Foodie Fun

We're sitting in the living room in happy food comas after a fabulous dinner. I marinated some chicken breasts in a mixture of olive oil, Three-Buck-Chuck sauvignon blanc, minced garlic, scallions, salt, pepper, lemon juice and zest and a handful of fresh herbs from my rain-drenched and burgeoning new herb garden -- sage, basil, marjoram, rosemary and summer savory. Then I grilled these over apple-chip-infused lump charcoal. Yum; good stuff.

Another happy discovery: I microwaved a few small Yukon gold potatoes until not quite done, tossed them with kosher salt, olive oil and rosemary and placed them, with a couple of garlic cloves, in some perforated aluminum foil. These I placed on the top shelf of the grill while the chicken cooked underneath. To my delight, the potatoes absorbed some of that great applewood flavor. There's an ice cream/barbecue joint in a neighboring city that serves delicious smoked potato salad; I've tried to replicate this flavor with minimal success; now I think I know the trick.

And -- calloo, callay -- I got an e-mail from a farmer in the next county, someone who raises heritage-breed Icelandic sheep and other small stock, saying that she's about to take a couple of lambs to market; would I like to buy some lamb? Visions of shashlik and Irish stew and curry and chops dancing in my head, I said, oh, yes.