Last week we spent a few days on the Oregon Coast in Lincoln City, then two days in Astoria, a charming maritime-based town on the border between Oregon and Washington.

It was a good, if rather hectic, trip.

Last Monday  in our hotel room in Astoria, I woke up with two insect bites on my left forearm. We’d slept with our balcony door propped open, and I figured a hungry mosquito had made a midnight feast of me.

The “mosquito bites” itched like crazy and got very red and raised over the next two days. From the outset Spencer, who’s deathly afraid of spiders, said he thought they were not “mosquito bites,” but spider bites.

By the time we arrived home on Tuesday night, they were looking pretty angry. By noon Wednesday, there was a pink ring radiating out from the two bites and moving up and down my arm.

Spencer insisted I call our doctor. I did better and sent the iPhone photo (above).

Christy, the nurse, called back quickly with a bevy of questions and a concerned/worried tone in her voice.

Our doctor called a few minutes later and slapped me on antibiotics and Benadryl Anti-Itch Cream to fight sepsis!!!

As much as I hate taking medicine, almost instantly, I began to feel better.

Over the next several days, the puffiness and pink circle went away. I was so relieved. Thanks heavens for penicillin!

It’s been a tough couple of months for the left side of my body, between my run in with the tape dispenser in March, and now, a venomous spider in August!

Let’s hope these incidents don’t come in series of threes.

One of our favorite restaurants in the ‘hood, right down the street from our condo along the Harbor Steps, is Matt Janke’s luscious Lecosho.

We’ve been remiss about writing about Matt’s second restaurant, not because we don’t love it, but because we sometimes just want to sit and eat and enjoy and not overthink things too much.

It’s the same reason I sometimes order a favorite dish time and again. And that favorite dish at Lecosho is the Grilled Octopus with Chickpeas, Salsa Brava, and Mama Lil’s Vinaigrette. It’s listed as an appetizer, but I find the bulky bowl of beans and tentacles is plenty to satisfy and satiate my appetite.

A few weeks ago, I had my grilled octopus accompanied by a side order of good grilled asparagus. Oftentimes, when “Yakima grass” isn’t in season, I substitute one of Lecosho’s finely crafted House Green Salads that’s always topped with a perfectly coddled egg.

These two dishes, plus Matt Janke’s thoughtfully selected and reasonably priced wines by the bottle and glass round out a dining experience of “food we like” (the restaurant’s catch phrase).

Way to go, Matt!

A few weeks ago, with a new camera in hand that gave me an excuse to attend an event I might not normally have gone to, Spencer and I set out in the Lex for Fremont, a.k.a, The Center of the Universe.

Our destination?

The Red, White, and Dead World’s Longest Zombie Walk.

As reported by the seattlest blog, “Last year the event managed to get 3,894 zombies to come to Fremont, taking the world record. However that was soon beaten by 4,026 undead bodies at England’s Big Chill Music Festival. This year the event managed to take back the title by bringing 4,233 people to the streets!”

The Zombie Squad had a colorful booth, and we met lots of other likely suspects along the way. The hearse in the photo above seems a particularly appropriate backdrop, as does the sign in the background advertising local radio station 107.7, The End.

Since this is, after all, mainly a food blog, I wanted to prove to you that zombies work up an appetite when they are out doing whatever it is zombies do all day. Here they are eating real food–no human flesh!–along the sidewalk.

There were zombie children. . .this one with a zombie baby perched on his shoulder. . .

And zombie families.

A young zombie boy enjoyed breakdancing with adult creatures of his ilk. . .

While a zombie d.j. spun appropriate tunes for the somewhat dazed, bloody crowd on this uniquely Seattle and totally unforgettable summer afternoon.

A couple of months ago, I started to become interested in plastic cameras, inexpensive cameras that offer unusual effects when you take pictures with them.

I was going to get a Holga or a set of Lensbaby lenses that diffuse the light, produce light leaks and color shifts, and shoot off center.

But, recent convert to Apple’s amazing iPhone4 that I am, instead I discovered an app called Hipstamatic that automatically creates these rather wonky images.

At first I thought I’d use the Hipstamatic iPhone app only to take photos in my other life. But one Saturday afternoon, over lunch at Bambuza Vietnamese Cuisine in downtown Seattle, I started playing around on some food shots.

Here’s one of the first ones I took. A simple shot of our tea cups and pot, striking against the vivid grains of the bamboo tabletop. And you just gotta love the 1960s-era ivory edges!

Below is my Vietnamese Crepe taken in a lot of natural light with the regular iPhone4 camera.

Same photo taken with the Hipstamatic! I love the way the crumpled napkin in my lap becomes part of the photo. . .like some sort of weird white sculptural element.

Over dinner at Vito’s on First Hill that evening, I took a photo of my Angel Hair Pasta with Calamari using the regular camera.

And the Hipstamatic, which created a warm and romantic shot, like something from another era.

Sunday evening, during dinner at the ever-romantic and long-running Andaluca in the Mayflower Park Hotel, I couldn’t resist playing around with the Hipstamatic once again.

Here’s a shot of our wine bottle and glass. . .love the frayed edges and rich, warm, crimson tones created by the seemingly magical Hipstamatic app.

I’m continuing to experiment with this very HIP(stamatic) app, and will post more food shots from time to time, so please stay tuned!

First I lost the splint. . .

Now the stitches are gone, too! Amazing how quickly the human body can heal.

Thanks to all who expressed well wishes for a quick recovery.

On the mend and brushing on ScarGuard (a nail-polish-like substance that purports to diminish scars) twice a day.

Last weekend will go down as one of the worst in recent memory, since early Saturday morning I fell and cut the base of my pinky finger on the sharp metal edge of a heavy-duty tape dispenser.

It was a pretty deep gash, but I toughed it out for four hours (even enjoying the always-amazing Oyster Stew and Beet and Arugula Salad at Place Pigalle) before the throbbing pain became too much.

Figuring we would not overload the United States health-care system, we opted not to go to our local emergency room, but rather to a nearby Urgent Care Clinic.

There, the doctor suggested he glue the wound back together versus stitches. Sounded good to me, as I hate needles or anything having to do with the sight of blood.

About an hour later, we were back on the street and ready to pick up our day, more or less where we had left off.

Things didn’t go well that night, as we could see blood coming out from underneath the bandages. The pain intensified.

First thing Sunday morning, I was all ready to go back to Urgent Care and get them to fix me up (again).

“No you won’t!” Spencer said. “We’re going to a real ER this time!”

And so we did.

Once there, a very nice doctor, originally from northern England so he had a pleasing Scots-like accent that reminded me of Scotty from the Star Trek television series, said the finger never should have been glued.

After several minutes of irrigation with warm saline solution (which felt wonderful!), he gave me two shots down the nerves in my finger (which hurt like hell!).

Next, he draped the wound with a blue cloth with a hole in the center,  then inserted four stitches made from blue nylon (or whatever stitches are made of).

He said I’d need to be in a splint for about a week, to stabilize my pinky and keep the stitches from pulling out.

So I am now doing all my typing with a splint and four stitches. NOT easy, and so other than for my blogs and articles, I’m sticking to lowercase as it’s too hard to shift.

I found out that Martha Stewart recently had to go to the emergency room for stitches, too, after her dog accidentally butted her in the lip, resulting in a bad split. Here are her gruesome photos, which certainly rival mine.

Get well and heal up soon, Martha!

Meanwhile, I will try to do the same. Splint off on Sunday; stitches out next Tuesday, if I last that long, sigh.

January is a prime month for enjoying raw oysters on the half shell. And I love nothing better than partaking of them myself and shooting a photo or two both before and after (better to see the beautiful shells)!

Here is the gorgeous plate served up at TASTE Restaurant in the Seattle Art Museum (currently closed until February 15 as part of the furlough imposed on all SAM properties to help save money).

And more bounteous beauties from Shuckers restaurant in the Fairmont Olympic Hotel. Varieties (left to right) are: Hunter Point (kind of bland–almost meat-like!), Kumamoto (a bit watery, but always a favorite), and Penn Cove (very briny).

Nothing this good ever lasts long enough. . .

Here’s the lovely oyster service at Cafe Campagne in the Pike Place Market.

And just for fun, a duo of oysters at Blueacre Seafood. . .a bit of lagniappe from the resident expert oyster shucker at the seafood bar that evening.

On a recent visit to South Seattle Community College for lunch at the Alhadeff Grill and a tour of the culinary, baking and pastry, and wine facilities, I happened upon this incredible Washington-themed diorama made by one of the college’s talented pastry students.

As someone who’s terrible at baking and crafting, not to mention working with chocolate and marzipan, it really spoke to me with its whimsy and utter charm.

Much fun has been made of airplane “food,” and deservedly so.  We were especially reminded of this after experiencing what Alaska Airlines served up on our recent flights from Seattle to Orlando and back again.

We went first class because it’s a long flight (six-plus hours); these particular flights (thanks to the Disney World crowd) are always packed with an unusual number of young children traveling with their parents; and, after many, many years of tough business travel all around the world, my 6′ 4″ husband (understandably) won’t fly anything but business or first class any more.

Here’s the breakfast on our outgoing flight. . .sad Hollandaise (?) sauce sitting next to a circle of polenta topped with a round of turkey Canadian bacon. Sitting astride rode a poached egg and two limp pieces of asparagus. I ate the egg, asparagus, and half the cold croissant and called it a morning.

Since I don’t eat red meat anymore, I counted myself lucky that I got the last order of Chicken en Croute. . .until I saw and tasted a poor, terrorized chicken breast trapped in a pasty puddle of puff pastry, then doused with the same tasteless, bright-yellow-colored sauce that I’d been served at breakfast! More limp asparagus sat atop, so I ate that, rescued the chicken from its “puff-pastry” cage and had a few bites of that, then drank a lot of Chardonnay as consolation.

Spencer did a lot better with his beef short ribs in cherry sauce with mashers, carrots, and Brussels sprouts.

At least the fresh-from-the-oven cookies that were served later on for dessert were warm, filling, and strangely comforting when hurtling through the air at 40,000 feet, especially when paired with a glass of California red.

We wondered aloud if the people in the main cabin might have fared better with their granola and beef-jerky snack boxes?

On our final afternoon in Copenhagen, when temperatures were close to 90 degrees outside and temperatures had been unseasonably warm since our start in London 15 days before, we sought most welcome comfort at the cool (both literally and figuratively) IceBar CPH by IceHotel.