The reason I started this was primarily to do two things. To make myself write SOMETHING - anything - more often, and also to record some of the better dishes I cooked In the hopes that I would be able to repeat them more accurately at a later date.

How little did I know how much I would need this. I am sitting here trying to remember what I cooked in the past week and I can't.

Yesterday (Wednesday): dinner was linguine tossed with toasted walnuts, olive goat cheese, capers and smoked salmon (not as good as it sounds) and mixed sauteed greens. Lunch was toasted bagels with goat cheese and smoked salmon and tomato. (See how lazy I can be...)

Tuesday was...took me a while but now I recall. Dinner - roast chicken with roast potatoes and a salad from Trader Joe's. No idea what lunch was.

Monday was pasta with pesto, frozen corn and veggie burgers (for Grace).

Sunday was the lamb stew mentioned in a previous post.

Saturday was dinner a sort of friend's house. And what a shocker. They just served precooked food from Whole Foods. I actually MADE a cake to bring along for desert. A basic chocolate sponge cake with an icing made using the lemon cake icing recipe but using the zest and juice of a tangelo from our organic box. Chocolate and orange. But again, it wasn't as good as it sounds.

Friday was a small dinner party. Roast chicken (yes, again) with roast potatoes, roast sweet potatoes and beets mixed, sauteed mixed greens, salad. Dessert was a blackberry pastry made in a few seconds at the table.

Quick Blackberry Pastries

I had some very nice blackberries from Chile and a little mascarpone and some palmier biscuitty things (to make a sublime-sounding variation, see this). Our guests had brought some home made honey (Dot is a beekeeper). So I mixed two tablespoons of honey into six ounces of mascarpone. Then I placed a palmier on each small plate, spread it with the honey-mascarpone mixture and topped with about eight big, fat, juicy blackberries. One of these each per person...