Steak and salad

Eastside Road, December 3, 2015—

WE HAVE MANY REASONS to be grateful for our neighbors, the Neighbors Down the Hill; and among them their recommendation of this delightful way to address the quotidian problem What's For Dinner.

Even the occasional visitor to this blog will have gathered that we frequently dine in restaurants. We do this partly for business reasons, of course, but we also enjoy restaurants, for both their kitchen skills and their menus. We stick pretty much to a basic repertory at home; we like the quiet jolts of new combinations restaurants can provide.

Neighbor told us of a discovery: prefabricated meals, ordered from the Internet, sourced and shipped by a firm nearly a hundred miles south; all you need to do is the actual cooking. Tonight's dinner was Sirloin steak and apple-walnut salad, and while it didn't save Cook a lot of time in the kitchen it kept her out of the grocery stores, and that — especially when you live a few miles from town — is a blessing.

And the dinner was both delicious and sound. I won't go into details; you'll figure them out from the photo and the recipe-card that came in the package. All the ingredients are organic and sustainable, and all we had to provide was the salt, pepper, and olive oil.

I complimented Cook on her dinner, as I try always to remember to do, and then asked how much it cost. Oh, she said, about twenty-five dollars, maybe less. In any restaurant it would have been twice that, and in many restaurants it would not have been so skilfully prepared!

Petite sirah, Preston of Dry Creek, 2013: big but not dumb, substantial, fruity, a fine steak wine

• Sun Basket, www.sunbasket.com
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants