Felonious Feline

So last night the girls grandparents arrived, and I made lavender stew in the pressure cooker, along with mashed potatoes and sauteed patty pan squash. The lavender stew is in fact made with a tablespoon of lavender and has that unique and delicate flavor infused in it.

This morning we had bagels and sockeye salmon lox. While we were munching on this in the living room, Zamfir had been greedily observing the slab of salmon, and hopped up on the dining room table (and channeling Lena) and started chowing away. I was annoyed since it was a $20 piece of fish and I had assumed we'd have it for both weekend days, but there wasn't much we could do other than consign the rest to the cats. It's a little salty, which he craves, so I hope it doesn't make him sick.

Thing 1 & 2

Here's Thing 1 & 2, who are getting hungry for their supper.

Here's Thing 3, who wants to lick the other things toes.

We left all the things at my mothers, and took J's visiting friend out for some sushi, an example of which is above. We have found a hole in the wall place up in Citrus Heights that is pretty much as good as anything I've had in NYC. It's called Yui Marlu, and the two times we've been there, we've been the only table that didn't have someone Japanese at it. The presentation in particular is superb.

Girls just want to have fun

With J's new birthday gift, a Flip camcorder.

Press the arrow button in the middle to watch them.

Come back - this time it will be different

Even good natured pets don't like their ears being grabbed.

Reading on a Sunday afternoon

 

I want that!

Yesterday's was J's birthday, so the girls made her breakfast in bed: spiced tea, cloudberry stuffed french toast, and grand marnier tossed strawberries. Later that night we went to La Boheme, which was reputed to be the best French restaurant in the city. It was excellent - I had escargot, rabbit, and then we split the cherries jubilee, prepared table side. So it was a lot of fun, and much better than the last special occasion place we went to here.

While we were there, the girls stayed at my mom's where they played with my sister and the dog (who they now outweigh).

If you click on the picture above you can see some more pictures too.

What have we been cooking recently?

Now that we are back home, we've been able to go back to using all our cookbooks and kitchen kaboodle.

Last week we made:

Lamb and chicken biryani
Ham and 13 bean soup
Roast sole over rosemary potatoes
Chicken tetrazinni
A mixed grill of lamb chops, fennel, and zucchini

I used a Jamie Oliver cookbook for the italiczed ones of those, and although it's a visually appealing book (lots of great pictures etc) I don't find the recipes to be anything special, or worth making again. They are vexingly imprecise too. The bean soup recipe was from our battered Sheila Lukins (of Silver Palate fame) book, and it was outstanding, although it took 8 hours to make.

The baby on the left is Shelly's new son, named in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm, the last emperor of Germany.