Feliz Cumpleanos!

My loving husband prepared a delicious meal of osso bucco with risotto milanese for my birthday dinner last night and served it with a tasty bottle of chianti classico (no fava beans though, just some English peas). I played a part though by keeping the baby occupied so he could work his magic mojo:



And, yes, that is our coffee table. His other present to me was letting me eat this meal in front of the TV so we could watch Bill Clinton's speech to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Stan's Donuts

Gropius and I ventured to San Jose to pick up a pair of nightstands this past weekend which allowed us to indulge in our donut fetish at one of the best donut shops in the Bay Area: Stan's Donuts of Santa Clara. We discovered it, compliments of our Slow Food Guide to San Francisco and both Gropius and I agree that it's a good thing Stan's is located 130 miles away from Sacramento!

It's located in a nondescript strip mall between a BBQ joint, and various other ethnic eateries.


Immediately inside the door is a guy kneading donut dough and cutting them out. The other two guys were responsible for frying them and glazing them.



The inside of Stan's is narrow and long with a counter and griddle in the back. Apparently, you can eat donuts AND enjoy a hamburger and shake if you want to (but honestly, after a donut, who cares about hamburgers?). As you can see, this particular Saturday the counter was full of folks enjoying their donuts.



Gropius and I, however, took our half dozen to go because we had furniture to pick up. So, we enjoyed ours in the car, parked in some shade. Important note: they were still warm and gooey from the fryer.




Will post pics of the furniture later...

'maters!

Gropius and I have been anticipating the ripening of our West Virginia "Hillbilly" heirloom tomatoes. We had two absolute monsters which finally were ripe yesterday, in addition to two slightly smaller ones. We couldn't resist putting the monsters on the scale to see just exactly how much they weighed:

Yup, you read it right--2 lb, 12.3oz. How 'bout that?

These tomatoes are in addition to the yellow pear, black cherry, black prince, and garden peach tomatoes I harvested yesterday, not to mention the tomatillos and the habaneros, anaheims, hungarian wax, and cayenne peppers. Oh, and three yellow squash.

Tasty!

Masullo

Gropius and I tried out a new restaurant last night before our childbirth class and it was delicious! I had heard about it on another blog and thought that it sounded promising. We are lucky in Sacramento to have several options for deep-dish, Chicago-style pizza, but we have had a harder time finding an upscale, Neapolitan-style pizza. I think we found it!

The interior was very minimalist ("Clean lines, Sweetie!") so you could focus on the food. I also loved the brown and earth tones of it all:



I had a sausage pizza that was very good, but I have to say that Gropius's potato pizza was delicious! We were so busy snarfing it down, that I didn't realize I had no pictures of our pizza until they were gone! We started off with some small appetizers of rosemary salted almonds and marinated olives and finished off with some mint chocolate chip ice cream and chocolate pudding.


Gropius wants to put in a wood-fired pizza oven in our backyard, but I'm worried we might end up like this:

BurgerTime!

We bought some flat iron steaks earlier in the week at WholePaycheck and were inspired to turn them into hamburgers when we bought La Boulange mini brioche buns yesterday afternoon. Ta-Chen had mentioned earlier this week that La Boulange, a San Francisco bakery, now had products available in Sacramento, so we decided to give them a try. YUM!

We ground up the flat iron steaks with some chuck, added basalmic vinegar, garlic, salt, pepper, and two piment d'espelette. Gropius roasted some poblano peppers we picked earlier this week from the garden which we marinated in some olive oil with rosemary, salt, and pepper. While the burgers were grilling, we also caramelized a red torpedo onion.

My burger(s) was elemental: toasted brioche bun, dijion mustard, hamburger, some grated cheddar, onions, and peppers. I ended up only eating one though for reasons explained previously.


Gropius's burgers (yes, he had TWO) had all the same stuff mine did with the addition of lettuce and a sliced Better Boy (our one non-heirloom tomato). He also had a Japanese cucumber salad (Ta-Chen, I will bring you a better cucumber this week--Gropius claims the previous one was inferior).



Then we ended dinner with bubbles and classic jazz.


And how was your Saturday night?

When Life Hands You Tomatoes...

...make pizza!

We made the pizza sauce with some of our speckled Romas and then sprinkled the top with some of our Garden Peach tomatoes and basil. Other than starting our own dairy or growing our own wheat, this pizza was made entirely with the fruits of our labor!

Sprinkling the basil


Beautiful pizza pie!



I'll have a slice of that!

Thank you, Miriam!

Our good friend, Miriam, gave us her recipe for Provencal Tart that is absolutely delicious! With our tomatoes coming into season, we decided that the best showcase for them was making her tomato tart. It's always SO freakin' tasty and pretty easy, too.

Here is an action shot of Gropius slicing the tart

And here's a close-up of the deliciousness...Mmmmm.....


Gropius also had a cucumber salad with one of his Japanese cucumbers from the garden. I referred to it as "porn-size" but I think Ta-Chen summed it up best when I brought an extra one up to school for him. He noted that "there's nothing Japanese about it." Still the best line of the day!


We served the tomato tart with a chicken breast grilled with African spices and some fresh green beans and a nice Malbec.