Dinner.

Our friends Trent and Aimee sent us Thomas Keller's cookbook Ad Hoc as a thank-you for letting them stay with us when they were here last month. The book arrived the day before we were leaving to be out of town, so our first opportunity to really peruse the recipes wasn't until we got back this weekend.  I must confess that the possibility those recipes presented was taunting me all week long....

We cooked three recipes from it for dinner:  chicken with tarragon, buttered farro, and rainbow swiss chard.  Wow, was it tasty!  The chicken had sweet paprika and curry powder that added an interesting twist to the usual, classically French pairing of tarragon and chicken.  And the swiss chard had serrano ham and wine-soaked raisins that presented a salty, sweet undertone to the chard.

But the true winner was the buttered farro.  OMG was it good!  Ironically, it was the simplest of the three recipes, but the integrity of the ingredients really shone.  Gropius and I both commented that with farro that tasty, it's a wonder why more people don't cook with it more often!

Thanks, Trent and Aimee!  Come back to visit and we'll cook you something....farro, anyone??

Recent Meals

Gropius and I have enjoyed some really good meals recently (as Lulu can attest).  On Saturday, we had a very Spanish meal--chicken with piquillo peppers and a tortilla española.  To round things out, we also had some locally-grown asparagus and a nice riesling from Pacific Rim.

The tortilla española

And tonight, we had an oldie-but-goodie, Golden Beets with Sunflower Seeds Salad.  We substituted regular red beets for the golden ones (we had the red in our fridge), but it was tasty nonetheless.  I think the red beets looked beautiful on our new blue salad plates, too.

Tortilla Española

My father fondly recalls telling a story about me when I was little and requesting something like 6 scrambled eggs for breakfast--one at a time, right after the other.

I'm experiencing that myself right now...Lulu is currently on her fourth (toddler-sized) portion of tortilla española.  We weren't sure she was even going to be that hungry since she woke up from her nap and ate a big lunch around 2:30pm (sweet potatoes, cauliflower, and buckwheat mixed with bacon and mushrooms).  So, we started off with a mandarin orange (she loves those)  and then thought we'd try a small piece of the tortilla out on her.  Little did we know that she'd be such a big fan (at least today).

...and we're now on to slice #5, but I think we're finally slowing down!

Bistro Jeanty

We joined dear, old friends for a dinner in Yountville on Saturday at Bistro Jeanty.  Trent and Aimee really liked the restaurant which made me glad (b/c I picked it!).  We had a wonderful meal together and Lulu was very good.  She had some of our appetizers and enjoyed her own food, too.

Simple pleasures.

Lulu playing in our neighbor's downspout.

I think someone likes the bubbly...?

Pretzel Time!

This weekend, I busted out a new pretzel recipe (this time with rye flour) in anticipation of Stephan's visit next week.  I'm a little rusty and out of practice, but I think we should have a couple of batches in the freezer when he gets here.  :)