1. Today was a big day.
Paul, Carol, and I collaborated to fix tonight's family dinner, a birthday dinner for Christy whose actual birthday was Friday.
I was the host. Christy requested a pot roast dinner, so Friday I purchased a chuck roast at Costco and this morning I took it out of the refrigerator, let it warm up a bit, and then went to work.
I began by heating up vegetable oil in our larger Dutch oven and then I seared the top and bottom of the roast.
I took the roast out of the pot and cooked six cloves of crushed garlic for a minute and then poured a quart of beef broth over the garlic and deglazed the pot's surface.
I returned the roast to the Dutch oven, covered the meat with Worcestershire sauce put a couple sprigs of rosemary on the roast meat, and added chopped up onion, carrots, red potatoes, and mushrooms.
I cooked the roast all afternoon, first at 300 degrees and later raised the temperature to 350. After about three hours, I determined that the vegetables were cooked and still firm, so I removed them. By about 5:15 or so, the meat was falling apart. I placed the meat on a cutting board and heated up the vegetables.
By 6:00 we joined each other at the table and enjoyed our dinner, deliciously enhanced by the green salad Carol made. She served it with Roquefort dressing made from a recipe that is at least sixty years old and came from Sig and Bunny's Sunshine Inn.
2. Conversation flew all over the place. Books. Movies. Gonzaga basketball. Paul went to see the Zags play last Thursday night and his observations and insights were fascinating.
Before long, Christy opened gifts from Paul and Carol and from Debbie and me and we ate slices of the superb cherry pie made, at Christy's request.
3. Let me tell you briefly about a quirk I have. If I put things away, I lose track of them and often forget I have them. As a result, my papers, books, bills, electronics, pills, and a host of other things are out in the open, covering different tables and other surfaces in the house. It's the same way in the kitchen. I often forget I even have certain goods because they are put away.
I curb this quirk a bit when Debbie and I are in the house together, but she's been gone the last three months, so gradually I've not put away more and more things, on purpose, so that I can see them and always know where they are.
Well, since I hosted family dinner tonight, I spent much of the day clearing off surfaces, putting things of mine out of sight, and now, starting tomorrow, I'm going to have to find those things again and get the process underway to put them back out in the open so I'll know I have them and can easily access them. This quirk of mine dictated my relationship with papers, file folders, teaching notes, memos, and other tools of my trade as an instructor. I have no explanation for why I have this oddball relationship with the material world.
No comments:
Post a Comment