The first annual urban canning dinner

As we gathered on a late winter's evening in Sonoma, each bearing a recipe that would include one or more of the preserved goods from the garage larder, the kitchen quickly filled with requests for various pots, bowls, implements, and glasses of champagne. The doctor fired up the grill for the tenderloin, and the assembly line in the kitchen got underway, with the lawyer, the marketeer, the real German and his Serbo-Croatian wife, the doctor and I all chopping, sitrring, and cooking our various recipes, while the gamer and the boys chatted, and the dogs happily cleaned up anything which dropped on the floor. My pot o'greens was relegated to the burner on the outside grill as the stove was a beehive of meatballs and pots a'stewing. (That gave the doctor the brilliant idea to use the outdoor burner for the hot water bath once the preserving season starts - during the heat of last summer we found ourselves preserving in bathing suits in the kitchen, so this should help minimize the heat.)



We had a wildly successful dinner, one which seemed effortless even with all the cooks in the kitchen and some confusion about the proper way to form meatballs (luckily the real German came to the rescue!). It was planned and yet spontaneous, and full of deliciously surprising combinations. Here's what we indulged in:

• A lovely ripened Camembert accompanied by homemade fig chutney
• An antipasto of Melanzane and mozzarella: little, lightly fried balls of eggplant with a "surprise" middle of mozzarella (straight from Marcella Hazan)
• Rao's famous meatballs (beef, pork, and veal) accompanied by homemade marinara
• Spinach, orange, almond & onion salad with home-grown oranges and a light vinaigrette
• The afore-mentioned tenderloin (there must *always* be a grilled item on the doctor's menu)
• Wilted spicy Indian greens (chard and curry) with sides of homemade green tomato chutney
• Bread fresh from the Ferry Plaza farmers' market in San Francisco
• Clafoutis with homemade strawberry and pear preserves and vanilla ice cream
• Homemade Poire William with a twist: we'd used Aquavit instead of eau de vie and put in a vanilla stick - the liqueur was sweet, incredibly smooth and will be delicious over ice cream or over poached fruit
• Lots of Sonoma-local wine

And so with cries of "we must have another!" we ended our evening with resolve to indulge again. And indulge we must, as we still have *boatloads* of preserves to get through.