Harvest Bounty

Our great friend l'accent aigu, aka ´, invited us over for a homegrown dinner last night. ´ has converted her lovely estate into a giant garden, sporting every kind of fruiting tree and vegetable one could ever hope to feast upon. Rows upon rows of berries, beans, cabbages, the whole works.

The garden is accented with beautiful blooms, cornflowers, poppies, matilija poppies, rock roses, lovely colors, scents and shapes popping up randomly everywhere you look.

The meal was pretty epic. ´scored some fresh abalone, which I commenced to pound and pulverize the bivalve to a pulp after Leslie had pared the mollusks down to their thinnest essence. Been so long since I have had the real thing, uncut with some other filler. Simply dipped in flour and egg and a squeeze of lemon, pure heaven!

Everything else came out of the garden; raspberries, green beans, squash, grapefruit salad with homemade lettuce and choice reed avocados. Tiny specialty french frises strawberries. Excepting the Katherine Goldschmidt Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, of course. And the butter from Parma. We saw the first oddly columnar shaped Anna apple off her new trees. A serious homegrown southern california meal.

After dinner we watched Bill Maher and waited for Nik Wallenda to do his thing. ´made organic, non gmo popcorn in duck fat and finished with truffle salt. Very nice way to end a perfect evening with wife and friend.

´ harvests wheat every year. Her garage is full of the beautiful tied sheaves. I need to go back and take some proper pictures one of these days soon.