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Weekend Update

Al and I started our weekend right with "date night", our third since the Boopster was born. (The first was in February when my parents were here, and we went out to see Sideways; the second was in October, when we went to see a New Jersey Devils game for my birthday.) This time we went to dinner at Washington Square, a Stephen Starr restaurant that's located, as the name implies, on Washington Square, and afterwards to a movie.

Washington Square is supposed to be a hip, trendy place, a place "to see and be seen," as one review we read indicated. We ate really early, however, long before the hip crowd—or any crowd, for that matter—arrived, so the only people-watching involved the 12 or so waiters keeping an eye on us. We had the full attention of the kitchen at that hour, and the courses came promptly, which was nice. We both considered the Unlimited Wine menu option, which included an appetizer, an entree, a dessert, and all the wine you cared to drink from among about 8 choices (the food options were more limited, with only 2 choices for each course) for $55. It seemed like a decent deal and a good way to have the wine you wanted with each course, but in the end we each decided we could put together a meal we would enjoy more by just picking random items from the food and drink menus.

I had a gulf shrimp cocktail with wonderfully, perfectly HOT cocktail sauce, a savory vidalia onion tart, the mushroom fettucini, and an Orange Hurricane. Everything was delicious, and the portion sizes were just right. The only thing I would have changed were the flavor proportions on the tart—half the phyllo would have been sufficient, and twice as much goat cheese would have made it perfect (the dot on top was half the size of a pat of butter). Al had a wonderfully fresh tuna tartare, more pork medallions than he could finish, and a glass of Mark West pinot noir (which he also didn't finish). The bill was about the same as it would have been under the Unlimited Wine option, but as we suspected, we enjoyed it more for being able to eat exactly what we wanted. Because we had a movie to catch, and because the overwhelming stench of cigarette smoke hanging in the air made it difficult to breathe (I actually had to take my inhaler), we weren't likely to linger over glasses of wine all night anyway.

From the restaurant we walked the few blocks to the Ritz to see Syriana. To avoid spoiling it for anyone who hasn't seen it, I won't go into the details; I'll just say that although it was excellent, were a couple scenes that really freaked me out. I squeezed Al's hand, pressed my lips together, and held my breath to keep from sobbing in one case, but I couldn't stop the tears from streaming down my face; in the other I had to hide behind Al's shoulder and try to plug my ears to keep from vomiting. Sounds horrific, I know, but I still recommend the movie, and the fact that I can now think of that first scene without bursting into tears makes me think I could see Syriana again. It's worth seeing twice. The casting was excellent except for Amanda Peet as Matt Damon's wife; I've never been an Amanda Peet fan, so I thought at first I was just biased against her, but Al also hated her in the role. I must say that it was a bit unnerving to see George Clooney looking so very much like my recently deceased Uncle Bruce, but that probably made a sympathetic character even more so in my mind.

OK, so now that I've spent four paragraphs on Friday night, I'll try to be more concise about the actual weekend. The summary is that I traded Al a Saturday of Projects for a Sunday of Cookie Baking. I was on baby duty all day yesterday while Al rewired light switches and outlets, filed down our bedroom door so it would close properly, assembled some storage cubbies in the basement, and did a bunch of other things that he never gets to do because we usually share baby duty on the weekends.

In return, I got to bake today. I'm almost done—the only thing that remains is the slicing of the Seven Layer Cookies (Gourmet, Dec. 2005)—and as usual, when I see what I have wrought I think to myself, "who is going to eat all of these things?" I'm sending some of the iced sugar cookies to work with Al, and I've assembled a sampling of each cookie type for our babysitter, but the rest will probably end up on our hips or going stale in their Rubbermaid containers. This is one of the things I miss about being in the Bay Area and going into an office on a regular basis: I used to have friends and co-workers with whom I could share my baking experiments.

Speaking of baking experiments, I did take a couple photos of the Orange Bread, but I forgot to post them along with the recipe. I'll be adding them shortly. Look for photos of today's cookies to be added to this post later right now, too.

Seven-Layer Cookies, Iced Cut-Out Sugar Cookies (top), and Rustic Nut Bars (bottom)