Fresh Tart

A definition:

Stomach: a saclike distensible enlargement of the alimentary canal located between the esophagus and small intestine; it stores food, adds gastric juices, begins the breakdown of proteins and churns food into a liquid mass.

Um, ew. Liquid mass? Way to make eating seem
totally disgusting (ha). Perhaps I should read that (Webster's) definition every time I get hungry for things I shouldn't be eating. It's definitely way ruder to imagine pizza or a burger as a liquid mass in the middle of my body than say, strawberries, which just sounds like a smoothie. A semi-digested rather acidic stomach smoothie.

Sorry. I've been in a wicked sh*t of a mood the last few days, John too, we've written it off to prolonged lack of sunlight. The post-holidays, post-birthday, snow-sucks-after-Christmas blues. You know it, too, I know. Meh. I've even been trading emails with Suz bemoaning the idiocy of the masses and chatting over coffee this morning (Friday Morning Coffee with Suz!) about the Holocaust. Egads. But I'll admit, I'm not opposed to using the saclike distensible enlargement of my alimentary canal to cheer myself up, namely through the filling of it with lovely (at least before chewing into a bolus) foods and the occasional sip of wine and/or bubbly.

Like last night. Date Night! Movie followed by dinner with John at (Uptown) Campiello. I know it's not all about Campiello the way it was when the place opened, but it was still festively hopping on a Thursday night and the food - D'Amico knows what the heck they're doing - was delish. We particularly loved the king crab appetizer - pieces of butter-tender crab tossed with julienne carrots, jalapeños, and scallions, served alongside a horseradish panne cotta. Unusual and spectacularly delicious, with a cool-creamy, sweet-spicy-crunchy thing going on. Our entree was a bit more traditional - ziti tossed with lemon zest, dried peppers, garlic, olive oil, and Parm. Simple, chewy-spicy deliciousness. Nothing makes a cooler (smoother?) bolus than king crab and ziti. Rad.

And lunch today, yum. At Yum Bakery, my mom treated Stace, Cooper, and moi to a post-Stephanie-is-41-(sigh) celebration. Yum Bakery is the perfect girlie lunch spot - sunny and buzzy, with a long list of spot-on comfort food tasties. Mom and I chose the salad sampler - good ol' fashioned tuna, egg, and chicken salads (with modern twists all of them, top-notch) spread on fresh foccacia bread. Cream of mushroom soup. Stace and Coop shared beef stew. We all dived into frites (but of course). And Happy Birthday to me...coconut cake. YESSS! Sooo good, a real, buttery scratch white cake, filled with coconut custard and iced with white icing and showered with sweetened, flaked coconut. Just exactly how it's supposed to be, ridiculously sweet and rich. Love, love, LOVED it.

Tonight? Uh, I'm not very hungry? Funny thing, ha. What to eat on a not-hungry night? Well, there's always the option of nothing, but that's not very weekendy. Or moderate. So I'm leaning toward a simple quesadilla - two French Meadow (Fat Flush, worst product name evar) sprouted grain tortillas, sprinkle of cheese, toast in a pan until melty and dip in some spicy Salsa Lisa. Few hundred cals, five minutes to prepare, tasty (essential), done.

Happy Sunless Weekend! (Grumble.)

And oh! Another reason to eat monounsaturated fats (as in avocados, olives, and nuts.)

Brunch! I forgot to say I had the loveliest brunch on Sunday (before John and I took off for Chicago), with my dad, Stacey, Cooper, and Nathan. At Campiello, turns out a very nice brunch spot. Not that I specifically knew that when I made the res, but I sure do now, and I would recommend it highly. For less than $20/person, you will feast (feast!) on warm blueberry-streusel muffins, eggs (I opted for a shrimp frittata, delicious), and family-style platters of crispy bacon & sausages, thick waffles, fresh fruit, creamy chicken-artichoke penne, roasted potatoes & peppers, champagne, and coffee. Yeah, "try to make a meal," as my mom's grandmother used to say. Lord. (I also forgot to mention that the plane could hardly take off, due to the weight of some passenger's stomach. Uff.)

Oh, also meant to mention that John and I atoned for Friday's viewing of Atonement with a Saturday viewing of Starting Out in the Evening. Now that is a movie, much better. We were able to sneak in a mini-date thanks to Cory& Suz hosting Nathan for Kids Movie Night at Shubert Theater, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix now showing! After our movie, under the guise of picking up Nathan, John and I were invited to sip wine and chat (yay!) in front of a roaring fire with Cory & Suz while the kids stayed really quiet so we'd forget about them and let them stay up too late. Which would have worked beautifully if we were younger parents and could actually stay up later than our children... Alas, we all had our sorry butts in bed by 11 p.m., wondering how on earth we're going to properly ring in 2008. Lame!

And oh, also after the fact (apparently the theme of this entire posting, ha), my mom's recipe for Spiced Cranberry Relish Mold. Perfect for Thanksgiving, of course, but lovely at Christmas too because it is absolutely, festively gorgeous. And the sweet-spicy combo is a tangy foil for uber-rich holiday foods. Enjoy! (Recipe posted in comments, below.)

Oh, Happy Friday! You know, one of those Fabulous Friday nights, when you go out with a completely cool couple, previously unknown, and just have an enormously great time? This was one of those Fridays, thanks to Sheri & Darin Lynch (Darin is a basketball/client friend of John's). Yeah, good times, and good food to boot. Dinner and lots - LOTS - of yummy Foris '06 Pinot Noir, at Campiello in Eden Prairie. D'Amico, baby, they always know how to do you up, oh yeah. As an appy, we split uber-crispy/spicy calamari, as well as a rich (!), truffly-creamy linguine, mmm. I had a delicious homemade ravioli with roasted chickenand mushrooms, although my true main course was merrily chatting with lovely Sheri, ha. Other dishes 'round the table included gnocchi with slow-roasted pork and taglietelle with bolognese, both of which I was mighty tempted to order myself. All in all, such a fun night, thank you Lynch's for a lovely dinner! (No, I didn't bring my camera, and yes, I wish that I had...)

Other than that? I'm thinking John and I need a very serious run to the grocery store tomorrow to stock up for the supposedly-coming snow storm. Soup, soup, soup, to counter the six-to-ten inches of snow...? We'll see. Nothing will ever compare to the Halloween Blizzard of '91 (yes, I know how old that makes me sound), when I was young and foolish. Was I lovin' my curly hair? Unlined face? Unplucked brows? That was literally Halloween Blizzard Weekend, my friends... Hunkered down at my boyfriend's house, lucky to have arrived in one piece. My car ended up buried outside - looked out the window, it was just...gone - so we went exactly nowhere for the whole weekend. I baked several frozen pizzas and drank quarts of hot chocolate (healthy, ha). Wow, sixteenyears ago, what a difference, ahem, the face she is a-changing (sigh)... Well, anyhow, if it's going to snow, bring it on. It'll be the weekend, we just got a pile of wood delivered today, andhey, I even have a Christmas tree! I'm ready.

So, if you're looking for things to do this snowbound weekend (that don't include frozen pizzas!)...how 'bout baking Foccacia Bread (pictured above) or Rockin' Challah ? Or...a batch of Lindsay's Dipped Gingersnaps? Or... if you're feeling carnivorous, a buttery, roasted chicken (with or without a Chicko, it's all good...)? Or...if after a snowy hike, you're massively craving carbs, Spaghetti All-Amatriciana? Oh, such cozy options, there's nothing like cooking/baking on a cold, snowy weekend (except perhaps grilling/chilling on a fabulously warm, sunny one, but you know, we Minnesotans take what we can get...). Enjoy!