Good Friday, April 22, 2011.
The Family Reconstitutes.
Mary Leigh is finished with her classes at Tulane for the year. But it's still just April! All she has left are exams, in a week and a half. They're blaming this on the lateness of Easter this year, and the closeness of spring break to the end of the term. Still, it seems to me that college semesters are about a third shorter than they were when I went there. And when I think of how much we. . . no, I won't think about that.
Our daughter brought home her first load of stuff from her dorm room yesterday, and is home for the weekend. After the Eat Club dinner last night at Nathan's, Mary Ann took me home, then drove to the airport to collect Jude. His flight was delayed by several tremendous storms between Los Angeles and here. He didn't get in until almost one in the morning.
The storms this spring have been off the charts in terms of frequency, severity, and damage. Most of the really bad stuff is north of here, but we've had more than our share of tornado warnings. An all-time record for tornadoes in April has already been set--and we have another ten days to go. This is exactly what the science of global warming has been predicting. Nevertheless, no amount of evidence will suffice for those whose other ideologies conflict with these realities. I live with one such.
Jude wanted his welcome-home meal to be breakfast at Mattina Bella. He wanted it enough to get up at ten (eight, L.A. time), knowing that Bella Luna cuts off the pancakes in favor of hamburgers at eleven. We made it right on time, even including the delay caused by my attenuated mobility.
Jude and Mary Leigh hatched a plan: they'd get a pile of pancakes and a waffle, and split both. Mary Ann beamed. Not only were our precious progeny in agreement about something happy, but she would be able to get one of the pancakes, and therefore not have to order anything at all. And, as is well known, the calorie count for food borrowed from another person's plate is zero.
Debbie Riccobono came over to alert us to a special: an omelette filled with crawfish and mushrooms. That sounded good, and I asked to have the concept translated into a benedict. It was delivered exactly as I imagined it, with a tangy flood of hollandaise over the whole thing. "Everything tastes good with hollandaise," said Vincent. He was right, at least about this test of the theory.
That was the sum total of my eating for the day. While I was on the air, the Marys and Jude went out again. MA is on one of her binges for boiled crawfish. She discovered that Cayman Sinclair at the Lake House has opened a subsidiary food service called Ziggy's on the side lawn of the old Bechac's building, which is now his Lake House restaurant. Ziggy's boils crawfish and grills barbecue. Combined with the outdoor seating, no offering could possibly have more appeal to Mary Ann.
They sat out there on the lakefront for a couple of hours, burrowing though many pounds of crawfish. The kids found it especially appealing, because quite a few other young people were in the area to socialize with. I sure would like to be a teenager again. The friends you can make! The food you can eat!
