The original dinner plan was to pick up some good wild salmon at Chelsea Whole Foods, but when it came time to do so I didn’t feel like going out, even to the corner, having just finished doing several loads of laundry early in the evening.

There was a package of two crab cakes inside the freezer, and we hadn’t enjoyed that treat in a while; I also had supplies to make some interesting ‘fixings’ for a complete dinner, so that’s what we had.

• two crab cakes from PE & DD Seafood (crab, egg, flour, red & green peppers, garlic, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, milk, celery, and parsley), mostly defrosted by the time I began heating the 2 above a low to medium flame, with a drizzle of olive oil, inside a small cast iron pan, 3 to 4 minutes to each side, served on a salsa composed of 2 small to medium chopped heirloom tomatoes from 2 different farmers in the Union Square Greenmarket (Norwich Meadows Farm and Eckerton Hill Farm), and 3 golden grape tomatoes from one, Alex’s Tomato Farm in the Saturday 23rd Street farmers market, combined with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, local sea salt from P.E. & D.D. Seafood, freshly ground black pepper, a bit of dried dried red espelette pepper (very mild) from Alewife Farm, much of one small celery stalk and most of one thick red spring onion, mixed with garnished some chopped epazote from TransGenerational Farm, arranged on the plates, with more of that wonderful Mexican herb sprinkled on top
• most of an 8-ounce container of plain water buffalo milk labneh from Riverine Ranch, leaving a shallow depression to receive a bit of a very good Greek olive oil (Renieris Estate ‘Divina’ (Koroneiki varietal), Hania, Crete, from Whole Foods Market), a bit of a dry seasoning called L’ekama from Ron & Leetal Arazi’s New York Shuk (the two founders are in this video here), a portion of a sweet Italian cipolla di Tropea from Alewife Farm, finely sliced, a little chopped habanada pepper from Campo Rosso Farm, the chopped stem of a baby purple romaine lettuce stem from Jayne and Elizabeth’s TransGenerational Farm, garnished with chopped fresh za’atar leaves, also from TransGenerational Farm, and arranged on leaves of their lettuce that had been dressed with local sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, drops of juice from a Whole Foods Market lemon, and a bit of the same olive oil
• the wine was an Oregon (Willamette Valley) white, Chris Baker Willamette Pinot Gris 2018, from Naked Wines
• the music was a recording of the Quintet for Oboe and String Quartet (1973) and the Quintet for Bassoon and String Quartet (1977), by the Finnish composer Kahlevi Aho (born 1949) on a Finlandia CD that we’ve owned for many years