Archive for the ‘eating and boozing’ Category

For Valentine’s Day, which was very lovely and Valentiney, I made a small feast. I made steak with a rub and a nice salad and roasted garlic mashed potatoes. The steak was excellent, the salad was okay, and the garlic mashed potatoes were the stuff of creamery, buttery, garlicky perfection in a gigantic pot of potatoes and I wanted to put my face in them and fall asleep and maybe asphyxiate in potatoey, garlicky happiness. It’s a fitting end for me.

I started them first, because the garlic had to roast for awhile, and then peeling the potatoes took an age and a half and also a knuckle. I focused on my potatoes as they came together, almost like magic. Garlic-smelling magic. The boiling, the concentrated mashing, the adding the entire stick of butter and the cream, the careful seasoning, the whipping in the soft, roasted cloves, the careful adjustment of seasoning, the struggle with myself to not put my face in the pot–at every stage it came together so beautifully, I nearly cried.

E is going on a diet. We keep trying to refer to it as “healthy living,” but really it’s a diet, because he thinks that he needs to lose weight. He went to the doctor, got a full physical work up, discussed his health and his options and his goals, and was prescribed the South Beach diet. We went through the cookbook, picked out some meals and went shopping, on Sunday, for many different kinds of meats and all the additional spices required, a whole sack of garlic and a whole bag of onions. We agreed that this whole healthy living thing is very expensive, when the cashier hit us in the face with the grand total.

This is a lifestyle change, and we have been cooking every night since, for a grand total of two nights.