What we et today

• Diversity Beans (field peas and navy beans, cooked vegan in a crockpot with olive oil, fresh ginger and hot curry)
• Brown rice pilaf (brown and white rice, Vidalia onions)
• Silver Queen corn, scalded, over thick-sliced homegrown tomatoes
• Baked potatoes
• Boiled beets (served sliced at room temp)
• Gojiberry iced tea

Victuals I have known

Personal top ten lifetime restaurant meals (so far).

Tie for first place:

-- 2004 Summer tasting menu at Babbo -- New York City

-- Barbecue sandwich with slaw + sweet iced tea at Allen and Sons -- Chapel Hill, NC

THE REST...

(3) Roast chicken with fall vegetables, Chez Panisse -- Berkeley, California

(4) Blue Hill at Stone Barns Offal Supper with guest chef Fergus Henderson (he cooks with parts most people throw away - VERY successfully) -- Pocantico Hills, NY

(5) The clam-and-bacon pie at Sally's Pizzeria -- New Haven, CT

(6) Salt-and-pepper crab at the R&G Lounge -- San Francisco, CA

(7) Roast chicken with cold green bean salad -- La Rotisserie d'en Face, Paris

(8) Cambodian/Vietnamese soups and noshes at Phnom Penh -- Vancouver, British Columbia

(9) The pastrami sandwich at Katz's Deli -- New York City

(10) The corned beef at the old Second Avenue Deli -- New York City (haven't tried them in their new location)

You may have noticed that two of my all-time favorite meals were roast chicken. Yes, I noticed too. I like simple stuff done well in addition to complex stuff done fussily and often in preference to it. :-)

Daydreaming of beignets

At Uber-Chowhound Jim Leff's blog, guestblogger Paul Trapani foodblogs New Orleans: Parts One, Two and Three.

Cutting it pretty close

I bought a geek toy I've wanted for a while now - it has elements of cookery AND geekery and is therefore irresistible: a ceramic santoku knife. (Wikipedia on ceramic knives.)

While it's a specialist toy tool, useful for slicing or cutting only... it is very very good at slicing and cutting.

Check out this cross-section of a local hot-house tomato:



That's a "detail" from the deconstructed tomato below:



It does, indeed, cut pretty close.

Finished simple salad: