Jen, who works at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, brought home some eggs from Martha's very own chickens the other day. Martha delivers eggs to the office regularly, and employees are allowed to take four at a time. Jen gave me two of them. I scrambled them up on Saturday for a quick and tasty lunch. I ate them on a sesame bagel from La Bagel Deluxe, with only Sun Gold cherry-sized and pink-hued grape-sized tomatoes and a Tazo iced green tea on the side.
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I made coffee ice cream Sunday in anticipation of a visit from my Dad this coming weekend. I knew it was going to be an extremely busy week for me at work, so I had to make the ice cream Sunday if it was going to get done.
And it turned out great. I used
the same kind of beans as I did in my botched attempt before Father's Day, the Song Bird shade-grown coffee from Costa Rica. Plus the yolks from a dozen, noncelebrity eggs, from Tello's Green Farm of Red Hook, New York. I encountered a minor glitch with the dairy ingredients: I'd somehow ended up buying three pints of heavy cream instead of half-and-half the previous Saturday at the Greenmarket. It wasn't until I was ready to heat it up this Sunday that I noticed I had the wrong stuff. One of the bottles also had the sticker identifying the product on the inside of the cap where it came into contact with the cream. I didn't really want to use it, thinking there was a possibility glue or who knows what else had gotten into the product. So I ended up going to Back to the Land and buying a quart of skim milk from Sky Top Farms of Whitney Point, New York. I used half of that in the ice cream, which allowed me to bring down the richness a notch. The final product was still a little heavier on the cream than usual. And I used more sugar than I did in the vanilla—1 3/4 cups compared with 1 1/2 cups—to better overcome the bitterness of the coffee.
Here's a short video clip of the ice cream makers just before I pulled the plugs and transferred the seriously thick custard to a container for the final freezing:
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I've never been a big fan of watermelon. I like the flavor, but as the fruit's name implies, it's so watered down. Saveur's cover story on watermelon in the September issue—with its luscious photographs and cultural history of the fruit—tempted me into buying a small, icebox-sized one on Saturday. I cut off a chunk Sunday night. It turned out to be seedless with yellow flesh. It was good, but I'm not going to rush out and buy another one this Saturday. The recipe for Sicilian Watermelon Pudding in the magazine looks like a winner, though. And here's a link to a gallery of photos of different varieties of watermelon. I bet the one I bought is a Yellow Doll.
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A couple of Sundays ago, at the 5th Avenue farmers market, I bought some fresh Hudson Valley Farmhouse pasta
from Breezy Hill Orchard. It comes in a 12-ounce package and is made with eggs from Knoll Krest Farm, which, like Breezy Hill, is in Dutchess County. (As is Tello's Green Farm.) I really enjoyed it. I had some with Bob's delicious vodka sauce that Sunday, as shown at right, and the last of it with meatballs I made from ground pork and beef and onions from the Greenmarket, with jarred tomato sauce. The balls were fantastic. I ate them for a couple more days with boring, dried pasta and then froze a bunch more. I got some more pasta last Sunday to see how good it would freeze. The woman at the farmstand said she'd never tried freezing it. I'm sure it'll be fine. I wrapped it up in parchment paper and put it back in the (recyclable) plastic container it came in before throwing it in the freezer.
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This past Sunday, I got lunch again at 'sNice: a Bueno Burrito with beans, brown rice, avocado and tomatoes. It came with some nice salad greens and a hot sauce for dipping. I dug it. Better than that fake-chicken wrap.
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Co-worker Joyce made an amazing blueberry-peach cobbler
that she brought in to share last week, before the craziness of the end of our production cycle this week. The somewhat sad photo at right doesn't do justice to the deliciousness of this cobbler. I took the picture just before wolfing down the last bite of it the day after she brought it in. Many people begged off or had only a little bit. Hello! It's homemade cobbler! I asked Joyce the first day if the leftover cobbler would still be around the next day, and she said it would. And when I got back from getting my lunch the next day, the dish was sitting on my desk. Woo hoo!
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Last week, I enjoyed a new (to me) aglianico: the 2004 Grifalco Aglianico del Vulture. It had the usual aglianico bite and kick of spice. And the label sure is neat. It was $18.95 at Morrell WineXchange, a shop near work I'd been meaning to check out. While there, I also eagerly snapped up two bottles of my favorite summer wine from last year, which I hadn't been able to find: the 2007 Crios de Susana Balbo Rosé of Malbec. Bob and Jen and I had some of that with our La Villa pizza tonight after drinking a bottle of 2006 Cline Ancient Vine Carignane. The Cline, which I've mentioned here and here (regarding the 2003 vintage), was appealingly funky. We'd opened a bottle of it last Friday, but it was corked, so for the first time in my life, I returned a corked bottle for a new one. The guy at Big Nose Full Body was very gracious, thanking me for having brought the receipt while saying that it wasn't necessary because "we trust you." And he smelled the wine and could tell I knew of which I was speaking.
We were going to have the Cline last week, after having enjoyed the 2004 
McKenzie-Mueller Pinot Noir, which Bob had picked up, with (and before) the beef kebabs and rice he made. The M-M was funky* yet lush. In the background of the photo at right, you can see the kebabs—made of chunks of marinated beef, onions, tomatoes, and peppers—that Bob was skewering as we were drinking the first glass of wine.
*Every wine I've drunk lately seems to be funky. Like Bootsy!
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