F.A. Farm

When I was a ski bum in Vail in 1980, I could go out and buy dinner for two, with a nice bottle of French wine and pay $100, including tip. Last night, Toni and I had a wonderful dinner, with a 2005 French Bordeaux, for $100, including tip. The featured entree was a 14-oz. ribeye, which we split. The included side dish was garlic mashed potatoes and we ordered French Onion soup, braised mushrooms and a special house salad as extra sides. For dessert, we had one of my favorites from my ski-bum days, vanilla ice cream with a shot of Grand Marnier on top.

I am sure you can see the theme here - a momentary return to the good old days when we were in our thirties, young and strong. I was also a waiter back then and quite involved in restaurants. What I found interesting last night is how good the steak tasted (medium-rare by the way), even though we routinely eat grass-fed beef from the quarter we bought last year. We also don't eat much meat, about once or twice a week for an entree and mostly for flavoring our vegetable dishes or pasta. Also, I first tasted grass-fed beef around 1981 when one of my high-school buddies started raising it and I happened to be back in my home town. Grass-fed beef is certainly the preferred red meat in our house, but it did not make us feel like traitors to have a nicely-grilled, aged, corn-fed steak. For those of you Ferndalians and Bellinghamsters who want to know the name of the restaurant, send me an email. Otherwise, I will just say it is on the Res and you have to walk past the slot machines to get there. Bon appetit!