Christian cooks dinner

 

The kitchen when Christian cooks Asian

When he has the time, Christian is a terrific cook who loves to experiment. He particularly likes to cook Asian dishes, so this week I ordered a lot of stir-fry vegetables—snap peas, bean sprouts, matchstick carrots, baby sweet corns, baby bok choy. I figured if Christian didn’t have time or didn’t want to cook, I’d do it, though my results would not be as spectacular. Two things about Christian’s cooking: he follows a recipe, maybe with side trips but he has to have a recipe to begin with, and he is slow. Even when he starts early, as he did today at about four-thirty or five, dinner is a bit delayed. I often think though that I should take a lesson from him and recipes—I try to do a familiar dish off the top of my head, and I usually regret the outcome.

So tonight Christian said he looked up stir-fry recipes but was disappointed—at most they called for soy sauce but no other Asian ingredients. So then he looked up chop suey, which I thought was something that came in a can when I was little and no one served anymore. Except Christian who found such a good recipe he decided he had to make fried rice to go with it. Dinner was, as he said, delayed. Jordan came out laughing sometime during that happy hour. It would, she said, take two days to clean the kitchen. Christian is not one who cleans as he cooks—maybe that’s one place where I outshine him.

Mary Dulle came for our regular Tuesday night happy hour, so we laughed and chatted while Christian cooked away inside the house. Somehow much of our talk was about Alter family tales, crazy things that happened when I was raising four teenagers. I guess that was partly because today’s big news was that Jacob got his first job—he interviewed this morning at Joe T.’s (Joe T. Garcia’s, a world-famous Mexican restaurant for those of you not from Fort Worth). His first shift as host is Friday, and a childhood friend will be showing him the ropes. We are all excited for him—I think it’s going to make such a difference in him—a big step toward maturity. An interesting note: Jordan said he had to sign a confidentiality agreement. Joe T’s gets almost every celebrity who comes to Fort Worth, and the staff is forbidden to take pictures. I know from experience that the wait staff will use our camera to take a picture of all of us, but that doesn’t count: we are not celebrities.

And, of course, this job puts Jacob squarely in family tradition. All four of my children worked in restaurants as teenagers. My friend used to tease me about being a generous tipper and I said it came from having my children work in hospitality. There was hardly at the time a restaurant in Fort Worth that I routinely went to where one of mine hadn’t worked. And when Jacob was an infant, his dad waited tables at Joe T.’s, while working in the title business during the day. I’m enthusiastic about Jacob’s job, and since he has his parents’ people skills, he’ll do fine.

Back to our dinner—Jordan and Christian carried it out to the cottage about seven forty-five, and I have to say it was worth waiting for. Vegetables were delicious, and Christian had “velveted” the chicken which made it tender. Best stir fry/chop suey I remember having—ever! And leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Christian's chop suey

This morning I would have told you today as Monday all over again—I had a hard time getting myself in gear after sleeping late. I was up at six and seven-thirty with Sophie and couldn’t resist going back for one last dream. Mary calls that second sleep, and I find I’ve gotten to count on it, now that Soph and I seem on a fairly settled schedule. Of course today I had to have the TV on to watch the doings in Miami, though there wasn’t much to see. Still, as Christian said tonight, the commentary was interesting. So many predictions, countless interpretations, statistics you can’t trust, and wild opinions about trump’s indictment, it leaves my head in a whirl. I have lots of opinions—no surprise there—but they are for another day, another blog. Meantime, I did manage to write a thousand words this morning—no small achievement. These days, reading the political news takes way too much of my time and cuts into my working time.

Today will stand out in my memory for a while as the day Christian made the good stir fry and the day Jacob got his first job. It’s enough.