Happy Halloween

What'd we have for dinner? Well, the family scrounged for itself after I snarfed sausage-olive rolls and pigs-in-blankets at a pumpkin-carving party. The results (of the carving, not the eating), may be seen at left; all design credit goes to my own little pumpkin.

Good Heavens

I'm behind in my dinner posts. Last night was scrumilicious, with another wild mushroom omelette. The night before was lamb chops with roasted beets. I was raised to revile beets, but have discovered in my adulthood that they're terrific, especially when dressed with vinegar. I apologize to my mother, and swear that I continue to draw the line at sweet pickles.

Breakfast Update

It turns out that however good dessert was, it itself was as nothing compared to gingerbread soaked in quince-poaching liquid the morning after, for breakfast. I had two helping just to make sure.

In re: the photo. Don't worry—I didn't actually can these. I have yet to get involved with canning.

Crab Cakes

with turnips, brown rice, and salad. Delicious as it was, however, dinner was as nothing compared to dessert: "Damp Gingerbread" from Laurie Colwin's "More Home Cooking," and poached quinces from Alice Waters' "Chez Panisse Fruit." This was a dessert with stature--I know because I ate myself silly. A side note: I find that in any spicy, moist confection (carrot cake, pumpkin cake, gingerbread, etc.) whole wheat flour is basically indistinguishable from all-purpose, and so I substitute it.

Spinach and Feta Sausage

with brown rice and sauteed mei quing. The cabbage was dressed with lemon juice from a not-quite-ripe Meyer lemon from our own tree.

Chicken Pot Pie

(not made by me) with steamed runner beans and sauteed turnips. The turnips are a beautiful variety our CSA sent us; they look like watermelons when you cut them in half. Unfortunately, they taste like regular old turnips, so we'll be returning to our beloved white variety once they mature in the garden.

Michael Clayton

I imagine the genesis of the movie was something like this: an enormously talented group of movie people are given the following challenge. Take only the most minimal set of convetional thriller plot devices, strung together so as to result in a just-tenable level of plausibility, and then *make the heck out of that movie.* Go nuts—use wonderful actors at their absolute best, give it a terrific script, make it gorgeous to look at, etc. Voila! "Michael Clayton." Clooney is all that he is said to be in the title performance. How good is he? I watched a two-hour movie in which he appears in nearly every frame, and I never once thought about how dreamy he is. I! never thought about George Clooney's dreaminess! He's great. So is everyone else, particularly Tilda Swinton in a tense perfomance that shows without telling the unique pressures of being female in a corporate environment--clothes, hair, and makeup play an understated but vital and dual role as both armor and Achilles heel.

One more thing I will say is this: if you have ever wondered just how efficiently and cleanly you could be killed in your own home, this movie will show you. Most impressive.

Chicken, Apple, and Fennel Sausage

with quinoa and baked squash. (Patty-pan? Cutie Pie? Cupcake? Some silly name that squash had.)

Haddock

in egg-and-flour batter, with brown rice, green beans, and salad. Grapefruit for dessert. Lately all I need to know about fruit is the following: is it citrus? is it juicy? If so, then yes, please, I'll have tons.

Broiled Steak

with brown rice and some seriously bitter greens. My spouse balked, but I munched on; there's not a vegetable too bitter for my taste these days (except maybe regular turnips).

Pork Chops

with lemon butter, roasted delicata squash (not over-rosted, for once), and sauteed greens. Yum.

Paris Fashion Week Pt. II

The grown-up in me would love to report that the show that blew me away was Lanvin. And it's not that I don't see that it is stunning, and that one would be the cynosure of all eyes in the room in just about any one of the dresses. It's that it's not precisely the grown-up in me that responds to fashion most of the time. This time it was Marc Jacobs, on whom I am forever just about to give up, who thrilled me at Louis Vuitton with a collection of layers in bright colors inspired, he says, by Spongebob Squarepants. The first three photos are all LV, and I'd wear them and the rest of his collection any day. The fourth photo, featuring a little blush-colored swing jacket that I'd wear every day of my life, is John Galliano, whose show made me as happy as his shows always do.

As usual, the color in the photos is not true, but will snap to life if you click on them to enlarge.

Omelette

with oyster and shitake mushrooms sauteed in butter, garlic, and parsely, with some parmesan cheese. Oh lord—this was one of those meals when it all came together perfectly; I could have eaten the whole thing over again. We had roasted red peppers on the side, and carrot cake (made by me, in a Bundt pan) for dessert. It couldn't have been better.

Paris Fashion Week Pt. II

Dries Van Noten, all is forgiven. Sure, you broke my heart last season with a collection based on workout gear and high-heel white sneakers, but that's all in the past, poof, gone, forgotten. Keep showing me collections like this one and we'll never fight again. As for you, Stella McCartney, I still have no idea what all the fuss is about, and Messieur LaCroix: ignore the critics. I'll wear anything you make, any time, any season. As usual, a puzzled but enthusiastic shout-out to the Japanese: Junya, Tao, Rei (especially you Rei, you braniac minx), you are my peeps, birth to earth.

PS—For some reason Blogger is washing out the color on the Dries photo; click on it to see the clothes in their actual intensity.

Grilled Salmon

with brown rice, steamed runner beans, and a salad of turnip shoots from the garden. This meal was quite tasty, but also majorly pretty to look at.

Flank Steak

marinated in soy sauce, olive oil, garlic, and lemon zest, and broiled. With brown rice, roasted red peppers, and sauteed Napa cabbage. I was going to nix the cabbage out of laziness, but then I nibbled a leaf and all my bitter-green pleasure receptors lit up at once and I had to go for it. And of course it's no work at all to sautee greens once you've washed them.

Veal Scallopini

I know, I know. But that's what we had, and they were delicious. With quinoa and sauteed greens.

Catch-Up

In fact we've had three really excellent meals in a row: 1) thin pork cutlets dreged in flour, sauteed in butter, and finished with lemon and parsley, with brown rice and salad mix. 2) crab cakes, roasted delicata squash, and quinoa. 3) crab and lobster cakes with deep fried brussels sprouts—sprouts from our very own garden! They were tiny, about the size of red grapes, and bloomed like wee roses in the hot oil. Scrummy.