Long Weekend, Part III

[The problem with multi-part reminiscing about the recent past is that if you let slide just a bit, you want to just walk away and forget it. But no, we've only got one or two more to go...]

[Where were we? Last Saturday night, my mother decided to celebrate my Dad's return from heart almost-surgery by offering up big, thick steaks, baked potatoes avec fixin's, and grilled asparagus. Is it just me, or does this seem a bit like offering to go barhopping with someone who just got out of rehab? Whatever...as I wrote last time, she's paying, we're playing.]

[To add to the cholesterol fest, Dad at the last minute (like, less than an hour before dinner) sees a food magazine open on the kitchen counter to a chicken recipe Mom planned to execute in a couple of days at my sister's while she and Dad took care of the Niece Audrey. He turns the page and bellows into the living room where Mom and I are minding our own business, solving world hunger or something: "Why don't we have Béarnaise sauce with the steaks?"]

[You have to know my dad to know how typical this is. He's an Idea Guy, and that's great, since some of us in the family can occasionally be more of the "Oh-Things-Are-OK-As-They-Are-Why-Bother" variety. Some of his Ideas he even executes himself: the goose in the clawfoot bathtub; the solar power plant in the back yard; the kitchen recycling system that we had two decades before most people even heard of sorting cans and bottles. It's the others - the ones we have to implement - that later make for "we can laugh about it now" stories at holiday dinners. Mom and I looked at each other with that look that said this idea was going to be one of the second variety.]

[However, he was just back from the hospital, and I know there will come a day when I'll wish I had him around to hear just one more Idea. I got up, I looked at the recipe, and thought "I can do this." The shallots came from their garden, and the wine, vinegar, and eggs were on hand, so I only had to run to the store for the unsalted butter. The QuikStop where I worked for three disastrous weeks the summer of 1988 didn't carry it (Red Bull but no unsalted butter: the world we live in), but that old market in "downtown" El Verano (where, when it went by another name, I used to wait breathlessly every month for new issues of The Uncanny X-Men to come out) did.]

[I rushed home. Mom had alredy chopped the shallots. I prepared all the other ingredients ahead of time, and they sat in bowls on the counter just like they do on the cooking shows, ready to be added without panic or trepidation. I stirred and stirred and stirred and stirred and stirred...and in the end, I got a perfectly smooth, indecently rich, and delicately flavored sauce that we didn't really need for those amazing steaks, but which made meat-spuds-veg just a bit more more.]

[Note to self: change living situation just so you can cook more.]

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