To say that I liked Michael Jackson while growing up is an understatement. I was obsessed with him. I used to day dream while looking outside my fourth grade classroom window, while kicking in swim practice, while laying in bed at night, that I was riding on the Pirates of Caribbean with him. Supposedly, he had this very ride recreated for him at Neverland. (not sure if this is true, but a little girl can dream right?) It was just the two of us in a boat, gliding through the calm water. For some reason, this was my dream.

I remember in that same 4th grade classroom, hiding my absolute favorite and tattered issue of ‘Dynamite’ magazine, with MJ gracing the cover, in my desk. Every few minutes, I would open my desk and peek inside, just to make sure he was still with me. And then I would smile. This didn’t go unnoticed. Ms. Winer caught me one day, and I remember how humiliated I was when she opened my desk and pulled out the magazine, waving it around and asking, “Sara, what is this? Do you want to share it with the rest of the class?” Flushing bright red, I was speechless. But, inside I was screaming, “NO, he is MINE.” She took him away from me, for home period at least.

I remember meeting a childhood friend for the first time at a park. Awkward that we were thrust together to play without ever having seen each other before, the first words out of my mouth were, “do you like Michael Jackson?” When she replied that she did, I knew that a longtime friendship had been born.

I remember being so envious of Monica, who showed up to school for Halloween, wearing a replica of Michael’s famous red leather jacket and glove. It was the icing on her Halloween costume. I was a Michael Jackson monster, complete with afro mask and all.

And, I remember when Thriller came out. I remember sitting for hours and hours, listening to the whole record over and over until I knew all the songs and all the words to all the songs. I did this with every record and tape I bought. I had to know the words. But, this was different. I loved every song and would just sit and listen to the album, singing along to the lyrics printed on the inside sleeve, gazing longingly at the picture of him, sprawled out holding tightly onto a Tiger. I wanted to be that Tiger.

I remember the many times, driving in the well aged, rust colored 280Z with my mom, when Thriller would come on the radio. I would ask to adjust the volume, and then I would sing at the top of my lungs. Every word. I knew every single word.

These are the memories that I have of Michael Jackson, before all the allegations, the surgeries, the baby dangling. While I was aware of these things, they never tarnished my image of him. He was my idol, my childhood hero, my crush. And, today, I am crushed.

A Cool Strawberry treat. Ooh Ah.




When I think of Frozen Yogurt, it reminds me of all those times in high school where we jumped in the convertible bug and headed to the Yogurt Stop. I think my diet at the time consisted of frozen yogurt, rice with soy sauce, Diet Coke, cookies from SAGA (the cafeteria) and bagels from Bagelworks (best place ever). Ah, Carbs.

Frozen Yogurt was such a fad back then, and now it has made its resurgence more than ever with the NEW wave of frozen yogurt. This time, it is being made with REAL yogurt. Go figure.

I have been itching to make ice cream since it has been over a year since I was creating many of the flavors for Poco Carretto. Spinning gelatos was one of my favorite things to do, and oh how I miss my daily spoonfuls. Now that Seattle is having some summerlike weather, I decided to celebrate it by churning up some frozen yogurt for myself. Funny, I have the best intentions when I set out to cook or bake anything these days. It is difficult to follow through when a 10 month old is threatening to pull down your gaucho pants. This week, that same 10 month old had his first cold. So, what started out as the beginnings of a lovely strawberry frozen yogurt during his lengthy morning nap, ended up as a yogurt ice by evening when I decided to speed up the process..chilling the liquid mixture for “just a few minutes,” in the freezer, while I put him to bed. What started as "a few minutes" turned into an hour, and when I came to rescue my yogurt, it was no longer liquid, but a nice sold mass.

Ah, Crap.

I would have thawed and respun it to try to recreate the texture that I wanted and that it was supposed to be, but the yogurt was already in that metal core. This would have meant that I needed to thaw the whole core, then refreeze it..further delaying the time in which the frozen yogurt would actually reach my mouth. Yikes. So, I threw in the towel, sucked it up, got a spoon and dug in anyway. What I discovered was that even though this wasn’t the frozen yogurt I had in mind, it was a nice refreshing and icy treat, especially nice on a muggy Seattle night.


Strawberry Frozen Yogurt or Frozen Yogurt Ice (whichever you choose, or whichever chooses you..)

Adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

1 pound fresh Strawberries (good ones)
2/3 cups sugar
1 cup plain whole fat yogurt. (I used the European Style yogurt from Trader Joes)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt

Quarter and macerate the Strawberries with the sugar ans salt. Let sit for an hour. Puree berries and mix in with yogurt and lemon juice. Chill in fridge for an hour. heh, or throw in the freezer if you want an icy texture. To make it like a granita, give it a stir every 30 minutes to create a jagged snow cone-like texture. You can even pour it into popsicle molds. But, if you want more of an actual ice cream texture, consult your ice cream maker.

Hummus at homeus.

It has been a fun and messy road, introducing solid foods to Baby Z. A few weeks back, I introduced hummus. He loves it, like most things so far, to my delight.
I started with a basic chickpea hummus and since then I have gotten quite creative…white bean, mixed bean, lentil…all with pleasing results. Making it at home results in a far superior product than any store will carry. For some reason, I am always disappointed with store bought hummus (with the exception of one), and now I will never go back to buying it again.

A basic Hummus consists of cooked beans, tahini, garlic, lemon and salt. I noticed that a lot of recipes add a bunch of oil, but I think the tahini lends the fat to the dip, so all it really needs is a little drizzle of good oil over the top. I add a little water when I puree sometimes, especially for Z who needs things a little less sticcccccky.

Lentil Hummus.

2 cups cooked lentils
½ cup tahini
3 cloves garlic
¼-1/3 cup lemon juice
1-2 teaspoons salt
2-4 Tablespoons water
Drizzle of olive oil over the top..

I included a range for most of the ingredients, as everyone has different tastes, and hummus is extremely versatile. Just stick everything but the water in the Cuisinart and whiz. Add water as needed. This is a good basic recipe that you can try using different beans, and adding more herbs to as well.

Super Low Maintenance Ginger Biscotti...

My life as of late doesn’t feel super low maintenance, so it’s nice to a have a biscotti recipe that is. I am talking, one bowl, no mixer required. They are actually low fat too, something that I usually don’t seek, (as I look down at my left over baby belly), even though maybe I should. I happened across a version of this recipe when I was in Kauai with my parents and Z in February. I enjoy baking for my parents, and in particular, they like my biscotti, so I decided to plop babe down to watch some Sesame Street and whip these up super quick. And super quick, they are. I had some challenges there, in the humidity that is Kauai, and my dough was super wet. But, in my haste and being all caught up in the moment of being low maintenance, I just plopped the dough on the cookie sheet and threw it, not too literally, into the oven. What emerged was a surprise. I thought that without butter or oil, these things would not be too edible. Hey, what do I know? I just love fat in my baked goods. I was so pleasantly surprised with the flavor of the ginger and the lovely crunchy texture. Perfect for dunking in that cup of Kona coffee. Sigh. Today, in grey Seattle, as I made these same cookies…(a late Mothers Day gift, Mom!)...I wasn’t at all surprised that the dough was much less wet, yet they yielded the same crisp and lightly fragranced cookie…and, once again, I am transported to the lanai, sipping my Kona coffee, biscotti in hand.

SLMG Biscotti.

½ cup crystallized ginger, chopped
1 cup flour
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons fresh grated ginger
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1 egg white


Combine dry ingredients in a bowl with whisk. Set aside. Mix eggs together separately to combine then pour into flour mixture. Fold eggs into flour, using hands if you knead to help incorporate it. take care not to overmix. Add crystallized ginger just to combine. Lightly flour counter and roll dough into a log. Place on nonstick cookie sheet, or silpat and bake at 350, for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool slightly, then cut into biscotti into ½ cookies. Bake again, for about 10 minutes more, until nicely golden. Makes about 1 ½ dozen.

Australasia, revisted.

It is easy now to look back on my previous life and how things have changed so much in the last 9 months. Hard to believe that it has been almost a year since I hung up my apron and walked out of the kitchen of Café Juanita, a year since I made, daily, 5# Focaccia, 10# of Potato Bread, enough gelato to fill my home freezer, and desserts to keep me satisfied for days and days and months.
Harder yet to believe, is that for me, there was life even before my previous life as a Baker and Pastry Chef, a life in which I was a recently graduated science major from UW, a life just after I hung up my cap, goggles and swimsuit, my sole identity for the 18 years prior. I call this period of my life the lost years. I think, looking back, that it was the time in my life in which I was really the most unhappy..when I really had no idea what to do next. I had just finished living the greatest 4 years of my life, and here I was, graduated, no longer a swimmer, with no job prospects and a dwindling support system of friends still living in Seattle.

It was 1996 and I moved out of the college house that I shared with my best friends in the world and into a foreign house, with two good friends that hadn’t left Seattle once college ended. We lived in Ballard, which at the time, hadn’t yet experienced the resurgence of cool. Back in ’96, it was kind of dead, its main street still bearing the look of an era long bygone. I used to spend my days in the coffee shops, writing letters to old friends (back before email was a mainstay..) and trying to figure out my next move. Ironically, I remember there was a bakery around the corner from our house, one that, now, has become the beating heart of Ballard as far as French Pastries are concerned.

I graduated with a Zoology degree and had dreams of becoming a Veterinarian, but given a less than stellar performance in Organic Chemistry and Physics, I just wasn’t sure whether I could hack it. So, I applied for an internship at the Woodland Park Zoo and thought maybe I could intern alongside the resident Vet.

The Zoo is one of the hardest places to find an actual paying job, so I started where anyone would, as a volunteer. I was assigned to the Australasia exhibit, which housed the Snow Leopards, the Tree Kangaroos, the Wallaroos, the Laughing Kookaburra, the Potaroo
(Pota-who? you ask?) and the Mountain Parrot.

As a Vonlunteer in Australasia, a few things were certain: I could never tend to the Snow Leopards by myself, for obvious reasons…I could clean the female Tree Kangaroo’s cage, but not the neighboring male, who was known to throw his poop in your direction and, I had to watch my back when cleaning the Emu’s pen, as they tend to like chasing humans.

As you can imagine, I was assigned to the most menial and labor intensive of duties…and, the least glamorous. Not feeling too comfortable in my skin as it was, this was somewhat embarrassing at times when people would walk by the exhibits only to see me cleaning up after the Parrot who kept throwing his newly prepped and placed food on the ground and pooping in the area of the cage that I had just hosed and scrubbed. I was the poop lady. I spent most of my days cleaning the pens and, when I was through, I spent the rest of my time, filling wheelbarrows with hay to lay in the Wallaroo’s exhibit. Sometimes, when the keepers felt sorry for me, they would give me something different to do, like lining the Leopards (empty!) pen with cat nip and other sensory treats hidden in pine cones. One time, I remember blowing Emu eggs and scrambling the innards into a nice omelet. So good. And by the way, Emu eggs are huge and a beautiful green color.

My morning would begin with a walk through the Zoo at sunrise, with coffee in hand. Not a terrible way to start the day. I would walk past all my ‘friends’ and say hello. The Hippos’s, The Meerkats and The Pallas Cat all happened to be on my way to Australasia. Then, upon arrival, I would spend a couple hours weighing poop in baggies before my afternoon of cleaning poop in the pens. Weighing poop you ask? Why yes, I was helping in some experiment in which I had to weigh the poop of the tree kangaroo, daily. To this day, I am still not quite sure what that was all about.

I laugh when I look back on my days at the zoo. I had kind of a love hate relationship with the place. I have the utmost respect for the keepers. Probably one of the most difficult jobs out there. I didn’t really love all the cleaning, and the poop, but I did love seeing all the animals on a daily basis.

Now, with Baby, I have rekindled my relationship with the Wallaroos, this time from the other side of the fence, looking in.

Irish Sod-y Bread.

Everytime I make Irish Soda Bread, I am flooded with memories of St. Patricks Day at the Bakery. It was such a crazy affair, pages and pages of handscrawled special orders, counting and recounting all loaves accounted for, mixing and shaping and baking as fast as we could. I remember the order of Buttermilk that we would receive the day prior; it took up every inch of our reach in fridge. The bags and bags of flour, the pounds and pounds of butter. And I remember pulling an all nighter, starting our bake at midnight the night before just so nothing unforeseen could surprise us the next day. A missed order. Late Menu Planners. One year, I remember coming up with the idea to dye the bread green. Not the best idea, our wooden workbenches were dyed green for weeks, and so, too, were our everyday loaves of honey white, sourdough..

During the normal week, we would only offer Soda Bread of Saturdays, and it was these mornings that we could barely keep up with the customers that filled the front lobby. We almost always ran out of Soda Bread, and each week, we would up the par. Not sure why we didn’t just offer it more times during the week. We had so many breads that we did daily, and the Soda Bread pretty much trumped them all.

There is something nice about Soda Bread. In a bakery where yeast was king, this bread was the quickest to throw together. In a pinch, you could just make more…not the case with the 12 other breads that spent their days rising in buckets and garbage pails strewn about.
Soda Bread is probably the easiest bread to make too. No need to have any kneading know how, this bread shines with a light touch and its craggily imperfect top.

Today, in honor of St. Patricks Day, I decided to step back in time and make some Soda Bread. Normally, I am a purest when it comes to this bread, (just flour, butter, sugar, baking soda, salt and buttermilk) but today, I decided to add a little pizzazz, some whiskey soaked raisins. I wont mention that I didn’t have any Irish Whiskey on hand and had to go with Bourbon instead….no, I didn’t just say that, in case you are Irish. I was pretty happy with the result. The Raisins added an additional depth of flavor, which was a really nice complement to my Guinness and Beef Stew. (thanks Carrie!)

Recipe: adapted from the Bread Bible.

1 cup raisins
1/2 cup whiskey
2 oz butter
2 cups flour
3 Tabl sugar
1 teas baking soda
3/4 teas salt
3/4 (give or take a little) cup buttermilk

soak raisins in rum for 30 minutes, at least. or up to overnight..drain and reserve the whiskey for another use...(or drink it!)
mix together dry ingredients and rub the butter into the flour mix until resembles a coarse meal. add the raisins and toss. add buttermilk and mix just to incorporate. shape into a round, slash an X with a knife, about 1/2 inch deep, and bake on a lined sheetpan for 40 minutes at 375.

I am back!!

Today is the start of a new era. For the last 7 months, I have pined for cooking and baking, have yearned to write my weekly blog entries in Whisk and Wander, and we have traveled, which usually warrants a few entries and some photos. but life has changed so much in the last 7 months, that I have been tired, not rested and frankly, not too motivated to do much of anything aside from caring and doting over my baby boy.

But, the tides are changing. I have finally figured out how to get my son to fall asleep on his own. I feel like my world is opening up again, especially my free time in the evenings. So what do I do, a week after I started ‘sleep training’ him and am getting a little more rest myself? First, I have a celebratory beer and then, I cook. (tonight, its coconut curry with halibut) For the first time in several months, I have felt the urge and the energy to get back in the kitchen. Not to say that I haven’t done any cooking…but, I know, I know, potstickers and edamame don’t count now do they?

My first blog back was going to be a re-creation of the famous French Macaroon cookies that we had from Laduree in Paris. But, I admit, I am rusty and they were not blog worthy, believe me. The extent of my baking as of late has been easy stuff like scones and chocolate chip cookies.

I have been an avid walker since Z was born, and often, my walks take me into a café for a halfway point coffee and a cookie. I have been to quite a few cafes around, so I have made it my quest to find the best and worst chocolate chip cookies out there. (not really, but as a frequent buyer and eater of CCC’s, I find that I am getting duped…but am still spending the money on these things anyway..) I hate to sound like a CCC snob, but there are some doozys out there…

If I had to describe my perfect CCC, it would have a slight crunch on the outer edges and give way to a chewy interior. And, unless they are toasted pecans, I hate nuts in my cookies…and brownies and banana bread.



Place #1: This place is known for its coffee, which is roasted in small batches in house…and I love their coffee, think they make the best lattes in Seattle, but their baked goods are….pretty mediocre. Their scones are almost always underdone and their cookies are always falling apart. Whenever I ask for one, the poor barista cant seem to grab just one from the case. Most times, I get a broken one, and part of an extra one, which is nice….if only they didn’t taste so much like bananas.

Place #2: This place is known for its grilled sandwiches and soups and they serve a decent latte, but again, their baked goods are ALWAYS doughy…. ‘the baker is afraid of the oven’, doughy. But, I admit, I have been known to like an underdone cookie now and again. Not bad, I like the chewy factor…but, recently, I saw the owners walk in with a huge tub of ‘Otis Spunkmeyer’ cookie dough…so, this kind of changed everything for me…

Place #3: This place is known for its Asian inspired pastries and they all actually look delicious, but for some reason, I order a CCC instead. Their cookies are the worst texture, dry and sort of chewy, in a stale way…and, they have walnuts. Yuk. I know that they make most of their things from scratch, so I am surprised that the baker pulls these out of the oven, takes a bite, and thinks they are heaven. They are not. (bonus minus point in my book since the walnuts were rancid in my last cookie...)

Place #4: I wasn’t going to get a CCC here, but I didn’t have cash and they only accepted debit cards with 5$ or more, so I gave in. They are a Cuban coffee shop and I think are known more for there unique atmosphere and coffee than their baked goods, but I have to say that I actually liked the cookie. I wasn’t expecting much, as it was wrapped in plastic, which usually says to me.. “Day Old..” and, did I mention that it was 2.00$ ? geez…But, a Double bonus, it had chocolate chips AND m&m’s…no nuts and although it was a dense cookie, it had a good dense yet chewy texture.

I am a baker by trade, so I have to be critcal when trying out these places. But, of course, I have been to most more than once, and I have again and again ordered the same cookie, so they are hardly inedible, but I am still on the search for the best, and I guess not having found it so far keeps me baking my own at home..