1.1.11 – Eat in Month Challenge (Day One)

For the New Year’s Eve celebration, we actually made two stops during the evening. Both were low key and at friends’ homes. It’s how I like to spend the last night of my year these days. There were a few guests at the second party whom we hadn’t seen in AGES. So great to catch up! We stayed out until well past 2am, but neither Ryan nor I had very much to drink, so waking up today wasn’t terribly difficult. No hangovers at least!

For the month of January, I signed up to participate in the Eat in Month 2011 Challenge that Diana is hosting. Ryan and I already eat in quite a bit, but I want to make a conscious effort to do that more often, at least for a month. It won’t be easy though. I made plans to meet up at a coffee shop tomorrow [my favorite one]… I can’t be giving up already!

So how did we do on day one?

Eat in Month – 01.01.11

Brunch:
tater tots and a fried egg

Snack:
chips and peach salsa

Dinner:
miso soup w/ owl limpets, seaweed, and tofu
Dungeness crab
mashed potatoes

After a brunch of twice-fried tater tots and fried eggs, Ryan went fishing while I stayed in for the day. I sent him off with some bread, sardines, a fruit leather, yogurt, and some chips to ensure that he had energy for his day.

I then cleaned up the house a bit in preparation for an afternoon movie with Keane, even cleaning the toilet! ICK! He brought over Kingdom of Heaven, which I thought was a really good film. If you watch it, check out the director’s cut version because it includes all of the intended story. A lot of it was cut out for the theater!

In the evening, the sister came over, and we worked on getting our very random dinner started.

Ryan didn’t bring back any fish, but he did come back with something I’d seen before, but never intended on eating – owl limpets. He’d read up about them on a bunch on different blogs and forums and decided to forage for owl limpets, just to try them out. You often see them hanging out on rocks, and they taste a bit like abalone. He didn’t bring back very many, so we threw them into the miso soup for flavoring.

It does not look photogenic once de-shelled, but I didn’t think to grab a picture in time. Keane took this one for me.

Ryan also caught his third Dungeness crab of the season.

It isn’t commercial size, but it made for a very tasty treat. While we were preparing the mashed potatoes, he sent me a text about starting up the Ultimate Crab Destruction Unit #1, so I knew he was bringing one home from the ocean tonight!

Have you ever foraged for ingredients? Would you?

If you asked me a year ago, I probably wouldn’t because I’d be afraid to misidentify something and end up poisoning myself. Then again, fishing for food is a form of it as well.

After our eclectic meal, we watched Moon. Also a very good movie. It was on Instant Netflix, so if you have that, definitely check it out!

The first day of the new year is up! Before we know it, the month will go by as will the year. Yikes!

How did you spend your first day of 2011?