professionalism.

That one word. That is what makes this blog run.

Sure, amateur food blogging seems glamorous - the dinner parties, the exotic ingredients, the gourmet meals at hip restaurants. But these surface appearances are far from the seedy reality of being up to your elbows in polenta at 11 o'clock at night. When we went up to Seattle last weekend, we changed our plans at the last minute to only spend one day in the city instead of two. Your average carefree vacationer would have resigned themselves to missing a few of their intended sights, but what did we have to do? We said to ourselves, "P & A, you planned out two days of food to try, but you'll only be in town for 24 hours, how will you choose what tastes to skip?" And we answered ourselves confidently, "We won't. Too many depend on us to let something like 'time' get in the way of eating. We will have multiple meals if that is what it takes. We could not live with ourselves otherwise." We do it for you, America.

That is a very truthful account of how we make decisions; our choices are largely dictated by our stomachs and often involve imaginary dialogue with ourselves. And, that is a very truthful account of how we nearly made ourselves sick in Seattle.

Truth be told, we didn't head up to Seattle for the food; we went for a Magnetic Fields show, which just might have been a life-changing event for A, who has a love of Stephin Merritt that borders on obsession. The show was really just great - if you can track them down live, it is worth the effort. In concert, they perform everything acoustic, lending this chamber-pop-sort-of-feel to their cynical and darkly romantic lyrics. Fantastic.

It was close to midnight after their encore, we still hadn't had anything to eat in town, and we only had about 18 hours before we would head back to Portland to catch a friend's art opening. We knew it was time to get started in on the food, and luckily for us, a chic late-night Italian place (with housemade pastas, no less) was around the corner from our hotel. At Tavolata, we clearly irritated the bartender who had been hoping his night would wind to a close, but we were shortly reinforced by more couples looking for a bite after the concert. I had a nice, round barbera to drink, and A had an interesting red that smelled like eucalyptus and cherries (yes, like a Ricola). The olive oil we had was delicious and reminded us of the fresh winter oils we'd had in Italy - peppery and green tasting. I'd read something recently about the importance of really premium olive oil making you cough - this was maybe a one-cough oil, but still full of flavor. A went for the squid and olive garganelli, a hand-rolled pasta that looks like a confused penne. The sauce was buttery and so tangy - everything you want in a great tomato base. I went for the spring nettle ravioli, since I have been anxiously awaiting the start of the farmer's markets and all of the wild plants that it brings. The noodles were sublime and the lemony filling brought out a nice aromatic quality to the nettle's bitter green taste.

[I'm getting long-winded. Like I said, we ate a lot. This sucker's getting split into two posts... Also, as I'm writing this, I'm listening to NPR's great coverage of SXSW - go check it out, Carrie Brownstein's blogging is hilarious.]