Snow Day

Celebrating being snowed in with buckwheat pancakes, honey and blackberry coulis this morning.

Stomach must be on permanent expansion plan in the past two weeks of Nebraska and T-giving gluttony, because I don't know how I managed to put away a few of these hardy fellers after an impromptu dinner spectacular last night at our fav neighborhood restaurant.

Waiting for the aggressive snow formation scenario to play out and downtown running evening errands, we decided to take one more step toward the inevitable ice-skating date by mange-ing while watching them (once again). What I didn't realize until we walked out of there at 10 p.m.ish was that the skaters had continued to pirouette past our window undeterred by the snow that wasn't snow but an inaugural base-coat of freezing rain! Blech. As much as I wanted to walk off my cranberry brown butter tart with ginger ice cream, neither of us were having it. It, character-building extreme elements, lost to toasty cab ride home.

To recap the meal: J had a house salad which sounds homely but was the most tantalizing heap of lettuces, paper thinly sliced radishes, and clumps of goat cheese hither and thither. For the main course he ate- and I tasted- a great lakes whitefish (which fish and which lake exactly I don't recall) in a spicy ciopinno-like sauce. The fillet was elevated like a object of worship on the beaks of a bunch of steamed mussels. Double yum.

I had the roasted beet salad with watercress and goat cheese. Then, thinking I was keeping it light, I order side of risotto-- the day's variety featured tomatoes and asparagus. The portion that appeared was really more than a reasonable serving and its richness was of the "one stick or two?" variety. Our server recommended a wine pairing with my meal that did compliment the creaminess of both dishes quite well, but was especially destined to be consumed with the beet salad. As my introduction to the Viognier varietal, this makes me interested in exploring others of its sturdy, mellow kind.