Food Digest

It turns out, a 35-cent frozen burrito isn’t always a “good deal.”

Got this little gem at Aldi — a grocery store that offers low prices for mostly generic food. I’m not too proud. This place has lots of awesome food.

This beef-and-bean burrito isn’t one of them. It’s just a bland vessel for empty calories; a meatlike paste with lumpy beans interspersed. The best I can say for it is that it was warm, and that’s more of a kudos to my microwave.

Woke up this morning and made an egg and cheese breakfast sandwich on white toast. I heated up some olive oil in a pan, then added some garlic powder to get it sizzling before adding the egg, some salt and some Frank’s Red Hot sauce. 

The Missus and I were invited to a friend’s dinner party. It’s something he does regularly — choosing a theme and preparing a multiple-course menu and only including a small number of friends. We were honored to be two of the six people at his grand piano-shaped dinner table. While the attire wasn’t fancy at all — we were all dressed in a more-than-casual kind of way — the food felt straight from an upscale gourmet restaurant.

He did four courses, each with a circle, triangle and square component. The first course, which I spaced on photographing, was cheese wedges (triangle); fruit and crudite (circle); and homemade toasted brown rice, oat and basil seed crackers (square).

Course two was steamed mussels and other stuff I can’t eat due to my seafood allergy. It was presented on a square plate. Luckily, there was a chicken carpaccio dish on field greens with a green salsa, served on a circular plate (pictured). And, for the square, there was a killer homemade oat crostini.

The main course for everyone else was tuna tartare. Mine was a beef tenderloin tartare, over blanched long beans, avocado quinoa cakes, a poached egg and with a red pepper, tomato and porcini sauce.

Dessert was something really special, with each morsel paired with an accompanying alcohol. The circular scoop of peach and rosewater sorbet was paired with a flute of champagne with a slice of strawberry in it. The cube of almond latte blanc mange was paired with a Kentucky bourbon; and a homemade sriracha truffle was paired with a malbec wine. Incredible.

As awesome as the food looked and tasted, it was an even better backdrop to a rollicking conversation that started at about 7 p.m. and didn’t end until we all went home, around 1:15 a.m.