Day 1

Going to some friend's house for a little potluck soiree. Seven veggie soba noodle salad with ginger tahini dressing and a cold pesto orzo salad with fresh garden tomatoes and strauss ricotta. Mmmmm. Knowing Jona and family there will be plenty of killer food. I'll work on posting some recipes (or are they merely outlines?) for the odd person out there who stumbles across my ventures into the online food blogs.

Gotta go, the monkey is up from her nap...


Okay, now I have a little time for some notes on the day: We made it to the potluck on time, due to our monkey not taking a nap today. H made the delicious soba noodle salad with a fresh ginger, garlic, tahini and soy sauce dressing. Along with the noodles were cabbage, red onion, celery, carrot, cucumber, bell pepper, and scallion, topped with black sesame seeds. Wow, this one had nearly everything that was fresh and produce in our house.

While H was working her kitchen magic I was experimenting with a granite mortar and pestle I received from my parent's neighbor Barb. Bless her soul, she is my surrogate grandma of sorts (mine are gone now and you will find them honored here from time to time) and had this laying around her house and thought I might enjoy using it. I washed it with salt and lemon juice and began mashing garlic cloves, pine nuts, olive oil, fresh basil, a pinch of salt, more olive oil and finally some microplaned pecorino. This was set aside while I cooked some orzo, tossed it with some olive oil and freshly made ricotta a la Aunty (about two hours old, made with whole milk from the world's best dairy; Strauss Family Creamery of western Marin.) I also added some whole pine nuts and freshly diced tomatoes from our garden, salt and pepper to taste.

It was while making this salad and reflecting on some recent cooking adventures that I thought "hey, I should start one of those blog thingies that I was reading the other night too," so I could have some means of documenting for the future whatever it was that tasted good at the time.

So this concludes the first post in what will hopefully be updated a few times a week (in a life with a toddler, wish me luck!)