I could trace the habit of tying napkins around our dogs' heads, like a head scarf, back to my father. It usually meant that he was bored with the dinner party or that the wine wasn't terribly good, but he would call one of the poor, unsuspecting labradors over to him, while the rest of the table was talking obliviously, and place one of my mother's good white linen napkins, folded into a triangle, around the accommodating dog's head while its dark, trusting eyes stared at him with great forbearance. It was really only the children who noticed, and we'd call the dog to us, under the table. We'd bend down unnoticed and gently call its name and giggle as it came bounding towards us, seemingly unaware of its own humiliated state. My father would watch us and chuckle to himself and then get back to the business of being a charming host.
As Briar lies in her bed with the green tea towel wrapped around her, burkha-fashion, her velvety black ear popped out of one of the holes in the cloth, I wonder why she puts up with me. But it really does suit her. Makes her coquettish even.
I have ten people coming for supper tonight. Yesterday it was fourteen. Ten is better. I only have twelve of everything, I've realized, and wonder why I don't have eighteen or twenty-four of everything as my mother does and my grandmother did. I wracked my brains yesterday wondering what to cook. I have to give myself over to the fact that September 21 is autumn, not summer, not even late summer. The weather is crazy. There's actually a nip in the air; there's actually, after the acute and searing heat only two weeks ago, a need to take a sweater with you at night. J took me to bld on Beverly for dinner last night. I constructed my own, after the most delicious tater tots stuffed with charcuterie, of fingerling potatoes, garlicky rapini and thinly sliced flank steak topped with red wine sauce. Yum. What an utter treat to go out to dinner and feast on Fallish food. bld is like New York, not LA. It's filled with many little wooden tables, really lovely earnest waiters, and has the most extraordinary sound system which makes the music sound as if it's being played live. When Aimee Mann broke into "Save Me" I couldn't even hear what J was saying. It's my favorite song from my very favorite film, and everything else could melt away in oblivion for all I cared. The food was really very good. Hot, careful, accomplished. The chef/owner is going to Vietnam with J in the fall, leading the culinary extravaganza part of the trip (when they're not biking).
But I digress. Surely. So, what to make on this eve of Fall? Gibbin is very clever. "One pot meal" he said, succinctly, "Welcome to Fall." I laughed and laughed and laughed and then realized that he wasn't joking. A one-pot meal indeed. And then my sister comes to the rescue with a recipe for pork tenderloin with apples and grainy mustard (moutarde de meaux - it used to come in large gray clay pots with a large cork stopper covered in crackly red wax). It is the season of apples, and cheese, and walnuts and big fat baked potatoes, Lucy points out.
Lucy has just returned from the NY premiere of Jesse James as her friend Andrew Dominic directed the film. She sits down for dinner with Andrew and Brad Pitt and Andrew says "Brad, this is Lucy. Lucy, this is Brad." Brad stares at her intently and says, not missing a beat, "Andrew, tell me all about Lucy." "Well," says Andrew in his deadpan Australian, "Lucy's a very good friend of mine..." and he tapers off, not sure what else to say. There is an uncomfortable silence until Lucy pipes up, with a huge grin, "Oh come on Andrew, I'm much more interesting than that. I have a pig and lots of children!"
I just put on my Facebook page that I would like to be stuck in a cupboard with Mark Ruffalo. It wasn't random. It was one of the questions on the ten questions application. It does feel slightly teenage though. Maybe I should've said Barack Obama or Albert Einstein or something. But if I'm really, really honest with myself, I'd really, really like to be stuck in a cupboard with Mark Ruffalo (in any carnation). And then again "13 going on 30" isn't a tongue in cheek, guilty pleasure as it is to many. It's honestly and truly one of my favorite films on the planet. Is this a case of arrested development?
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