Espresso is Good

There hasn't been a lot of knitting this weekend, or at least not a lot of interesting knitting. Mom and I went to the Mariner's game on Friday (Ichiro Bobblehead night!), and the game was too exciting to knit at. Yesterday I had a few other things going on, and although I started a new project that I'm sort of excited about, there's not enough of it yet to bother photographing. Maybe later today, since the weather is nice! The most exciting thing this weekend, though, is that I bought an espresso machine. Not a super fancy, price-of-a-used-car machine, just an entry level home model. I'm still figuring out how to make the best coffee ever, but the results have been pretty delicious so far. I've tried Illy grounds, and Starbucks pods. The pods are 100% reliable and super convenient. The grounds are a little more difficult, but I think will be worth the extra effort so that I can brew two shots at a time. If anyone has some coffee brand suggestions, leave it in the comments!

In other food news, I would like to present . . . .

A Tale of Two Sandwiches

Given my poor dietary habits and my sheer laziness when it comes to cooking, I really don't feel like I have a leg to stand on regarding the blogging of food topics. However, this weekend I've experienced two sandwiches that stand on the polar ends of acceptable restaurant food.

Sandwich #1: The first sandwich was the biggest culinary disappointment I've had at Safeco Field ever. Worse than paying $8.75 for a beer, worse than a day-old reheated corndog, worse than ice-cold fries. The name of this disappointment? The BBQ Pork sandwich.

A little background: at Safeco Field, you can download software for your Nintendo DS that lets you look up stats, follow other games, see video replay, and order food to your seat. Ordering food to your seat is a great feature if you're stuck in the middle of the row, or if the lines are really super long. The main reason I've ordered from the Nintendo in the past, though, is because it offered a pork sandwich that is only available in the Bullpen Pub, which is three full levels and half-way around the park from our seats. This sandwich is terrific--it's got slices of bbq pork with chipotle mayo topped with coleslaw on an onion Kaiser roll. It's a huge sandwich, so Mom and I can split it and still feel like we had a meal. It's arguably the best food item in the ballpark, and it's the sandwich pictured on the Nintendo DS menu.

On Friday, when I ordered the pork sandwich from the DS, what arrived was a small, microwave heated roll with a few slices of overcooked pork drowning in a really boring bbq sauce. Really bad--completely not delicious, totally not worth even 1/3 of the cost. And although this disappointment was assuaged by the M's 5th inning comeback, I have a creeping fear that the most delicious sandwich at the ballpark may not even be available at the Bullpen Pub anymore, and that I'll have to spend all season trying to find foods to carry into the park instead of eating the same (delicious) hot dog all the time.

Sandwich #2: On Saturday, I went to the Fiber Gallery's Anniversary Sale, and I had planned to stop by Red Mill Burgers for lunch. When I drove by, though, the place was crammed full and there were maybe 15 people out on the sidewalk, so I decided to try a place across the street from the Fiber Gallery called Picnic. The menu was small and simple, and I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich to go. This is a $9 sandwich, and when they handed it over to me I thought that I might have made another sandwich mistake because it had no heft to it. It felt like maybe there was no filling to this sandwich. I was totally wrong--this sandwich was perfect. The bread was crusty and flaky without being chewy, the ham and cheese were perfectly proportioned, the only condiment that I could detect was dijon mustard, which is the only condiment that this sandwich needed. There was no flavor-diluting lettuce, anemic winter tomatoes or other unnecessary ingredients. If Picnic was on my way to Safeco Field, I would take this sandwich with me to the games, and never even miss the pork sandwich. Next time I might not eat it in my black-upholstered car while wearing a black shirt, but maybe I still would.

Just to bring this non-food blog back to yarn, I did pick up new yarn yesterday although my plan was to not buy any more until I'd paid for Sock Summit. There are only so many things I can resist, though--I've passed by the Webs sale, and the Jimmy Bean's Wool sale, and a couple of sock clubs that I really think I'd enjoy. Anyway, in the spirit of full disclosure, I bought a sweater's worth of Classy at the Fiber Gallery's sale (20% off!) because the more I knit with it, the more I like it. Then on the way home, I stopped at Renaissance Yarns and picked up yarn for the new project I started last night (which I'll likely blog about tomorrow). Let's hope that I can straighten out all of my knitting problems sooner rather than later, so I can make some stuff (rather than just knit the same thing over and over, fixing mistakes).