Cabbage rolls

Eastside Road, August 11, 2010—

TO FRIENDS FOR DINNER, always a pleasure, especially when it's local friends not visited often enough. Aperitif with cheese and a delicious custom-made (from their pig) coarse-cut salame on the back patio, then à table for cabbage rolls, the leaves wrapped around ground beef and pork with a handful of brown rice and judicious herbal flavoring — dill, among other tastes. (Juniper, I'm sure.) Deeply flavored tomato sauce on the side, and sour cream. Green salad afterward, and then strawberries and Bovolo ice cream — basically a very good dolce di latte, subtly flavored with mace and black pepper. And all the meat and vegetables, and the wine too, from their own place, sustainably farmed!

Sauvignon blanc; L. Preston Red, both Louis Preston Winery.
The dessert reminds me that I forgot to mention a delicious ice cream sundae served for dessert Monday night: vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, slivered almonds, and a dark complex local honey. Now how could I have forgotten that?