Friday, April 16. Too Big A Breakfast. Mary Ann felt the urge to have breakfast at Mattina Bella. For some reason, this took much longer than usual (the restaurant wasn't lagging, we were). I was barely able to finish today's newsletter before show time. This used to happen to me all the time in the early years of the daily newsletter, in which case I'd just reach into the morgue and resuscitate an old article, often with even reading it, let alone rewriting it. Now, with many more paid subscribers (it was free in the old days, by which I mean the 1990s), I feel funny if anything in the newsletter appeared before. The Food Almanac recycles, naturally, but I edit the whole thing every day and add two or three new pieces. The recipes repeat about once every two years, but I add two or three completely new ones every week. Mary Ann says I put far too much effort into the newsletter, and she may be right. I know it's become a compulsion, but I think it's a good compulsion.
Back at Mattina Bella: Mary Ann had her usual maxi-meat omelette. Since I had the most complicated item on the menu last time (eggs with crabcakes Benedict), this time I had the simplest: the basic combo of scrambled eggs, bacon, and grits, with a biscuit. All that was very good, but I make better biscuits.
I have been easing into a one-meal-a-day regimen for the past couple of years. It's not an intentional plan--I'm just following my appetite, which is much diminished from what it was even five years ago. But I almost always have dinner. Today, I really didn't want to eat anything on my way home. When I arrived, I made myself a little cheese plate, then headed toward bed, with a necessary stop at the computer to weed-whack the dozens of e-mails since this morning.
And check on the messageboard, where an old controversy--the behavior of children in restaurants--has caught fire again. I say that for every irritating kid one encounters in a restaurant, there are two dozen irritating adults. We feel within our rights to discipline the kiddos (or become outraged that their parents don't), but say little about the loudmouths*, the underdressed, the complainers, and the abusive. I think we should give children more slack than is generally accorded. It sure worked for our kids to let them do more or less whatever they wanted. But I know we have been lucky with our kids, too. Mary Leigh has been going around lately saying how happy she is.
*I am one of the loudmouths myself. People tell my I speak much louder than I think I do.
Mattina Bella. Covington: 421 E. Gibson 985-892-0708. Breakfast. Neighborhood Café.
