The day before, Tony and I had home-cooking-loving Game Party host Mark; his mother, Dorothy; and Jack over for dinner. Mark and his sweetie, Hanif, had just gotten back from a Canadian cruise with Dorothy and Mark's Aunt Faith. Hanif begged off dinner because he had to work early the next day, and Mark's aunt was going to come at one point but ended up visiting with a son who'd come down from Boston, Mark said.
To start off, I made the first in what's become a string of salads with fresh raspberries on top. The previous day at the farmers market, I'd gotten red and gold raspberries from Berried Treasures. I also diced some ripe bell peppers and sliced some radishes to sprinkle amongst the crisp and delicious varieties of lettuce. I don't think I used raspberry wine vinegar in the dressing, which would then have contained freshly squeezed lemon and lime juices, some oil, and shakes of salt and peper. In later variations of the salad, I added splashes of the vinegar, which, of course, contributed more raspberry flavor. Outstanding!
For the main course, I roasted Belle Rouge chicken breasts with garlic and tarragon and heated up some kabocha puree from squashes I'd roasted the day before that I spiced up with cinnamon and nutmeg. I also roasted some striped heirloom tomatoes that I drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and, toward the end of their cooking time, fresh basil. I took the photo right before I put them in the oven.
The chicken on my plate looks a tad bony to me from this angle, but it was really good. Dorothy said she thought it was going to be too much chicken for her but she cleaned her plate like everyone else. :-)
For dessert, I served both homemade Concord Grape Sorbet and my ice cream obsession for 2011, Kentucky Colonel Spearmint Stracciatella.
The day before, Tony and I had hired a car to take us and Rudy to a shelter in Brooklyn to check out some dogs, including the female named Scruffy I'd taken a shine to after seeing her on the shelter's website. She was definitely pregnant. And she wasn't too interested in us. Which is understandable. She had other stuff on her mind.
Rudy was so good at the shelter. I was afraid he would have flashbacks to his time at a different shelter in the same neighborhood, but he was totally calm and his usual sweet, happy-to-be-here self.
Tony got a bad vibe about the place. The young guy and gal running the shelter wouldn't allow us to see the area where the dogs were kept—they said it would be too chaotic—so they brought the dogs out to us one at a time. That was after they enclosed a feral cat that they said was a frequent visitor from across the street in a small room off the room where we were shown the dogs. That annoyed Tony.
We met Reggie, who turned out to be a girl, Regina. The gal said she had forgotten whether the dog was male or female when she was adding him/her to the website. Regina was cute but sort of flighty.
We also met Beau, whose sister Belle had already been adopted. He was somewhat friendly toward us, but there wasn't a strong connection. And he was being treated for worms, which the guy told us after we'd taken him for a walk and he'd produced a really unhealthy looking poop.
We thought the guy and gal were well-meaning but are still probably trying to get settled into their relatively new space. Tony has no desire to go back there.
Nick ended up at a shelter in Lindenwold, New Jersey, which is quite a ways south, so I don't think we'll be able to get out to see him anytime soon. We've got several rather busy weeks ahead of us, so Tony is trying to convince me—and has, in fact, mostly succeeded in convincing me—to wait until after the new year to select a dog.
Here's a photo of Tony, Beau, and Rudy:
And here's a shot of Mark, Jack, and Dorothy in our greenhouse before dinner was served:
And here's a photo of another pretty raspberry-containing salad I made for myself during the weekend Mark from DC visited us:
This past Saturday was the first one at the Union Square Greenmarket that I couldn't get raspberries. They liked the weather we had up until then.
The dinner you made for Jack, my mother and me was so good. The ingredients were all so fresh and flavorful and a colorful feast for the eyes as well.
Posted by: Mark H. | November 02, 2011 at 12:32 AM