When you live in a very small town in central PA, like I do, there are three things you can do when it comes to food: eat pizza or sandwiches at the coffee shops, eat in one of only a handful of good restaurants, or cook for your damn self. I usually choose the latter. When a good friend of mine, Dean (who will hopefully be a regular poster here) came to visit for a few weeks this winter, we cooked for ourselves like we thought we were royalty. It was grand. Then he went back to Portland. I'm still cooking here, but it's nice to share discoveries, recipes, and even the disasters (exploding gingerbread pan story to come). Others will be posting too--Tony has volunteered to do a special "Clean Out the Fridge Gourmet" column. My friends Peter and Karla are master chefs (Peter made an INCREDIBLE indian meal a few weeks ago, which i have photos of and I hope he'll share that shrimp recipe). Dean is so good at putting together different flavors that sound weird but are delicious...and he's good with the spice. Adam T Cole is a total gourmet. Sean knows how to cook for a whole roomfull of people, serve everything on time, and have all the dishes already washed by dessert time. Amazing, all of you. And I'm sure more will join us. So, let's eat!

This photo was taken at my neighbor's house (poets-in-res Dick& Carol Frost) after a night of tapas and LOTS of wine at the new restaurant in town (thank god) Marco's Tapas. The wine is a Montecillo Rioja (Harold, our dept chair, is a real wine expert...this stuff is gooo-od and he picked it out), the cheese some sort of manchego, I believe. And some sliced dates and apricots, some walnuts. (Dean loves apricots. They remind me too much of earlobes.) I can't believe that we were able to eat anything after polishing off about 10 plates of tapas (is that redundant? plates of little plates?), but it was a great spread.

Maybe we should talk about wine... I'd been into the Malbecs for awhile, but I think that will subside with the coming of warmer weather. Now it's Riojas--maybe because of the tapas. Maybe because I want to go back to Spain? Lisa, what's the wine we drank in Spain all the time with the bubbly water? I want some...