1. Usually, we have family dinner together on Sunday, but this week we not only rescheduled to Monday, we also invited members of the Vergobbi family to join us. Back in 2019, Cathy, Dave, and April Vergobbi's father, Jim, passed away. The Vergobbi siblings were in town to wrap up the last details of settling their father's estate and they agreed to have dinner with us at Carol and Paul's.
I was in charge of putting together some pickled appetizers. Earlier in the day, I dashed over to Paul and Carol's and left off several pickled items: Kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, red peppers, bread and butter pickles, asparagus, and beets. Knowing Carol has a much better stocked kitchen than I do, I asked her to lay these out for me and she did in six handsome white square bowls.
I was also in charge bringing baked beans. I soaked a combined two pounds of navy beans and black beans overnight and, last night, I chopped up two onions, cut a half a pound of bacon into small pieces, and set out molasses and brown sugar.
This morning I dumped the soaked beans in the crock pot, put water over them, and tossed in the chopped onion and bacon and the molasses and brown sugar.
I let the beans slow cook all day. In the middle of the afternoon, I added Dijon mustard to them.
2. While the beans gurgled away, today's mail came and included my rented replacement copy of the American Film Institute's superb documentary, Visions of Light. Released in 1992, it's a study of the history of cinematography reaching all the way back to the earliest making of moving pictures. I love this movie as it marches through the decades of movie making, the development of movie making technologies, the improvement of lenses, and the daring of the many photographers who have shot the many, many movies so beloved by film goers. I'll never be the kind of observant, analytical movie viewer that the many people who write about films are. I don't really have words to describe what's happening photographically in movies. But, I can appreciate light and shadows and perspective and I can, at the very least, marvel at photography in movies that stirs me, makes me sit upright, and moves me with its beauty. Visions of Light helps enlarge my response, even if unarticulated, to what I see in movies.
3. Dinner was fun. Christy organized picnic style food. Dave Vergobbi offered anyone interested a hearty shot of Maker's Mark. April (Vergobbi) Lee's husband, Rick, mixed Italian Aperol Spritzes. Christy brought lemon chicken drumsticks and potato salad. Ed had given me some fresh asparagus from the Columbia Basin and Carol roasted it. Carol also baked cornbread and I brought my crockpot of beans. April brought watermelon slices. For dessert, Carol baked rhubarb oatmeal cookies.
I enjoyed conversation with Cathy (Vergobbi) Dammel. We are both graduates of KHS Class of 72. I also enjoyed talking with Dave Vergobbi and tried to convey to him what's happening on Zoom with Bridgit, Bill, Diane, Val, Colette, and me with our project to understand literary comedy better.
I didn't chat as much with other members of the Vergobbi family: Dave's wife, Anne (a longtime friend of Christy's) and their daughter, Claire nor with April (Vergobbi) Lee, her husband Rick, and their son Nicholas.
I listened to everyone talk to everyone else when I wasn't in conversation and thought this was a superb evening featuring two families deeply tied to each other and to the town of Kellogg breaking bread, yakking, and enjoying mirthful fellowship.
No comments:
Post a Comment