Sunday, August 24, 2008

The simple elegance of reality in food and drink.

The Curmudgeon household has been preoccupied with a number of professional and leisure time pursuits during recent months, and as a direct result of these diversions, the estate had become overgrown with noxious weeds. Diana needed help today, so I grabbed the machete and began hacking through the underbrush.

As one congenitally opposed to yard work, especially on a steamy Mekong-meets-Spring Street day like today, I was surprised to thoroughly enjoy the sweaty task of killing as many plant life intruders as possible. My analyst will help me decide the degree of transference in all this. Suffice to say that enemies and obstructionists were falling like … um, weeds.

Quite naturally, the wholesale slaughter of vegetation sans power tools left me somewhat hungry, but I was prepared. A Saturday morning visit to the Farmers Market in downtown New Albany had yielded ripe tomatoes, Capriole goat cheese with herbs, and about a pound and a half of locally processed beef ribeye. Diana had prepared deviled Farmers Market eggs. I melted the Capriole with a few splashes of white wine from French Lick and topped the medium rare meat with the cheesy goat sauce. The plate was adorned with naked fresh tomatoes and deviled eggs.

The local theme could not be extended to Kentuckiana beers, as I’d none of them at home, but there was an even better choice in the fridge: New Holland Blue Sunday, the brewery’s sour Flemish red ale, bequeathed to me by Fred Bueltmann during our recent visit to Michigan. Understand that sour cherry notes and oak with beefsteak is as fine a belly mortar as porter.

I’m no professional gourmand, but the simple reality of locally flavorful food and drink is what it’s all about.

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