This weekend was it such a relief, after an incredibly hectic week, to have some down time with my fiance and eat some actual meals, instead of fruits and veggies and soynuts shoved into ziploc baggies in a fog at 5:30 in the morning.

Friday Jeff had gone out to a big lunch, so I wanted to prepare something light for dinner. (The lunch made me a little sore, actually- I had assumed he was going out to a deli in the Valley for his corned beef sandwich, and instead they went to Langer's. I've been wanting to go to Langer's since I moved to LA, and never went, even when I lived 5 blocks south in the heart of the ghetto. I've been asking Jeff when we can go to Langer's ever since he started eating red meat again. The New York Times cannot print the word pastrami without mentioning Langer's, and Jeff off and went without me. Not that I'm bitter.)

So I pulled out Amanda Hesser's other book, her newer one,
Cooking for Mr. Latte.A lot of this book was familiar from her column in the NYT Sunday magazine, so mainly I got it to have it all in hardbound format. Her mac and cheese alone is worth it, and the recipes are less daunting then some of
The Cook and the Gardener appear. So I made, from her "What to have when you've eaten to much" chapter, a light salad with dill and arugula and romaine. Jeff crumbled up his pumpernickel into the salad, but I liked it fine on its own.