It's just not the same…

Los Angeles, March 17, 2017—

SALAD IS WHAT I seem so often to crave on these road trips, and it's not surprising: Constant Reader will know that virtually every dinner at home ends with a simple salad of lettuce in vinaigrette: garlic smashed with salt, olive oil, wine vinegar. So I was happy to see an arugula salad on the menu, even though it was tricked out with almonds, shaved grana padana, pecans, golden raisins, and such. Made it a little Venetian, perhaps, but still green enough for St. Patrick's Day.

Main course: spaghettini with a very rich meat sauce involving veal shortribs and dense tomato paste among other things. Good, but very rich: and a man with a beard can have trouble with spaghettini, not my favorite pasta shape.

     Dolcetto, Bruno Rocca, 2015

•Bistro 45, 45 South Mentor Avenue, Pasadena, California; +1 (626) 795-2478

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating: 2016      2015     2017

In-N-Out

Lake Elsinore, California, March 16, 2017—

YES, BELIEVE ME, I know: it's been quite a while since I've posted here. I've been busy and distracted. There have been some memorable meals and I may yet comment on them here if I get time this weekend. But then again I may not.

We're on the road; have been since Monday; our early Spring tour of southern California in search of wildflowers and to see a couple of plays. This morning started out in the charming town of Indio, I write a bit ironically, where last night we dined after a mediocre fashion in a casino, faut de mieux.

This morning's breakfast was a cold gummy "croissant" and a couple of tolerable cappuccinos.

Lunch, after a visit to the remarkable Palm Springs Art Museum, was a quite good date milk shake: good enough to let you know where we got it:

•Great Shakes, 160 South Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, California; +1 (760) 327-5300

Dinner was a hamburger at the only fast-food joint we patronize. I'm sure I've written about In-N-Out before; it's an interesting operation; the employees all have a voice in the company's management; the beef is relatively wholesome; the fries are made from potatoes peeled and cut on premises. Nothing fancy; nothing bad.

•In-N-Out Burger, 331 Railroad Canyon Road, Lake Elsinore, California; +1 (800) 786-1000

     A beer in the motel room: Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat, okay,

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating: 2016      2015     2017

Enchilada; starches

Eastside Road, March 3, 2017

SORRY, I WAS DISTRACTED yesterday. That seems to have been happening too frequently recently. I had a physical the other day, the routine one; they asked about my drinking: aa couple of glasses of wine with dinner, I said. Have you had four drinks in an evening recently? Yes, I said, a whole bottle of whiskey in fact. When was that, they asked. Election night, I replied. Ah, yes, they said, we've had a lot of that lately…

And there have been other distractions, but why go into that. Yesterday cook made what she called a sort of open-faced enchilada. I have no idea how she did it, but my shopping list requested half a pound of ground beef, a quarter pound of cheddar cheese, cilantro, and La Primavera brand tortillas if I could find them, otherwise no tortillas at all.

No one in Healdsburg had La Primavera brand tortillas, but she apparently found a couple in the freezer. Maybe you can tell from the photo what was in the final dish: all I can say, the following day, is that it was cooked first on the range in a black iron skillet, then in the oven on a baking sheet, and it was delicious.

     Primitivo, Grifone

Tonight we had a vegetarian dinner: lentils and rice, cooked with onions that had been browned in olive oil with salt and pepper. This was equally tasty. In both cases, of course, we followed with our usual green salad, and clementines and chocolate.

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating: 2016      2015     2017 (I'll try to catch up on this soon)

Pork loin

Eastside Road, February 28, 2017—

THE BEST KIND of company to dinner tonight: a granddaughter and her son, both with good appetites. Why not another pork tenderloin?

The technique was essentially the same as last time: a rub; a wait; a quick browning on top of the stove, then a slow roasting, still on the range. The materials were different, though: Cook followed Marian Burros's suggestion to combine mustard and brown sugar for the coating, but she substituted a little apple-cider vinegar for the stipulated sherry. In my critical opinion the result was not as brilliantly sharp and rich as the last loin we've had, with its garlic and fennel seed; but it was good enough to keep in mind.

Potatoes, as you see, cooked with shallots; and broccolini, slow-cooked and very very good. Then the green salad; then the clementines and, little boy being at table, cookies.

     Cheap bianco, then Primitivo

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating: 2016      2015     2017

Onions and oranges

Eastside Road, February 27, 2017—

ONE OF OUR FAVORITE old standbys, and such a simple thing: a salad of thinly sliced (equally thin, please) onions and oranges, blood oranges if you have them, dressed simply with a tiny bit of salt and a judicious drizzle of good olive oil. And that's it. Ingenious.

Afterward, a can of hominy cooked with a sausage, also sliced, and some halved little fingerling potatoes; probably some onion in there too. And then the green salad, and two or three tiny clementines, and some chocolate.

     Bottle-end: Garnacha, Laya, 2015

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating: 2016      2015     2017

Chicken, potatoes, broccoli

Eastside Road, February 26, 2017—

BAKED CHICKEN, let's call it. Cook found a couple of pieces in the freezer, left there from the last whole bird we had. She rubbed them with a blend of fennel seed, rosemary, garlic, pepper flakes, salt, and pepper; let them stand a bit with lemon wedges, then set them in a hot oven, adding fingerling potatoes after the chicken had browned. Succulent; lots of flavor.

Green salad; then vanilla ice cream sundaes with lavender caramel sauce, pecans and pistachios. Delicious.

     Primitivo, Grifone, 2015

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating: 2016      2015     2017

Vegetarian

Eastside Road, February  25, 2017—

A deli turkey/cheese sandwich and a beer left me uncomfortably stuffed, and my companion evidently felt the same.  For dinner, then, nothing wanted beyond a baked potato and green beans, with garden thyme and our olive oil …

Primitivo, Grifone, 2015