The fun of communal cooking

 

Our fancy--and oh so rich!--pasta dinner

Jordan and I team-cooked supper tonight and had such a good time. I think it’s a particularly blessing of the mother/daughter relationship. Christian announced he had a work event and would at the least be late and perhaps not home for supper at all. While we love him dearly and miss him on these nights, we welcome the occasional evening when we can cook things he doesn’t like. Last night we were going over recipes, and he happened to look at the one we planned for tonight—pasta with artichokes hearts and goat cheese. He looked alarmed, “It has no meat! And it has artichoke hearts!” See why we like occasional “just us” meals?

The recipe was rich—farfelle, a bit of green onion and garlic, a lot of pasta water, cream cheese, goat cheese, mozzarella, French fried onions (I thought that odd—they were stirred into the sauce—but they turned out to be a good addition). Dill, parsley, salt and pepper, red pepper (which we omitted—the black pepper gave it just the right pep). When you combined it all in a casserole dish, you topped it with more onion rings and Parmesan and served it sprinkled with green onion tops. See what I mean about rich? All those cheeses. But so very good. In truth, though, it was a bit complicated, and I'm not sure I would have done it if left alone.

It’s been a pleasant if unremarkable couple of days. I survived the dental appointment yesterday and even came away with praise for taking good care of my teeth. I certainly had worked myself into a snit of worry by the time I got to the office, but as I later explained to Jordan, dentistry when I was a kid was a much different thing, and I had bad teeth—lots of cavities so I suffered a lot with the old, slow, bumbling dental drills. The teeth are thanks, I think, to my dad from whom I inherited that little problem. After the appointment, Jordan and I went to far west Fort Worth to pick up Jacob, and it was a treat for me to be out driving around—see what pandemic has done?

Yesterday evening our Tuesday night happy hour celebrated Mary Dulle’s forthcoming birthday with flowers, snacks, Prosecco, and, of course, cupcakes—strawberry because that’s her favorite. Forgot to take pictures, but it was lovely to sit on the patio in such pleasant weather and such good company. We are blessed with neighbors.

We were all worried about Sophie though—she clearly was not herself. So lethargic, and as I explained to the vet tech this morning via phone she is not by nature a lethargic dog. She didn’t walk to the gate to greet people nor escort them out; when Christian came out, she stayed on the deck instead of jumping wildly off it and racing to beat him to the cottage as she usually does. Finally, when he called, she came hesitantly down the steps, which led him to say, “I’ve never seen her use the steps before.” She also did not get up in her favorite chair to sleep, which made me think she had tweaked a muscle. When the vet called today, that was his diagnosis.

I spent a restless night worrying about her, getting up to check on her. Each time, her tail drooped, and she looked at me with big, pitiful eyes—talk about “Be still my heart.” It was a reminder to me of how much our lives are entwined with our animals—I really, in a bizarre moment, wondered what I would do if she died in her sleep.

Of course, she didn’t—and she seems much better today. Her tail is up over her back most of the time, she forgot she couldn’t jump and got on the couch in anger at the dog behind us, and she generally seems happier. Still slept a lot. I’ll check in with the vet again tomorrow.

And tonight I am in a spanking clean cottage. So glad to have the wonderful Zenaida come and reach all those corners, high up and down low, that I can’t. She makes the bed better than anyone I ever met, and her visits brighten my days. So I’m a happy camper tonight. And a busy one—proofreading 302 pages of my 1995 novel, Libbie (about Elizabeth Bacon Custer). The reprint will be out in June. More about that another time.

We’re in for a “cold front”—in the upper fifties. After last week, that is laughable, but it’s also supposed to bring welcome rain. No patio weather for a while, but that’s okay.  I have work to do—which is a good feeling.

Stay safe, everyone.