Summertime, and the eating is easy.

 

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 – Summertime, and the eating is easy

The calendar is filling up again.  We scheduled eyelid surgery for Elliott in early August.  Please note that this is for medical, not cosmetic, reasons.   However, if anyone knows any modeling agents interested in slightly older but extremely photogenic clients, …. 

Elliott took advantage of his largely pain-free last couple of days to continue the garage cleanup.  Can you believe we had six of those roll-up or fold-up reflective windshield things lurking behind boxes?  They’re all in the trash now.  And all of the paper goods are now carefully arranged on the shelves – at least until we stock up again at Costco.

This is turning out to be a week of lunching out.  On Monday, we ate at Wegman’s, after the morning appointment with the eye surgeon.  Elliott thought that a small wheel of Brie, a croissant, and a cup of coffee would make the perfect midday meal.  I, on the other hand, grazed at the vegetarian offerings (apple and fennel salad; barbequed tofu; a combo of jicama, corn, red pepper, and asparagus).  We went out with Katie to a local Italian restaurant for lunch today.  It was one of those unpretentious family-owned places that we used to find on Long Island when I was growing up.   However, this restaurant was in a strip mall where you can also find Mexican, Salvadoran, Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Japanese, Afghani, Pakistani, and Ethiopian food.  I just adore the culinary diversity of the DC region.

Since we’ve been filling up at lunch, I’ve tried to keep dinners as simple as possible.  On Sunday, I threw some ripe tomatoes, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, and Vidalia onion in the food processor and made gazpacho.  It tasted like summer in a bowl, but Elliott found it too acidic for his taste.  I wasn’t surprised.  I just fried up a bratwurst for him.  (It’s been this way for years.)

It would be nice if our tastes in food coincided, but he’s actually quite easy to please.  When we were walking through the aisles in Wegman’s, he stopped and said, “I’d really like some jello, some strawberry jello.”  I hadn’t bought jello in years, but for dinner tonight, he got his beloved jello, along with bread and peanut butter.  I guess it brings back memories of his childhood when jello was often the featured dessert.  You’ll notice in the photo that there’s extra sugar sprinkled on top.  According to Elliott, that’s the way his mother always served it.  (Would you like some sugar with your sugar?)  Meanwhile, I was more than content to finish off my dinner of crudités and hummus with a bowl of organic strawberries and plain Greek yogurt.  

By the way, Elliott also enjoys eating “real” strawberries.  His favorite way of eating them is to hold the berry by the stem and then dip it into a mound of powdered sugar.  After he takes a bite from the bottom, he dips the berry back into the sugar. Double dipping obviously isn’t a concern.  I was shocked, but he swears he’s eaten berries this way since childhood.  We always keep a supply of powdered sugar on hand, and store it in a container that is close to thirty years old.  We bought this original container of sucre glace at LeClerc (the supermarket) when we lived in France and just kept refilling it over the years.  It’s probably highly unsanitary, but we’re both strongly attached to it.  However, I’m afraid that one of these days a hyper-vigilant health inspector will swoop down and confiscate it.    

With all of the errands we’ve been doing outside the house, we haven’t had much time for other projects.  Late this afternoon, we finally started going through the drawers of the flat file, and took a very quick look at the collages.  There must be more than fifty of them, in various sizes and proportions.  Deciding which ones to frame is going to be difficult.