Caprese Salad c/o McCrossens

Some time last week I met up with A.S. at McCrossen's for drinks and conversation. We hadn't seen each other since our brunch at Fathom Oyster House back in early June, so it was good to catch up. I was hoping that McCrossens would still have some of the specials they had posted on their Facebook page a few days before (something like fois gras bruschetta), but that was not to be. Instead I had their caprese salad type dish and it was marvelous. Great pesto. Delectable tomatoes. Fresh cheese.
I had a Riesling and then switched to beer as far as my beverages were concerned.

Salad and Pasta c/o Jackie's

After the drive back to Silver Spring we quickly regathered ourselves and went to Jackie's for dinner. Their menu had quite a number of things on it that looked appealing, but I ultimately decided on a salad and an entree. Our waiter was not the warmest of servers and when I asked about how the tuna on the Nicoise salad was prepared, he told me that there wasn't any tuna at all. I found that to be quite confusing, as I have never before run into a Nicoise Salad lacking in tuna. In fact, I would go as far as to say that a defining characteristic of a Nicoise salad is tuna. So that was weird. I went with the salad with Le Bocage spicy greens, sugar snap peas, Chinese peppercorn and a mango infused vinaigrette. I loved the bit pile of greens and the look of the peas and ate the entire thing, though the peppercorn and vinaigrette's overall presence could have been better enforced. What?
My father had the shrimp and squid ink gnocchi with mustard greens and spring garlic, as well as mussels and peas from the looks of it.
I had the orecchiette primavera with pesto, broccolini, foraged mushrooms and Idiazabal manchego cheese. I liked it very much. A little oily at the bottom but good.
I generally try to say no to dessert, but once I looked at the dessert menu and realized that my father was going to split a little sweet treat that I might as well jump on the wagon. This was a butterscotch panna cotta I think, with little cookies. It was a little soupy, but tasty.
I think elements of this chocolate cake dessert were heralded as good, though my father was a little less positive about the cake itself. Alas. Or was that D? I forget.

Bucks County Country, Part II

After the tubing we dropped by a gallery where Mr. Ass had a few paintings up (I have tried to remember the gallery's name, but cannot) so that he could varnish them. This was, I think, my first experience watching a painting be varnished. Pretty simple, I guess, but kind of crazy. I mean, why doesn't any of that paint get moved around when something liquidy is brushed on it?

After that we returned to Mr. Ass's house, where we picked basil from the garden (he picked most of it because I got too busy taking photographs).



The corn really was as high as an elephant's eye.
We then turned the basil into pesto.
And then I took a photograph that really is almost exactly the same as the one I took last summer.
While I really just wanted to sit on Mr. Ass's back porch forever, I realized that I had to get home before all the parking spaces were taken, so, reluctantly, I left.

Salad & Pasta c/o Luigis

Another day, another salad and pasta dish from Luigi's. This time I tried their tortellini with a creamy pesto sauce. It was not my favorite. I mean, I have a tendency to eat too much fatty stuff, but when even I feel like the dish I'm eating is just plain fat-iculous, well...you know it's trouble. I would have been happier with a simple pesto, without the cream component.
The dragon got all up in my face about this sentiment.

Out of the City

After work on Thursday I headed north to Newtown to see E. and A. E. and A. and I went to high school together. E. is currently living in L.A. and I can't quite recall the last time I saw her...I think it was at her college graduation party and that would mean that it has been four years since we last saw each other's respective face. A. I have seen more recently. I swung by E.'s house and then we went on to A.'s where we found him in the garden doing some weeding, I guess.
We picked some basil from aforementioned garden then E. made pesto while A. boiled pasta while I stood around losing parts of my bracelet and talking about petty problems of my life.
Then we sat on the back porch and ate the food. It was quite badass.
There was also a little bocci played (my bocci ball set is always in my car just waiting for a swath of grass and relatively willing fellow players).
It was lovely to be in a more country setting again. It was even more lovely to spend an evening shooting the breeze with friends. And of course the bocci also lifted my spirits.

Dinner in Greensboro

I did arrive in Durham not too terribly later than I, and the airlines, intended. A high school chum was kind enough to pick me up from the airport. The original plan was to have myself dropped off at the train station (which I expected to be more than a trailer next to the train tracks) but at first it seemed like I was going to miss it and after that it turned out that the train was an hour late. So we did a half-way deal, high school chum driving me half way to Greensboro (or perhaps a little over half) and my hosts picking me up and taking me the rest of the way. All was good. It was a nice little car visit. And then on the other side there was tortellini with homemade tasty pesto with freshly shredded cheese. Yummy!

A Little of This and A Little of That

The boyfriend and I are overloaded with vegetables. What with the community garden and the farmshare....and my insistence on buying a hell of a lot of heirloom tomatoes in Evanston last weekend. Last night the college chum left us to go to a suburb and see a guy about a thing. The boyfriend and I then ate some pasta with the first batch of pesto I made. I also made gazpacho, thus using up most of the heirloom tomatoes, two purple peppers, 2/3 of a cucumber, garlic, cilantro, chicken broth, a red onion, basil and tarragon vinegar.

Not so bad.

Pesto-Licious

So I made a bit of pesto the other week from the basil the boyfriend brought home from the community garden. Two days ago the boyfriend brought a hell of a lot more basil home and so yesterday I attempted to make it all into pesto.


I didn't succeed in making all the basil go away but I did make a dent. Problem was that I ran out of pine nuts...and forgot to put garlic in one batch. But now we have pesto for the rest of our lives...it's in the freezer currently.