Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Breakfast of Champions

On this rainy New York morning I woke to find a table of flowers, Mimosas (Buck's Fizz to you lot over the pond) and a bag of Doritos. From a man who knows me. Hm hm hm. We are ready for our trailer park now. Or maybe we are just practising for our Airstream Dream (driving across the country in...).

My dad called in a public voice from Bloemfontein Airport, en route to Cape Town, and reminded me that it is the city of my birth; and we will see my mom in a couple of hours for a small lunch at Balthazar. I am cooking for dinner. I like cooking. I have wanted to make Deborah Madison's Braised Root Vegetables with Lentils and Red Wine Sauce* forever, and we brought an armload of Hudson Valley turnips, beets, carrots, fingerling potatoes and parsnips back from our trails. And grass fed beef short ribs from Fleisher's, in Kingston, a butcher and beautiful uptown area worth a detour.

* Local Flavors, Deborah Madison, Random House, New York, 2002.

15 comments:

flwjane said...

happiest of birthdays. enjoy every moment of your day. and we all look forward to hearing the mouthwatering details of your dinner. cheers!

Blog Princess G said...

Happy Birthday! And it sounds like a wonderful way to spend it. Many happy returns... xoxo

My Farmhouse Kitchen said...

Looks like somebody is having a birthday ....Happy Birthday !

Balthazar....my dream restaurant...I dream through the cookbook.....

can't wait to hear about the dinner too...

have a great day....


Best,
Kary

pen.ny said...

The doritos! So cute! "From a man who knows me"

How lovely.

Enjoy your birthday:)

(I hope you don't mind, I posted a link to this post on my blog)

Ikaika said...

What a beautiful birthday morning! Hope the rest of your day only gets better ...

Hau'oli la hanau!

Keli'i

Karen L R said...

Happy Birthday, Marie. Wishing you all the best!

rachel said...

Happy Birthday! What a lovely bright cheerful table at which to have breakfast!

Constanza said...

Chica, Happy Birthday! Besitos de North Carolina.

Marie said...

Thank you very much, all birthdayers...I know it's very conceited to put any news of one's birthday up here, but I blame it on the Doritos.

The dishes are humming in the dishwasher, the cat is humming on his chair, Vince is humming in the shower, and my tummy is humming with memories.

arcadia said...

sjoe, baie geluk! hoop jy het 'n heuglike dag gehad.

donna said...

i am feeling much better about my cheetos habit. happy returns, since i missed the actual day.

quiltcat said...

eep, i seem to have missed your anniversaire! I hope you had a wonderful birthday! it looks like the man and the cat know exactly how to make you happy, and that's exactly as it should be. Was some sort of chocolate confection in the giftwrapped box??

quiltcat said...

pee ess...between you and Karen LR, my formerly-large-then-drastically-reduced-by-flood-and-further-controlled-by-frugality cookbook collection is growing again. Both of you have recommended Deborah Madison and since we have almost nothing except root veggies left at the Farmer's Market, i think i need to invest in this book. And the one on soups.

Thomas said...

Doritos! HA! The icing on the cake.

Marie said...

Baie dankie and thank you!

QC, in the box was...a Kindle! With Hamlet, all of Dumas' fiction, and Wiliam Gibson's Pattern Recognition already on it. I like it already and have used it on the subway; and no, I won't give up on real books.