Copper River Salmon Lands in Seattle

That's right, it literally lands in Seattle, jetted in from Cordova on an Alaska Airlines plane. Friday morning, I was up bright and early to participate in this Seattle Springtime right of passage. With the kick off of the Copper River Salmon Season, media and celebrity chefs head out to SeaTac Airport to give the first fish that arrive to Seattle the red carpet treatment. Once it arrives, we all celebrate with a celebrity chef cook off, and eating salmon for breakfast. 

Before we got to the cooking, I was in awe watching this man filet the salmon. It was impressive.

Sure, I'll have a fresh piece...it tasted like butter in my mouth.

Look at how beautiful that salmon is!

After drooling over the raw fish, the chefs got to cooking. I of course had fun just watching the chefs do their thang, although tasting was a nice perk as well. I wasn't the only one who was happy to be having Salmon fro breakfast.

Judges, Mike Fourtner (from Deadliest Catch) and Jay Buhner (Mariners Hall of Famer) seemed to be having a really good time as well.

And the winner...

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Eating & Drinking Our Way Through the Big Island

As I mentioned in my last post, we recently went on vacation in Hawaii, and had a fantastic time. Get ready for me to fill you in on the adventures, good eats, cocktails and sunsets (and cocktails at sunset). Here's the plan, I'm going to bombard you with pictures and then post all of our recommendations and favorites at the end. I hope you hold on for the entire ride!

First off, the adventures, we spent the first half of the trip, driving around the island, checking out white sand beaches,

black sand beaches (shouldn't Mr. KMW be a hand model?!),

hiking around Volcano National Park,

and checking out Akaka Falls.

We were in awe of the contrasting landscapes, check out the lists of our favorite spots after the photo purging!

We spent the second half of our trip, spoiling

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Whistler: A Tale of Skiing and Après Skiing

Recently some friends of ours from the East Coast flew out to Seattle to spend a long weekend with us up in Whistler, BC. It was a fun weekend of skiing, good company, après skiing, beautiful scenery and some good eats.

It started out with a 4 to 4-1/2 hour drive from Seattle (pending the border crossing time), and it was an absolutely gorgeous drive.  

Some Sea to Sky Highway shots for evidence.

Top hits on our playlist were Macklemore's Thriftshop, Toto's Africa, and Edward Sharp and The Magnificant Zero's Home.

Onto the skiing. I am not a hard core skier by any means, I've skied a handful of times and am content with the green slopes. I have no urge to ever graduate to blue, going too fast and skiing off the edge of the mountain is a fear of mine. Regardless of your experience, Whistler has slopes and scenic views for everyone. Evidence is below.

 I of course was a HUGE fan of après ski. I'm much better at that than skiing. Our favorite spot for après ski was Dubh Lin Gate Irish Pub. It was right at the bottom of Whistler Mountain, they served a mean Bloody Caeser and we did a pretty good job of scoring a spot by the outdoor fire. We went there everyday. Evidence is below.

 

I didn't take many food pictures, other than the poutine, as I said last time when in Canada, do as the Canadians.

Despite the lack of photos we did eat at some good restaurants. Below is a summary of our hotel and food recommendations.

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Eating & Drinking Our Way Through Vancouver

Even though we have a lot more to explore in the Seattle area, we decided to venture to Vancouver this weekend and explore our new corner of the USA....I know, I know...Vancouver is in Canada. You get the point. 

That is the cauldron from the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver must have been a great host...beautiful city, lot's to do and REALLY GOOD FOOD.

We arrived in Vancouver around 9 and held out for dinner until we arrived, walking out of our hotel we stumbled upon Kirin for Chinese food, and it did not disappoint. No pictures...but we had hot and sour soup, a tangerine beef dish and a noodle dish. The menu is ridiculously big, in size and number of dishes, but don't get overwhelmed...I'm pretty sure you can't go wrong.

Now onto the rest of the weekend...when I took the time to take pictures, before devouring the food. I'm warning you now, this post will be scattered and random, but I'll get my point across so hang on. 

Granville Island is absolutely adorable. We enjoyed snacking at the market and Granville Island Brewery has some good beer. Although, my favorite beer of the trip was the Red Racer IPA, it was a nice hoppy IPA with a citrus finish. If I can get my hands on some of it in Seattle, I'll definitely be stocking up my fridge. 

After some snacking, we did a lot of walking around the city and decided to refuel with some Malaysian food at Banana Leaf. Once again, delicious, just look how happy Mr. KMW is!

Next up...When in Canada, do as the Canadians...so we just had to have some

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Queso Closed: Eating Our Way Through Austin

We visited Austin this past weekend and I was in food heaven, indulging in two of my favorites, Barbecue and Mexican. Thanks to our wonderful hosts, I have some pretty good recommendations if you're ever visiting Austin. Which you should, just so you can eat black beans and queso for breakfast without being judged.

We arrived Friday night and our first stop was Stubbs for some Texas Barb-B-Q and cold beer. It was a great atmosphere and delicious food.

We started off with some queso and fried green tomatoes for appetizers (yum) and the highlights of my dinner were the chopped beef and the serrano cheese spinach. I will be attempting to re-create this spinach sometime in the near future, look at it, it's heaven on my plate.

Just look at this happy patron.

Oh and if you go to Stubbs, try to wear a red plaid shirt.

Now onto brunch, we went to Magnolia Cafe on Saturday and there were so many breakfast options that included black beans I couldn't handle it.

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