My Three Latest and Best!

Am back from a few weeks of travel and vacation. Thought I'd catch everyone up on the best meals of the past few weeks:

1) Cape Cod National Seashore, Cape Cod, Mass. My hosts decided to forego the fancy pants Provincetown expensive dinner and hosted me on the beach. Shorts, t-shirts, and an oversand permit for the Cape Cod National Seashore parked us right on the edge of the Atlantic on a calm, warm, evening, watching the sunset, drinking Pinot Gris, and eating sandwiches on foccaica from a local bakery along with desert treats like pecan tarts and a mini-chocolate cake. Heinekin for dessert. Best meal of the trip.

2) DB Moderne, 55 W. 44th, NYC. When my lunch date cancelled, she said "don't worry, I'll call and cancel the reservations." I replied, "you'll do no such thing! You think I'm going to let you stop me from having lunch at DB?!" Well, I was a little nicer, but I was committed to lunch at Superchef Daniel Boulud's hot bistro in midtown. It was a fantastic meal from the food to the service. I had the two course menu with the day's soup -- a wonderful tangy gazpacho with tuna -- and a spearfish with a lemony hollandaise like sauce but much lighter and served with rice and white and green asparagus. The waiter recommended excellent pairings (a savignon blanc and a rose) for the meal and the wine especially took the soup from excellent to fantastic! A terrific meal with a cute investment banker table next to me as a bonus. This place is also great for people watching -- lots of media people, i-bankers and very well dressed trendsetters.

3) OK, I'm cheating that this is a meal I cooked myself, but I was so proud of it since I'm not a cook that improvises very well. On July 4, I did the grilling. Pork tenderloin stuffed with cilantro, feta cheese and apricots, roasted peppers, roasted corn, carmelized onions, and spinach salad with cranberries, pecans and red wine vinagrette. I was going to stuff pork chops but the tenderloin looked *so good*. I threw two bunches of cilantro in the food processor, mixed with 1 block of feta, and added the apricots. I was going to use dried, but found a half a tin of the Australian Glazed Apricots from Nieman Marcus that an aunt always sends at the holidays. So, in went a few of those. I threw in some white wine to make it all stick together. I marinated the tenderloin in whatever I could find -- orange juice, Italian dressing, a bit of oil, garlic and Coors Light. After I rinsed it, I sliced each piece open, stuffed it with the cilantro/cheese mixture then stacking two face together, I tied them with string. Each set of tenderloins with stuffing tied in then went on the grill. All in all it turned out very well.