This has been a long week. I don’t know about you, but I think after a while work and life really just tire you out if you’re not exactly where you want to be. For those who are always wanting to be on the move - growing and getting to the next level - complacency becomes a toxin. So for tonight, rather than reporting on animators or ads or cool artsy events around town, I’m going to sit back and be a bit more introspective.

I decided to use cooking as an attempt to distract myself from life and to turn a Saturday night spent alone into a relatively fun evening. Earlier in the week, I decided on the dish — veal saltimbocca and pommes de terres sautees (or saltimbocca di vitello if you want to be a literalist.)  

So through the magic of Yahoo!, I found a simple recipe and was on my way. It involved several supermarkets and butchers to get the handful of required ingredients. Most items came from my local Trader Joe’s, but for the proscuitto di parma, I went to Bay Cities on Lincoln Blvd. in Santa Monica. After a failed attempt to get veal from Von’s, then Victor’s Meat (Culver City), I sucked it up and went to Whole Foods and basically bent over for 2/3 of a pound of veal scallopini. “Whole paycheck!”

After nearly 90 minutes of cooking (mostly the potatoes), the dish came out extraordinarily! Here’s a picture below. Frankly, the freshness of the ingredients, particularly the proscuitto really gave it a boost. I also used about 1/3 a cup of good wine in the sauce, which always makes a different. (I am finishing glass #3 right now). Speaking of wine, I paired my delicious feast with my second favorite white wine, Conundrum. It is a California blended table wine. Runs about $28 on average. Trader Joe’s seems to sell it less these days but Vons goes as high as $35. For the veal recipe click here. I added some fontina cheese between the veal and prosciutto and that really hit the sot. For the potato recipe click here. 

I think there’s something refreshing about just cooking something new and slightly challenging. It’s also a great way to procrastinate from other activities you should be doing. Will tomorrow be a bit better? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s tough standing still and not always moving forward. So cooking sometimes is great because you get to create. When everything’s done, at least you pushed yourself to stretch your normal boundaries.