Date Night

Thursday nights, our kids are with their respective other parents (it's complicated), which means it's date night. We almost always go out to dinner, but tonight we're going to cook instead. The menu: Chipotle-lime chicken on the grill, accompanied by a grilled sauce (you grill all the components, then throw 'em in a blender with your liquid ingredients and spices) and a fresh tomato-and-corn pie that a foodie friend recommended. Never made any of these dishes, which is part of the fun, plus they sound great to me. I'm thinking a Sauvignon Blanc will pair nicely.

It's yet another gorgeous day, with a warm breeze and clear skies. I can't believe this summer, and now this almost-fall. So we intend to eat on the back patio, then take a nice walk, then come home and watch new-season TV. It sounds underwhelming, I guess, for a "date," but I adore these kinds of nights and I'm already looking ahead and missing them from January's vantage point.

Crab and Avocado

Last night I dropped my son off with my mate and stepdaughter,took my daughter to soccer practice and took a long walk along the paved paths that wander through the soccer park. The sky was clear and blue, the temperature was warm but not evilly so, and I listened to Squeeze on my iPod and tried not to sing loudly enough to startle the joggers around me. When the girl and I got home, I made myself this very simple dinner that's so delicious I can hardly bear it. Thin white bread, toasted and brushed with olive oil; topped with mashed avocado mixed with a pinch of cayenne; topped with canned crabmeat mixed with lime juice, salt, pepper and fresh chopped mint from the backyard. I had a bottle of Riesling open from the night before, so I drank a glass of that. (A Sauvignon Blanc would have been even better.)

The combination of all those things put me in the best mood for the rest of the night. I was a better parent, a better partner, and a happier person than I usually am.

I wish I could re-create that experience more often. I should get more avocados.

"I'd like to speak with the chef, please..."

This is the funniest food-related post I've read in a long time: http://timesnews.typepad.com/news/2009/01/apparently-sir-richard-branson-thevirgin-bossthought-this-was-the-funniestletter-of-complaint-hed-ever-received------dear.html

The go-to

In the past, when I was uninspired, rushed or just lazy, my go-to dinner was a bowl of cold cereal. I'll still have it every once in a while. It's one of those things that works for me even when I don't have a taste for anything else.

I have a new go-to meal now, though, and it's been that way for a couple of years: Avocado and cheese on toast. The details vary, but my simplest (and most common) version is a slice of multigrain bread toasted with swiss cheese in the toaster oven, then topped with sliced avocado and salt. It's also good with roasted garlic--what isn't?--and occasionally I'll turn it into a whole sandwich, adding a little turkey and some raspberry red pepper jam.

That right there is comfort food.

Green beans

I wasted 20 minutes of my life last night trying to force my kindergartner to eat two green beans. Green beans from a can. I know full well it's ridiculous. But that kid would cross the street to avoid a fresh vegetable, so this is the only "green" vegetable he'll eat (or it was), and I need to draw some lines, damn it, because I'm the mom.

So I won the battle, but what a stupid war. Canned green beans suck.

My own dinner was leftover lasagna, which is always better the next day, with some focaccia and roasted garlic, and a molten cake for dessert (less good on day 2). I ate it standing up while the Battle Del Monte raged on. I waited on my wine--a Beringer Founders Estate pinot noir--until after all three kids were bathed, brushed, dressed in jammies, read to, kissed and tucked away. Monday evenings are always crazy, because we have all three kids and the mate and I work all day. Around 6:30 we play short-order cooks for the little ones while he and I tend to make due with what's left on their plates or scrounge for other scraps. Even so, it's a good crazy for the most part.

Sunday dinner

Every other Sunday, my mate and I have the entire day and night to ourselves when my kids and his kid are with their respective other parents. Our favorite way to spend a good part of those Sundays is to come up with a dinner menu, make a shopping list, head to Fresh Market, then come home and cook and drink and eat until it's time to go to bed. I adore this ritual date. Love it.

Last night we made lasagna. It's been a really long time since I've eaten lasagna, especially the kind I was craving yesterday--the old-fashioned kind, with tomato sauce and Italian sausage. We found a recipe that looked like a winner on epicurious, and decided to make a simple spinach salad with balsamic vinaigrette to accompany it. We also got a great loaf of focaccia and I roasted a fat head of garlic to serve with the bread. My mate, who likes eggplant (I don't...yet), also breaded and pan-fried some slices of eggplant for himself. For dessert we opted to try a recipe I'd ripped out of Food + Wine, for molten chocolate cakes with peanut butter filling. Yes, molten chocolate cake is a cliche dessert. It's also delicious. So there.

It's worth mentioning that at Fresh Market, they were out of mozzarella cheese, and so we went to the deli counter and asked the expressionless young man there to just cut off a pound's worth of cheese for us without slicing it. He stood there slackjawed, before finally saying, "Uh, can you tell me about how much would be a pound, because I have no idea." So I drew an imaginary line on the log of cheese and said, "Try about here, and we'll add or take away as needed." He did--and the thing weighed in at 1.02 lbs. I was pretty damn proud of myself (I'm mathematically challenged, and I'm no professional cook or estimator), but my mate, Slacky the counter guy, and the customer waiting behind me acted as if nothing monumental had happened. What the hell? I was forced to high-five myself, which isn't very satisfying.

Wine: I picked out an $8 bottle of red called Nero D'Avola because I'd seen it listed on a wine list at a restaurant I liked, and the label said it went well with baked pasta. And it did. Everything we made was fantastic. My dessert looked exactly like the photo on Food + Wine's site. (High-five again!) I'm having the leftovers for dinner tonight and will attempt to get the kids to try it, but I doubt they will. Still, I keep trying.

A growing obsession

Little by little, as I've grown older, my fondness for food has grown. Things I never used to touch (onions, mayonnaise, mushrooms, duck, Brussels sprouts, and so on) have one by one become palatable, even favorites that I can't live without. As my palate has expanded, so has my interest in trying new restaurants. And cooking new dishes. And obsessing over "Top Chef." When I realized that at least 70% of my Facebook status updates were about food, it occurred to me to start this blog. If I write it down here, maybe I'll stop bugging my friends and family so much with rapturous soliloquies about roasted garlic. I kind of doubt that, though.

Because I seek out great restaurant experiences, I've also been drinking more wine. The first time I did a chef's tasting menu complete with wine pairings, I was blown away by the difference wine can make with food, and how the right pairing makes both the wine and the food taste even better. It was a complete revelation. So now I'm on a big kick to learn what I can about wines, and damn, there's a lot to learn. And because I'm impatient, I drink a lot of wine. (Yeah, that's the reason.) And the more I drink, the more I like...just like with food.

I fully expect that, as this blog progresses, I will become both huge and alcoholic. But I'll try not to.