Pasta with Red Gravy/Birthday Buffet at Springbank House

Saturday 29 March

H: Barbara is home tomorrow. Spent the day cooking up a big batch of Eye-talian tomato sauce—known as red gravy amongst the Squiglios, the pack of wild Napolitani who helped raise Barbara—while trying to make sense of Eye-talian opera (Ernani). Had a ladleful of that with slivers of pepperoni and a mess o' cheese. O, and a good spaghetti red.

Birthday Buffet at Springbank House

Though this blog is just about dinners, Barbara is unable to avoid bragging about other meals today. First, the wonderful breakfast: the usual (!) fresh fruit cup, orange juice, coffee, and then Stefan's special Springbank eggs: two poached eggs in a nest of baby arugula on sliced tomatoes and homemade bread, with streaky bacon on the side. Barbara was so overwhelmed she was unable to pay proper attention to the martini glass of vanilla yogurt and plate of fresh poundcake.

Then, while Andrea and Stefan were receiving a busload of Japanese travel agents, Mike, the Chair at Brock, drove Barbara out to the Flat Rock winery on the Twenty-Mile Bench of the Escarpment, where they make lovely Rieslings and Pinots in an energy-saving hexagonal pavilion with a fantastic view over Lake Ontario.

Then we went to lunch at the elegant Inn on the Twenty, where Barbara had a slab of warm whitefish on top of a sort of Salade Niçoise, and Mike had the Vintner's lunch (a nouvelle version of Ploughman's), with some glasses of Dolomite Riesling. Mike dutifully went on to the office, but Barbara spent the afternoon listening to the Met broadcast of "Ernani" in a pleasant golden haze.

By this time, Barbara had been so warmly embraced by Springbank House's denizens that she was addressed as Auntie Barbara (especially by Bruno), and was invited to a special buffet dinner for Andrea's birthday. The party began with sparkling wine in the living room, where 18 or so friends and neighbors, ranging from seven to seventy-odd, gathered. We then moved to the enormous truss-roofed library, where tables that Stefan himself had built were laid with white cloths, fine glassware and silver. The buffet was laid out in the dining room: grilled salmon in parsley sauce (innocently flavorful, but Stefan told us the hot sauce had blown out of the blender while he was making it); pork tenderloins skewered around fresh figs; perfectly medium-rare slices of lamb in demiglace; and asparagus, cauliflower, carrots, and other yummy vegetables in their various sauces. The red wines were of course from the Niagara region, except for one Baco Noir from Prince Edward County, north of Lake Ontario, specifically brought by Matt.

As you may have guessed, the desserts were extraordinary. Andrea's birthday cake, baked by Stefan, was multilayered chocolate, with icing so smooth it glowed in the candlelight (it was Earth Day, so they'd turned off the lights and lit the room only with candles). Stefan also did an amazingly light chocolate truffle cake, and their neighbor Lorna brought the best carrot cake Barbara had ever tasted, and a pumpkin torte even better than that. We sipped port, sherry, and great home-made ice wine, hashing out the great questions of history, politics, and movies until late into the night. We felt like one big, friendly family, and Barbara only regretted that Holt wasn't there to enjoy it - and also that she'd have to get up at 6 in the morning to make her plane back.