Americana in California

As much as I know they love the Golden State, the Red Hot Chili Peppers make "californication" sound like a dirty word. My own californication has been my falling in love with our state's trees, hills, coastline, mist and dry sun. This year I've done a pretty good job of getting out of SF county to summer country, but I didn't taste this summer until I visited Mike and Sally's house for their tattoo barbecue.

Our fish stand crew officially broke the 300-sandwich-in-one-day record in April, and that meant one thing: salmon tattoos. I'm apparently not completely californicated yet because, despite admiring many a tat at Yoga Tree Castro over the past year, I passed on my chance to look at a salmon swimming up my leg for the rest of my life. But the other people getting inked one after the next took this particular dinner to the next level.

Sally's traditional starter of a generous hunk of salmon, this time with summery cukes, kicked off the night. English rounds on one side and scallop-edged Russians with juicy seed beds on the other:


Here's Sally doing the regular hostess thing, pausing between serving the veggie sushi she just rolled and putting out the dinner spread to GET A TATTOO?

Yes, that's what this hostess does between courses :-)

She was willing to accept a modicum of assistance from sous-chefs, here extracting grilled corn:


Her spread covered the table with perfect coleslaw wet with mayo and apple cider vinegar, potato salad with dill, moist bbq'd chicken,sticky pork ribs, and heirloom salad glowing with tomato flesh of every color of the rainbow besides blue (which is proven to be unappetizing anyway).

I've become jaded to stone fruit this summer, with my new job submerging me daily in the juiciest nectarines, peaches and plums California orchards can muster, but Sally's peach raspberry pie with its perfect ratio of crumb to fruit was artful.

A few Californians were very happy that hot night.