Sunday dinner: Corned beef

What I ate tonight—because you wouldn't want to know what I wore!

We had my mother-in-law over for our traditional Sunday dinner. This evening we had corned beef and cabbage with potatoes. And green salad: red lettuce, with bosc pear, shaved asiago, and balsamic vinaigrette. Accompanied by a Navarro 2005 chardonnay. Followed by Meyer lemon mousse.*



There's nothing like a family dinner to re-set us all before the start of a new week.



Hope you had a restful, enjoyable weekend.

* I would include the recipe, but it was so hideously complicated—from the Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook, where recipes have to be not only seasonal and local but ridiculously complicated—that, even though it was delicious, I'll not make it again. My regular homemade lemon curd, folded with whipped cream, is every bit as good and much easier. Nonetheless, it was nice to put the beautiful Meyer lemons from my backyard to good use.

p.s. Every time I eat corned beef and cabbage, I think of the worst birthday dinner my sister ever experienced. My mother used to make us our favorite dinner on our birthday, and one of my favorites was corned beef and cabbage, to which I considered mustard an important side dish. But one year my mom got confused and presented my sister with . . . corned beef and cabbage: right meal, wrong kid. My sister always hated it. She tried to cover up her disappointment, but one look at her face, and my mom knew she had fucked up. What would my sister have preferred? Beanie weenies. Seriously. Remember those?