Farmer's Market day today, so no cooking - at least until later. I went and had my usual two hamburgers for lunch, covered with the excellent mango relish they make. I bought a box of local Roma tomatoes for $ 3 - there must have been around 30 tomatoes in the box - as well as three bell peppers; two white and one red, for $ 1.50.
Let me go on for a minute about the peppers, and bear in mind that I have been stuck in Hong Kong for the last six years. These had that sweetness and the crunch you can only get when fruit or vegetables are just picked. The flesh had the same crunchiness all the way through, not like those rubbery tasteless abominations that Park 'n Shop, or Taste, has the gall to charge its customers for.
For dinner, Ivan came round and I fired up the barbecue. Nothing elaborate; a few Mediterranean sausages, tomato and feta salad, bell pepper salad with a squeeze of lime and a drizzle of olive oil, and for the main course - New York striploin steaks.
The steaks were interesting - I had bought four from Foody Mart for about $ 16, and then - because I thought we were having more people over I got another one from Loblaws; exactly the same size but this one cost $ 8. I could not tell by taste or look why the one steak cost twice as much as the others.
Steak grilling has never been my forte, perhaps because I never had a lot of practise and never fully understood the benefits of a really, really hot grill, but with a little reading, and a watch, I managed to make a half decent effort. They were at least as good as some pretty average restaurant steaks. Ivan and I ate two each, and used the rest of the skordalia from the other day as a garlicky dip - almost like a garlic butter but without the butter.
Photos would have been good, but we were too busy eating.
I realised it is times like this, as we sat outside eating in the cool clear sumer night free of attack mosquitoes, noise pollution, pollution, and people, that we are truly living the good life. We sat in silence and darkness, a semi-circle of light from the wall lamp giving us some visibility. You could almost hear the grass grow. Later we finished our meal with a light dessert of sliced pears from the very tree we had been sitting gazing at most of the evening.
* * *
FOOD COSTS:
Two burgers $ 10.00
Five steaks $ 25.93
Feta cheese $ 6.68
Sausages $ 3.99
Peppers $ 1.50
Tomatoes $ 3.00
Sunday total $ 51.10
What a pretty picture, baby! Love it. Please send it over.
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