This Saturday head over to the Eastside for a cooking demo by Artisanal Brasserie & Wine Bar head chef Terrance Brennan at Sur La Table at The Bravern in Bellevue. At 2:30 pm, Brennan will be preparing a sheep’s milk ricotta gnocchi with wild mushrooms and asparagus; diver scallops with blood orange grenobloise and cauliflower silk, followed by a thin apple tart with caramel ice cream. Individual tastes will be available for everyone on hand so they hope you’ll RSVP at 425-372-2200, though it’s not required.

Well, there’s…

well, no, there’s…

…wait, what about…

…

…oh, never mind, there’s NOTHING better than pie. Which is why you need to visit Fuel in Wallingford, Montlake, or Capital Hill on Sunday, 3/14 for specials on yummy, yummy pies baked by High 5. Buy 3 pies, get .14 off your purchase.

There will be no appetizers, instead Enza will offer a prix fixe appetizer table with a changing selection of items that might include gorgonzola with pear jam and pine nuts, Pecorino Romano with apple jam and walnuts, prosciutto di Parma on breadsticks with cantaloupe, or cacciatorino Italian salami with green onions and grilled garlic.

An ever-changing menu can present a real challenge to a chef: it will be interesting to see how this plays out at Enza. Will diners appreciate the variety or will they long for greater constancy? As someone who has a tendency to get stuck in food ruts, it’s nice to get a nudge toward something new from time to time, but I do like to have a few fall back items. Enza is definitely worth checking out, anyway; an added bonus is the happy hour offering of $4 Italian cocktails and country wine all January long, not to mention the complimentary hot chocolate at the end of every meal.

Reservations are available at 206.694.0055; for more on Enza Sorrentino, check out the Sorrentino website.

Joule Restaurant, in Wallingford, is starting up their Winter Supper Series again tomorrow. The way the Winter Supper Series works is that you pay a fixed price (usually $25, though some weeks are more depending on the menu) and you get 5-7 family style dishes brought to the table. There is always plenty of food. I’ve never left anything less than completely full and satisfied. Each week brings a different theme. This week’s is Hot and Spicy Korean.

Joule is great about catering to dietary restrictions as well. We regularly bring a friend who doesn’t eat pork and they have never failed to create amazing pork-free dishes for her while filling the rest of the table with porky goodness.

Wine and beer are available and in past years, they’ve had a glass of house wine for $4. That means you’ll end up with a complete meal and a glass of wine for under $30 (not including tax and tip).

*There are a few weeks that are more expensive. Valentine’s Day, Iron Chef night, and Seattle’s Best, which I’m guessing is going to be heavily salmon, oyster, or clam focused.

Joule Restaurant
1913 N. 45th Street
Wallingford

Marination Mobile serves a creative Korean-Hawaiian hybrid menu featuring such items as kalbi tacos, kimchi fried rice, kalua pork sliders, SPAM sliders, and spicy pork tacos.

Marination’s Twitter feed will let you know where they’re at on a given day but generally speaking it’s SODO on Monday, Belltown on Tuesday, Fremont on Wednesday, Beacon Hill on Thursday, Safeco Field on Friday, and West Seattle on Saturday.

One of my co-workers has been telling me about this truck for what seems like forever. I’m kind of wishing I’d thought to get around to having their food before this recognition which is surely going to bring some longer lines, but, hey, what’s a line when there’s good food at the end of it?

As the LA Galaxy and Real Salt Lake duke it out for supremacy, fans can snack on the Galaxy Dog which features two strips of applewood smoked bacon, nacho cheese sauce, red onion and diced tomatoes and is available, naturally, at Seattle Dogs. Ciao Down will offer the Galaxy Pizza, topped with ground buffalo, caramelized red onions, thick cut bacon, and pepper-jack cheese. Real Salt Lake is represented by Grill 12′s Salt Lake Burger topped with caramelized red onion jam, apple wood smoked bacon, blue cheese, and black cherry barbeque sauce.

The FSN Lounge will be honoring the world’s love for the beautiful game with an assortment of internationally-inspired dishes like Dungeness crab macaroni and Cheese (England), Pissaladiere baked puff pastry with olives, grape tomatoes, caramelized onions and triple cream brie (Spain), Mama’s meatballs (Italy), Bossa Nova chicken sandwich (Brazil) and more.

Everybody loves pretzels, or nearly everyone enough to ensure that pretzels have long been a staple item at sporting events. Since the MLS Cup is a big event, it makes sense that this game has available a big pretzel–the Victory Knot is a two-pound pretzel topped with sea salt and served with three dipping sauces (spicy mustard, beer cheese and sweet vanilla cream). This pretzel is so big that it is served in a full-size pizza box.

Finally, no matter who wins the game, everyone can celebrate the day with MLS cupcakes – cupcakes decorated with the MLS and team logos.

Kick off for the MLS cup is at 5:30 pm on Sunday, November 22, but there are plenty of events to occupy you until game time. On Friday, November 20, MLS players will go toss a fish at the Pike Place Market at 3pm. Fado Irish Pub hosts a Meet and Greet and Silent Auction from 6 – 8 pm with happy hour drink specials all night long, appearances by Sounders FC players Sébastien Le Toux and Taylor Graham, and a silent auction to raise money for Seattle Children’s Hospital.

The 2009 Supporters Summit happens at Qwest Field on Saturday, November 21, featuring a State of the League speech by MLS Commissioner Don Garber, Supporters Shield history and presentation by Sam Perron, Kansas City Wizards, a raffle and an officiating and technical discussion panel with Joe Machnick and Alfonso Mondelo.

Saturday night features the Sounders End of Season party at The Baltic Room and a Pioneer Square Supporters Social at Elysian Fields.

On Sunday, get psyched for the game in the morning at the FIFA 2010 Tournament at Fado, sponsored by Gorilla FC, in which teams of players compete to find out who is the best FIFA10 XBOX player, winning great Sounders prizes and raising money for the victims of Black October in Bolivia.

Sunday afternoon there’s a Pre-Game Spaghetti Feed at Fuel and then at 3:45 soccer fans meet up at Occidental Square for the traditional March to the Match, accompanied by Sounders FC owners, players, coaches and MLS Commissioner Don Garber.

I’m sure most of you out there are already know this, but you can make it from Seattle out to wine country in the same amount of time it takes a bottle of red to properly breathe.

However, I’m not here to talk to you about wine.  Which I can assure you is to our mutual benefit, as all I have to offer on the subject involves the painfully embarrassing consequences that befall me those times I muster the bravery to take another shot at drinking it.  What I’d like to touch on today is an oft-misunderstood spirit favored by my curly-headed 70′s hero, Ron Burgundy:

I love Scotch. Scotchy, Scotch, Scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly…

And down into my belly it has gone on many a fair occasion.  Sadly, my lack of respect for the true potential of this Scottish delight has led it to make almost as many return trips from my belly as well.  Cutty Sark, J & B, Chivas Regal — these are the names I had associated with Scotch throughout the years.  It’s not that I particularly enjoy slumming it on the bottom shelf, I had simply been under the impression that it was all going to go down like battery acid anyway.  It’s almost comical that it took a certified “master of whisky” to set me straight on the subject.

Recently I was offered the chance to stay at Willows Lodge in Woodinville, a five-acre spread bordering the Sammamish River in the heart of Western Washington’s wine country.  Under normal circumstances I might be apprehensive about such a vinocentric destination, but I made the trip in order to attend something far beyond your everyday swish and spit wine tasting.  Hosted by renowned master of whisky Ari Shapiro (pictured left), and with a four course menu prepared by Barking Frog Executive Chef Bobby Moore, the celebration comically dubbed “Scotch-tober” was nothing short of an amazing amalgamation of whisky knowledge and culinary craftsmanship.

It’s not likely anyone would argue whether or not Shapiro knows his Scotch.  Even those not immediately enamored with his PowerPoint skills (fun fact: this is the first alcohol-related PowerPoint presentation I’ve experienced) would find his expertise on both the spirits and the land they originate from to be truly impressive.  Over the course of the evening he regaled the crowd with old world toasts, and spared no detail in explaining the production methods and regional flavors leveraged to produce each distillery’s unique flavor.  As a wannabe connoisseur, I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty that the 15-yer-old single malt Dalwhinnie was my favorite Scotch of the evening, due largely to its floral nose, sweet taste, and clean, subtle finish.  This stems from its origins in the highland region of Scotland, where it is crafted out of fragrantly sweet mountain water.  After that I’m pretty certain I’ll never be able to even look at a bottle Cutty Sark seriously again.

Well before the event ever took place, Shapiro and Chef Moore had been putting their heads together to come up with a menu that balanced the signature flavors of each Scotch with that of the evening’s cuisine.  The result featured such mouth-watering dishes as breast of squab with a celeriac, endive, and Walla Walla onion salad, chilled Virginica oysters, and my personal favorite, the smoked ribs with fennel and yukon gold potato gratin.  There was just something about how the smokiness of the ribs played off of the dry, equally smoky 16-year-old Lagavulin that made me want to paint my face blue and white and start quoting William Wallace.

As if I didn’t have it good enough already, after my hunger and thirst had been quelled around the Barking Frog’s open fireplace, I made my way back to the room waiting for me at Willows Lodge.  Just your standard accommodation, complete with 40″ flat screen TV, stone fireplace, private patio, and a soaking tub deep enough to drown your sorrows and/or Manuel Uribe if you really felt like it.  Seriously though, the one thing I couldn’t get enough of was the bed.  So soft, so comfortable.  The sensation that I would later describe as “sleeping on a cloud of smiling puppies” was in fact courtesy of the Australian lambs wool mattress pad that can be found adorning the beds in any of the lodge’s 84 rooms.  Probably the highest compliment I could pay to the lodge, its staff, and their attention to detail is that in all my years traveling I’ve yet to stay anywhere so comfortable and relaxed, yet so serious about the care of their guests.

Another great thing is that there’s always something going on at Willows, so you never have to be without an excuse to treat yourself to a mini-vacation or romantic getaway in Seattle’s back 40.  For example, in December Willows Lodge is featuring a weekly series of complimentary classes called “Holiday Boot Camp”.  The classes are free and take place the first three Wednesdays of the month, from 5:30-6:30 p.m. during Fireside Cellar’s Happier Hour. The program is aimed to help novices navigate the challenges of holiday entertaining:

• Wednesday, December 2: Brian Matthews of Barking Frog will share drink recipes and tips for creating the perfect holiday cocktails.  Guests will learn techniques for creating a hot apple pie, oatmeal cookie and a white chocolate mint-tini.
• Wednesday, December 9: Executive Chef of Barking Frog Bobby Moore and award-winning Wine Director of Willows Lodge Jeffrey Dorgan will share tips and recipes for holiday appetizers and discuss how to pair the perfect wine with traditional holiday meals.
• Wednesday, December 16: Trena Costello, pastry chef of Barking Frog, will share pastry recipes and tips for creating the perfect homemade holiday desserts.

No matter how long you’ve lived in the area, I implore you to consider adding a night at Willows Lodge and a meal at Barking Frog to your Seattle bucket list.  Both are comfortably far enough away from the city — but not too far — perfect for those who wish to spend less of their time traveling and more of it relaxing in the arms of the one they love; or as it was in my case, a foursome of strategically-placed goose down pillows.

The “New Moon” menu pays a culinary tribute to the story’s themes with “Vegetarian” Stakes, a/k/a picatta seared chicken satay over parmesan risotto and sauteed spinach (I’m not quite sure how chicken gets to be vegetarian, but, boy, does this sound tasty to me); Lion’s Love, which is paprika seared lamb chops with roasted vegetable cous cous; and Bella’s birthday cake which is red velvet cake with sour cream frosting and dark chocolate sauce.

The cocktail menu is appealing, too: Bella’s Papercut combines Absolut Mandarin, Cointreau, and Grenadine. Edward’s Cold Touch is concocted with blueberry Stoli, Poma, Sprite and Blue Curacao. Jacob’s Warmth heats things up with Clover coffee with Bailey’s, Rumpleminze, and whipped cream.

If you’re a Twilight fan, you’re probably already delirious with excitement about New Moon and really don’t need any encouragement to go see it, but why not go see it in style?