Sunday, March 13, 2011.
Fresh Tuna Salad. West End Memories.
Mary Leigh was up earlier than she been all week, ready to head back across the lake to what she is calling her "real home"--her dorm room. These are searing words for Mary Ann, who clings to the belief that our children still "really" live here with us. My mother had that notion, too, but I'll never tell MA that.
My daughter has hurt me a little, too. Not once while she was here has she asked me how I was. I understand where that comes from--I had the same lack of empathy when I was her age, and long beyond. (MA would probably say I still have it.)
On the other hand, Mary Leigh impressed me with a letter she got from her English professor, who is supposed to be very hard to please. Her mid-term paper about the book Pride and Prejudice brought the highest grade in the class. The prof said it was a pleasure to read, and that it pointed to a side of one of the characters that he'd never considered before.
Now this is what we send them to college for. But I wouldn't have known about this had Mary Ann not told me.
Holed up in my office, I spent the day editing pieces for the Lost Restaurants book. The main effort went into all the restaurants in West End Park. I used as my baseline the first article I wrote about West End, in 1973. There were ten restaurants then, and no empty spaces. The count and the quality would go down from there. I returned to write updates every five years or so, and watched that sad decline of should have been (and once was) the prime restaurant row in New Orleans.
Mary Ann keeps saying that we can take advantage of my homebound state to do a lot more recipe research than usual. And to build some radio shows around cooking at home, the way I do on Thanksgiving every year. But when will we begin? Today she said she didn't feel like cooking, and went to Zea to get something for me to eat while she explored her stock of leftovers. The fresh tuna salad over there is really good, I think, except for the fried noodles. I wonder why it's impossible to get the kitchen to respect my no-noodles spec on that. I know they make the salads up to order. Must be muscle memory.
As I went to bed, I had to admit to myself the awful truth. I am indeed getting a gout flareup in my uninjured foot. Great. Just great.
