The Dinner Files

I’ve made this mistake before. In fact, I’ve made it three times now. We have people coming to dinner and I think, “I know, I’ll make those Vietnamese salad bowls we ran in Sunset last year. They’re simple and delicious and people can assemble them themselves and make them vegetarian if they want to.” And then I do the shopping and start the cooking and remember why so much time passes between my making of Vietnamese salad bowls: they are amazingly time consuming to prepare. I didn’t even make the beef this time, but it still took over two hours to get everything chopped and fried and ready. The guests were super-duper appreciative and endlessly entertaining, but I was quite happy to simplify the concoction the next night as my dashing husband, Ernest, and I each assembled our own:

Rice noodles, spring salad mix, spring onion (green onions would have been too), mint, shredded carrot, and a sliced chile.

We would have used leftover tofu from the night before, except Ernest bogarted the entire batch after it had been passed around the table but once. It was very bad form, and he was chided for his poor manners, but we all couldn’t help but find it somewhat hysterical that a 6-year-old would want to scarf down over 1/2 a pound of black pepper tofu. Since we had no leftovers, I made another batch to round out our salads. I highly recommend it – it took a grand total of 10 minutes to make.

Many of you avid readers can make these yourselves from the picture above. But if you’d like to include the black peppered and saucy tofu or want more instruction, I’ve posted this Vietnamese Spring Noodle Salad recipe over at Local Foods.

While there were no garnishes/toppings leftover, that whole new batch of tofu and new round of rice noodles meant there were plenty of both sitting in the fridge the next morning. Somewhere in there I also found a bit more mint and some escarole leaves that looked great even though I could not for the life of me remember when I bought them. Since I like to live on the edge and have failed – despite many bouts with the f***er – to develop a healthy fear of food poisoning over lo these many years of cooking, I chopped up the escarole, heated up the tofu and rice noodles, put it all in a bowl topped with mint and the drizzle of nuoc cham left, and called it lunch. Yum. It really was the meal that just kept giving.

Ernie is getting his hot days. And hot nights. Last night we sat in my parents’ backyard–no fog rolled in, no wind picked up, no sweaters were needed. I picked up sandwiches, noodle salads, and spring rolls from Jasmine Deli, my favorite Vietnamese restaurant. I have no pictures for you. Camera battery went dead. Too bad. The grilled pork on baguette rolls with cilantro, chiles, shredded carrot, and shredded green papaya were as pretty as can be.

Later on I headed to Cafe Barbette to meet a friend. As she predicted, I had “just a glass of wine” (she seems to find this high-larious). She decided to have wine too, and so ordered the same thing I did. The server left and she turned to me in a panic, “that wasn’t a $20 glass of wine you ordered, was it?”

I kind of love that she thought I’d be ordering $20 glasses of wine. It sounds very fabulous, in a way. But internets, I’m a freelance writer. No $20 glasses of anything for me. $20 bottles, sure. $20 glasses, no.

So we sat and sipped and soaked up the energy that emanates from Upper Midwesterners when they have long, warm summer nights at their disposal. It is joyous. It is contagious. It is palpable. I love it.