July 20 – July 26, 2026

Monday:                  Provençal Greens Soup / Parmesan Crostini

Tuesday:                  Rick’s Birthday Dinner at Mere and Hoddy’s

Wednesday:          Crispy Cheddar Chicken Tacos

Thursday:                Dunnings Dinner

Friday:                      Dinner at Bill and Suzee’s – Birthday boy, Judd, above, drinking Caymus and contemplating giant bowl of strozzapreti in parmesan/ricotta sauce

Saturday:                Zucchini and Summer Squash Pizza

(No picture of the chicken – but here are the potatoes, zucchini, summer squash and shallots cooked in a skillet place below the chicken to catch its drippings.)

Sunday:                   Grilled Chicken with Potatoes, Summer Squash and Chili

Steaks as Big as Your Head – Bowls as Big as Your Wading Pool

[This is a catch-up posting – I’ll get another posting out this week and then we’ll be up to date.  I realize that no one is holding their breath for these posts, but it’ll make me feel better.  Oh – and there is no recipe in this posting, but there will be in the next one, and it’s a summer grilling must.]

The week before last we didn’t do as much cooking as usual because of the hospitality and generosity of family and friends.  Mere and Hoddy invited us to join them and Annie and Dennis and the birthday boy himself, UFR, for dinner at the Hanna Spa and Retreat.  And later in the week, Bill and Suzee invited us to a dinner party with a cast of thousands, for the purpose of celebrating the 90^th birthday of Judd, the guiding light of a group that Bill and I meet with every Thursday.  How, I wondered, do you cook for this many people?  My question was answered when Bill poured a wonderful pasta from a pot that would not fit on our shelves into a bowl that could have held a half-keg of beer.  Bill and Suzee are fine cooks and the dinner was one to remember.

As for the night at Mere and Hoddy’s:  The purpose was to send our birthday boy into the following year with all of the love and support and indecent jokes and general insults that we could muster – but also with a good meal to fortify him for the next 365 days.

Mere made spectacular corn salad and potato salad, and we brought a tomato-peach-burrata salad with candied pecans, but the centerpiece of this fine, very Irish and boozy celebration was the grilled steak – bone-in rib eyes purchased by Hoddy at Willy’s Smoke House.  These steaks – often called Cowboy Steaks – feature about 4 inches of protruding bone (a Tomahawk steak is the same thing with a 10-inch handle of bone).  Just carrying these beauties to the grill on a platter – maybe 15 pounds altogether – nearly did me in.

Now, I’m not going to tell you how to cook a bone-in ribeye.  If you follow this blog, you already know that – though I will just add that a little par-cooking in a low-oven and then about 4 or 5 minutes per side over a hot grill with a little flare-up to give a nice char and then 2 minutes or so with the steaks resting on their side to crisp the fat cap will earn you some smiles.

I will close by noting that on my latest trip to Willy’s Smoke House the man behind the counter remembered the order for 3-inch thick bone-in ribeyes from Hoddy and Mere.  He agreed that it was a pretty spectacular order for the shop, allowing him to take his family on a long-awaited vacation to the shore, as well as to pay off his student loans and buy a 20-year old Scotch that had been on his wish list for a decade.  When I asked him for a small container of pulled pork, he muttered something under his breath and didn’t even say “You’re welcome,” when I thanked him.