Friday means another pick-up from Be Wise Ranch, and we are now officially swimming in lettuce and oranges. Here's the plan:
Friday - beet tops and goat cheese fritatta with a salad with heirloom tomatoes (if they're ripe enough!)
Saturday - scallion pancake (with gorgeous red/purple scallions), seared tuna, radishes and cucumber
Sunday - zucchini and cherry tom gnocchi (a late summer fave), plus more salad
Monday - carrot ginger soup, salad, and some kind of bread
Tuesday - this little bulgur salad with cherry toms and more of the scallions and maybe some leftover soup
Wednesday - broccoli tart, salad, and the rest of the heirloom tomatoes
Thursday - sesame peanut noodles over whatever veggies are left (hopefully scallions, some letuce, and cukes)
Well, I was very excited to read The Exception, after seeing a review in the Times. But I was disappointed. It could have been a much better (and slimmer) novel had it just focused on the petty evils inflicted on officemates, but it was also a grand (and overblown) rumination on the nature of evil. It might have been good as one or the other. The pair was just bad. The writing was also very... Danish. I don't actually know Danish literature, but I'm trying to give the author the benefit of the doubt. The pacing was quite good, but much of the set-up was belabored, and there was extraordinary attention paid to what the one single woman ate every night. I think this was supposed to paint a sad little portrait for us, but it was just odd. And then, I shit you not, there was a case of split personality.
What a surprise then that Richard Flanagan's Unknown Terrorist was a terrific read, and an insightful commentary on... the banality of evil. I got a Flanagan book (someone's book of fish?) as a gift a while ago and never really got through it. I'll have to try again. The acknowledgments in Unknown Terrorist were pretty interesting. I got from NetFlix Paul Cox's A Man of Flowers to see where one story line had come from. (It was more than I could take.) And I checked out from the library Boll's the Fallen Honor of Katharina Bloom, which gave the skeleton of the story. I've got the film version on the NetFlix queue.
Anyway, I hear Spielberg has bought the rights to Unknown Terrorist, so go read it before it gets ruined with a Julia Roberts lead or some such. BTW, this is the second book with a sex-worker Australian protagonist I've read this summer.
My sister was in town last week and that meant lots of great food. She took us out Friday night to Jayne's Gastropub. We'd been curious about Jayne's, with its gorgeous interior and even gorgeous-er menu, but had been put off by prices that seemed a bit too high. It was fantastic. I got the scallops special, served with a rather filling spinach and goat cheese rissoto that was a tiny bit chalky, but forgivable. Dave got the steak frites. I'd been proud of my steak lately, and this put me to shame. Lindy had the halibut, which was truly lovely, and Dave and I finished off all her pea greens. (I guess they were just a little too Cally for her.) The wine list was unpretentious and well priced. And the creme brulee made Dave very happy.
Lindy's boyfriend turned up Saturday night and proposed! Putting off (again) the pork and kale soup I had planned for the night before and put off. They ran off in bliss together, and I roasted some tomatoes and a piece of salmon for myself.
We celebrated in style Sunday with three courses (at home): roasted beets with balsamic and goat cheese, carrot and potato mash with pan fried tilapia and roasted cherry toms, followed by fig tartletts. Lindy had never before had a fig (outside of a newton)!! We had soem cheap champagne from Henry's that was really very nice and pear-y. I'll have to look again to see what it was.
Monday we improvised a rocket and white bean pasta. Tuesday we finally made the pork and kale soup. (thumbs up.) Last night we did another soup, using up the broccoli (foolproof), and I served it with roasted kale (yum!) and corn bread. (meh. i was out of cornmeal and used grits instead. whaddayaknow, it was a little gritty).
We picked up our first batch of organic groceries tonight, and I'm so excited. It was fun to plan a menu around it, and I think I did alright. Here goes:
Friday - tonight it's beet salad with a buttermilk dressing (a james beard house recipe) and a loaf of olive bread
Saturday - bread salad (the rest of that loaf) with gorgeous heirlooms and a cucumber left over from Lisey's garden and a little caprese
Sunday - parsely, lettuce, and radish salad with a yogurt dressing, topped with sliced steak
Monday - goat cheese and beet tops frittata with sliced tomatoes
Tuesday - broiled tomatoes (we got a lot of tomatoes....) and sliced roast beef with horseradish
Wednesday - summer vegetable gratin and poached salmon
Thursday - kale, pork, and whitebean soup (recipe from the latest eating well)
We also got a load of oranges and bartlett pears. There was this ginger pear cheesecake recipe in Eating Well. If I'm feeling bored (and can find it!), maybe I'll give it a shot.
We were the lucky recipients of a box of groceries straight form Lisey's garden this weekend: squash, runner beans, a HUGE zucchini, peppers, corn, homemade pickels and a bottle of basil-infused olive oil. Wow.
And this friday we start a weekly order from a local CSA. I got an email yesterday with instructions for finding the pick-up location, and it sounds like the beginning of a spy novel.
What is the silliest thing you've ever spent more than $30 bucks on?
Submitted by Terri.
oh, vox. you don't know me at all. there is very little i would spend more than $30 on. my wedding dress cost $50. i think i maybe spent $40 on a pair of shoes once.
I did the shopping on Saturday this week instead of Sunday, and it was a different world. Shelves were stocked, aisles were empty...
Saturday - I perfected this sausage-radicchio dish Saturday night. After cooking the sausage, I pulled it out and minced it, then added the radicchio to wilt. Added the sausage back in with the cream, then tossed with linguini. This will be one of my new staples.
Sunday - We finally made it to Iowa Meat Farms. I can't believe we've passed the last four years here without it. I was looking for scallops, which they had, but in $20 portions, so we went for a nice thick pork chop instead (and blew the difference on wine). We paired it with the minty mushy peas (Jamie Oliver's version with potatoes mashed in) that I'd planned for the scallops, threw some ginger carrots on the side, and improvised a blackberry reduction sauce. It made such a pretty plate that Dave took a photo, which of course doesn't do it justice.
Monday - Tonight it's chard and goat cheese frittata and chunky tomato soup. I substituted stems from the chard for celery in the mire poix for the soup. Let's see if I can cool the soup down enough to serve it cold, or if the weather cools enough to serve it warm.
Tuesday - I had the most delightful frisee salad at Absinthe in SF last month, and I have been craving a reprise since. There's a recipe in my latest cookbook purchase (not that it's that hard to figure out, but it amped up the craving). We got thick cut bacon at Iowa for the lardons, and we'll try our hand(s) at poaching eggs. As I recall, the Absinthe eggs were simply fried over easy. But it was still a great dish.
Wednesday - We're trying out an Indian inspired eggplant/cauliflower dish from the latest Eating Well.
Thursday - And then it's the stand-by hippie burgers and sweet potato fries.
Friday - We're headed to the desert to wake up early for the Augurid Metoer Shower. I predict fried chicken.
I did not know that radicchio was chicory leaf.
Anyway, I bought a head to make this pretty salad I saw in Real Simple. I like to use cider vinegar in chicken salad, and it worked nicely here. In the spirit of the magazine, I cheated and bought a whole roasted chicken, rather than making my own. I hate how the stove overheats the kitchen in summer. (But I love it in winter.)
With the rest of the head of radicchio, I threw together a pasta dish that turned out quite nice, so thought I would record it: Remove a link of sweet sausage from its casing and sautee. Drain any excess grease, and add torn up radicchio leaves to the (mostly dry) pan. You'll need a lot more than you think since it will wilt. Toss with some cream and season with salt and pepper. Serve over rigatone, or better yet tagliatelle.
With all the planes trains and automobiles of the last two months, I've had a chance to do a little reading.
- Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open was a nice tour of trends in neuroscience. Nothing terribly new, but all very accessible. (Except Johnson's mix of reporting and personal musing seemed a little off this time around.) I used to be dismayed that every time I thought of a good book to write Johnson did it. Now I guess I'm glad.
- Picked up Seven Types of Ambiguity at the Stanford book store, thinking it was linguistics text. It was in fact a really engrossing psychological 'thriller'. Not really so thrilling-- there's one event that ties the book together, but it has the page-turning feel of a good thriller. And it's good for about 600 page turns. Great for summer. (Also, I learned the word Roshomonian.)
- I borrowed Pendulum for a train ride and was wowed. I'll have to look for more of Aczel's work.
- I stumbled on Give us a Kiss, a kind of hillbilly noir in the Geisel stacks. I'm still not sure what I thought of it. Fun enough, I guess.
- I was looking forward to Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart's followup to The Russian Debutante's Handbook. It was less raucous, less sentimental, and less vivid than the TRDH. I tore through it, but was disappointed.
- I snagged Tulip from my mother-in-law's bookshelf for a plane ride and was sorely disappointed. The sections barely hold together, and the whole thing feels as though it is a handful of essays stuck together. And it lacks the excitement of say, a Michael Pollan tome, reading at times like a catalogue.
