In mid-December, my sister and her husband brought Vera Anne Kady into the world and so my fiancee, Adrienne, and I chose to give them a few weeks to get acclimated before heading out for a visit. At this point, she is just 6 weeks old. So we picked a weekend in January out of a hat, drew lines through the calendar, and submitted my work request.

 

So, in typical Adrienne fashion, no fewer than 17 alarms were set starting at 4:30 in the morning for a 7:45am flight. So we loaded the car, took out the trash, started the dishwasher, and hopped into the car. We made it through check-in, TSA Checkpoint, and to our gate without incident. Waiting for our flight, overhead we heard a crackle and shuddered waiting for the announcement expecting a missing child or new regulation. “Someone has left their Special-K Bar at the TSA Checkpoint, please return if it is yours. It appears to be blueberry.” Only in the Fort Wayne International Airport. Got onto the plane, flew to O’Hare, made our way to the gate, onto the next plane, and landed in Seattle a full 45 minutes early.

 

On the flights, I read Stories of Your Life which is the short story the recent movie Arrival was based on. This I got in a Christmas book exchange in part of Adrienne’s family (thanks, Zach!). Quick concept: everyone brings two books wrapped with a brief description or clues on it, with typical gift exchange rules. It was well-written, brief, and fun. Strongly recommended, particularly based on its brevity. Then I started All the Light We Cannot See, which has been recommended to me enough times I needed to just start it. And when I needed a break, I read Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. It’s one of the few books I’ve reread, and I think this was my fifth time reading it.

 

We quickly grabbed our bags, hopped in a taxi, and made our way for the Hotel Ballard. This was my first experience in a hybrid vehicle. I was really impressed with the MPG-gauge, which was usually running over 100, and mused to myself if I had a Prius, I could only drive it to work and fill up the gas tank once a year. Ballard is an old lighting and fishing district, now it’s a hotspot for Millennial startups.

 

Once checked in, we dropped our bags and made our way for “lunch”. At this point, it was about 3pm our time and we hadn’t had a proper lunch. We randomly picked Porkchop and Co. from a list my sister gave us. We shared a tomato and fennel soup which was light and a little creamy. There was no feeling of salt in this soup, a difficult medium to hit. Soup too often is heavily laden with salt, but if there’s not enough it can be just as bad. She had a cauliflower sandwich on sourdough (it was loaded with cauliflower flavor!) and I had a jerk chicken sandwich. I really liked this place, they make all of their own foods including their own pickles and kim chi. The onions on my sandwich were lightly pickled giving them a nice bright flavor but they were still so fresh they snapped!

 

On the way home, we stopped at Cafe Fiora and got Libby a Cortado and me a cappuccino. A Cortado is not a coffee drink served with orange zest, as Libby thought, it’s apparently a latte with a smaller amount of frothed milk.

 

Libby had met us at Porkchop and Co. with Vera Anne, and we walked back to their apartment where we got to hang out with her more.

 

Once Steven got home, we chose to grab take-out from Moshi Moshi, a local super-fresh sushi place really close to the hotel. I won’t go roll-by-roll, that’ll take all morning, but the salmon out here is amazing! It’s a wonderful deep red and the texture is unlike anything I know!

 

After sushi, we walked down to Hot Cakes for dessert. I had been here once before, and I knew Adrienne was going to love it. They make molten cakes to order. So each one is a small cake about 4oz and the center is just gooey-sticky goodness. What we ordered was a chocolate cake with peanut butter lava center. It was served with truly hand-made vanilla bean ice cream and bits of peanut butter fudge on the side. The ice cream itself was a little inconsistent, with bits of ice flakes in the middle – the kind of fine touches and so-called imperfections you can only get from something that is made in small batches. We also ordered a “Drunken Sailor”, a milkshake made with peanut butter, caramel, and whiskey. It was basically heaven with two straws and whipped cream on top.

 

On the chalkboard near the back of the storefront is a list of their sources – the places where Hot Cakes gets their supplies. The name of the dairy farm where the milk comes from, the hives the honey comes from, and so forth. It struck me how difficult that must be for most restaurants to do, even specialty places, but to have prioritized it and advertized it, well color me impressed. It was later noted that this is commonly done in Seattle.

 

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was very late and we were drained, so we crawled under the covers and considered our plans for tomorrow.