Monday, five days ago now, we drove down to Berkeley on business, and lunched in the café. Look at this Yellowtail "crudo"! It was a delicious piece of fish, dressed with olive oil and lemon jiuce flavored with mint, and came with a marvelous salad: I could eat this happily at the beginning of every meal except perhaps breakfast.
THAT EVENING, dinner with a couple of dear old friends at a favorite place of theirs, though I've almost always found it a little stiff and slightly out of whack. The menu was vaguely Piemontese, and didn't at first seem to offer anything really attractive: most of the dishes were a little out of whack, with too many flavors or textures pulling at them.
Oh, but look: a simple plate of house-made pasts, tagliarini in fact, served simply with butter and white truffles. Can't go wrong there; and the gianduia afterward was very nice indeed.
THE NEXT TWO DAYS, I'm sorry; they're a bit of a blur. One of them undoubtedly brought the last of that delicious chick-pea stew that first appeared last Friday; the next day, Wednesday, we had a decent hamburger with French fries and a glass of red at a pleasant local:
• Brody's Burger and Brews, 3135 Cleveland Avenue, Santa Rosa, California; 707-526-4878
YESTERDAY, OF COURSE, was Thanksgiving, the day that turns all Facebookers into food bloggers. I didn't take a single photo. We were invited to a friend's house; there were eight of us at table; we began with Martinis and then sat down to a traditional table: roast turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, Brussels sprouts. Afterward, a green salad; then delicious pies, apple and pumpkin-caramel. To drink, Lou Preston's Red.
WE COME NOW FINALLY up to date, with another of the "prefab" dinners we've been experimenting with, sent to us by Sun Basket. The neighbor down the hill introduced us to this concept: pre-prepared complete dinners sent in a box, nothing for us to do but the actual cooking and eating. It seems wasteful, somehow, all that packaging and shipping, but the containers are recycled, the shipping's not expensive, and the ingredients are organic and sustainable. Tonight we had a fine-grained, quite tasty pork steak, with onion confit and an improbable but in the event delicious dish of kale and bosc pears. And why shouldn't pears be used, for example, in place of potatoes? I'll bet the long centuries before potatoes got to Europe saw many such dishes: I'm glad to have this one tonight.
Afterward, another helping of that delicious apple pie — hard to believe there was a little to bring home with us last night!
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