Sunday, December 4, 2011.
Saints @ Swifts.
At the Barnes & Noble store in Mandeville, I signed around 225 copies of Lost Restaurants. I was supposed to have been there for two hours, but it stretched out to four. People just kept on coming in. We also ran through all the store's copies of my cookbook, including a few of the old edition. What's that still doing on bookstore shelves?
That made us a little late for a Saints party at Doug and Karen Swift's house in Lake Vista. Karen cooked up an assortment of good homestyle food. Doug made quesadillas with a clamshell-shaped gizmo specifically designed for that purpose. You put a tortilla on the bottom, cover it with the meats, cheeses, and vegetables you'd like, top it with another tortilla, then close the clamshell. It not only heats from the top and bottom, but the inner surfaces have ridges that seal the quesadilla around the perimeter. It divides the quesadilla into six triangular slices, each sealed along the radii. Ingenious, was my first thought. But who needs this? was my second. And where do you store this thing when you're not using it, which surely is most of the time? Doug said it was a gift from a friend, explaining everything. Well, the quesadillas were tasty, which is all that matters.
I thought at first that at last I would see an entire Saints game. But we missed the first few minutes, and for some reason nobody sat down for long, intent stretches of watching the game. I wasn't paying much attention, but it didn't look especially exciting. I think the Saints won.
During time-outs, Mary Ann and Doug (who is an MD) discussed a peculiar health issue Jude has developed. Doug says it's nothing serious and easily resolved. Mary Ann is thinking of strategies by which Jude can be brought to town for an extended period before and after the matter is worked on. Mothers as intensive as Mary Ann want to keep on being mothers. Jude seems willing to go along, for once. He says that getting an appointment with a doctor in Los Angeles is ridiculously complicated and requires waiting for weeks.
