Go A's!!! Go Alice Waters!!!

Fortunately, the A's played a day game today, so we were able to watch their first-round playoff game against the Twins. We can watch any playoff game live on mlb.com, if it is on at a reasonable hour. What a game! The A's won (of course) with the help of two home runs by Frank Thomas. I wonder if we were the only people in Eindhoven watching?

This past Sunday we started a new tradition here in Eindhoven with our friend Brett: Chez Panisse Night. Brett is from the SF bay area and is really into cooking tasty food, so naturally he brought a small library of Alice Waters cookbooks with him to Eindhoven. We decided that we would pick out a few recipes and cook a nice dinner once a month.
The menu:
- Seared lamb with greens, chantrelle mushrooms and shoestring potatoes
- Roasted quail with mushroom risotto and a blueberry thyme sauce
- Lots of French wine
- Port and speculaas
We started cooking at 5:30pm and didn't finish eating until midnight. Everything was delicious! Impressive, considering we were cooking in a tiny kitchen with only an electric hotplate and a convection oven. Of course, we did have a few luxury items to work with, like Brett's mandolin for slicing the potatoes. In the spirit of Chez Panisse, we bought everything from the outdoor market and our local butcher shop. We're already starting to think about our next meal, which we think may have a Halloween theme. Any ideas for costumes? We're also thinking about inviting another guest to our dinner, preferably someone who can make dessert!

Finally, last Wednesday we learned that Vanessa's ex-roommate, Megan, was kicked off of "America's Next Top Model" after only the second episode. This was both good and bad news for us. It was bad news because we were rooting for Megan because a) she has a great name and b) we wanted to be able to say that we "knew personally" America's Next Top Model. It was good news because a) now we don't feel compelled to watch all of those annoying teenage brats and b) now Megan doesn't have to live with all those annoying teenage brats. Congratulations, Megan, on making it that far.