Toots is from Argentina, and this year, at Toots' request, I'm preparing Bife a Caballo, a very typical Argentine meal, although I'll be making potatoes roasted with duck or goose fat instead of what has become the more typical French fries. They'll be roasted along with some home-grown rosemary which I just picked a couple of hours ago, and which is very fragrant. Often a chimichurri sauce is part of this dish, but Toots doesn't care much for chimichurri, so I'll add a simple salad of butter lettuce and radicchio with a home made balsamic dressing.
This past Wednesday a friend from Argentina brought us some chocolate and dulce de leche treats from the Havanna bakery in Mar del Plata, and we'll enjoy those for dessert. We love their alfajores, and we're looking forward to trying these chocolate havannets. Breakfast will include my first attempt at making scones, which will be served with my home made Meyer lemon curd and sweeties excellent, organic apricot preserves. The apricots were from her son's trees.
The steaks will be a couple of rib eyes from grass fed cattle raised on a friend's ranch in nearby Livermore. About three times a year we'll cook beef at home, and we get all that we eat from my friend. His beef has proven to be consistently good.
The Meyer lemons come from either another friend's tree in Berkeley, or from trees on a ranch in nearby Winters, CA, where Toots' son and daughter-in-law live. Last year I bought Toots a Meyer lemon tree, and we put it in her yard. The first crop of lemons look great, but they're not quite ripe now, however, soon we'll be able to enjoy our very own lemons.
I hope everyone enjoys their dinner and time with their sweetie as much as Toots and I will enjoy oursz
