Dinner For One, for Two People

Cast of Characters
1 child who wants plain buttered pasta
1 husband who had a late lunch and doesn’t want any dinner at all
1 self who is craving vegetables

Ingredients
1 bunch of almost over the hill Asian braising greens from the CSA
1 bunch of similarly almost over the hill turnip tops from the CSA
3 garlic scapes from the backyard garden
2 springs of flat leaf parsley from the CSA
2 potatoes, because they’re there
Butter
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Balsamic vinegar (the dregs of a fancy bottle rinsed out with the cheap stuff)

1. Pour glass of wine.
2. Put pot of water on to boil the child’s pasta.
3. Wash and chop the greens, tossing out all the really over the hill bits.
4. Decide that sautéed greens isn’t really enough dinner, and boil another pot of water for some potatoes.
5. Peel and dice the potatoes, and toss ‘em in the pot for 10 minutes.
6. Heat up a little olive oil in a skillet with a lid, and toss in the chopped garlic scapes.
7. Remember that you forgot to salt the now boiling potatoes and the pasta water.
8. Cook the child’s pasta.
9. Rescue the garlic scapes before they start to brown, and toss in the still wet chopped greens. Slap a lid on the pot.
10. Mince the parsley and put it someplace where you won’t forget to add it later.
11. Drain the potatoes and mash ‘em with a pat of butter.
12. Drain the child’s pasta and toss with a pat of butter. Serve.
13. Scoop the greens onto the mashed potatoes and mix it all up, gently, with another pat of butter.
14. Serve up the demented colcannon in a bowl, sprinkled with a little rubbed kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, the minced parsley and a few drops of balsamic vinegar.
15. Eat. With more wine, as necessary.
16. Don’t share when husband says “I didn’t know you were making that. It looks good.” Because it’s just enough for one.

Debauchery sans Toddler

I went away for a long weekend last weekend - to San Francisco to visit my brother and his new wife, and to eat and drink and sleep with abandon. It was heaven.

Friday, my brother picked me up at the airport and we had lunch at the Liberty Cafe. I had the beet/goat cheese strudel, followed by their banana cream pie. And a glass of wine. After tooling around, stopping in bookstores and eccentric other spots, we picked up his wife and had a lovely Gruner Veltliner at the Hotel Biron. Dinner was at Blue Plate, where I had pan roasted chicken livers followed by gnocchi.

For breakfast on Saturday, we scampered to Tartine for scones and croissants and bread pudding and yogurt and freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and lots of coffe. My other sister-in-law (that is, W's sister) picked me up for a few hours - we drove around in the rain, checked out a plant sale at the botanical garden, and ate an udon lunch. She returned me to my brother's care, and after a tour of the not quite finished Federal Building, we did the tourist thing and had drinks at the top of the Marriott for the view. We had a feast at a friend's house that night - fried chicken AND mashed potatoes AND collards AND brussels sprouts AND salad AND biscuits AND cornsticks.

Sunday we had breakfast at Atlas and then got in the car, picked up a friend of theirs and set off over the Golden Gate bridge. Our first stop was a wine tasting at Bella, in the Dry Creek Valley. Their wine was nice, their caves were great, their picinic tables were splendid. A bottle of their zinfandel washed our cheese and crackers and apples down perfectly. We then headed towards Napa, for a little shopping in St. Helena and more wine at Alpha Omega. Their 2005 Sauvignon Blanc was lovely, but the 2006 - feh: cat piss.

Sunday dinner was the raison d’être for the entire trip: dinner at the French Laundry. And yes, it was fabulous. And yes, it was worth flying across the country for.

Another comment about wine

Last week's New Yorker had a fascinating article by Larissa MacFarquhar about a married couple who are philosophy professors exploring the relationship between conscious experience and the flesh of the brain, that is, the mind-body problem.

One afternoon recently, Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. "She said, 'Paul, don't speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren't for my endogenous opiates I'd have driven the car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I'll be down in a minute.'"

Now I know why I need that glass of wine at the end of the day. Although, I prefer anything but Chardonnay.

Cocktail Playdates

I'm not social enough to be much of a playdate mom, and I figure that Miss M. gets plenty of socializing being at daycare five full days a week. But, I do think that playdates with wine are a great idea - and birthday parties - and all of those slightly awkward get-togethers of parents and kids where the kids know one another well and the parents more en passant. It breaks the ice. And wine is good. I've been reading With Bold Knife and Fork by M.F.K. Fisher; here is what she has to say about wine:

As for wines, they are for me. I like honest wines as such, all of them and always. Of course some are better than others, and I like the best ones the most. But I could and would forgo any other liquid forever, as long as I might drink one humble wine with my daily bread. I like wine before, during, after, and in between meals, if things point that way. I like to know, and to use, local wines, which is probably why I have managed to live near the grapevines since I was four. If I were told today that even one more sip of wine would kill me, I might believe it, but I know that I would also investigate the prognosis, weigh its validity, and then decide for myself. If I agreed to abstain for survival's dubious benefits, I could at least taste vicariously by continuing to serve wine to my friends and, like old George Saintsbury in his Cellar Book, grow mellow on memory.