LIFE IS MEALS

Hubby and I stopped in at a new Half-Price Books in S. Austin the other day. I thought I was there just to sell a butt-load of books I had weeded out from my collection, to make room for more art stuff, but I was wrong. I ended up getting virtually nothing for all those books, but whilst wandering around, waiting for their estimate, I stumbled upon this.

Much like my old favorite Simple Abundance, this is a "book of days", meaning it has separate essays for each day of the year. These just happen to all relate to food --  one of my very favorite topics, n'est pas? Of course, I had no idea if the essays would be any good, but I figured "Hey, I've got a chit for a whopping nine bucks in my hand. Why not chance it?" So I brought it home with me, and as the old saying goes, they "had me at hello!"

One of the first essays I read was the one for August 30, and it described an impromptu, intimate dinner party they were invited to by painter Donald Sultan, celebrating the end of summer, which involved no more than ten minutes of cooking.

The evening began with the four guests being served drinks and two cheeses plus some hard Italian salami on a board with a sharp knife and crackers.

The main course, served with good wine at a dining table with a beautiful cloth and lots of candles, included:

• soft boiled eggs decapitated in their shells, topped with a dollop of caviar
• a large platter of sliced red and green tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and basil
• a platter of store-roasted and quartered capons
• a platter of steaming corn on the cob, and a stick of butter that was passed around, for everyone to roll their ears of corn around on

Dessert was thin, handmade cookies from the best local source.

This menu so inspired me that John and I had a mini version of it just last night, minus the appetizers and caviar, and substituting a grocery store roasted chicken for the capons. I thought it would be the perfect time to try out this fellow's ingenious method for cooking and shucking corn in the microwave, without all the mess. Believe it or not, it really works! The only thing I did differently was that, since my microwave is super high-powered, I cooked my two ears for only four minutes total. It was delicious, but I had to squeeze a bit to get the cobs out of the husks. They did, however, come out virtually silk-free!

One of the next essays I read was all about the proper way to brew tea. Why, I do believe I've found another set of soul mates!