Bark, Bugs, Lizards, and Leaves.

Vignettes of My Birthday Dinner.

But first, a product review! I bought Green's All Natural Tripel Blonde Ale without realizing that it does not contain, according to the label:

"...any of the following: Wheat and/or Barley, Crustaceans (whew! -Ed.), Eggs, Fish, Peanuts, Soya beans, Milk, Lactose, Nuts, Celery (what about that great Boulevard Celery Beer? -Ed.), Mustard, Sesame Seeds, Sulphur dioxide and Sulfites."

This beer sucks. It starts out tasting a little like a lambec, because it's laid on lees and is, duh, Belgian. It has a nice light body, true, but a strange bitter aftertaste that has nothing in the world to do with hops. Rather than sitting up against your palate the way hoppiness does, this particular bitterness (which is probably due to the rice used to brew this..."beer") sits on the back of your tongue, along either side, and ruins your taste for the following things:

1. Triple cream cheese.

2. Salametto (dry salami) (more about this in a minute)

3. Danish butter. DANISH BUTTER!!!

4. Really good bread.

Oh, and strawberries. Which Chef Boy asked me to bring out of the 'fridge. When I reminded him to wash them prior to eating them, he told me he never washes strawberries. I told him, "I don't mind eating dead smoked raw pig covered in mold, but I have to draw the line somewhere in the safety department!"

Because Salametto is dry dead smoked raw pork. And fat. And various other things (which the manufacturer assures me make up less than two percent of the total ingredients by weight), all covered in mold, all of which combine to make something that, as CB said, "tastes like it's been hanging in a seventh-century church in Italy with doddering old men looking after it."

Then we noticed the label. It was made in Berkeley. But I'm sure it was smoked over burning Birkenstocks.

By the way, if you have to eat only one butter for the rest of your life, make it Danish butter. Spread it on thick enough that you can see toothmarks in it, then call your cardiologist. Because, my friends, Danish butter is made from cultured cream with just a tiny bit of salt. You don't want to use it for cooking, unless you're making something that you want to taste mostly of butter, but DAMN is it good for just plain eating.

And now I'm going off to finish my bottle of POP and eat some of the chocolate miniature omigod cheesecake that CB keeps pushing on me, even though I'm not all that fond of chocolate. I have a pound and a half of tiramisu waiting for me, after all.