My weekend at foodie camp

This last weekend was the annual West Coast Culinary Symposium. This year it was in Portland, at the same place it was three years back - a remoteish Campfire Girl camp. It's on the rustic side (apparently some of the cabins had rodent dropping infestations). I've been attending them for some years now. I always have fun, because this is a subset of a subset of friends. It's an SCA event focused on food nerding. My happy place. Also, I get to hang out with people I don't see very often from Oregon/Washington and Southern California. And usually meet new people to be friends with. The keynote speaker led a discussion on food history and "Why do we do this?" My answer is "To inspire and be inspired." No exception for me this time 'round.

I usually teach at least one sausage class. This year it was one of my recent discoveries: an herb omelette sausage subtlety. After making it a few times at home I figured out how to make it work and I thought this would be an interesting and modern palate-accessible alternative. Although limiting the class to eight people made that less accessible, I suppose, but I find that's about the top limit for this sort of class. Otherwise there's a lot of standing around and people can't help. Anyway, it was immensely popular. There were a number of foobs initially (I didn't know where my class was, then didn't get the supplies from the kitchen, and so forth) but we finished around our time limit and it was delicious. People commented that they'd make this for events themselves! I count that as a total win.

I felt a little bad for one teacher; I took his class and there were only two attendees. It wasn't anything I didn't know (food safety) but it was a good refresher, even if it was focused more heavily on the microbiology side than the practical how-tos.

The class coordinator gave out nice thank you gifts to teachers: a bit of waxed linen, a hand-written thank you note, and a jar of jam. Which TSA confiscated at the airport. I was peeved, but who knew jam was a verboten terrorist device?

The only downside to having gone, of course, is that there's a ten day event coming up this weekend. Oh well. Back to work.

Missed it. Then again, how would he have celebrated?

Sunday was Galen's 13th birthday. Approximately, anyway - I have long suspected that the birthday the shelter put down on the form is a guess. We didn't notice until after the fact. I suspect our returning from a weekend away was the best present we could have given (aside from never leaving in the first place). Sadly, we were cheered that Galen only threw up two or three times in our absence. Our increasingly-neurotic-Siamese gets separation anxiety, and the throwing up is what has led to his massive weight loss.

Since we returned, he threw up all the times he was apparently saving up. Twice last night (the last at 3 AM) and multiple times yesterday. I discovered one with my foot shortly before leaving for work. There's really nothing we can do short of trying to get him to eat more calories - he's a grazer and will only eat a certain amount of food per day. Right now he gets half unicorn meat (aka vet intestinal-friendly wet food) and half lactating mother cat food, which is obviously high in calories. He did gain a pound back in the first month, but we haven't weighed him since to check.

Taginius

This week's Resolution Recipe: Butternut Squash Tagine.
( I have made this dish before, but not this particular recipe. So it totally counts. )