Sunday, October 24. Back To Quiet. Too Quiet. Bound for different destinations, Mary Leigh and Jude left our home this morning at five-thirty. She drove him to the airport for his flight back to Los Angeles, and then returned to her dorm at Tulane. And so ends, to Mary Ann's sorrow, ten days with both kids in the house most of the time. She's stuck with just me now.
This morning, that strikes her as a rotten deal. I made the mistake (grievous timing error) of trying to put a good spin on the situation. While I was sitting at the computer writing, an obscure, wistful Sinatra song came on XM. It's about how wonderful Sunday is when you have all day to lie around with the one you love. Sinatra brings roses to her in her bed with breakfast, and the two of them "Talk. Read the papers. Misbehave. Enjoying one another." Every time I hear this song (and Jonathan Schwartz plays it often on his Sunday show), it brings tears to my eyes, because this is my dream of being married.
When I heard the song begin, I asked Mary Ann to come in and listen to it with me. She said that such a scenario was what she wanted as well. And she cried too--but for a different reason. She said I'd never given her this kind of relationship, and then went into a familiar litany about why, because of my genetics, I was incapable of doing so, and nothing could ever be done about it. We talked this out for well over an hour. It was very far from the conversation I thought this wonderful song might conjure up. But at least we got some loads off our minds, and we felt the better for it afterwards.
I think.
Mary Ann's actual plan for the afternoon called for watching the Saints game at home until she got too hungry to forestall lunch any longer. At which time we'd adjourn to Zea and watch the second half there. The Saints, I heard, were supposed to beat the Browns easily. Instead, the home team suffered a loss as embarrassing as in the bad old days, when friends would tell me they envied my lack of interest in the Saints's progress.
The lunch was much better. We started out with Zea's consistently fine hummus, different from the classic in being made with roasted garlic. Then a new dish from Zea's fall menu called chicken Djakarta (below). This must be another creation from Hans Limburg, one of the three chefs who own Zea. He's from the Netherlands. Because of the long Dutch rule over what is now Indonesia, restaurants serving the food of that land are as popular as Indian food is in England. Every now and then Hans works one onto Zea's menu. Three breast fillets coated with a spicy peanut sauce, atop a pile of sugar snap peas. I thought this was delicious; Mary Ann couldn't get her head around the peanut butter. She had a rack of ribs--her favorite dish here.
One of the desserts on the fall menu was a trio of cupcakes. The cupcake trend boggles my mind. Just how good can a cupcake be? How much pleasure can be had by eating something stringly associated with childhood? The answer to both questions is, "a little." But Mary Ann loves cupcakes. A couple of weeks ago the Kupcake Factory--a growing local chain--delivered a box of them to our remote broadcast at New Orleans Audi. The Marys went crazy over them. I thought cupcakes might be just the thing to warm things up today.
It was not to be. The server reported that they were out of one of the three cupcake varieties, but they would substitute an extra of one of the other two. We'll get them next time, I replied. This brought the manager out, very apologetic, willing to let us have the two-and-one cupcake assortment on the house. I wasn't mad. I just wanted to take a picture of the full monte. Mary Ann rarely eats desserts and wasn't disappointed. I really meant it when I said we'd get them next time, but I don't think they believed me.
Every week I enjoy a breakthrough in my reconstruction of the website. Today, I figured out how to put a jack-o-lantern on the marquee. Also, I finished adding all 412 restaurant reviews to the system. Now I can start on the 689 recipes.
Zea. Covington: 110 Lake Dr. 985-327-0520.
Kupcake Factory. Kenner, 819 W Esplanade Ave. 504-464-8884. (And other locations around town.)
