Brunch in Spokane

If there's anything I need to really stress about living here, it is this: It is REALLY tough to be a food-loving transplant living in Pullman. All the Chinese restaurants here in Pullman are oversauced and undersalted, the Thai places mess up on balance, even the simple sandwich places slog through with underwhelming deli meat (which, considering the lack of decent meat around here, isn't entirely their fault, I guess). I've been getting better at cooking at home and it's certainly become more natural. 

But I miss brunch. I miss that big heavy meal that I eat early in the day to fuel the shopping and running around that lies ahead on the weekends.

Thank God that Spokane is only about an hour and a half away, a drive that seems to get shorter and more reasonable the longer I live here. I'm starting to understand that time is a totally different thing out here in the middle of nowhere. I'm reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time right now and maybe I can explain it soon. But for now, all I can say is that having restaurant eggs less than two hours away is suddenly not unreasonable.

The other weekend we finally made it to Sante, one of the more highly recommended restaurants in the Spokane area. It's as close to Brooklyn as it can be with its nose-to-tail, farm-to-table approach to food. Everything we got was heavy and creamy and made us just a liiiittle too slow for me to make it back for my gym class in time, which was just fine with me. 

We started with a latte and a mocha. The caffeinated indulgence necessary to any decent brunch.

Then we got a shared a heavenly gnocci dish with guanciale, sweet potato and sage. The creamy sauce made it even more disgustingly delicious.

I had a benedict of some sort, which despite the presence of another heavy topping in the hollandaise, was much welcomed after a canned hollandaise at the (sadly much-loved) Breakfast Club in Moscow the weekend or so before. Rob had some kind of shirred eggs which were really tasty but also strangely fishy considering they didn't list anything seafoody on the menu. Hrmm.

Well, it was like old times again, heading off from brunch and walking straight for some shopping, albeit in a mall and not Bedford or the Brooklyn flea. It was better for the wedding shopping we needed to do, anyway.

Before heading home we did a crazy free-for-all spree at Trader Joe's, as we usually do when we're in Spokane. It always seems indulgent at the time, but I thank myself weeks and weeks later as I'm making awesome berry smoothies or snacking on vanilla bean flecked yogurt or reheating frozen pizza when we're in a pinch. And this time we've discovered something amazing, thanks to a tipoff from some Pullmanite friends: Trader Joe's frozen chocolate and almond croissants! Look how they puff up overnight and then bake into buttery perfection!

This morning we noshed on these puppies as we perused online stores for registry items in our PJs. Not quite as good as a brunch/shopping weekend in Spokane, but pretty close.