Fresh Tart

Such a pretty, gray day. I just love snow, ice, freezing rain, slush, and gusting winds in April. Refreshing! Plus, it's so great for the hair, shoes, and spirit. Yeah.

Actually, it is good for the spirit...to get the giggles. Which is exactly what happened last night, after another amazing performance of Jersey Boys, when Mom and I had to make our way across the street to the parking ramp. The icy-slushy sidewalks made for excruciatingly slow, dangerous going (in heels no less, ack). The wind was too strong for an umbrella. So we just had to take it, 40 mph gusts driving heavy, wet snow into our hair, faces, and coats. We thankfully made it inside, took one look at each other, and burst out laughing. What else can you do? We looked like two drowned rats! At least it was the end of the night, sheesh.

Despite the nightmare weather, it was a pretty fantastic night. As I said, Jersey Boys completely rocked (again), I loved seeing it a second time. We preceded the performance with a lovely dinner at Palomino - garlicky shrimp scampi for Mom, a bowl of the best minestrone I have ever had for me. That soup, I craved it today. Rich broth, chewy pasta, tender beans and vegetables, topped with a crouton and a generous grating of cheese.

I couldn't have eaten it today, though, too full from the coconut rice pudding I had at Suz's this morning (Friday Morning Coffee with Suz)! OMG, delicious, creamy, decadent, the perfect comfort food. Who the hell needs lunch when you have coconut rice pudding? We did our usual gab and shriek and evil gossip and I'm now fortified with good cheer for the weekend. Hey, we all know our fair share of unhappy, crazy people - they're everywhere, unforch - but nothing balances it all out better than other amazing women - girlfriends, sisters, step/mothers, aunts. I am disgustingly lucky to have them all and oh, am I grateful, very, very grateful. Thanks - yet again - ladies!

So! Every-other Friday I have dinner a la moi, and this happens to be one of those Fridays. As I've mentioned before (bit repetitive today, sorry), I take the opportunity to make and eat things that no one else in the fam much digs: kale, okra, tofu, polenta, brown rice, squash, brussels sprouts, beans, miso, beets, veggie burgers, cabbage. Good things. Healthy-yummy things. Things that some men and children have decided to not like (long sigh). Tonight I'm planning tabbouleh (heavy on the parsley, tomatoes, and cukes), a garbanzo salad I bought at Whole Foods (with mint and red onions, tasty), and braised kale. Rarrr...

With lots of HOT tea! In front of a WARM fire! Baby, it's cold outside - stay warm out there!

Fab Friday! And a beautiful one to boot - lalalaaah! The sun is shining and slowly melting all that damn snow. I squeezed in Friday Morning Coffee with Suz, the first in many weeks. And since I flew solo for dinner, I made myself a plate of tasty, healthy favorites - fish (in this case cod), a smidge of polenta, and lots of braised curly kale. Feeling good, feeling good.

I've been buying cod lately and lucking out with very fresh, tasty fish. I just sprinkle it with a little salt, then saute in olive oil until just-done, a few minutes per side (it only browns a bit). I squeeze lemon into the pan, maybe toss in a few capers, and voila, the fastest "sauce" ever. Yum. And as I've weirdly raved before, I flat out cravepolenta + kale. The texture of slightly chewy greens alongside soft, creamy polenta, mmmm, love it. Nothing particularly involved, in fact very quick to prepare (when I make polenta for myself, I only simmer 2 Tbsp. in a cup or so of water until smooth and creamy; takes 15 minutes max). Another example of a meal that no one else in my family would touch (John loves fish, but kale and polenta, not so much; the kids - yeah, right). Good thing I'm quite happy to cook for myself and eat alone!

Although dining with others is lovely as well - especially last night, when John and I had dinner with our neighbors Kasey & Dan Hatzung at Spasso in Minnetonka. Spasso, owned by The Wine Shop, has been open for oh, about a week, so we'll forgive them a few goofs, like serving our entrees before our appetizers (!) Luckily it didn't much matter - we shared everything anyhow. The wine list helpfully included point scores from various wine reviewers (e.g. Robert Parker, Wine Spectator). Scores aren't the be-all, end-all of course, but they are helpful when you're staring at a list of a hundred wines, your nice waitress clearly knows nothing about wine, and you would like to try something new.

The unanimous favorite was their version of the Spanglish (as in the movie) Sandwich - a BLT, jazzed up with a fried eggand basil mayo. Seriously good. A couple of pasta dishes didn't blow anyone away - over-cooked pasta, flavorless sauces. I enjoyed the polenta fries but I'm not sure anyone else did - I mean, what would I not like about fried polenta? This version was crisp on the outside, creamy in the middle, smokin' hot and not greasy, served with little flavored mayos - a rather odd combo but tasty nonetheless. For dessert we tasted tirimasu (fine, not great) and pear bread pudding (positively delicious). Although Kasey & Dan live across the street, in typical winter-in-Minnesota fashion, we've hardly seen them for months, so it was great to steal them away from their cutie-pie little boys for an evening.

Or two - we'll all be at a neighborhood cocktail party tonight! (In fact, I'd better kick it into gear and spiff myself up at least a bit...)

Party Crasher, that's me! John's law firm hosted a meet-n-greet with an accounting firm last night and with permission (I wasn't a total crasher), I happily horned in on the delicious appetizers (catered by the Modern Cafe), vino, and chat. Organized by John's partner Jennie Clark, who is on the board of the Minnesota Center for Photography, the event was held at...the Minnesota Center for Photography! Terrific space, with a stunning current exhibit (Three Gorges), I had a great time and stayed (crashed!) just long enough for John and me to snag Stu The Wine Genius and drag him out for dinner with us. The MCP is in NE Minneapolis, and Stu remembered the fun dinner at The Sample Room we'd had with his wife Debbie, Rudy Maxa, and Ana Scofield (our pre-Napa planning dinner), so we bopped over there for casual eats. Setting = lovely, food = not so much, but we had a great time anyhow and dished on Tuesday night's Commanderie dinner, so it was all good, all good.

Today, Friday Morning Coffee with Suz, of course. More upbeat than a couple of weeks ago (we didn't cover the Holocaust or talk politics today), we were back to our usual shrieking and howling primly (bah ha ha!) about bodily fluids, oh yeah! Not so great for anyone near us trying to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee, but fabulous for my frozen winter spirits! All hail Suz the Metal Mommy!

Since I've eaten out no less than four times this week - FOUR - I'm mos def making din tonight. It's my turn for a go at the Watercress Soup with Gentleman's Relish Toast recipe I posted a few weeks back. I'm grilling the lamb chops too, oh yeah, we'll be ushering in the weekend in fine (watercressy, lamby) style.

Enjoy yours!

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.)

Yay for Friday Morning Coffee with Suz! Well-timed, loads to talk about, things have been so crazy-busy I feel like I haven't seen her for a year. We sipped our yummy joe, ran into a few old neighbors, gossiped some more, and cackled and shrieked so loudly we damn near chased away all the other customers. Woops! Man, good friends are worth their weight in gold (or in this case, much more, since Suz is pretty tiny and doesn't weigh very much at all)!

I had to tell her about the blast of a night I had last night - my mom invited me along to her office holiday party at The Chanhassen Dinner Theater for their production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I admit, I'm not a big Broadway musical fan of the Andrew Lloyd Weber variety, but I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Joseph. I first saw it in oh, 1983, it was my high school's spring musical production. I remember going in with low expectations...and walking out completely charmed. I went at least another five times (hey, I was 16). I had last seen it in the mid-90s, the big-time Donny Osmond version at the State Theater, very fun. And then not again until last night, almost 25 years after my first viewing (ouch!) - still fun, still charming. Good stuff.

While I was out, John was wrapping up the two-month-long celebration of our 5th anniversary. Huh? Well, back at the beginning of October, after much brain-wracking in an attempt to come up with a gift worthy of my sweet husband, I birthed two pretty friggin' awesome ideas. Idea One: a surprise dinner with his boys, his long-term buds, at 20.21. I got emailing right away, tossing out dates, and came up with...December 13th?! Ack, so far away from October 19! I felt I needed something else too, something closer to the big day, hmmm...

And then, Idea Two: I commissioned my coolicious sister Stacey to paint a portrait of Sigmund, John's dear, sweet dog who passed away last March (and who he's been missing mightily, sniff). An entire painting obviously couldn't be ready by the 19th either, but Stace thought she could have it done by Thanksgiving, so I told John he had two kickin' gifts coming. And so...Stace did her thing and delivered the painting on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. It is, as you can see, completely amazing, a fabulously Stacified Siggy Roo, John was (is) absolutely blown away. BIG time hit. (Yesss!) Then last night...finally the dinner with his boys, total blast, a bawdy feasty feast that had the guys thanking me for thinking of it. (Yesss again!) So there. We are really, truly, absolutely done celebrating our anniversary.

Although for dinner tonight perhaps we could....

Moving Day! No, not for me, heavens no, but for Susie. So, instead of Friday Morning Coffee with Suz, it was Load Up My Car with Suz's Stuff, ha. It was...fun! Yes, fun! I've given her and The Coreman all sorts of crap about being too old for a do-it-yourself move, but it's all actually worked out fine. (Well, almost fine, there have been a few of the typical scheduling snafus, but so it goes when one moves, as we all know. Moving! Uuuugh...). No one (so far) has thrown out a back (knock on wood), or ruined any furniture (knock on leather), and they're looking shockingly settled in the new digs.

And the new digs are GREAT! Wooded and spacious and absolutely lovely, reminds me a lot of Debbie & Stu the Wine Genius' beautiful home. So Suz is now a Cake-Eater. Wow. I don't know how one achieves Metal Cake-Eater status, but somehow she's done it. Look out Hornets, Suz is RAWKIN' Edina! Yet, Elegantly...

Me? I'm solo for dinner tonight, I'm rawkin' (ha) leftover Manhattan Clam Chowder, and that's about it. Perhaps a bath. Perhaps a twilight walk around the 'hood. And then early to bed, it's just that kind of Friday, ya know? Enjoy yours...

Oops, I Did it Again! Somehow I accidentally slow-roasted another pork shoulder, this time an Italian version (think fennel seeds, tons of garlic, oregano, and thyme). Same technique as carnitas, same silky, porky result. Rarrrr, LOVE it. Nice to have sitting in the fridge over the weekend, ready to eat as is, or toss with a bit of rigatoni, or enjoy alongside creamy polentaaaaah, or stuff into a warm, soft roll, with thinly sliced onions and pickles, for a killer sandwich. None of those options suck and I'm glad to have them all. Yeah.

I met Susie Silpada Sales for a last-minute Friday Morning Coffee with Suz today (both Kim and I were busy on Tuesday, so Tuesday Morning Coffee with Kim & Suz had to wait for next week, boo). So fun! So necessary! Nothing like the elixir of girly chat (and Almond Joy candy bars - Suz brought Almond Joy candy bars! My very, very favorite, yay!) to wrap up a craaaaz-ow week. What to tell first? About Nathan's new school? Driving through a hailstorm? Eating delicious, strange animal parts, barefoot, in front of a television crew? Cooper's vomiting all over Stacey's car? My parents' new home? My accidental flashing of the Metal sign at a religious event?

And then, what to listen to first? About Suz's impending move? Her kids' new schools? Her new Susie Sales job? Her new kickass fur vest and totally Metal boots? It was too much, there's just too much going on. Life is wild right now, in a good way, guess we'll just have to get together again (hee, hee) - like on Monday to celebrate The Maven's 40th! Yes, that nauseatingly young beyotch is about to join the ranks of us cougars. Hope she can handle it... I'm cooking and haven't quite decided yet what I'm making. Stay tuned...

Girls, girls, girls! Not in a Motley Crue kinda way (at which point I have to admit, I love me some Motley Crue, esp. Dr. Feelgood, on my iPod as I write this, no lie), but in a Suz + Baseball Moms kinda way. First up, Friday Morning (afternoon) Coffee with Suz, on her patio, with a naughty chocolate-chip brownie no less (yeah!), I was as happy as a clam talking it all to death with my Susie-Sales, Heavy-Metal Minx, woo hoo!

Then I took off for Baseball Moms at McCoy's, this time to celebrate Beth Collins' 40th Birthday - woo hoo again! Happy Birthday Beth! As usual, I had a great time, chatting with Bobbi, Suzanne, Bridget, Jen, and Gayle and meeting Lynne and Maria. And snacking on mushroom-brie pizza and the killerest - sweet potato fries with a side of ranch dressing, rarrr... Yeah, gooooood stuff. Man, we Baseball Moms have had a lot of fun over the years. Hallelujah Little League, even (especially!) when baseball season is over.

Um, why am I up at 12:00 a.m. posting to my blog? Well...blame it on my neighbors. Tonight was the last "neighborhood women's association meeting" (code for "wine and chat") of the season (we'll reassemble in September), always a very fun time (thank you to hostess Lisa, who put on a gorgeous party, even without electricity! Talk about a good sport!). And a good time to taste a variety of homemade treats! I tried my best - I did! - to indulge in just wine (you gotta pick and choose your vices when you're a, er, moderate epicurean or whatever), but I couldn't help sneaking a few tastes of guaaahcamole, which was damn near calling my name. My neighbor Katie brought it, in all its smooth, spicy-creamy, green glory, and divulged a little secret - Frontera Guacamole Mix (which I've seen at Byerly's in the Mexican food section). It's damn goooooood, A+, go for it.

And after chatting with my neighbor Lindsay about all things food (including her recent trip to Napa and a recipe for black bean burgers that I hope to snag from her), I had to dig in to the amazing chewy, salty chocolate cookies that she brought - The. Kill. Chocolate + Salt = Perfection, which Lindsay knows - she had improved on a chocolate cookie recipe, by adding salt, to make them so killer. I'll try to get that recipe too. Yeah, baby!

In summary... Yesterday = Cooper Cuteness + my stepdaughter's middle school graduation (gorgeous) + baking Ranger Cookies for Nathan and Coop (yum). Today = ungodly, hot wind + more work on my screened porch + a decadent little swim, all to myself. Tomorrow = Friday Morning Coffee with Suz + Hijinxing with my Minxes!!! Holy Hell, what a nice end to the week, huh?