Another food day

 

Another lazy day—maybe it’s the three-day weekend, though why in the world would a holiday weekend affect my schedule? At any rate, it was lazy—went to online church in the morning, spent too much time on Facebook but the political stuff is so interesting these days (if you’re careful about what you read). Spent quite a bit of time going through the cooking and food magazines that had accumulated on the left-hand corner of my desk, where papers seem to multiply of their own accord. Actually got some helpful articles for my chef course and some recipes that I put aside for us to try.

I saved a page for Christian because it was about fried rice, which he’s been wanting to try. But when I started to give it to him, I realized it was just one big picture with the simple advice that you should coat every grain of rice with egg yolk. I told him that and threw it out.

It pains me to admit this, but I probably will let my subscriptions lapse to everything but Southern Living—and they are in danger if they don’t stop featuring so many shrimp dishes that I cannot eat. Since I am at heart a print person (due to my age and training), it is hard for me realize that the magazines simply take up space on my desk and challenge me to go through them. I mostly find recipes online. At my advanced age, I am being drawn into the internet—I get my recipes there, and I read my books there. And publish my books. I am part of a revolution I try to resist.

But the big food event of the day was that we ordered dinner from an upscale Mexican catering service that both Christian and I burned to try. I had been to one of their catered brunches and was blown away by the food. One thing I particularly liked, and I found true again tonight, is that they season the food but do not feel called upon to test taste buds with hot spiciness. Their food is flavorful, but not overly spicy.

Dinner for two turned out, as we planned, to be enough to feed six or eight, but it was expensive. And good but not great. Ever since take-out became a thing, I have maintained that food doesn’t travel well. It is better eaten newly cooked in whatever restaurant but not reheated at home—hamburgers particularly suffer from this. Tonight’s dinner was delivered at noon, and we reheated to serve at seven. Reheating never benefits food, just dries it out.

Tonight although there was plenty of food, we each had miniscule portions of tomato soup (very good, with a seasoning neither Christian nor I could identify), Caesar salad, Beef Wellington with mushroom duxelles, chicken breast with sauce, baked salmon with chimichurri, Brussel sprouts (none of us like them), and broccolini with lemon sauce that I couldn’t detect. You can see though why dinner for two feed three adults. There was a dish of mac and cheese which we put aside for Jacob. Shhh! Don’t tell him it has truffle oil. Dessert was an apricot crumble with white chocolate—again, probably better when fresh out of the oven.

I count this evening’s meal as a lesson learned. We were so intrigued by their menu—so now we’ve satisfied that intrigue, and I doubt we’ll do it again. I would still love to go back to that catering service when they have another of their in-house dinners, but meantime I think Jordan, Christian, and I come up with better meals, and we should stick to cooking at home. The best take-out I’ve yet had was Macaluso’s last night.

And slightly food-related: Mary Dulle sent me a posting about Chicago’s Palmer House closing. For my book, The Gilded Cage, I delved into that history, and when my kids and I were in Chicago, a visit to the Palmer House was high on our list. And in my new book, Saving Irene, I set the climactic scene in the Palmer House. Food is part of it too—their menu includes a lot of fish fresh from the Great Lakes and a
“rooftop honey” salad dressing, made with honey from the hives that sit atop many of Chicago’s downtown buildings. A fascinating fact I uncovered in research.

These days it’s a Hilton property, but it has apparently been closed since early in the pandemic. And now there are foreclosure actions against it for something over $300 million indebtedness. I don’t expect them to tear it down tomorrow—these things work their way through the courts slowly—but I hate to see that grand old dame become another victim of  pandemic.

 

Enough. The world is sometimes a discouraging place, but it will be brighter tomorrow. Happy Labor Day everyone.