My sister, Holley, her husband, Jason, and their sweet, sweet baby, Marin, came for a visit this past weekend. It brought back lots of memories of when they lived in Madison. At that time, our brother, Matt, was attending UW and Chris and I had just moved to Madison the year prior. During those years of living in the same city, we would get together for wine-soaked, delicious Sunday dinners at our homes, head out to dinner at our favorite haunt, Lombardino's, and meet up for beachy cocktails at Jolly Bob's in the middle of winter. Those times were precious and long since past, but so easily relived with a good meal at our table.
With kids in the equation now, we're no longer making homemade pasta or tamales by the dozen while drinking copious amounts of wine. Dinner is now in stages - pre-dinner dinner for the kiddos and a post-bedtime meal with just the grown-ups (monitors on, of course).
The kiddos had a red-grape and Italian sausage pizza with rosemary and local blue cheese. The grown-ups had a piece (or two) to tide them over for the real meal, which consisted of goat-cheese gnocchi in a walnut-thyme brown-butter sauce, polpette neapolitano (from the Molto Mario cookbook) and a contorni of sautéed rapini with chile flakes and garlic. Dessert was a refreshing meyer lemon-buttermilk sorbetto. A New Zealand sauvignon blanc was served with the gnocchi and a dolcetto d'alba was poured with the meatballs.
The food was good, but the company was better.
Here's what we're eating the rest of the week:
Sunday: Turkey sloppy Joe's riffed from the Joy of Cooking with pickles, apple-berry sauce and tator tots
Monday: Spaghetti and meatballs with sautéed broccolini
Tuesday: Ricotta frittata with red peppers and onions
Wednesday: Roasted cod with sautéed spinach and mashed potatoes
Thursday: Meatball or grilled cheese sandwiches with carrot sticks
Friday: Lemony tuna and peas on cream biscuits
Happy eating, -s.
