This year’s FoodBuzz Blogger Festival dinner was held at the Ferry Building. Not a bad location, eh? It was a formal sit-down with 4 courses and wine pairings. Look at all this tableware!
We started with the appetizer, which was an absolute beet fest! If you don’t like beets, then this would have been the worst thing ever. The tart was made with golden beets, was topped with crimson beets, feta, currants, arugula, and served alongside a basil puree. As for me, I love beets, so I totally dug this.
Next up were some huge seared scallops with braised fennel in a champagne beurre blanc sauce. These were cooked quite well, although we did notice that they were only seared on one side. I’m not all that into fennel, but this was pretty good stuff. You know me, I’m all about scallops.
Onto the lamb chops! These suckers were served with butternut squash mash and a bunch of expensive expensive mushrooms, which I promptly did not eat. But one of my tablemates took them. I’m not that crazy about lamb, but I enjoyed these particular chops. And the mash was great.
Dessert was tarta de almendras, a buttery almond cake served with oranges and figs and a spanish sherry sabayon. It’s quite a mouthful to describe, but it tasted even better. It was a lovely dinner with great new friends!

Eugene ended up being a good half-way stopping point for the long journey from the coast back to Bend. Plus, we had to stop so that J could watch a World Cup game. Much to my surprise, the Eugene Saturday Market was taking place, which of course had a farmer’s market along with it and a food court. Everything was locally grown and looked fabulous. There were berries everywhere.
White raspberries!

And all kinds of cherries!

But really, what everyone had, and what looked the best, were the oregon grown strawberries.

There were veggies as well, of course. Here are some beautiful cherry tomatoes of different colors. Although I know that tomatoes are actually fruit.

There were also tons of root vegetables, like these turnips and beets. Potatoes were also all over the place.

Along with some cucumbers and some onions and some even more gorgeous red torpedo onions.

This dude was selling crazy mushrooms that he grows. I wonder what other kinds of non-food mushrooms he grows? Because after all, this is Eugene, and man, hippies abound!

Dungeness crab is everywhere in Oregon, and you can even find some here.

Here, they were selling freshly homemade salsas as well as fresh corn tortillas that a lady was cooking up, right on the spot.

There were food vendors in the proper food court, which was part of the regular craft vendor part. But in the farmers market, there were also a few food vendors, including this pastie shop.

J got some fish tacos. He liked these, but was surprised by the spicy salsa that was plopped on top.

I got a little teriyaki bowl from a food court vendor called “nice rice”. My nice rice bowl was brown rice topped with teriyaki chicken and veggies. It was perfectly fine. All the produce looked amazingly fresh, and if I lived in Eugene, I would hope to get my fresh fruits and veggies here all the time!

Memorial Day weekend gives my family an excuse to get together and do pretty much nothing but eat. We went to my aunt’s house in delaware, as usual, and started the festivities with these korean style pancakes. Mrs. W brought these over. This is really the easiest way to cook them. It’s an electric non-stick skillet. Just throw in some oil, which gives you the crispiness, and cook them on each side until they’re lightly browned.

They weren’t typical, in fact, they had shrimp and broccoli in them. And because the batter had some yeast in it, they were a bit on the puffy side. So chopped up raw shrimp, chopped broccoli, julienned zucchnii, and chopped scallion. And voila, lovely shrimp and broccoli pajeon. You can buy dipping sauce or just make some with soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, sesame oil, and whatever else you want.

Next up we had some riblets. We didn’t have actual proper courses or anything, we aren’t that fancy. It’s just that we started off with one thing, and then just ended up moving to the next dish, and then cooking the next thing, etc. We also had some lovely lettuce from my mom’s friend’s garden so we could make little riblet ssams. You know, like the fancy people do at momofuku and what not.

It was memorial day weekend, so you know what that means. That’s right peeps, it means firing up the grill. So as usual, my uncle manned the grill and we had some korean bbq. How easy are these to make? Super easy. You go to H-Mart and buy them marinated. Then you throw them on the grill. It doesn’t get easier than that.

Alongside the ribs, we grilled up some spicy dried file fish that my mom prepared. They were extremely thin and delicate and were boney, so you had to be careful. These had tons of flavor, but were a tad too salty for my palate.

We ate rice too, like the asians are known to do. And we had plenty of banchan. There were random green things that I did not eat. There was tons of spicy kongnamul, or soybean sprouts to you, which is one of my favorite banchan in the whole wide world. There was kimchi too, not made with your typical napa cabbage, but this one was quite the hit with everyone. I particularly liked it.

What did I do at this feast? The only thing I was in charge of was the corn on the cob. I peeled back all the husks and removed all the silks. If you can, get someone else to do this, because it’s a pain in the ass. Then put the husks back into place.  Then soak these bad boys in water before putting them on the grill. The soaking will help steam these beauties. Don’t worry about burning the husks, the corn inside will be perfectly fine. Make sure to not undercook them. I got a little scared and took them off the grill too soon. It was still good, but because it was slightly undercooked, they weren’t freakishly sweet, like they could have been. They were just normal sweet. Don’t make my mistake!

We even had dessert! This doesn’t typically happen. My aunt happened to have this lemon cake, which was pretty f’in lemony and amazing and beyond moist. I wanted to eat the whole thing. But alas, I controlled myself and shared.

We had our little bbq the day before memorial day. On actual memorial day, we didn’t really do much. My mom brought some berries and I happily ate them up for breakfast.

Later in the day for a late lunch, we had miyeok guk, which is a korean seaweed soup. When my mom makes this, she just cuts up meat. But my aunt’s version had rib meat in it and I think she had basically stewed the meat so that it fell off the bone and was super tender. I literally ate all of the meat from the entire pot of this. We didn’t just eat well this weekend, we also cooked! Or at least my mom and my aunt did. Recipes coming up next!