Foodie vs. Eater

I'd tell you about the wonderful dinner I had last night, but Claudia does a much better job. There were a lot of flavors in this dish and the combination really worked. To an extent that every bite tasted slightly different, but in a complementary way.

What's particularly interesting to me about this dish is that it contained red onions that I liked. As I've mentioned before, I'm picky about onions and not a huge fan of red onions, really. But these onions had been roasted and browned with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, so not only did the texture was soft and taste sweet and savory at the same time. I also enjoyed a delicious and simple salad of butter lettuce with (roasted?) walnut oil and a pinch of some special salt that I'd never heard of before.

In fact, Claudia discussed a lot of dishes and ingredients that were new to me, so not only was dinner fun, I learned a lot as well. Claudia is a true foodie--being from New York tends to make one's palate at least slightly more sophisticated than, say a person who's never been outside of Tennessee for more than two weeks at a time--whereas I'm just a person who likes food. An eater, if you will. So it's always nice to get to experience firsthand the fruits of someone else's learned lessons and labor! Count me as a new fan of (among other things) farro, roasted red onions, walnut oil for salads, and live butter lettuce (which should last longer in the fridge than my usual lettuce). And, interestingly, black pepper in pumpkin cake. I'm suddenly regretting not taking a slice of pumpkin cake to go...yum.