I finally got to Fleisher’s today, after using everything in the fridge except the enormous lamb shoulder which I’m saving for a bigger group, and got a few things to see us through the next couple of weeks. For tonight, ground lamb seasoned with garlic, cumin, herbs, pepper, and salt accompanied by another perfect salad and fresh-dug red potato fries. Not a particularly photogenic meal, nor very healthy- the fries got their second dunk in the frying oil (safflower) enriched with the copious rendered lamb fat- but as a departure from our normally pretty sound diet I thought it well justified by yet another clammy, rainy day plus the fact that I make fries about three times a year.
To illustrate this, when I told Milo what we were having, he asked “what are French fries?” To make it past his third birthday in today’s Factory Food America without knowing what fries are is pretty great in my book; how many three-year-olds do you know who would ask that, and who eat nasturtium flowers, mustard greens, and beet pickles like they’re cookies? To cap it all off, I found more Domaine Cheze Saint-Joseph and bought 3 each of the 2001 and 2003 so I can decide which I want more of; we tried the 01 but we’ll have to do a side-by-side to decide.
Hey, right on, Milo.
I encountered a woman (a bit overweight, and it’s relevant) in a store with her young son, who was delightfully well behaved.
She boasted, “Whenever he’s this good, I get him an order of fries. Big order of fries.”
I winced, not so much because she calls portions of food “orders,” but because that kid would have been so much better off with a beautiful peach.