Out and about, despite my stupid-Madison cold (cough, cough) and pouring rain. Lunch today at YUM! Bakery with Polly, soooo tasty. Chicken soup for the throat and the soul. With a couple of matzo balls to boot, as well as a split of coconut cake and a cup of hot tea. Oooh, all so YUMmy and good...
And tonight, to Cave Vin with John. Warm and cozy and candlelit, with perfectly 
executed brasserie fare. I opened with silky butternut squash soup, garnished with pieces of roasted parsnip; John opted for gooey, beefy French onion soup. For my main I tucked into lovely roasted chicken, served with pan juices, roasted asparagus, and the friggin' killerest pommes frites on the planet - skinny, searing hot, just-crisp, and showered with salt and crushed garlic. Right. On. Baby. John had crusty-rosy pork tenderloin with some fabulously glazy-glace reduction that I was way too obsessed with my pommes frites to even taste. Sorry. We split a hearty Chateauneuf du Pape (go for the good stuff, half-priced on Monday nights) and rolled out happy and full.
Not a bad way to start the week. Unless it's all down-hill from here...?
Moderate it: I really wanted the butternut squash ravioli, with sage butter - I've had it in past years, in the fall, and it's always fantastic. However...very rich. So I chose the roast chicken with frites (!!!) instead, so I could snag a fewwithout feeling like I'd gone completely over-the-top. All good.
YUMmy Payback
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.)
I’m Stephanie Meyer. If you're looking for fresh, delicious food to share with those you love - welcome! In addition to the recipes you'll find here, I post Tuesday recipes at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly magazine with a focus on local, seasonal ingredients. I also cook and take photos for Andrew Zimmern's Kitchen Adventures/Food & Wine magazine, post gluten-free recipes at Stuffed Pepper, cook with food photographer Susan Powers for Shooting the Kitchen, and organize the Minnesota Food Bloggers. Let’s eat!
