It’s what’s for dinner!

This is a jalapeno cheese roll. It is roughly the size of your head. I bought two of them from a farmer’s market up the road, because they guy said they were two for one. It is possibly the most un-paleo thing I have ever bought, this side of funnel cake. And it is absolutely delicious. I shared one with Katie, and then I ate the other one myself for dinner the next day, because I could. And I felt like a million bucks. Hooray, wheat!

A beer other beers dream of being.

Another gem I found on our trip to Columbus was this beauty. I first had Hennepin at an Italian place out in California, and was blown away by its complexity and full-bodied flavor. The profile in this Saison goes on for days, with just the right amount of fruit, spice and hops to please just about anybody. Like staring at the sky on a clear night, the more you look, the more you see in this beer.

The strong ABV prevents it from being a “session beer” by the strictest definitions, but it’s definitely one that’ll make you want another. I’m over the moon that it’s finally made its way to Ohio!

An unassuming place out in the boonies, but they do good work.

The day arrived at last! It’s not normal for me to get this excited over what amounts to groceries (okay, maybe it is), but today was the day we got our beef from Innisfree on the Stillwater! Six months after we bought our freezer for just such a purpose, and almost three weeks after we helped pick out our steer, we got the call from Kirby’s Butcher Shop that our “quarter” of beef was ready. In fairness to Kirby’s, the beef was ready awhile before we came to get it. But they had suffered a power outage, and when we had planned to go pick it up, they were disinclined to open their freezer and risk thawing out thousands of dollars worth of meat.

So on a beautiful day off from work, I loaded up the dog in the pickup truck, threw a few coolers in the bed, and made the drive out to Greenville. The shop itself is nothing to look at from the outside, and inside is all business too, with just a desk up front, full of the usual clutter of papers and aged office supplies that seems to characterize these sorts of small, rural businesses. The rest of the building is the butchery and freezers.

That is a pile o’ protein!

But whatever they lack in curb appeal, they make up for in expertise, professionalism and customer service. When the steer came in, I gave them a call, and the owner of the shop talked me through the process, since it was our first time ordering beef wholesale. We went cut by cut, him asking me what I wanted and didn’t, and what sizes, thicknesses and denominations to package for each. The result is a completely customized beef order, with all the cuts I want and none I didn’t, in packages sized perfectly for Katie and I to use as we need.

Picking up was just as nice. I showed up, having already paid Innisfree for my share of the steer, and they just brought up the trays with my beef, I loaded them into my coolers, and was on my way. Each portion is clearly stamped with the cut, quantity and our name, for easy sorting and tracking later. In all, our quarter ended up being right about 100 pounds of beef, and this from a steer that lived through some lean times, in terms of rainfall and resulting pasture density. The meat itself is lean, healthy and so incredibly tasteful, you might not even recognize it as beef, if all you’ve ever had is store-bought, grain-fed, factory farm beef. It’s great stuff! Now we’ll have to see how long 100 lbs of beef can last two athletes.

… on a silver platter.

Remember what I said about Rule #2? Well, you can’t say I don’t live my own advice. This was part of an amazing dinner on Saturday night in Cleveland, at The Greenhouse Tavern. It is also part of the reason I was excreting pork fat during my 5k on Sunday.

My sister writes about it in more detail here, but I’ll just say it was worth it. The whole dining experience there, from unique and perfectly executed cocktails to every morsel of each course of the meal was just amazing. I got to try things I’d never had (like pig face, and beef tartar) in a place where I was sure they’d be done right, and it was all delicious. If it weren’t for the price tag, I could get used to eating like that!

The only proper way to cook with white wine is to drink whatever portion of the bottle you don’t use in the recipe.

 While I can’t claim to be anywhere near the all-star in the kitchen that my sister is (if you aren’t following her blog, you are wrong), I do occasionally crank out something pretty tasty from the kitchen. For a recent family gathering, I helped whip up an Asparagus Artichoke Shitake Risotto and a Spring Asparagus Pancetta Hash that both turned out quite tasty, if I do say so myself. It was my first attempt at a risotto, and under Katie’s careful tutelage, it was a success.

Later, for lunches, I tweaked the recipe for the hash (read: I used what was laying around) and used fresh green beans instead of asparagus, bacon instead of pancetta, and topped them with an Innisfree egg to make quick, breakfasty meals to take to work. Yum!

What can’t be improved with the addition of goat cheese and an egg?