The University of Georgia Wind Ensemble, conducted by John Lynch, just released a fantastic CD on the Naxos label.  The whole disc (called “Millennium Canons – Looking Forward, Looking Back”) is worth hearing, and the sound quality is stunning.  The CD includes the first internationally-available recording of “Kingfishers Catch Fire,” and it’s also the first recording of the piece with my “stamp ‘o’ approval.”  I was at the recording session — I wrote about it on the blog — and I sincerely appreciated that Dr. Lynch welcomed my input during the session.  I love what John did with the piece.

Why isn’t this always the case? If an ensemble is going to record a piece by a living composer, shouldn’t they want the composer there during the recording session to help produce the recording and ensure that the final product is the definitive representation of the piece? I think part of it comes down to budget, but I suspect it’s also because not every conductor wants the composer butting in after every take to offer endless nitpicking tweaks. I was fortunate to be part of UGA’s “Kingfishers Catch Fire” session, as well as the University of Kansas’s sessions for my Soprano Sax Concerto (also on the Naxos label), and most recently, Arizona State’s recording session for their recording of my Soprano Sax Concerto (to be released next spring — and boy howdy, that one is going to be incredible).

There’s a Naxos Podcast about the CD, with a good interview with John Lynch. It’s worth a listen. In addition to “Kingfishers,” the CD includes “Millennium Canons” by Kevin Putz; “My Hands are a City” by friend-of-the-blog, Jonathan Newman; “Lost Gulch Lookout” by the newest member of the University of Michigan’s composition faculty, Kristin Kuster; Holst’s “Hammersmith;” and “Awayday” by British composer Adam Gorb.

If you do buy the physical CD (available on Amazon), check out the photo credit for the CD cover. That’s right: yours truly! (This is a shot of Lost Gulch Lookout in Colorado.)

The entire CD is available on iTunes (and also on Amazon as an MP3 download), or you can purchase the two movements of Kingfishers as individual tracks. Both movements are really spectacular, but the first movement, in particular, is the best I’ve ever heard, thanks largely to the clarity of the recording. I’d kind of forgotten about a lot of those little color changes that you can really only hear on this recording. (Just listen to that bassoon solo in the first movement! Check out the clarity of the low winds in the second movement! Seriously — the contrabassoon is reason enough to buy the second movement.  And I haven’t even touched on the insanely sweet bass trombone playing in the big chorale towards the end of the second movement…) Thank you engineer Bruce Leek, who is, to my ear, the best band recording engineer out there.

You probably read that title and thought, “I wonder what this blog entry is really about.  It can’t possibly be about roasted pepper sandwiches because a) isn’t this supposed to be a music blog?, and b) why the hell would anybody care enough about roasted pepper sandwiches to post a blog entry about them?”  Remember yesterday, when I said that things were pretty slow around here, and all I was doing was playing in the kitchen? Well, here you go: photographic evidence of this. And with all of the pictures I’ve been posting of the kitchen, and food cooked in restaurants, I figured I’d take some pictures of food cooked in our own kitchen. Below, I document — with the always lovely Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens — proof that we do, honestly, cook in the new kitchen.

Last night’s dinner was, as you guessed (because you’re smart), roasted pepper sandwiches with (and you may not have guessed this part) a side of garlic and herb tomatoes. It all starts with — yes, you guessed it again — roasted peppers. We got a mix of red and yellow peppers. Roasting them couldn’t be easier. You throw them (well, maybe place them) on a cookie sheet and bake them in a 500 degree oven for 30-40 minutes. When they come out, they look like this:

Next, you chop up a bunch of herbs. We’d bought the herbs the day before (thank you, Central Market, for having real fresh herbs that aren’t even packaged — they just sit, cut, in little cups of water), and leaving the herbs overnight in our fridge resulted in this yummy smell of fresh basil and thyme that washed over us every time we opened the refrigerator door.

Cooking the tomatoes is pretty damn easy. Put a bunch of cherry tomatoes in a pot with olive oil, garlic, thyme, and basil. Then… cook. Even I can do this.

Meanwhile, the roasted peppers have been skinned and marinating in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, capers, and more tasty herbs.

And hey! The tomatoes are ready!

Then you need a good loaf of bread. Oh, and try to avoid eating the ginger spice cookies in the background. Save those for later.

Spread a bunch of — almost too much — herb goat cheese on the bread.

Put a whole bunch of the roasted peppers on top.

Garnish with whole fresh basil leaves and some slices of red onion, salt, and pepper.

And you’re done! Roasted pepper and goat cheese sandwiches with garlic and herb tomatoes. You’re awesome! You cooked your own dinner! And then you kept your wife waiting while you took pictures of every step!

Full disclosure… We didn’t come up with these recipes, although they couldn’t be much simpler. Both are by Ina Garten from her cookbook, Barefoot Contessa at Home. We just discovered her cookbooks a few weeks ago, and they’re awesome. The recipes are super simple to make, the results are delicious, and, best of all, every recipe has a nice color picture. Eat up.

If there were a video game of my life over the past few weeks, it would be called “Ultimate Slacker.” I haven’t written a blog entry in ages, as several people — including my mother-in-law — have pointed out. Updating my Facebook status? Yes. But not much else. The Facebook thing makes is that much harder to blog, because I frequently have roughly two sentences that I want to share, not a full epic story. (My proudest status this week — and possibly ever — was “John Mackey finds it satisfying to click “Remove from Friends” after somebody posts something ignorant and homophobic. If only there were a “Remove from Earth” button.” No less epic was “John Mackey is watching Liz Love eat.”) The result, though, is that instead of accumulating enough stuff to warrant a blog entry, I end up with nothing.

Summer is like that. There are few, if any, performances, at least that I attend, so I don’t have any performances to write about. Stories like, “today, I shipped a set for an honor band performance” aren’t likely to keep you coming back for more updates.

The kitchen, like I showed recently, is very nearly done. I’ll post a few more pictures once it’s really, truly finished, but it’ll be a few more weeks. (We’re still waiting on the cabinet front for the dishwasher, but in the meantime, we still have a big black plastic front on the dishwasher. It’s not so slick.)

So what has been dominating my time for the past few weeks? Mostly, it’s cooking in the new kitchen. We’ve made couscous, grilled lemon chicken (twice), sesame noodles, humus, and a bunch of other stuff. Over the weekend, we made a baked omelette for two. Holy crapunzel, that was delicious. (Thank you Ina Garten, the source of almost all of these recipes.)

We also took a day trip to Houston last week. Our friends Sarah and Cory Meals recommended a restaurant called Mark’s American Cuisine. Holy HELL this place was great. We started, as we’ve started most of our festive dinners since our wedding dinner, with some pink Champagne.

First we ordered the appetizer special: Carpaccio of Prosciutto with summer melon and figs. That little bowl in the middle is a melon soup with a broth of Riesling and ice wine. (We love Riesling; we can’t help it. We’re not very wine-hip.)

Our other appetizer was the sliced vine-ripened tomato, roasted pepper, and arugula with two kinds of mozzarella, aged Balsamic, and a green peppercorn vinaigrette.

For her main course, AEJ had the steak.

I went with the pork chops.

If you go to Mark’s, you have to get dessert — even if you’re far too full. We were barfingly stuffed, but how could we turn down one of my absolute favorite desserts, tres leches cake?

And why stop with one dessert? Who the hell only orders one dessert? Wusses, that’s who! We are not wusses (well, not since high school at least), so we also ordered this trio of lemon cake, a lemon curd square, and donuts. That’s right. Donuts.

What else is happening? There’s been a lot of baby deer playtime here at the house — often right outside my studio window.

There’s really been enough slacking, though. At the beginning of next week, I’m going to start writing a new piece. I have three pieces coming up, back-to-back, but I think I’m going to start with the march that I’m writing for Midlothian High School. If you have any thoughts about what this march should do, let me know, ’cause I’d appreciate the feedback.

First, though, it’s time to start dinner! Tonight we’re having roasted red pepper and herb goat cheese sandwiches! Mmm…