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TUESDAY 30 JULY 2002 link
I went wedding-dress shopping with my sister today. I won't tell you what her dress is going to look like, but I will say that she is going to look absolutely gorgeous. She has perfect wedding-dress hair - dark and curly, with tendrils that she can pull down around her face and neck.
And she picked a great place for lunch, Juban Restaurant. The tables there all have built-in gas grills. You order the kind of meat or vegetables that you like, grill them yourself, adding any of several different sauces that they serve. I didn't have the grilled food, but I'd love to go back for dinner. Instead, I had Kalbi Donburi - short ribs and onions served over rice - and it was pretty yummy. My sister's chicken, egg, and scallion donburi was really good, too.
She found the restaurant from the San Francisco Chronicle site. Anyone who lives in the Bay Area, or anyone who comes to visit, should know about this site - it's a great restaurant resource. Here are a couple of links:
http://www.sfgate.com/eguide/food/
This is the Chronicle Food Section. There's also a search area called "Find a Restaurant" which is very useful. In particular, check out the "Cheap Eats" section. (This is where my sister found Juban.)
http://www.sfgate.com/eguide/food/restaurants/top100/
There is also a "Top 100" guide that changes every year. These are good picks, and they range in price - not every one is a $$$$. If you need a for-sure winner, pick a restaurant off this list.
I find the Chronicle reviews to be very reliable. One thing that I particularly like is that they also give restaurants a noise-level rating. I'd rather have fair warning that the food's good, but that you might not be able to hear your friends' conversation.
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WEDNESDAY 24 JULY 2002 link
Catherine woke up at 4:30 this morning with a terrible asthma attack. She could hardly breathe - it was almost bad enough to go to the emergency room, but she didn't want to go. This only happens to her when she has an allergic reaction, so at 6:30 I gave her a couple of Benadryl. Twenty minutes later, she could breathe again, but was completley drugged. She went back to sleep and slept until 12:30. I kept sneaking in there to make sure she was still alive!
I, of course, did not go back to sleep. Anyone with cats knows what I mean. The meowing, first to be petted, then to be fed, then to be let out... Tonight I plan on going to bed at 9:00.
To make us both feel better, I'm making Vegetable Soup with Turkey Meatballs. New crop onions, Romano beans, red bell pepper, celery, carrots, and homemade chicken stock for the soup. Ground turkey (dark meat) mixed with LOTS of garlic, oregano, sage, parsley, and Romano cheese for the meatballs. I just drop the meatballs into the soup, without browning them first. It's a heck of a lot easier, and there's no extra pan to wash. (I saw an Italian chef do it that way on TV. I can't remember her name, but I appreciate that trick!)
Speaking of tricks, Suzanne Schmalzer of Eat Drink and Be Married passes along a trick she learned from another chef. Brian Scheehser of the Hunt Club in Seattle brushes fruit (peaches, nectarines) with mayonnaise before grilling. "Be sure the grill is super clean. The fruit won't stick and you will get great grill marks. Chef confessed to employing this technique to fish as well." Great idea - thanks for passing it along, Suzanne!
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WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 2002 link
I own about a thousand cookbooks. (This is an exaggeration, but not a big one.) After a while, it starts to seem silly to have so many if you're not going to use them, so the other night I made an entire dinner out of Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.
(Marcella is a genius. I wish I'd been able to take her cooking class. She used to teach in her villa in Venice, with her husband teaching you about Italian wine while he poured some for your lunch. She still teaches twice a year at the French Culinary Academy, but that doesn't sound as fun as the villa.)
So I made pan-broiled thin steaks with tomatoes and olives, eggplant cubes al funghetto, and green beans with olive oil. The beans weren't really a recipe, but her description:
When on a June day in Italy, you have let yourself fall into the rhythm of an Italian meal and have had pasta, followed perhaps by scalloppine or chicken or fish, and then to the table comes a dish of still lukewarm boiled green beans, glistening with oilve oil and lemon juice, you may well think, after a bite of those beans, that nothing could taste better.
Don't you want to have some? Anyway, the dinner was delicious. And it's pretty nice how cooking from a book takes the pressure off. It's like having someone in the kitchen with you, telling you what to make and how to make it. No decisions to make!
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WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 2002 link
I got a very special treat this morning - after our daily run my friend Monika MADE ME BREAKFAST. I didn't realize it until she handed me the plate, but I could not remember the last time that anyone made breakfast and brought it to me.
Monika made something with a German name that sounded like "Eye in a Glass." It was soft-boiled eggs in a glass bowl with garlic chives and parsley, served with buttered toast. And a hot cup of tea, made exactly the way I like it - I didn't have to get up to adjust the sugar or milk! Let me tell you, if you don't already know, how incredibly indulgent and wonderful and pampered you feel when someone brings you breakfast. It's pretty amazing.
Thank you!
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TUESDAY 9 JULY 2002 link
We're back! It was supposed to be a quick trip, but we decided to stay another day, and then we thought maybe just one more would be a good idea... and so it goes.
My favorite place to eat in Albuquerque (Duran's Pharmacy) was closed for remodelling. I almost cried when the cashier told me. Apparently, they do this every year, the two weeks before 4th of July. "They do a big spring cleaning, and all the girls get to take a vacation." We still got to buy a jar of their green chile stew to get us through our days in Taos.
We did get to go to Frontier twice, though, and that almost made up for our disappointment. I really like their posole, and I adore their sweet rolls. (We used to have them every Christmas, before everyone started going on diets.) Their green chile stew is really good, although I do like Duran's better. Good tortillas, good OJ. And after doing an online search, I see that they also have exceptional bacon. Why don't I find out these things until after I get home? All these years that I've been eating at Frontier, and I've never ordered bacon!
Good enough reason to go back, though...
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