slung

(lots of picture links today - beware!)

I started the day with cinnamon buns and reading Ruth Reichl's Comfort Me With Apples. (Recommended! She's a great writer, and if you're a bay area foodie type, you'll recognize many people and places. Priceless stories, well told.)

The Leckmans called, on their way home from Marin, and we headed out in search of pineapples. Russell is always tying his shoes while we're walking, and today he happened to stop in front of our local sex-supply shop, Good Vibrations. On to our local produce market (at 24th and Valencia) where we acquired four large pineapples, and admired the lemons and limes. Another block and a half, and we met Tad & Beca just in time to help carry up a few groceries.

We played with the new camera, extracted lovely pineapple juice, admired Soosh (who really needs to stop brawling and let his ear heal), and played with the new camera. We bore witness to the clever beast using the toilet, just like the rest of us. And then we scuttled off home, stopping back at the veg market, Lucca, and the fish & poultry market. (Where we chatted for a while with Bob, the head of the fishmongers about barbecuing, fish, and Macintoshes.)

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. We picked up and started cooking. I mixed the first pitcher of Singapore Slings just in time for Tom, Carol, and Tim to arrive. We sipped at the slings, made the first of many toasts, and snacked on pate and olives. Dave & anne arrived, bearing great slabs of meat, which we promptly fed through the grinder & carried downstairs. Everyone mixed their own bowls of steak tartare, accompanied by hot toast, fresh off the grille. (Our condiments? The classics: Worcestshire sauce, mustard, egg yolks, parsley, capers, cornichon, smashed anchovies, salt, pepper & hot sauce.) The weather held; it was cool, but not bitterly cold, even when we were grilling by moonlight. We opened the magnum of Greenwood Ridge '97 Cabernet Sauvignon, and sipped away at that.

Consensus was that we were too full for more starch, so we nixed cooking up the israeli couscous with asparagus pesto, but we did grill up the accompanying asparagus, mushrooms, and scallops with proscuitto. Everyone helped carry the dishes and prep bowls upstairs, where we settled into some '97 Navarro Pinot and some '95 Navarro Cab and a few ferocious Jedi Knight battles.

When we had let our stomachs rest a bit, we had some cheese (d'affinois & drunken goat) with the season's first cherries, a pear, and some of Carol's delicious brownies.

The evening ended content, full, and happy.

Posted by meriko at May 18, 2002 12:00 PM