Category: Away Games

May 26, 2009

We had a pretty delightful weekend, and managed to stumble into three consecutive dinners at other peoples’ houses- a refreshing inversion of our normal M.O. We went to Vermont for a couple of nights, and the first night we had grilled venison with polenta and salad (we brought everything from home.) The next evening we headed over to the beautiful new house of some family friends for a terrific meal: grilled halibut and shrimp with…

April 28, 2009

This will be a quick one, since I’m completely knackered from the continuing herb (now technically herb and fruit) garden which I’ll take pics of when it’s done. Until then, I’m going to try to make some progress posting some of the backlog of meals that lurk on my desktop, mocking me. Since I’m too tired to cook tonight, it’s nice to have some things on hand. A couple of weeks ago, we went to…

April 24, 2009

I have once again written a guest post at Thursday Night Smackdown, so you can go there to read all about my almost entirely home-made Reuben, and then feel bad about what you’re making for dinner, and just give up and order Thai food. Should you want to read the other posts I did there last fall, you can find them here and here. They’re actually pretty good, since I worked on them for a…

March 2, 2009

Homemade sourdough, this time with 30% whole wheat, where the dough sat in the fridge for 6 days getting good and sour. And, building upon this tangy, crackling foundation, some carciofi alla romana and local, organic navy beans pressure-cooked with guanciale, mirepoix, herbs, and smoked duck broth, and finished with truffle and olive oils. I’ve been loving the shellfish lately, especially given their highly sustainable status, and big bowls of this (here steamed with sake,…

December 3, 2008

The guys are back in the studio this week, recording the third of their Radiolarian records, and Billy asked if I could come shoot some more video this afternoon. I could. And like before, I brought some snacks. Chris also brought one of the legs of duck confit I gave him yesterday for his belated birthday (it’s his all-time favorite) along with a kumquat-cranberry-cabernet chutney and the rest of the apricot-chanterelle sauce from Thanksgiving. From…

November 17, 2008

On Saturday, we met briefly with Gerard and Alison so they could give me a belated birthday gift since they were too sick to come to the party. So, like secret agents, we met in the AutoZone parking lot and they handed me a bag with a side of wild Alaskan salmon in it. The cloak-and-dagger locale was especially appropriate because he works at the CIA. (The food one, not the one with real spies.)…

October 20, 2008

We went to Vermont for one night, which wasn’t enough, but will have to do for the time being. Driving up we got to experience the steepening gradient from still-luminescent foliage in our area to the more austere landscape that latitude and altitude combine to bestow upon the Green Mountains at this time of year. The bases of most mountains still had some color, but it faded up to the browns, greys, and dark greens…

October 12, 2008

There was much food, drink, and merriment- we had two couples come stay with us for the weekend as we all attended Debi and John’s wedding. The weather was perfect, perfect, perfect, and everything unfolded at a tranquil pace that made for lots of refined hedonism and good time with good people. Only one of the four- Andrew– was with us for dinner on Friday, after a not-so-successful mushroom-hunting walk; it’s been really dry here…

September 1, 2008

We spent the long weekend in Vermont, and Sirkka and Nissa joined us for a couple of nights. Though the last two days were crystalline late-summer perfection, the beginning of our stay was gray and a little muggy- though it didn’t actually rain more than a few drops. So we let the kids do their thing, and between what we brought from home and what we picked up at the farmers’ market, we did all…

August 28, 2008

Yesterday was the guys’ last day in the studio working on the second of their three Radiolarian records, so I brought some snacks by around dinner time to help get them across the finish line. I had an idea the other day for a Thai curry custard- kind of a cross between a chawan-mushi and a pôt-de-crème. So I took some coconut milk and chicken broth, simmered them with green curry paste, Thai and lime…