Week 3, part 2 - Caperberries, Rosemary Vinegar, Truffles. Brought to you by the letter "S".

I decided it was time to have a dinner party, both as a reason to have a few fun friends over and as an excuse to go to Ferry Plaza for the Farmer's Market (and of course, to use up my Shannon stuff).

Some people avoid the Farmer's Market like you'd avoid Safeway on a Sunday, but I wanted to see what vegetables are in season and that's a simple way. It turns out that it's fava bean season. I wasn't sure what to do with favas, especially as the helpful farmer selling them said I'd need seven pounds for six people, but I thought it might be a fun experiment.

Let me skip to the end of the story and tell you that favas require a lot of work, including shelling them, blanching them, peeling them again, and then throwing out about six pounds of stuff you peeled. They taste, in my opinion, exactly like edamame, which you can buy at Trader Joe's pre-shelled. Buy favas at restaurants, serve edamame at home.

However, by the time everyone came over at seven, the favas were done and there was some cheese from the Marin French Cheese Company (left over from last weekend's cheese tasting adventure) for a snack. It was so fun to have everyone around the table that all the shelling was worth it!

After dinner, we played Scattergories, which is one of my favorite games. It doesn't make sense then that I'm not very good at it, but I'm not - I can usually get two answers on my first pass and then spend the rest of my time on one of the remaining seven things. So, I decided to practice using some of the real categories... fortunately, I rolled an S:

Things that are cold: Salad. Roasted peppers, caperberries from Shannon, rosemary vinegar from Shannon, olives. Technically it was served at room temperature, but that's close enough.

Breakfast foods: Salmon. Once part of the entree - Salmon with Coconut Rice, it's not bad first thing in the morning.

Desserts: Signature Key Lime Pie a la Anne. Everyone needs a go-to dish, and I'm lucky that Anne chose one of my favorites!

Things that grow: Strawberries. I also got these at the Farmer's Market, though they are apparently not in season (read: sour). Still, served with Shannon's truffles (on Shannon's green cake stand), they were a healthy balance to the pie.

Items in a refrigerator: Spicy sauce (2 points!). The sauce for the salmon, a red curry sauce, was really spicy. It occured to me today that I had doubled everything in the sauce except the coconut milk, which explains a lot.

Hobbies: Scattergories. Duh.

Tools: Siphon (which Peter brought for the whipped cream and Suzie used as a flashback to college).

Four letter words: Sofa, where I retired after everyone left. Did they mean curse words for this category? There is one but I don't want to use it in relation to my dinner.

Things you plug in: Salad shooter! I am so excited about this Shannon acquisition; I see it in next week's plan.

I have such fun leftovers for the week, and four more points to my credit. I'm going to sleep.