Last night’s dinner was so good. It was also a very pleasant evening with good friends, but I do have to say that the food was amazing as well, even if I did make it myself.
That’s the rainbow chard gratin: chard leaves and stems cooked separately, then baked with béchamel sauce and grated Parmesan — with panko on top for crispness, Erik’s excellent idea. The chard was tender and flavorful and the sauce velvety and luscious. I won’t tell you how much butter was in it, but the sad thing is it’s still less than the amount that goes into any decent cake. Sigh for us dessert lovers.
Here’s my own freshly baked crusty French bread, sliced and served with Reblochon (somewhat similar to Brie) from Laurent Bonjour and smoked Gouda from the Winchester Cheese Co.
I also made garlic bread with another loaf of the bread.
For dessert, which I alas forgot to take a pictor of, we had lemon sorbet and vanilla pudding (see yesterday’s entry for linked recipes).
Here we are, with me looking impossibly nerdy for some reason (but my arms look good, yay Pilates!).
After dinner we went to the living room and the girls talked about girl things (possible paint schemes for the bedroom, bathroom, and living room), and the boys talked about boy things (buying stocks and air conditioners). Hee.
And that was our evening!
And now… two gratuitous kitty pictors. 🙂
The end!
[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
Have you come up with good ideas about a paint scheme for the living room? I’m going through that one myself. I’m about to mix some colours up and see if I can come up with something acceptable. I was thinking taupe, but after watching Star Wars last night, I’m thinking a muted blue. I only watch movies with room colours in mind. *sigh*
I have been reading a lot of home decorating websites and magazines lately, along with one really cool book, and they’re helping me get some ideas. The most recent issue of Domino has something on how to pick a color scheme, based on the mood you want to evoke or just what colors you like (if you go to their website and click on the picture of the issue, you can see a pic of the article). I thought it was a nifty article because the person wound up with red, khaki, and lavender, and it actually looked really good (but this was in separate rooms, not all in one).
What I think I am going to do with our living room is an idea from the $500 Room Makeovers book: pull the colors from one item in the room to build a color scheme. I have a print hanging on the wall that has a cream matting with red trim, and a white frame, and I love the way that looks. So I will maybe paint some parts of our all-white room red and some parts cream. I was going to do red door jambs and moldings, and cream doors, but Ying suggested just painting one wall red, and I may do that instead.
The trouble is I keep having ideas and then not acting on them but reading more websites and magazines, and then I come up with new ideas and then I don’t act on those… so I have all these ideas but I really just need to DO something.