Busy days at the cottage

 

Kristine Hall, me, and Stephanie Raffelock

It’s been wonderfully busy around here the last couple of days. Today I had the fun of serving lunch to Austin author Stephanie Raffelock (Creatix Rising: Unlocking the Power of Midlife Women and A Delightful Little Book on Aging) and Kristine Hall, publisher of the online weekly newsletter all about Texas books, authors, and writing, “Lone Star Literary Life.” I had met both before, briefly and one time each, but we have ongoing email relationships. And I knew all along that Stephanie and Kristine also had an online relationship. So while Stephanie was in the Metroplex, it only seemed logical to get us together.

Besides, it gave me a nice opportunity to cook for guests. I had explained to Stephanie that no, I did not want her to take me to lunch. It’s easier for me to stay in the cottage and cook. So I fixed Coronation Chicken Salad—you can pretty much figure that one out. Developed in 1953 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, it reflects the heavy influence of the flavors of India on British cooking: curry, mango chutney, dried fruit, and sliced almonds. There is debate over whether it should have diced, dried apricots or raisins—I went with raisins, because cutting up dried fruit is a pain. Watch for the recipe on next week’s Gourmet on a Hot Plate (Thursday). I admit it was a bit of work: I cooked chicken breasts on Wednesday and cooled and diced them; Thursday I made the salad, so today all that remained was to serve it in lettuce cups, with a side of mixed berries. It was a hit—well, at least they cleaned their plates.

Coronation chicken salad

We talked of books and politics and food and aging and books again and Substack and it was all wonderful. We laughed a lot, were serious at times, and Sophie was in heaven because Stephanie played with her. Lunch went by way too quickly, and I’m wishing they’d come back once a week.

Last night I had dinner with long time friends Subie, Carol, and Kathie. We were celebrating two birthdays but more than that we were relishing the opportunity to be together. Like lunch today, it was laughter and stories, a bit of politics, a bit of life in the residential community where two of them live and the third spends a lot of time with her special friend. Our waiter, Matt, was young but patient with four old ladies who changed their minds a lot, tried to joke with him, and dropped things on the floor. I noticed that when we first were seated, there was so much background noise I resigned myself to missing much of the conversation. But I played with the settings on my hearing aids and ended up hearing everything perfectly and being able to participate easily in the conversation.

We had a good laugh over one of our number who asked the waiter what Dukes was—we three immediately, said, “Mayonnaise!” and she said, “I hate mayonnaise.” She ended up with the lobster roll which had medium mayo and loved it. I had oysters Rockefeller, which were really good. I longed for the half dozen oysters on the half shell, but I heard they were $25 and yet not enough sustenance for an entrée, so I resisted. A lovely evening, and we resolved to do it more often. And sometime I’m going to go back and have those raw oysters. For some reason, the oysters at this restaurant are all tiny and delicate, perhaps more palatable than big fat ones.

So tonight Soph and I are being lazy. I’m going to relish the last couple of days and sink into some pleasure reading. Looking forward to a long weekend.

Obedient Sophie when Stephanie said, "Sit."