I had decided early in the day on Sunday that I would prefer cooking a dinner with meat that night to one with pasta, since I had a good supply of both vegetables – and small, or micro vegetables as well – since more of them could be incorporated in, as it turned out, a pork entrée, than in any pasta.

Also, the freezer had grown almost full, which was going to make it hard to bring home something interesting that I might find at the market.

Another note about the dinner: Unusual for a meal at our table, there was not a single garlic clove or spicy chili. It was still eminently delicious.

• two 8-ounce boneless pork chops from Walter and Shannon of Shannon Brook Farm in the Finger Lakes, thoroughly dried, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a large pinch of light gold dried habanada pepper, seared quickly in a heavy enameled cast-iron pan before half of an organic Chelsea Whole Foods Market lemon was squeezed over them then left in the pan, which was then placed in a 400º oven for about 13 or 14 minutes (flipped halfway through and the lemon squeezed over them once again), removed from the oven, arranged on the plates, sprinkled with the chopped stems and leaves of 2 stalks of (pre-spring) baby celery from Windfall Farms, the rich pan juices poured over the top
• just under a pound of small, really wonderful, sweet Natasha potatoes from Phillips Farms,  scrubbed, boiled unpeeled in generously-salted water until barely cooked through, drained, halved, dried in the still-warm large vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot in which they had cooked, tossed with a little Trader Joe’s Italian Reserve extra virgin olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and garnished with micro chervil from Two Guys from Woodbridge

• a couple handfuls of beautiful chicory rosettes from Campo Rosso Farm that had popped up from last fall’s plants, washed, drained, dried, each halved – or quartered, if larger, tossed in a large bowl with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and a number of thyme branches from Chelsea Whole Foods, then arranged inside a large well seasoned Pampered Chef oven pan, without touching, roasted at 400º for about 10 minutes [I have to admit that I went a little overlong this time, but a bit crispy is good too, when it comes to chicory], removed from the oven and allowed to cool just a little before they were drizzled with a very small amount of balsamic vinegar
• the wine, a perfect pairing, was a really terrific unfiltered, unfined pinot noir, a French (Loire) red, Marie and Vincent Tricot’s ‘Les 3 Bonhommes’ 2016, from Copake Wine Works (I can’t say enough about the experience)
• the music was the contemporary Spanish composer Alberto Posadas’ ‘Poetics of the Gaze’, with Nacho de Paz conducting Klangforum Wien (a great listening)