They Can Only Do Harm.

Dear Food Diary,

This weekend I turned 30.  I had planned on complaining about it to you long and loud... but now that I'm at it I find I don't have the energy.  Yikes.  That's probably a bad sign for what's left of my youthful vigor.  On the bright side: if 30 marks the death of my youth, at least the cake was good at the funeral.

Sunday we ate at home. 

I made steak and scallops.  Sarah created a vaguely asian "what the hell is in this (in a good way)" salad, and a vanilla vodka-infused berry/mint/lime dessert.  Since you probably wouldn't be able to get to sleep without knowing (and joylessly analyzing) what was in that salad, stupid asshole Food Diary, I'll tell you:
    a Granny Smith apple
    a carrot
    a parsnip
    dried cranberries
    cilantro
    honey
    rice wine vinegar
    salt and pepper

See?  It was the very picture of healthful side-dishery.

Speaking of pictures -- then we had two Byerly's desserts.

I know and I don't care.

Monday, we both took the day off and returned to the Arboretum (again) so Sarah could take some more awesome pictures. 

To summarize:  Now I'm practically ancient, I eat too much meat and sugar (and fat), and I'm too tired to even complain about it.   Life is good.

Your (old) buddy,

Matt

I'm Glad I Spent It With You

Dear Food Diary,

After our solo adventures on Friday, Sarah and I decided to spend most of yesterday afternoon at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.  We walked several miles and saw some nature.  It was pretty, and the exercise made us both feel a little better about all the sitting, eating, eating, and sitting we'd done the day before.

As soon as we got home, Sarah started working on a turkey pot pie. 

She chopped fresh celery, shallots, garlic, and some carrots from the garden (now taking up lots of space in the fridge's veggie tray).  After sweating the root veggies and celery, she browned some flour in the same pan, then added a few ounces of Surly Darkness and let it reduce.  Then she added chicken stock and simmered that until it thickened a bit.

She transferred it all to a baking dish with some fresh green beans and chopped leftover turkey, popped it in the oven for 20 minutes, then added frozen peas.

 We topped that with puff pastry and tossed it back in the oven.

Twenty minutes later, this happened:

It was by far the best meal I've had in the past month.  Better than the squid rings at Sawatdee, better than the roasted pork at Conga, better than the plate of cookies I had for lunch Friday.

Sarah made some genius choices with this one.  Like when the Darkness reduction turned out slightly too bitter (Darkness '09 is much hoppier than '08), she added a teaspoon of honey along with the chicken broth. 

In the end, the whole thing melded into this super-deep and complex combination of flavors and textures.  The puff pastry stayed crisp and buttery, each vegetable was cooked to its perfect texture, and the flavors spiraled into stupifying depths of, um, awesomeness.

Darkness was a distractingly rich side beverage -- the stuff, which pours like lightly carbonated maple syrup and tastes unlike any other liquid intended for human consumption, added plenty of depth to the pot pie.  On its own it was almost too complicated to actually enjoy.  The 2009 batch is sweet, hoppy, earthy (like confusingly delicious mud), and hoppy.  Refreshing it's not. 

It played its part, though, in what turned out to be a pretty much perfect Fall day.

Yours truly,

Matt