Wednesday, November 23, 2011.
The Family Restaurant.
The three restaurants my family visits most often are Zea, Mattina Bella, and the Acme Oyster House. All three are places liked by all four of us, and there are not many other restaurants that can make that claim. But as we all get older, our tastes change. The Marriott Courtyard's breakfast café--where we went hundreds of times going back to the early 1990s--is now completely off the list. The Acme's popularity with us is in a steep decline, although we still go.
But Zea remains rock solid. Jude insisted that we go there at some point during the ten days he is in town. Today was the day. He was in for a surprise: the Korean barbecue pork tacos are still on the special seasonal menu. He had not had these before. The dish is so popular that it will likely be added to the permanent menu. I can understand why. Not only are these things delicious, but eight bucks is a strikingly good value, given that all four of us made and ate whole tacos from one order.
The rest of the food on the table was predictable. Guacamole. The tuna-and-avocado stack (also still on the special menu, much longer than it has in past years). A hamburger. A grilled chicken salad. A "Zeasar" salad. And a bottle of the house chili glaze. I have a fuzzy idea for a Thanksgiving dish involving that good stuff, and I'm out of it at home.
In fact, we're out of a lot of things we need for tomorrow's big dinner. This, despite what looks like the certainty that it will only be the four of us at the Cool Water Ranch tomorrow. Neither one of Mary Ann's siblings who were expected to come will do so, after a wrenching discussion that left all concerned somewhere between angry and tearful.
We will get past this and have a good time anyway. But first, we have to go to the store and buy a hundred dollars' worth of food to add to the turkey and the ham we already have. A cauliflower, some green beans, sweet potatoes (really pretty and big), several pounds of butter and a quart or two of whipping cream (there's never enough). And a few other things.
Nobody said so, but shopping felt nostalgic. For years, the kids and I went to the supermarkets together as part of our Saturday routine. We'd always leave Mary Ann home and have our own special fun. (Example: a roll of toilet paper could not be purchased without Mary Leigh's standing at one end of the aisle to catch my throws, one roll at a time, from the other end.) Mary Ann knows she is not welcome when the kids and I go to the store, and she went home while we filled the basket.
My big projects for the evening were brining the turkey, making the ham glaze (which creates what Jude once named perfectly "the smell of Thanksgiving"), and cleaning up the Big Green Egg and cutting pieces of sugar cane for the turkey smoking tomorrow morning.
I did not have to make the standard Thanksgiving cheesecake. The desserts were covered by Mary Leigh (homemade ice cream sandwiches) and--amazingly--Jude. He made a dozen red velvet cupcakes. He used a mix, but you have to start somewhere.
