Let's All Meet Up in the Year 2000

I just ate a sesame-walnut-swiss chard-fresh mozarella flatbread and an umm ali from Sofra and I feel like a giant smear of grease but it was oh so worth it.  Happy happy tummy!
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I think I just ruined a small Le Creuset saucepan :-(((((((  I decided to make my own lip balm, since I am allergic to so many additives.  The directions said to just put the plastic pot of lip balm base in a pan on low heat.  Without thinking I put water in the pan too.  Then I re-read the directions, noticed that they did not call for water, and dumped the water out.  Bad bad call on my part, as I think the directions should have included the water after all.  Melted plastic pot all over my little saucepan :-(  I did still make the lip balm, as the plastic pot hadn't melted through, but even if I can get all the plastic out of the saucepan, I don't know what that will do to the finish and whether it will be fit for making things for human consumption.  Feh.  They don't actually make this particular saucepan any more, but a similar one is at least $100.  A year or so ago my big Dutch oven took a tumble off a counter and cracked.  It makes me very sad to see the set gradually go beyond its usefulness.  Years ago* in Chicago I got a four-piece set for something like $79.95, an astounding deal, and using the pieces always made me feel like a real cook.

*come to think of it, it was at least 20 years ago.  Which makes me feel better about the cookware's longevity, but dear god does it make me feel old.
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I just made the best drink ever, at least this evening, starting with your basic gin gimlet with muddled basil, then topped up with Knudson cucumber essence spritzer.  It is, I say, summer in a glass.  Alongside my basil tomato mozzarella sandwich it is perfect.

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Sunday night we went to Craigie on Main, just outside of Central Square, and had the six course chef's whim.  I don't think I've ever been in a restaurant with so many waitstaff who were nevertheless so unobtrusive.  Your every need is anticipated.  A server accompanied us from the bar to our table just to carry my drink, and when M asked where the washrooms were, he was walked to them instead of having them pointed out.  We felt very country mouse in some ways but one does quickly become accustomed to that level of service.

Over the course of two hours, I ate:

• smoked sablefish with caviar and fennel vinaigrette, with little I think radish sprouts
  
• tempura cod cheeks with spicy mayonnaise.  Ordinarily I do not like mayonnaise at all but this bore little to no resemblance to the stuff that comes in jars
• seared tuna with fennel sauce and some kind of greens that I am forgetting
• macomber turnip puree/soup--this was to die for
• Chilean sea bass with chinese broccoli and a carrot au jus.  The fish was of course delicious, even if Chilean sea bass is one of those fish one ought not to eat, iirc, but the carrot au jus was a revelation.  I like carrots well enough, but this was the Platonic ideal template of carrot against which all taste of carrot must be measured.
• apple and pear crisp with prune cognac ice cream.  I make a pretty mean crisp myself so while the crisp was delicious, it did not blow me away.  The prune and cognac ice cream, otoh--wow.  If you had told me before Sunday that I would swoon over prune flavored anything I would have been highly skeptical, but I did indeed swoon over this!

I also had a cocktail called Northern Lights, which had St. Germain, scotch, grapefruit juice and Bitterman's tiki bitters.  It was a very well crafted drink but a little sweet for my palate--the bar menu mentioned douglas fir in the description of the drink so I was expecting something more assertive.  It was good though.  I had a pinot noir whose name I never caught with dinner; the waiter asked what wine I would like, to which I replied, well, since I'm getting chef's whim, I don't know what food I'm getting, so you pick.  It was a good choice, whatever it was.  I was too full for an after dinner drink, though I had some Fernet Branca at home later :-)  M had more or less the same food choices as I did, except that his turnip dish had squid stuffed with lobster and shrimp in it where mine had brussel sprouts (which I will take over lobster and shrimp any day), and he had a plate o' meat in place of my sea bass, hanger steak, marrow, tongue and maybe other stuff.  He liked it, but liked my sea bass better.  And then he had a sweet grits thing for dessert.  I liked it better than my crisp but not as much as my ice cream.

All in all, it was a highly memorable meal.  It is not the kind of splurge we can make at all often, but it was well worth the money for both the meal and the pampering.  Perhaps during the year we can go back for the bar menu and drinks...
 
On a side note, I'm inspired to try cooking with fennel now, as it appears I like it quite a bit.  Must look at recipes...
 

Usually when I have extra pie dough after rolling out enough to fill a pie pan, I cut out flat pieces of dough and bake them sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.  Right now there is so much sweet stuff in the house that I simply could not do this when I made tonight's sweet potato pie, so instead I sprinkled the pie crust scraps with parmesan, then added Penzy's pasta sprinkle to some and herbes d'provance to others.  WIN!  Delicious cheesy melt in your mouth snacks!

Years ago I accidentally bought three large containers of cinnamon--I kept forgetting I'd already bought some.  So I have had bountiful cinnamon for what seems like ever.  Today, I have run out of cinnamon!  I did not think it would ever happen!  So the sweet potato pie has taken a somewhat Caribbean turn, with extra ginger and allspice and nutmeg to make up for the lack of cinnamon.  It is smelling pretty darn tasty...
 

• Yay Connecticut!
• Last night I made a good dinner.  I sauteed leeks and garlic, then mixed that up with cubed potatoes and cauliflower florets and oregano and thyme and pepper, and roasted all that for about 45 minutes.  Then I made a feta cheese sauce, poured it all over the vegetables, baked it for another 30 minutes and then I said yum yum as I ate it up.  It seemed like a daunting amount of work when I got home tired and a bit depressed last night, but that 45 minute roasting period was just enough time to get in a yoga practice, so it ended up feeling very efficient.  Between the yoga and a good meal I felt much, much better about life at the end of the evening.
  
• The last time I made a roux for a cheese sauce it was disastrous, but this one turned out perfectly, even using olive oil instead of butter.  I absolutely credit the silicone-coated whisk I got at Ikea.
• Looking forward to apple picking tomorrow, though I will be showing up late as I have a massage scheduled in the late morning.  Don't you feel sorry for me? 
  
• Back when I was in grad school, I ended up reading rather more than I would ever have intended to about Iceland's history and ethnography, because an anthropologist whose theory I was interested in did her fieldwork there.  The current news about Iceland reminds me that the island nation's economy has periodically collapsed throughout all its recorded history, generally due to the fishing stocks collapsing or to consecutive poor harvest years or to plague, or occasionally war.  It's really no wonder that Iceland shifted the basis of its economy off its own land into other people's, in a way.  But in the long view of history, collapse like this is nothing new, and probably nobody will starve to death in little hovels this time around.
• A blue jay in a green and yellow leaved tree festooned with shiny red berries is a beautiful sight to see.

 

Trader Joe's "Sparkling Mojito Beverage" is pretty awful.  It tastes like those pillow mints, the little poofy square pastel ones.  Rum and extra lime didn't substantially improve it.  Serves me right for being lazy.

Last night I made tofu poke from a recipe in the Boston Globe Magazine--served over a bed of lettuce, it made an excellent no cooking hot weather meal.  Definitely recommended, both for vegetarians and for people feeling too broke to buy sushi-grade tuna.

I walked to Alewife this morning!  My foot hurt enough that I probably should hold off on regularly walking for a bit longer, but it felt good.  I didn't end up limping, which is definitely progress.

The weasels were able to come out into the rest of the apartment last night.  Ianto is--I don't exactly want to say fearful, but he is very cautious and a bit hesitant.  I remember seeing that with Ronan too.  This is undoubtedly more space than he has ever experienced in his entire life, and for a not-baby ferret, that can be a bit intimidating. He also has some trouble with the hardwood floors.  After a while, it was clear he was a bit freaked out, so I brought him back in the bedroom, gave him treats and told him how brave he was.  After regrouping a bit, he was able to come back out again later, so he wasn't too traumatized.  It's just going to take him some time to get comfortable.  Sisiutl, on the other hand, explored, mapped and catalogued for about three hours straight.  Her tiny feet tippytoe across the hardwood floors with no problems.  She also started relocating bats from our shelf of bats in the dining room to under the bed, which is apparently where all toys belong.  They both liked the water fountain, once they got the hang of it.  They came out this morning to enjoy the cool air, and both of them did some running around.  I am going to have to add fifteen minutes to my morning routine to accommodate weasels being cute time.

( SYTYCD )
 
Oh, and Top Chef--yay!  All ends as it should.

 

Was working on my cane piece for Shimmies for a Cure this afternoon, getting very frustrated and feeling like I'd forgotten everything I ever knew about cane.  Practicing cane is also pretty awkward in my living room (half the time when I go to tap the floor, I have to tap the couch, and not smashing the tv is always a concern), which didn't help.  So, I thought I would try out my white galibeya, pretty much the whole costume, coin belt, saidi hat, anklets--everything but jewelry and makeup.  Lo and behold, once I took a look at myself and saw I resembled exactly what I wanted to resemble, it all came much more easily and I liked what I did in that run through.  It's going to be a ton of fun to do at the show, that galibeya puts me right into character.  I think I will see about renting space somewhere in the next couple of weeks, though.  I think we don't have Najmat's class the last Tuesday of the month, so I could rent our classroom space then.

Yesterday M and I went to Flora, just down the street from us.  We've lived within a mile of the restaurant for years now and somehow never made it over there.  The building was my bank when I was a kid, though.  We were quite impressed with our meals and enjoyed the atmosphere.  We were offered the Restaurant Week menu even though the participating restaurants aren't required to offer their special menus on Saturday.  I had cod cakes with puttanesca sauce and watercress for an appetizer and an absolutely delicious wild mushroom risotto with acorn squash and some kind of greens.  M also had the cod cakes and some beef thing that he said was excellent.  I also had a good cocktail called a 1794, I believe equal parts rye, campari and sweet vermouth.  They are one of the very few places in Arlington with a full liquor license, and I think we might perhaps make a habit in the summer of walking over and having cocktails and light snacks (crazy Arlington by-law, you can't order just booze, you have to order food with it, otherwise you might think you were in a bar and cause mayhem and anarchy). 

Tonight I will be bad and order pizza for dinner, I do believe.

Review Number One:  Animal Spirit, pet supplies, 2348 Mass Ave, Cambridge (between Porter Square and Route 16, in the white brick building)

I needed to stock up on Innova Evo ferret kibble, and have been increasingly annoyed by the spammy behavior of my online supplier.  So I went to the Innova site, which has a handy "find a retailer near you" feature.  Lo and behold, there was a retailer not a mile from my house!  I called to make sure they had the ferret kibble in stock, and stopped by on Tuesday to pick it up.  This is really the best kind of pet supply store, all kinds of healthy food options (no cheap grain based foods for carnivores here!), grooming stuff, neat toys, etc., plus a resident kitty and a rather shy rescued dachshund behind the counter.  The staff were friendly; I didn't have any reason to ask questions, but I suspect they would be quite knowledgeable as well.  I am impressed that the only brand of ferret food they seem to carry is by far the best food on the market.  They carry BARF diet as well, which is certainly easier to buy than make, if that's your thing.   So, if you feed your pets high quality food, check out Animal Spirit!

Review Number Two:  Various vendors at Etsy

This holiday season, I have done some of my shopping at Etsy, and I've been having the best experiences.  Each of the vendors I've shopped from has been prompt with shipping, the items have been great, would do business again A++++++!  Seriously, it's been fun.  The thing I ordered has not yet been the only thing in the package.  One person included a hand-colored comic about his creations.  Another person included a mix CD, and another threw in some buttons.  The stuff you can find at Etsy is creative and unique, and runs the price range from dirt cheap to tres cher for the genuine art.  So if you're struggling for gift ideas, check out Etsy!

Oh, and a third review, just because:  recipe for Cauliflower and potato soup, Jane Brody's Good Food Cookbook.  I rate it four potatoes out of five.  The soup is basically cauliflower, potatoes, onion, garlic, soy sauce, a lot of parsley, cardamom, pepper and milk, which sounds a little incomprehensible but is very tasty.  The parsley and cardamom especially go well together.  If I make this soup again, I would use more cardamom than the recipe calls for because I love it very much, and I would add some toasted almonds either as a garnish or perhaps ground up and added to the soup.  The only reason I didn't give this soup five potatoes is that it really screamed for those toasted almonds.  Also, if I'd used another potato it wouldn't have all fit in the pot I was using.

Took the night off from official exercise due to general ouchiness but danced around in the kitchen while cooking.  I swear sometimes I do my best dancing in the kitchen in my fluffy slippers and gothic ass sweatpants.