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Sweet, sweet Saturday. As much as I love being with my kids, every other Saturday (due to our second-marriage, share-custody status), John and I have the day to ourselves. We try to take full advantage of our limited – yet usefully predictable – alone time and have ourselves a fine Saturday (lemons to lemonade as they say, not that I’d suggest divorce and remarriage as a “fun” way to find alone time as a couple, Lord no; but hey, we all have to find and polish life’s duller benefits wherever they exist).

We usually scrape out a tasty brunch or lunch of some sort (if not a movie as well), either here at the hacienda or at, you know, La La Lucia’s. Today, it was here, with leftovers from my high-input-yet-solo dinner last night. John had a work thang, but I was in the mood to cook, so I made myself (as I had mentioned) Watercress Soup with Gentleman’s Relish Toast as well as grilling up a few lamb rib chops. Oh Good Lord, I had such a good meal by myself it was almost obscene as I talked, sang, danced, and laughed through the preparation.

Best of all – plenty of leftovers for today’s lunch, which we just happily, heartily consumed. With sips of the holiest of wines, our beloved Turley Zinfandel, this time a 2003 Lodi Zinfandel, Dogtown Vineyard. Sigh. We only pull out the Turley if I’ve worked really hard on a meal, and it’s turned out particularly deliciously, and this meal qualified. Charred, salty lamb chops, followed by creamy, spicy watercress soup, bathing a crispy, chewy, herb-buttered crouton… Ridic, really, and best consumed in a lavender-scented garden somewhere in Provence (the window in the pic makes me want to leap right through, sniffing deeply as I crash-land, ahhh…), but we made due with our own – because, you know, we had to – winter-in-Minnesota kitchen. Cold, gray skies warmed by Larry Turley and Suzanne Goin, as it were. And perhaps (!) a bit of my own enthusiasm for eating and sipping heartily and well with my Johnny on a Saturday’s afternoon…

No complaints here, my friends, none at all. (Well, perhaps one tiny complaint – as in, it’s over! Lunch is gone, wine is put away, sniff. Always the moderateepicurean’s dilemma – knowing when to call it quits. Shucks. Time for a cup of really strong coffee – nothing signals “the end” of a meal like a great cup of coffee.)