Saturday, October 1, 2011.
Biscuit Resurrection. A Marriage In My Generation.
Mary Leigh slept too late for us to have breakfast together, although I did knock out a pan of buttermilk biscuits--as much to renew my standing inventory as to please her.
I always have biscuits in the freezer, ready to be brought out of suspended animation. This involves what seems to me an obvious trick, but I've never seen it in any cookbook or article. When I bake the biscuits, I take all except the ones we will eat that morning out of the oven, while they're a little underbaked. I let them cool for about five minutes, then put them into a big food storage bag, which goes right into the freezer.
When the biscuit desire wells up, I take one out and microwave it for forty-five seconds while the toaster oven warms up to 400 degrees. It goes in there for five to seven minutes (depending on the size of the biscuit), and emerges almost exactly as it would have right out of a normal baking. Crusty at the outside, moist and butter-meltingly hot in the center. Wonderful!
No radio show today. I used the time to unearth ties that had fallen off their rack onto the floor in the closet. I have too many ties--over a hundred still in regular use, at least that many more for special occasions. This may be enough to last me the rest of my life. If indeed tie-wearing doesn't become a stigma, as it just might.
I did wear a tie (and a suit) to attend the wedding of Scot Craig. He's the co-owner of Katie's. His newlywed wife's name is Stephanie. It was a charming, low-key ceremony at St. John's Lutheran in Mid-City, with music from an organist who had a good command of the baroque. "That's the music I wanted at our wedding," Mary Ann whispered. In fact, that was the music at our nuptials, but our organist was so terrible that you couldn't tell.
The reception venue took me by surprise. It was at the Kiefer Arena, on UNO's East Campus. I haven't been out there in years. That was for the Symphony Book Fair, and the place looked worn out. No longer. Two large rooms--one with windows looking out onto the open expanse of the East Campus and the lake beyond--presented a very agreeable space. The lights were low, the drinks flowed freely, and the furniture was comfortable enough to for sitting and talking with the many people we knew.
How did they know to look here? Turns out the Stephanie works here. Scot covered his end of the party arrangements by having Katie's do all the catering. A lot of good food, of which the most impressive were the spicy bacon-wrapped shrimp, the prime rib, and grilled oysters outside on the lawn. The wedding cake was the first one I've ever seen that wasn't round, but made of squares.
The drinks flowed freely. I ran into the guy who used to cut my hair in the 1970s, which means that he was the one who had the unenviable job of reducing my then shoulder-length locks to something more like a standard male cut. I haven't seen or thought about him in years--except, strangely, for a half-hour earlier. When we passed the now-fenced-in strip mall on Robert E. Lee Boulevard where his barbershop used to be, I told Mary Ann all about him.
This is the first wedding I've attended in a long time that involved people approximately my age. I don't know how old Stephanie is. (Of course, brides are youthful-looking and beautiful by definition.) She's younger than Scot, though. He's pushing fifty, and in very good spirits. He and his bride made an enviable entrance, first-lining ahead of a walking jazz band.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
