of kids dying seems to be speeding up: 60 from April to September and then 19 in the first week of October. The number now is at least 80. How do I know this? Have a look at the attached photo. [Photo shows a young boy and girl in a pool.]
The girl in the middle of the pool is your niece. The little boy on the right is dead. Influenza caused an encephalitis and ravaged his brain, and he was pronounced dead at 7:20 a.m. today. His father is one of my partners. Yesterday I stood over his lifeless little body in the Pediatric ICU at Minneapolis Children's Hospital while his mother cried in my arms. Today I will help his father figure out where to bury him.
People these days are afraid of vaccines. Why? Because they haven't seen the awful things that vaccines prevent. Parents these days have not seen polio, mumps, measles, smallpox, etc. They hear stories of autism and listen to [actress] Jenny McCarthy, and they fear the boogie man they can see; they have completely forgotten about the one that our grandparents eradicated for us.
Never mind that there is absolutely NO accurate information—people are choosing to listen to Jenny McCarthy and not the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People are choosing to listen to the same source of information that produced the stories about spiders underneath your toilet biting your behind and killing you. People fear documented vaccine complications like Guillain Barre disease, never mind that the risk of this has been documented to be one in 1 million.
The risk of dying from swine flu is one in 500—higher for our children—but we instead try to avoid a one in a million complication risk from the vaccination? Your lifetime risk of death in a car accident is one in 84, yet how many times did you buckle your baby into the car seat to run some pointless and unnecessary errand? Please take the time to open this article and look at the risk chart. Look at what is number five.
The [email containing the internet rumor about Vitamin D] you were forwarded makes claims about the production of the new vaccine that are patently untrue. Please read the CDC’s website on this issue, especially "Will this vaccine be made differently than the seasonal influenza vaccine?” The answer is: “No. This vaccine will be made using the same processes and facilities that are used to make the currently licensed seasonal influenza vaccines."
There are no easy answers. There is no Vitamin D cure. There is no global conspiracy amongst doctors and big pharma.
My prediction is this: Thousands of children will die unnecessarily this winter because their parents took the word of Fox News and scare tactic emails and their accountant friends who proclaim to know "the truth" about vaccinations.
I apologize for the tone of this email, but it reflects the fact that I am sitting here alone in a cold house because I have sent my family away. I am unwilling to risk bringing home a disease from work that killed my friend's baby this morning.
When you make your decisions on this, do the research. Do not take the advice of any one source, including me. But please, for the love of God, do not make decisions about the well-being of yourself and your children based on the unsubstantiated, uninformed recommendations of an unsolicited email or a newscaster.
Stay up to date
staff, physicians and volunteers in the NWSA can stay up to date on flu through our internal Flu Resources website. Be sure to check our Flu Vaccinations page for information about getting vaccinated.
Thank you for all you are doing to protect our patients and community and to stay healthy during flu season.
Best wishes,
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Dinner with Strangers
Every year the school my daughter attends plans an event to encourage the parents to mix and mingle. it's a good excuse to plan an nice fall menu.
This year I found recipes in a couple local books and was inspired by some Italian themed foods. The core dishes were simple dishes that would be easy to make for a weekday meal.
I did however forget to take pictures.
• Antipasti
• Assorted Crostini
• Sexy baked olives w/feta
• Gala apple, blue cheese & pecan salad
• Cannellini beans w/garlic & sage
• Roasted butternut squash w/shallots & rosemary
• Halibut w/roasted shallot pinot noir sauce
• Molten Chocolate Cake w/Blood Orange Sauce
In general everything worked except the beans, though I think the beans would have worked as part of another dish with more flavor. The chocolate cakes were of course very popular, but then again good chocolate pretty much makes any dish.
I also want to recommend the Fresh Fish Company on 24th and 80th. I often forget about them and their Halibut was prefect!
This year I found recipes in a couple local books and was inspired by some Italian themed foods. The core dishes were simple dishes that would be easy to make for a weekday meal.
I did however forget to take pictures.
• Antipasti
• Assorted Crostini
• Sexy baked olives w/feta
• Gala apple, blue cheese & pecan salad
• Cannellini beans w/garlic & sage
• Roasted butternut squash w/shallots & rosemary
• Halibut w/roasted shallot pinot noir sauce
• Molten Chocolate Cake w/Blood Orange Sauce
In general everything worked except the beans, though I think the beans would have worked as part of another dish with more flavor. The chocolate cakes were of course very popular, but then again good chocolate pretty much makes any dish.
I also want to recommend the Fresh Fish Company on 24th and 80th. I often forget about them and their Halibut was prefect!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The End of an Era
The October issue of Gourmet had an somewhat over the top article about the restaurant meals you could enjoy with $1000. I enjoyed the read but planned a rather sarcastic commentary. Though the truth is I'd love to "take the $1000 challenge" in Seattle.
This week it was announced that Gourmet would be shut down after the November issue. I find this very sad and think the cooking world is going to be missing an important voice. Gourmet might not be the everyday cook's guide book, but the stories about food and people are wonderful.
Some may find issue with comparing it to the loss of our local newspapers, but it really is the same thing. Investigative journalism and in depth reporting are going the way of snippets and sound bytes (god I sound old). Here I am on a blog, I would say I'm part of the problem but I think I reach maybe 20 people.
Ruth Reichl the editor of Gourmet, is amazing. I know she will have lots of opportunities but I will miss the regular delivery of her voice. I was lucky enough to hear her speak this year and she was as funny, unassuming and as "real life" as you would hope. She is not a food snob, she is a food lover. While I may never understand or and have the opportunity of appreciate the food world in the same way, I enjoy having a small glimpse into that world. I don't think I'm going to get that from the food network.
I may either have to cook all the recipes of the last issue or try that $1000 eating frenzy as a way to say good-bye. I will miss Gourmet.
Does this make the 100's of old magazines in my basement instant collectors items?
This week it was announced that Gourmet would be shut down after the November issue. I find this very sad and think the cooking world is going to be missing an important voice. Gourmet might not be the everyday cook's guide book, but the stories about food and people are wonderful.
Some may find issue with comparing it to the loss of our local newspapers, but it really is the same thing. Investigative journalism and in depth reporting are going the way of snippets and sound bytes (god I sound old). Here I am on a blog, I would say I'm part of the problem but I think I reach maybe 20 people.
Ruth Reichl the editor of Gourmet, is amazing. I know she will have lots of opportunities but I will miss the regular delivery of her voice. I was lucky enough to hear her speak this year and she was as funny, unassuming and as "real life" as you would hope. She is not a food snob, she is a food lover. While I may never understand or and have the opportunity of appreciate the food world in the same way, I enjoy having a small glimpse into that world. I don't think I'm going to get that from the food network.
I may either have to cook all the recipes of the last issue or try that $1000 eating frenzy as a way to say good-bye. I will miss Gourmet.
Does this make the 100's of old magazines in my basement instant collectors items?
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