Mandolines and Violins

I had the pleasure of a day off on Friday. Actually, I had just gotten home from working all night and was operating on a one hour nap I picked up in between consults.

Foregoing sleep, I took on the day for Honey-Do tasks. Dog to the park for 1 hour, return things to the mall, buy things at the mall for Meghan and me, grocery shop, and return home for dinner prep and the benefit of a nice fat cigar in the dusky sun.

The most exciting part of the day (other than my wife coming home), was purchasing our new Mandoline. Why so exciting? Mandolines cut veggies, including potatoes, thusly giving you fries...we had determined our night would be devoted to truffle fries.

To surround that decadent side, we had decided on Mediterranean Lamb/Beef burgers, with a nice herby mix of rosemary, chive, mint, and garlic. It was a snap putting that together. And to be honest, the rest was pretty easy as well. I whipped up a nice cucumber, tomato, onion, and kalamata olive salad, made some tzatziki sauce for the burgers, kept dessert as the BIG SURPRISE for later, and started on the fries.

After ruining a few potatoes with our new device, I got the hang of it. I was whippin those russets through the slicer and julienning the frick out of those bad boys. Meg got home, we opened a nice starter bottle of white, and put the heady aroamed fries in the oven to bake.

After 45 minutes, the "Those are too thin Matty" fries were greasy limp lumps of grey flesh. Slightly buzzed, we had the idea of placing them in the frying pan to make Truffle cakes...

The char that ensued was neither edible or intelligible, so we scrapped the heap of Truffle dung and tucked into the burgers, and the salad, and a really nice bottle of Pinot Noir. Pleased, we settled into the couch, and with the dog nestled under the blanket, I sneaked away for our latest dessert creation.

Macerated Blackberries, Vanilla Bean Frozen Yogurt, covered in Creme de Casis....props to Bobby Flay, we got the idea whilst watching our tvo'd "Boy Meets Grill". Thrilled and exhausted my wife woke me up and said, "it's time for bed". From Honey Do, to Honey Did...it was a good day to be a Matty.