The Morning After

The mascarpone is looking good. It was pretty set this morning, like Greek yogurt thickness. There was some liquid in the bottom, but not much. I poured hot water over a linen dish towel to sterilize it per the directions. If you try this at home, kids, use tongs to hold the towel, not your fingers. The directions said to hang dry, but since it's hard to wring out a steaming hot towel (see tongs use above), it was going to take forever to dry. I should have done it last night. Since I'm not exactly the patient type, I brought the towel back upstairs from the laundry room and hung it over the oven door, still hot from making bacon, to dry. I lined a strainer with the towel and dumped in the cheese, twisting the top, putting it over a bowl and into the fridge. It's drained about 1 cup maybe of liquid so far, maybe a bit more.

Seattle

This past weekend we visited our friends who live in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. They were great hosts, showing us Seattle's best. We visited the market, galleries, farmers markets, shops, parks and great restaurants and bakeries. Considering all the pizza we make between the two of us, it's fitting that the first Seattle post is about the Ballard Farmers' Market. The market is a block or two long, with a double row of tents.



We cruised around for breakfast since the cafe we planned to go to was closed for the holiday. Luckily, these girls were cranking out some delicious crepes. We split a ham, cheese and spinach crepe and a Nutella and banana one with whipped cream.



Sorry, no pics of our actual crepes. Between coffee, crepes and cameras, our hands were full. They were delicious, although I could have used a bit more filling in the ham and cheese one.

We bought ingredients for dinner (more later) and the boys got in line for pizza while we finished up. The flight attendant and the guy seated next to us both raved about the pizza at the market. Here's the clay oven cart.




And the pizza. This was the special of the day and it was delicious. Asparagus, onion, tomatoes. The crust was very, very thin. Super crispy on the edges and softer in the middle. Just the right balance of toppings. Fresh. Hot. Slightly smoky. We also had a meat version with a light tomato sauce. I preferred the veggie.