February 15

What We Ate (while you were gone)

Dear Austin -

I'm having such a fabulous time with Teresa.  So far lots of giggling, and food event after food event! The wine bottles are stacking up in the bin.  Today we had the now-usual second-Monday breakfast at Venus.  We all ordered the Winter Scramble - it had butternut squash in it.

 

We girls went for a picnic today - the weather was Gorgeous! We took take- out from Imperial Tea Court (delicious take out) -- pork -and -pumpkin- stuffed dumplings, yellow curry chicken, and handpulled noodles -- to Live Oak Park, and held down the root of a tree while Anjali showed us just how quickly she can run out of our sight - over and over again! It was amazing! One minute within an easy few steps and a grab, the next minute I'm literally running to catch up with her before she dips her toes in the creek clear across the park! Wow.!

I have not thrown my food principles totally to the wind, but have been dangling them casually out the window as we eat not 100%whole grain sourdough, chocolate (chocolate chocolate), and even let Anjali have more than one taste of Teresa's gelato today! She bacame an instant addict, as you could imagine.  

For Valentine's Day Troy was working, but I tweaked the (flourless) almond -egg muffin recipe to become a waffle recipe - so it had almonds, eggs, sweet potato, butter and about half a pint of cream! Then the real kicker was a chocolate sauce  of cream milk butter and very dark chocolate with more than a little kick of cayenne. I named it Decadent Dark and Hot Chocolate Sauce.  Austin, we ate enough waffles with enough of that sauce to make our hearts beat techno! The chocolate was so intense! Then for dinner I made a soup I have named Valentine Soup: roasted butternut squash with roasted beets pureed with broth onions and garlic to a thick creamy blend the color of ... A valentine. With greens added. Sourdough walnut bread with mounds of butter. Delicioso if I do say so myself.  

Tonight T and I watched Julie and Julia on the projector screen . We agree that we could do without the Julie character and have a full-length film just of Julia.  Her enthusiasm is infectious, and Meryl Streep does a superb job in the role! Ok! Downstairs to finish dinner. 

Love! 

Tiffanie