Summer Solstice

We celebrated a little early (June 18), but did it in style with our friends Rick & Faye and Cheryl & Hersch. Started the evening with fresh strawberry dacquiris and cheese & crackers; then followed with a sumptuous meal. First course was chilled red bell pepper soup with basil and croutons served with a luscious Goldwater New Dog Sauvignon Blanc (another one, possibly the best yet, from the Marlborough region of New Zealand). Next, we feasted on grilled flank steak with shiitake mushrooms accompanied by orzo with everything (except pine nuts and parmesan cheese, which I failed to add before serving). With this, we enjoyed a Mariah Zinfandel from Mendocino Ridge in California. After cleansing our palates with a refreshing cantaloupe sorbet, those of us who could still manage to eat enjoyed fresh blueberry tartlets with lime curd.

Another great meal with wonderful friends, not soon to be forgotten.

My hero

Last night we went to see my nephew, Andy, graduate from City Year. Along with some 170 other young adults in Philadelphia, Andy performed 1700 hours of community service this year. He worked on a project called "Young Heroes", which runs a Saturday program for kids in middle school, where they learn about the social issues in their community and then work together to solve those problems through hands-on community service. Other City Year corps members do other kinds of community service, primarily in City schools. Seeing all those young people celebrate their accomplishments and hard work was truly inspiring. I know Andy worked extremely hard all year, and that it wasn't always fun, but I also know he will take the lessons he learned and use them to make the world a better place. Thanks, Andy, for being a wonderful role model, mentor to other kids, and a true leader.

After the graduation, Andy, Debbie, Garrett, and I continued our celebration at a nice little cafe in West Philly called Rx. The restaurant is in an old pharmacy at the corner of 45th and Spruce, which I thought was the source of the name. But according to their website, Rx is the abbreviation of the Latin word recipe. Whatever, the food is great. I started out with a lovely salad of organic mixed greens, sweet-spicy pecans, roasted peppers, and Wolf Creek chevre, with a light vinaigrette that allowed all the other flavors to come through. Following that, I had a delicious chicken dish: truffle-glazed organic free-range chicken with a very tasty Vidalia onion marmalade, and served with polenta and brocoli rabe.

My newest toy

After reading a post from Josh's friend Bec on his blog, I decided to start listening to books as well as reading them. So I joined Audible.com and got, with my one-year membership, an iPod mini for $99.

First of all, Audible has just about the worst website I've ever seen, and it does a lot of annoying things to make it impossible to share or copy the books you purchase. I understand that they need to protect themselves, but the obstacles they put in place make the system really hard to use. Nonetheless, I have started downloading books and enjoying them.

The first book I'm listening to is Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl. It's the story of her years as the restaurant critic for the New York Times. I am really enjoying this as I drive along and listen on the CD player in my car. Except by the time I get wherever I'm going, I am starving for something really good, rich, and expensive.

Meanwhile, Garrett and I got our first batch of free-range chickens from our friends Cheryl and Hersch, and then enjoyed a wonderful chicken dinner with them and Rick & Faye. I made the Grilled Chicken alla Diavola, Roman Style from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. The chicken was delicious, and the company was even better.

In other food news, Faye and I went and picked strawberries at Weaver's Orchards early yesterday morning. These strawberries are red all the way through, the way they are supposed to be, but so different from the strawberries typically available in the grocery store. Next up at Weaver's are sweet and sour cherries followed by red and black raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and peaches. That should just about get us through he summer.

Down Under

Another great wine dinner at Mosaic, this time with our friends Jon and Barbara. The menu featured wines of New Zealand and Australia along with Chef Mike’s fabulous food. For a starter, we were treated to champagne mango (a sweet and somewhat lighter mango than what we typically have) wrapped in proscuitto di parma, with micro greens and a yummy passion fruit vinaigrette, topped with corn stalk shoots. An Australian sparkling wine from Seaview, made from a combination of pinot noir and chardonnay, complemented the flavors nicely. The first course featured New Zealand green lipped mussels in a curried tomato broth with basil, served with a delicious 2004 Omaka Springs Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region of New Zealand. This is about the 4th or 5th Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough that we’ve tasted recently and they have all been tremendous. Following the mussels, we had a huckleberry-glazed ostrich filet with a sweet potato croquette, flavored with lemon grass. The tart huckleberry glaze was delicious with the other flavors, and the ostrich was very tasty, though somewhat firmer than what I expected (having never eaten ostrich before). The sweet potato was a nice complement to the ostrich, both in flavor and texture. With this course, we drank a wonderful 2002 Torlesse Pinot Noir. The main course featured a grilled Australian Barramundi filet with gingered risotto and braised baby bok choy, served with an Australian Grenache/Shiraz from Hill of Content. The fish had enough body and flavor to stand up well with this tasty red wine. We finished the meal with a wonderful, light, and delicious Pavlova served with a tart lemon sorbet, fresh fruit, and a small amount of tart lime confit.

Robert Peters, the wine maven from the Ardmore State Store, who did a great job of pairing the wines with the food, told us that my two favorite wines from this dinner, the Sauvignon Blanc and the Pinot Noir are both available in the specialty stores, but that the other two wines are sold out. The Omaka Spring Sauvignon Blanc is a steal at $9.99, and is offered as one of the PA LCB's Chairman's selections, which if you haven't checked out, you should.

Magnificent

It’s the best word I can think of to describe Sarah Dunant’s The Birth of Venus, a book that tells a compelling, sensual, and exciting story against the backdrop of social and political upheaval in 15th century Florence. I don’t remember the Renaissance and Reformation being nearly this interesting when I learned about them in school (or maybe I just never learned about them since I never took a lot of history courses).

In a prologue, Dunant introduces us to Sister Lucrezia, a nun dying of breast cancer. Cleaning her body after her death, the sisters are astonished to see a tattoo of a snake, “so lifelike that by the time it had slid its way over the breast you might swear you could see the movement of the muscle rippling under the skin...”

How did Sister Lucrezia come to have such a tattoo? Her story is a long tale of love, betrayal, and lust; art, religion, and politics, beginning when Alessandra (who would become Sister Lucrezia) is only 14 and her father brings a painter to the family home to “glorify the chapel.” Over the next few years, Florence comes apart at the seams as a fanatical monk, Girolamo Savonarola takes power after the death of Lorenzo de Medici. Alessandra marries a man thirty years her senior, but her intellectual equal, as a way of protecting herself from the repression growing all around her and (she thinks) having the life of art and books that she wants. Of course, life is never as simple as it seems.

Alessandra, her slave Erila, and her mother are strong, independent women at a time when women were thought of as little more than chattel. Her husband Cristofalo and the painter are likewise interesting and sympathetic characters, in stark contrast to Alessandra’s brothers Tomaso and Luca.

There are many times in this book when the conversations seem like they are taking place in the 21st century rather than the 15th, but this is a minor complaint. Overall, the story completely drew me in and held me till the very end.