BLTs

At the farmers market last weekend, my favorite farmer (Otis Family Farm) had a sign at his booth that read, “How about a BLT?”. And then it advertised their specially smoked bacon. Needless to say, we bought some bacon and grabbed tomatoes, lettuce and bread from a neighboring booth, and had the most amazing BLTs for lunch that day. We took a photo of Husbands beautiful crafted layered BLT because it was, really, just beautiful. And then the house smelled like smoked bacon for the rest of the day. Aahhhhh….

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Another Birthday Dinner; Dam Bistro

Here’s a post from a few weeks ago that I totally forgot to publish. Silly Blonde. Enjoy!

Yep, one more birthday dinner. This time in Wisconsin, in the lovely town of St. Croix Falls at the chef-owned, family run Dam Bistro. We’ve been there before and unlike most restaurants, the couple running this little joint really care about the food and the customers. It’s so refreshing to see the chef make your dish and to know that the food was most likely grown or raised within a few hundred miles.

Unfortunately, this little gem of a restaurant has been affected by the slowing economy. They’re numbers are down, and so they had to let a server go. Our server for the evening was working just her second shift, and doing a mighty fine job considering the learning curve. So there were some issues, but nothing that couldn’t be overlooked. Our appetizer failed to appear, but turned out we didn’t need it when we saw the size of our entrees. They apologized and bought us dessert. Hum, pizza or chocolate? I’ll take the chocolate.

Two of us ordered the Pork stuffed with Italian sausage and served with mashed potatoes. The other two ordered the horseradish-encrusted salmon served with mushroom risotto. The pork was perfectly prepared, the salmon was really large with a generous coating of gentle horseradish. And the risotto? Lets just say that I could have skipped the pork and the fish and just filled up on the risotto.

But I didn’t. It was my birthday, wasn’t it? So I accepted that dessert and went for the tiramisu. Not too boozy or too sweet, it was just right. And a nice way to wrap up a week of birthday dinners.

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Local Melon

For something different, I stopped by the Minneapolis farmers market last week. It’s just blocks from my office and during the week it’s shamefully, almost empty. The weekends it’s chaos. My complaint about the MFM is that vendors are not required to sell local products. There are bananas and avocados and mangoes. But this summer, they’re letting vendors display a sign that reads LOCAL, so you know where your stuff is from. This melon was grown in Waverly by the Untiedt Farm. I had to google it, but Waverly’s about an hour west of the cities. Close enough for me. And melon was melt-in-your-mouth juicy and scrumptious. Can’t wait to finish it off tonight.

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Easy Tomato Sauce

(Surprise, I’m back)

We bought a whole bunch of fresh tomatoes at the market yesterday and when I couldn’t think of anything for dinner, we decided to go with this easy tomato sauce recipe from last weeks Taste Section. It’s actually a base sauce, but it worked just find served over some pasta. I added a couple cloves of garlic, some crushed red pepper and a handful of fresh basil from the garden. An easy solution to a weeknight dinner. Plus, we have lunch for tomorrow and enough to put some in the freezer.

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