Red Repast, 2/14

This Valentine’s Day, I actually had a date. Granted it was a dinner date with 7 other people, some of whom I knew (single friends) and some whom I did not (two couples and one formerly coupled). But I am calling it a date, as it was on my calendar. The cool thing, besides the people who were there –their coolness evidenced in their being able to discuss elephant seal penises with total strangers and later to produce a photo, is that we ate red. And later, at least in my case, peed red too.

THE MENU:
After introductions, we toasted the day of love with a pomosa (pomegranate juice with champers) and immediately descended on the crostini platter (choice of spreads: muhammara, romesco, or a date/pom/goat cheese). Our transition from polite hors d’oeuvres eaters to ravaging diners happened quickly. Timbales of beet tartare on white plates demanded we take our places at the dining table. (Visually, the beet dish conjured up the stained, blood-red-on-white, virgin-deflowered thing and was more compelling than I’d like to admit; maybe I shouldn’t have read all four books in the Twilight saga.) This first dish fixed our red tack; there was no changing course. Yet, as with most things where you start out assertive, maybe a little polemical, we softened as the dishes progressed. While we never abandoned our crimson core, we accentuated with creams and greens.

Finishing our first plate and leaving little beet juice Rorschachs in our wake, we fell willingly into the red reverie before us. Delicate, fresh made pasta with a simple but sweet home-garden tomato sauce; sautéed red chard with blood orange, avocado and pine nuts; salad with red pears and red onions; and cheesecake. Where’s the red in cheesecake, you ask? Duh, there isn’t any and, no, we didn’t add red food coloring (we saved that for later). The beyond-the-beyond quadruple cheesecake was made Valentine’s compatible by studding it with chile “sparklers” and topping it with red chile jam (there was also an onion and apple chutney to accompany it, which must have been red in its raw state but was now the color of nutmeg—just eat, don’t evaluate the chromatics on this one). Luckily we had plenty of resveratrol (read: red wine) to combat the cholesterol now flooding our arteries.

None of us can believe that after all of that (including second and third helpings of cheesecake), we had room for dessert. Actually, we didn’t. But we were on the path, we could not fall away now. We were blue staters committed to doing the red journey—we heeded our President’s call for bipartisanship, for steadfastness in difficult times. Out came the cherry clafoutis and the red velvet cupcakes. To further bolster us, there was a bowl of red hots, more cheese (it wasn't red but it WAS cheese--'nuff said), and a couple of un-red chocolate bars (the latter snuck into our meal under the joint Hershey/Hallmark food proviso of 1954).

ALWAYS TALK ABOUT THE NEXT MEAL WHILE YOU'RE STILL EATING
The meal was such a success, we started to imagine the Purple meal, the Yellow and Blue meal (will I then pee green?), the Orange meal. I’m all for it. With Red, we not only got fantastic eats, we heard all about large sea mammal sex organs. I can’t recall the last time the term “os-penis” (a.k.a. os priapi or baculum) made its way into my dinner conversation. I can’t wait to see what the other colors bring out…or should I say, up?

THE LESSON
Love isn’t a holiday; it’s a feast day!