Saturday, January 1, 2011

New Year's Day

Berkeley, January 1, 2011—


IT WILL PROBABLY turn out to be a three-pound weekend, maybe four. But it's worth it, and I know how to drop back to normal.

We brunched out, the four of us, a little before noon, at a Berkeley fixture we hadn't been to in years. I had a simple on-the-road breakfast: two eggs over easy, potatoes, three or four strips of delicious bacon, unbuttered toast, with a couple of cappuccinos.
  • Café Rouge, 1782 4th Street, Berkeley; tel. (510) 525-1440

  • Then, after a glass of fine dry Blanquette de Limoux at Pat&Mike's, we stopped at Alice's annual New Year's Day at-home. Here a buffet was cooked by none other than the handsome, intelligent, kind and generous, supremely gifted Scott Peacock, and I kept thinking of Phil Harris and "That's What I Like About the South":
    pecans
    pimento cheese spread on celery sticks
    Incredibly well-seasoned collard greens
    Sweet-potato purée
    Sweet southern ham
    Hopping John
    Scott's fabulous corn-bread muffins
    An incredibly delicious, resonant, integrated meal, full of flavors and reassurances, among friends who know how lucky, healthy, and hard-working they are; a salutary beginning of a new year.
    Pigeoulet (Var), 2009


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