oysters and arugula

As I walked to the train yesterday, it occurred to me that the anniversary of my first blog post must be quite near.  And so it is – it’s today!  When I began, I wasn’t completely sure of the direction I would take, but I’ve come to realize that what I like most to write about is the intersection of food and life.  I love to cook, I do love to eat, but it’s when those activities connect with the people and events of my life that the words flow most easily.  So here’s how food connected with the Great Snow Storm of October 2011 . . .

Knowing that the forecast called for snow, and wanting to dive into one of the 29 recipes I had dog-eared in Melissa Clark’s In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, I decided to make Ale-Steamed Mussels with Garlic and Mustard for Saturday’s lunch.   As snow fell and leaf-filled trees began to bow under the weight, garlic, thyme, and ale steamed through my apartment.  That and a bottle of ale, made a perfect greeting for Dr. S, who had narrowly escaped multiple fender-benders on his trip north.   We sat down to a heaping bowl of mussels, a baguette, a salad of arugula, endive, cranberries, almonds, and Bayley Hazen Blue, and bottles of Anchor Brewing Company’s Liberty Pale Ale.

Out of respect for copyright laws, I’m not going to print Melissa’s recipe here, but I will tell you that where she called for 3 cloves of garlic, I used 6.  3/4 c. of ale?  How about a bottle, can’t really have too much broth!   Shallots?  Damn – forgot those at the store, went with half a sweet onion.   I figured there wasn’t too much you could do to mess up a mussel recipe.  And based on the fact that when lunch was over not a mussel remained and the better part of a baguette had been used to sop up the broth, I’d say there’s at least one person who agrees with me.