jwg

When we go shopping we get some kind of seafood and some kind of meat. In each case enough for 2 meals.

On the shopping day we cook the seafood and save the rest for day 3; on the next day we cook the meat, saving the rest for day 4. Seafood is usually one of: (not in exact order) salmon, shrimp, scallops, swordfish, monkfish, tuna, bluefish (rare to find these days). No exact order depends on what looks good at the fish counter. The fish is usually grilled, but sometimes roasted. The meat is usually one of chicken thighs with bones, steak, lamb chops or shanks, pork loin or chops, sausages - grilled or in pasta sauce, brisket, or lamb or beef stew. For vegetables we choose what looks good. Potatoes with the meat dish and rice with the seafood.

For the cooking days we have fresh salad of mixed lettuce types usually including tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms. Dressing is olive oil and vinegar - balsamic sometines - almost always with me, occsionally mustard vinaigrette; + ground pepper and herbs (fresh from the garden in the summer)

Beverage is water or occasionally wine.

Shopper cooks on day 1, warms up on day 3, other person on days 2 &4. non-cook washes dshes; on days 2 we save the dish washing until breakfast uless there are too many. Wine glasses get washed on the day of use. Occasionally a day of distruption of we are going dancing - not these days of course. And we always have some frozen pizza or other frozen foods - called emergency food - if for some reason we didn't go shopping or there is a schedule conflict.

We don't have dessert.

As a part of our Road Scholar trip to Southern Africa we went to lunch at a restaurant, Mzansi, in Langa, one of the neighborhoods in Cape Town that was designated as a place to move black people during the apartheid regime to make way for white people in other sections of the city.

At the end of the meal the owner and operator, Nomonde Siyaka, gave a fascinating talk about the history of the place. It was originally a very small house in whch her family lived in extremely crowded conditions.

The food was excellent - it is rated #1 in Cape Town on TripAdvisor - clearly for both the food and the experience.

There were marimba players in the front of the restaurant entertaining us and at the end they were quite loud and everyone joined in dancing.

We have a set pattern for meals preparation and menus. And who does what.

Our weekday breakfast is orange juice, cold cereal with fruit and milk, coffee for Robert rsc, tea for me. Milk is poured from Gertrude in Gloucester, Hildegard in Cambridge. We rotate between corn flakes, cheerios, bite-size shredded wheat, and "flakes" (some other kind of flakes). Take from the left put back on the right. Note that it is 4 kinds of cereal so a particular kind doesn't get eaten on the same day which would happen if there were 5 types. I rotate between tea types and always have green tea on Monday.

Occasionally when it is cold we have porridge (oatmeal) instead of cold cereal. And for this Rutherford, our Wooly Mammoth, comes down to supervise.

On Saturday it is blintzes. I make them from scratch - a batch yields about 10 - we cook 4 and freeze the rest, and the second Saturday which uses up the Ricotta and the other Neufchatel yields another 10 so we have usully 3 more weeks worth in the freezer. Blintzes are served with yoghurt and fruit and cinnamon and sugar. Robert makes the filling the night before. Saturday tea is Rooibos

Sundays rotate between pancakes, waffles, and french toast - all served with maple syrup and fruit with yogurt - also cinnamon and sugar. The pancakes are made with corn, rice, and soy flour, wheat germ and the liquid is fruit juice. Waffles are wheat, rice, and soy flour with wheat germ; milk is the liquid. Baking powder of course. Grated orange rind is often also added to these. The eggs for pancakes and waffles are separated and the whites are beaten and folded in. Sunday tea is some kind of spiced tea. The coffee has cinnamon and sometimes something else added. We make more than enough pancakes and waffles and the extras are wrapped in waxed (not wax) paper and are used for evening snacks with ice cream on them.

I am the one who officially pours the pancake or waffle batter into the pan or waffle iron. Once when Robert did it he got this Certificate of Excellence which is posted on our bulletin board in the kitchen. Note the signature.


For weekday holidays we make an egg dish - a frittata, omelet, occasionally poached, fried, or scrambled, and very rarely eggs Benedict. Today it was a frittata. And then my tea is Earl Grey.

The general rule is that who ever gets up first does the cooking and the other person washes the dishes which sometimes includes some of the previous day's dishes. When we cook an elaborate dinner or there are too many dishes we wash them after dinner. Dishes are left in the dishrack to dry. We don't have a dish washer.

The general rule about oranges is: "I don't squeeze Oranges". The exception is on the first of the month when I do them. When we have grapefruit instead of oranges I am the one that sections them. Whenever we buy a batch of oranges we buy a grapefruit - so that is about every 5 days.

Having a system like this makes everything easy. No dithering or deciding about what to have or who does what.

One of the traditions at motss cons is to have a foodie dinner on Thursday night. For this one in New Orleans we chose Commander's Palace. Eight of us had the 6 course Chef's Playground Tasting Menu with wine pairing and 5 others just had a fine meal.

Here is what the 5 non-dessert courses were + the Coup de Milieu wine intermezzo.

Hand carved bluefin tuna
Caribbean Crab Bisque
Argentinian Churrasco Shrimp
le Coup de Milieu; Blood and Sand
Chilli and Citrus Crusted Redfish
Braised Leg of Milk Fed Veal

I took pictures of all the courses, but so did Ken Rudolph, the organizer of the event, and you can see them here - complete with descriptions from the menu.

They served 7 desserts and we passed them around nibbling a bit out of each one.

Click here for larger versions of pictures:


It was a very fine meal.

Here is the kitchen (or part of it)

Two weeks ago we went to Journeyman in Somerville for the traditional celebration of Robert's birthday which had taken place while we were in Ireland. Journeyman is a nice small place that has tasting menus only - 5 or 7 courses. We chose 7 courses with wine pairing - I like the no decisions necessary system. And there were several amuse-bouches also. We had a lovely time; the food and service were excellent.



Some of the things we had:




My phone wasn't focussing well so I stopped photographing.

Dinner - roast duck w. rice and orange stuffing, yams & apples, snap peas, rolls, salad, Pinot Noir.
Served on my maternal grandmother's china.

( Dessert )

And the great rarity, the table was not full of junk as it usually is - for the second week in a row.

We went to SFMoma and saw this great exhibit: How Wine Became Modern - closing April 17. They had a wall filled with amusing bottles, another exhibit where they had soil samples and the current weather from vineyards all over the world, and exhibit of glasses, a video that showed the evolution of wine exporting from various places and little bits of info about how certain movies had a great influence on specific wine choices (such as Sideways).

The was a long narrated video of a man in a white suit carrying a glass of red wine through the streets of Bordeaux. He had a camera mounted on himself that showed the wine glass. Over time his suit became a lot redder. We watched for quite a long time.

Captions like this appeared.

Hamster cages is fighting words. First used to elaborate a French Syrah's earthy nose, the term provoked outrage among conservative winemakers who responded by denouncing the young bucks' linguistic excess. One wine merchant remarked: "If they continue like this, we'll sone have customers requesting wines that smell like Sumo wrestler's thighs."

They had an array of wine bottles with squeezable bulbs that allowed you to check out the aroma of each bottle and see whether you recognized the smell as described. There was a wine named Cat's Pee which was renamed Cat's Phee to be more palatable.

A few pics:

Because of our schedules my official birthday dinner was tonight, a month late. We went to Ten Tables Cambridge which was quite delicious. I strongly recommend it.

I had:
- Potage of Winter Root Vegetables with Toasted Hazelnuts & Heirloom Cranberry Compote
- Pan Roasted Hudson Valley Duck Breast with Maine Chantenay Carrot Puree, Baby Bok Choy & Honey Gastrique

And Robert had:
- Caramelized Onion Tartlet with Bartlett Pears, Endive, Great Hill Blue & Amontillado Sherry
- Quince-Laquered Berkshire Pork Shoulder with Maitake Mushrooms, Cippolini Onions & Roasted Chestnuts

Chardonnays for the first course and a Malbec for the mains.

We split Chocolate Terrine with Sea Salt & Thai Basil Ice Cream for dessert with decaf coffee and Rooibos tea.

Ot was most excellent with very good service as well. A test for me which they succeeded on was the tea service which was in a nice metal pot and it was hot - also they warmed the cups. I've been surprised that in some fine restaurants they serve tea with lukewarm water and a tray of tea bags.

This has been the site of the Peacock, Butterfish, Celador, and Craigie (now moved to Craigie on Main). We've been to them all. It is downstairs in the basement of an apartment building - thus the name Celador. There were about 15 tables, The original one is in JP near our dance space and it presumably has 10 tables; we haven't been there yet.

The reservation was in the name: Balthazaar - our Unicorn.

One of the consequences of living in the same place for a long time (43 years) is that one accumulates stuff. That coupled with the fact that I don't often throw things away has yielded a rather full spice rack with many unused items - some of which are antiques. Rest assured that most are recent.



For example, the ginger on the lowest shelf near the middle has 47¢ stamped on the bottom and the container doesn't have a bar code. The expiration date on the baking soda on the top shelf is 01 28 91; this baking soda still works for odor control and rising (one recipe we use) has baking powder and baking soda. The ginger has a faint smell but of course it hasn't been used since we use fresh ginger. It is possible that one or more of these items predates moving here.

I'm actually going to throw out some of this stuff since we want to relocate some other stuff to the top shelf.

Tonight I took Robert rsc to dinner at Craigie on Main in Cambridge as a slightly belated birthday dinner.

It was most excellent. I had Assiette of Three Terrines: Quatre Foies, Fromage de Tete, Lamb Rillettes with a bunch of sauces on the side and Robert had Sweetbreads for our first course. We both had grilled/roasted scallops with clams as our main course that came served with pineapple salsa. For dessert we had a Olive Oil and Taza Chocolate Mousse and Gingerbread Pain Perdu (there was no problem finding the ginger bread). Plus decaf expresso and seven herb tea. They served the tea properly in a nice pot - I've been surprised how poor the tea service is in some very nice restaurants.

I had a Northern Lights which was St. Germain, Scotch, citrus, Bittermens Tiki Bitters (their description also says: Crisp, Smoked Elderflower and Douglas Fir) followed by a glass of Vouvray. I like trying out these weird drinks - is one was good. Robert had a glass Bourgogne Blanc.

We ran into my friend Henrietta Davis (a Cambridge City Councillor) and her husband who were celebrating her birthday at the restaurant.

The prior occupant of this place was La Groceria, a very nice italian restaurant who had been there for many years which occupied the first floor and the second floor also. Before that La Groceria was a tiny little place and above it on the 2nd and third floors was the apartment of the late Marleen Montgomery, the leader of an off beat music school and director of The Quadrivium, an early music performing group that I was a member of for a number of years. Marleen used to hold classes, soirees and workshops in her apartment and was there many times. It used to be wierd later on eating in the upstairs rooms of La Groceria in the very room that used to be used for workshops.