Chili

Eastside Road, January 31, 2010 —

CLEARLY ONE OF THE HUNDRED great dishes: chili and beans. Lindsey cooked up a mess of pinto beans to begin with. Then she browned ground beef, adding onions and garlic at the right time, flavoring with oregano and good New Mexico chili powder, and combined things, and cooked cooked slowly slowly. Before, guacamole with chips; after, green salad.

Nero d'Avola

Grilled tuna

Eastside Road, January 30, 2010—

DOWN THE HILL to the neighbors' house for dinner: Eric grilled a slab of storebought tuna on the Tuscan grill in his fireplace, and Thérèse roasted potatoes, onions, a carrot or two, some fennel, and some bacon in the oven.

Green salad, of course; a little bit of salsa verde on the vegetables, and hot fudge sundaes for dessert. Once again — I know this is a predictable litany — a truly delicious dinner: color, texture, scent, flavor, vitamins, minerals, good company.

Cheap Pinot grigio; Nero d'Avola

Chestnuts

Eastside Road, Jan. 29—

GIOVANNA AND PAVEL are here for the weekend! What nicer way to celebrate than penne with chestnuts? Lindsey mashed them into the sofritto, then combined that with the drained pasta — delicious on a winter night. Green salad.

cheap Nero d'Avola

Hot diggety

Eastside Road, January 28, 2010—

I COUNT THIS an excellent day: sardines with raw onion on toast for lunch; hot dogs for dinner. Niman Schell, of course, broiled, served with mustard and a slice of dill pickle and some very thin slices of raw onion on a DB&C* bun. Only one thing would have improved it: a Cubs game. Green salad.

Nero d'Avola

*Downtown Bakery and Creamery, 308 A Center Street, Healdsburg; tel. 707-431-2719

Soup

Eastside Road, January 27, 2010—

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, dear Mozart! We finished the slaw, savored a bowl of red-pepper soup, and revisited the cheese box tonight, with toast and a green salad to follow.

The rest of that Sauvignon blanc, Viñas Chilenas, 2009; and Tempranillo, La Granja 360, 2007

Encore

Eastside Road, January 26, 2010—

TONIGHT'S DINNER was the same as yesterday's: slaw and Swiss steak. I dealt with the latter yesterday, so why not investigate the concept of slaw tonight? The word's simply Dutch for salad: sla. In English, though, slaw has a more specific connotation, seems to me: it involves shredded leaves and pickling or fermentation. A slaw is essentially Northern, as a green salad seems Mediterranean. As I said yesterday, this one involved cilantro, lime juice, red pepper and salt as well as the red-cabbage base. Crunch, salt, sweet cabbage, sour lime: a multisensate course.

Swiss steak

Eastside Road, January 25, 2010—

WIKIPEDIA WOULD HAVE made my world entirely different when I was a child. Instead of idly wondering why Mom called it "Swiss steak," and wondering what it might have to do with the only thing I really knew about Switzerland — namely, The Swiss Family Robinson — I would simply have done what I did just now and looked it up online.

Who'd have known:

The name does not refer to Switzerland, but instead to the process of "swissing", which refers to fabric or other materials being pounded or run through rollers in order to soften it.

I don't recall Mom ever running our beef through rollers, though I did hear her slam the tenderizing hammer on it from time to time. To me, Swiss steak is beef that's been tenderized somehow, then slow-braised, usually in some kind of tomato sauce.

That's exactly what Lindsey did tonight, and it was as good as ever. Little old potatoes, too, boiled tender, so you can mash them down in the juice with your fork. As a first course, a red-cabbage slaw with grated carrot, chopped onion, a little chopped cilantro, some red pepper flakes, lime juice and salt. Afterward, the usual green salad.

Sauvignon blanc, Viñas Chilenas, 2009; Tempranillo, La Granja 360, 2007