Diary 11|1, 2|2014: Friends At N'Tini's.

[title type="h5"]Saturday, November 1, 2014. There's Always N'Tini's.[/title] The Fowlers accept our last-minute invitation to dinner, and we convene at N'Tini's, a restaurant we patronize in waves. Many months elapse without our going there, followed by three or four dinners in a month or two. It's not one of the North Shore's best restaurants, but it's always entertaining, relaxing, and tasty enough. At least if one can avoid the occasional menu oddities. The Fowlers are longtime friends whose connections with our family go back not only many years, but across thousands of miles. In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, we were all in the Washington, D.C. area--they for years, we for a few months. Our sons are close friends; they will have attended each other's weddings in 2014 by the time the year is out. I have my first martini in many months. I am happy to see that N'Tini's has ditched the funny little cocktail glasses they had been, and taken up bigger, more traditional, more graceful glasses in the classic shape. We accompany the drinks with a pile of thin-sliced onion rings. They are great. Is there anyone out there who actually likes the thick-cut kind in which the onion, translucent, seemingly embryonic, inevitably pulls out of the fried coating? We are all in a mood for steak. I have the New Orleans-cut sirloin strip. The new chef has not been informed that a New Orleans-cut steak (that's what the menu calls it) is a sirloin strip cut very thick, then cut in half vertically. N'Tini's is one of four restaurants I've persuaded to create such a steak and call it by our city's name. But every time they get a new chef it reverts to a standard strip. Which is not a bad thing, as I learn by eating tonight. The Fowlers split big filet. Mary Ann diverges from the rest of us with a crab cake. The Fowlers have sold their house in North Carolina and are now back in Mandeville, where we first met them. Twin sisters who are mothers of two girls Jude used to hang out with in fourth grade show up and catch up. Meanwhile, a kidding-around battle takes place between our regular server Helen and the guy who was assigned to our table by the hostess. Michael is one of those guys who I think ought to be older than I am, but is actually a good bit younger. Maybe it's because he's a banker. [divider type=""] [title type="h5"]Sunday, November 2, 2014. The Pantry. [/title] I resume my big pre-Thanksgiving project, cleaning out and re-arranging the pantry. This week, I discover that I have over 150 wine glasses, ranging from little sherry glasses to an enormous Riedel glass designed for red Burgundy. It is made of crystal, and the glass of its bowl is paper-thin. It's big enough to hold an entire bottle of wine, although that would be idiotic. George Ridel himself gave it to me so early in the history of my radio show that it was still in the station's original 1925 studios in the Maison Blanche Building. Riedel sparked a revolution in wineglass design, one I learned about while we were on the air tasting the differences one wine would show in different glasses. I decide that I must build racks for the wineglasses--the kind from which glasses hang upside down. This will require dusting off my table saw--which I have not used in many years--and figuring out how to build the racks. I'm not sure it's possible. However, I am pleased with myself for moving a stack of bowls and spring form pans to a new spot that doesn't require bending the bowls to extract them from the shelf. Whenever I mention to Mary Ann that she has an oversupply of completely useless items that I wish she'd ditch, she jumps on my Coca-Cola collection. Some thirty years ago, I accumulated seventy filled Coke bottles--the six-and-a-half-ounce classic kind that used to carry a nickel deposit. The bottles would then be cleaned and refilled. I remember when the deposit was two cents, and when they could be readily converted into cash. Many were the candy bars I bought using income from collecting bottles on the sides of roads. Later, I rifled through the stock of small Cokes on supermarket shelves, looking for bottles in circulation for a long time. The oldest one I found is dated 1948. My Coke bottles are lined up on an inaccessible top shelf, completely out of the way. They make a visual statement. To Mary Ann, they're pure Tom-foolishness. But of course they are. All visual art is useless. But I rearrange the bottles so that they take up four Coke-widths less. I can't be accused of lacking the ability to compromise. Sometime in the afternoon, the Marys and The Boy and I indulge in our regular Sunday lunch of choriqueso, tacos, bean soup, and chicken enchiladas with molé at La Carreta. Someday, we will remember these times by just recalling that menu.