Organic

We drove down to LA and it's been raining forever so the hills were green and covered with wildflowers and there was a dusting of snow on the peaks of the Tejon Pass. The hounds were remarkably well behaved; for hounds.
Napa for my birthday was wondereful, especially Bouchon and the mudbaths. There is this totally weird moment with mud baths where you simply don't want to get in and get DIRTY! But you screw your courage to the sticking point and wallow in like a pig and you are rewarded with flotation warmth. Your body is supported by the mud, so you really don't have to do anything while your joints and muscles ooze into relaxation. But it's really hard to get in or out, and you make a little popping sucking noise as you get out.
The profliteroles at Bouchon arrive in a trio huddled together on the center of the plate, and with a big boat of warm chocolate sauce. The choux pastry (which they put herbs in and poach to make gnochi which are also incredible) was warm and recently made, often you have profliteroles and the pastry is popped onto a ball of ice cream and then frozen so you are eating frozen pastry which is not good. But these were pretty much the platonic ideal of profliteroles, the chocolate sauce combined with the ice cream and the whiff of pastry - yum. Good vanilla ice cream and rich bittersweet chocolate sauce is a damn good combo.
On Sunday we went to the farmer's market in Santa Monica after a long walk on the beach. I bought bags of organic baby lettuces , fresh herbs, asparagus and strawberries. That evening I pan seared chicken breasts stuffed with butter and tarragon then baked them, while I then sauteed the asparagus with lemon and tarragon and butter and a few walnuts. It was very fresh and the aspargus was divine.
Last night I took the organic baby lettuces and made a salad.
We have lemons in the garden so I made a dressing with olive oil and lemon, threw in some turkey bacon for protein. After we had made a significant dent in the ORGANIC salad, a green beatle walked out of the ORGANIC baby lettuces on my plate and across the table.
Which was a kind of protein I hadn't been anticipating.