When you have beautiful fish such as these exquisite filets of Dover sole, please don’t tamper with it so much. In this case I sea-salted and peppered each filet, heated the cast iron skillet to wicked-hot and then removed it from the stove. I gently placed each filet into the pan and let them cook on the residual heat for about ten seconds on each side. Onto a plate they went, where they received enough olive oil and lemon juice to mingle with the juices of the fish and give me something to soak up with a crust of bread.

… I’d probably enjoy this simple miracle of ingredient cross-utilization on a fairly regular basis. It is, quite obviously, an uncomplicated salad of carrot julienne, cremini mushrooms and basil chiffonade with an impromptu strawberry walnut dijon vinaigrette and cracked pepper.

One of the great pleasures of having one’s own meat grinder comes from the luxury of autonomy over the fat content of ground meats. It seems that most store bought ground beef comes with a fat content of no greater than 30%. But we all know that a fattier burger is just where it’s at sometimes.

I came home the other night with a burger craving so unrelenting that I pulled some beef chuck from the fridge, trimmed the fat from the lean, diced it all, then blended to a consistency of about 65% lean, 35% fat. This I put through the medium grind plate of my hand-powered Universal grinder. The result was formed and pan-seared to medium rare.

Of course I didn’t stop there.

I didn’t have any cheese afoot, and so I pulled out a little leftover garlic peppercorn bechamel sauce that I’d whipped up for creamed kale over the weekend. This I warmed atop the burger in the pan. And when you’ve got fresh mushrooms and basil about, it doesn’t make sense not to saute them in the beefy pan juices and thicken yourself up a nice little mushroom sauce. That’s what I did.

The result of all of this went between two wedges of toasted sour black rye, and onto a plate in a photogenic position before being squarely devoured. I give you the Bechamel, Mushroom and Basil Hamburger Sandwich.

How pleased I was to discover that exquisite Fructal juices from Slovenia are available at Taste of Europe (1739 SE Hawthorne in Portland, Oregon). One of my absolute favorite juice beverages in the world is Fructal’s blueberry and aronia nectar, which I became addicted to in Zagreb. At only $3 a liter, it sure beats the hell out of paying $3.75 for an eight ounce serving of something inferior at Whole Foods. The premium blend of blueberry and aronia (chokeberry) juices is EXTREMELY high in antioxidants, and packs just the right amount of refreshing tartness.

I had a half kilo of ground beef that needed dispatching, and so I hove it into my backsack before heading to Pete and Mara’s function last evening. It was a warm, intimate gathering of friends and associates, and the fireplace was lit. I seasoned the beef liberally with sea salt, pepper, chopped garlic and olive oil, wrapped it around a duo of sturdy pine twigs I found in the front yard and propped the assembly up to bear audience to the tranquil dirge of the flames.