August Date Night In: Preparations

Menu

·         Fire-Pit Fontina with Tomatoes, Rosemary, and Lemon

·         German Pretzel Sandwiches

·         Smoky Potato Salad with Sour Cream and Dill

·         S’mores Terrine with Smoked Salt

New ingredients (to me):

·         Fontina cheese

·         Liquid smoke

We decided, in the spirit of post-vacation, snap-back-to-reality, frugality to save our Date Night In this month for our anniversary. That way we’d be combining two special occasions. I’m fine with it, especially since September is just around the corner and we won’t have to wait very long to do this again!

Most of the food is supposed to be done over a fire. I don’t think we’re going to do that. We’d both like to smell nice for our anniversary dinner, I tend to be a mosquito chew toy by campfires, and we don’t have the right gear to get a predictable outcome on the cooks of various dishes. So we probably won’t have a very smoky potato salad and our s’mores have unsmoked flake salt dusted on them instead. We expect it will all still taste just fine.

Last night we pickled peppers (Roy), prepped pretzel dough for a slow rise overnight (me), made mustard-whipped cream cheese (Roy), and made s’mores terrine (me). Chocolate lovers unite. There’s 12 ounces of high quality dark chocolate in our terrine. Smiles all around.

Tonight shouldn’t be too complicated, she said hopefully. We will make the potato salad, which is supposed to be served warm (I’m not sure how I feel about this, but the ingredients look amazing), and cook the fontina. I’ll bake pretzel rolls in a couple of hours. (Doing anything pretzelly takes me back to my childhood and family pretzel nights at the Davis house. Mom would make the dough and divide it into handfuls ready to be rolled out. We would do our best to make long, even snakes of dough. One of the kids would invariably struggle with this. Then the old twist-and-flick to create pretzels. Wingardium leviosa! A quick blitz in a baking soda bath and into the oven. Mustard or cinnamon sugar to finish it off. Oh man.)

Right now it’s off to a fresh cup of coffee and reading/nap (depending on the quality of the coffee). Library trip this morning means there’s much to flip through!