Happy to report -

- that the Gourmet chili recipe turned out quite tasty - and even my plant-eating brother would have liked it, since I made it with not-pork sausage (despite the turkey broth - he's usually pretty forgiving about that kind of thing, although he just doesn't want to know, and now I am telling), that I browned and even though it stuck to the pan, I made sure to sure to scrape up all the good browned bits - I let it sit and steam itself off the heat to loosen the crust. And I made sure to cook down the sauce until it was nice & thick.

Seattle must be influencing my food choices at the moment - I just got the Cafe Flora Cookbook, and tonight I want to make a version of their Roasted Yam Quesadillas - appears to be on their lunch menu right now - to use up this little piece of butternut squash that's been in the fridge for 2 weeks, and the cilantro and toasted pumpkin seeds leftover from the chili. But now that I've been reading Dave's post about the Vietnamese tofu sandwich, I think I'd rather be bombing around Seattle on a bike or on foot, and grab one of them.

Tomorrow I'll start in on tea party food, so it'll be tiny foods - small sandwiches, little cakes, baby cheesecakes - and lots of butter. Yesterday I taste-tested my cheddar chutney tea sandwich, for at-work breakfast, Cathy Clark ww bread with the crusts off, buttered, thin slices of Widmer 4-year cheddar, and Major Grey's chutney. Good but even as I polished off I was thinking hmmm, I should have only had half. What I mean is the rich buttery creamy tastes are making me hanker for the fried tofu, hot peppers, soy-y, vinegary, cucumber tastes of Seattle Asian street food instead.