How the other half lives

 

Hasselback kielbasa ready for the oven

Many of my friends, especially people from University Christian Church, now live in the downtown high-rise retirement community, Trinity Terrace. My good friends Jean and Jeannie live there on the seventeenth floor, next door to each other (which happened by serendipity). Despite my absolute delight with my cottage, I am sometimes a wee bit jealous of the social life they have there. Nobody needs ever to eat dinner alone unless they really want to.

Saturday night I was invited to dinner with friends there. We had happy hour in an apartment I’d not seen before. On the ninth floor in a corner, it has windows to the south and the west (I get so turned around in that building). The view is spectacular—from the dining table, from Morris’ office, and from the living room. For a one-bedroom apartment, it is spacious and open, with quite a bit of storage space (oh, how jealous that made me!). Morris’ special friend and my good friend, Kathie, decorated it for him and will tell you proudly that almost everything came from garage sales. Morris’ personal art collection decorates walls, tabletops, and display cabinets. The whole apartment is a marvel.

From there we went upstairs to the Blue Spire, the upscale dining area. It’s a social experience—people stop by the table for a chat, you wave at others on the way to your table. Everybody seems to know everybody. The menu is good, though I too often am tempted to have things I can’t ordinarily get—fried oysters, bone marrow, etc. Saturday night it was liver pate, which turned out not to be the coarse country pate I was hoping for but a buttery something—good but rich, so I settled for a large salad for my entrée. Of course, Caesar salad is not without its own richness, but it was an outstanding version of the classic. But then I completely lost my mind and had crème brulee for dessert. I paid for all this indulgence the next morning when the best way I could describe myself is sluggish.

I loved being there, seeing the apartment, meeting new people. (I have also seen Jean’s apartment which is equally unusual, full of her late husband’s artwork, much of it in a special wall of bookshelves). But in the long run, Trinity Terrace makes me grateful for my secluded little cottage, where I can cook to my own taste, keep whatever hours I want (at TT you have to be in your apartment by nine or ask for an extension). I know I am so lucky to have this living situation, and I am appropriately grateful. But I sure did have a good time Saturday night.

So Sunday night, a good friend from church (no, she doesn’t live at TT) came for supper. To indulge Jordan I made stuffed mushrooms with a cream cheese/Pecorino filling that was so good. For dinner we had spanakopita from the Greek festival at the local orthodox church. So delicious, and I know I could never make it that good.

I made a retro fruit salad over the weekend and took some of it to Kathie and Morris because I had a jar of hers to return (it had come filled with split pea soup). When I gave it to her, she, a deliberate eater (is that a good way to say it?), made no pretense that she would eat it but immediately said, “Morris will love it.” And he said the same thing, so I hope he did. What was in it? A can of peach pie filling, a can of fruit cocktail (drained), and three bananas (sliced). Told you it was retro.

I seem to be on a menu kick tonight, so here’s tonight’s dinner, in the oven as I write—Hasselback kielbasa with oven roasted carrots, potatoes, and onion. The vegetables were tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, and dried thyme, the kielbasa basted in a mustard/honey combo. It smells heavenly. The recipe called for fennel, but I’ve never cooked with it, always put off by my notion that it tastes like licorice. Maybe I’ll have to try.

Kielbasa dinner plate