Leftover leftovers

Eastside Road, November 14, 2013—

LAST NIGHT THE FOLKS down the hill came up for dinner because we had a houseguest for the night, an old friend from The Hague, here visiting UC Berkeley for a week. What to have for dinner?

Let's keep it simple. Cook rummaged in the icebox (as I call it: others say "fridge") and found some mushrooms, a few carrots, half a white onion, one yam, a small butternut squash from somewhere. Elsewhere there were still a couple of potatoes and a couple of big red onions. Garlic, of course.

And we'd prepared for tonight by laying in eight of Franco Dunn's marvelous sausages — these his "Greek sausages," flavored with fennel and garlic and lemon and coriander seeds, I believe, and who knows what else. Well, Franco, of course.

Cook chopped the vegetables into bite-size pieces and tossed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then scattered them on a big sheet pan and baked them in the oven. I built a fire in the Weber — grape prunings, oak, a few scraps — and grilled the sausages. We had a first course of Comté, Brie, and Caveman Blue cheeses, and a fine long evening of conversation.

Soave, Gaetano d'Aquino, 2012; Aglianico, Beneventano, 2012; Salice Salentino, Epicuro, 2011 — cheap wines all, but perfectly serviceable

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BUT WE HADN'T finished the vegetables, nor even the sausages, so we dined off them again tonight, just the two of us, with some green beans, and raw carrots and pickled peppers as a side dish, and a green salad afterward, and tangerines, and chocolate mints…

Salice Salentino, Epicuro, 2011