Jeremy had said that he wanted to fix dinner on Friday night and he wondered
what kind of meal we would like.
There were any number of possibilities; I've never seen him produce a meal that wasn't delicious.
However, Nancy was able to come up with a response almost instantly:
pizza!
Her response certainly pleased me because Jeremy makes great pizza. It
also pleased Jeremy because he likes to have a meal -- including the preparations
-- become a social event.
Like me, he likes to make his own sauce when he makes pizza. He also likes
to make a variety of pies. He had marrinated some boneless chicken breasts
in spiedie sauce and then quickly cooked them in a frying pan while he
made a marinara sauce.
His marinara sauce includes onions and garlic and various herbs, including
oregano and basil (he prefers fresh basil leaves instead of dried leaves)
and a touch of hot sauce. And, like me, he scoffs at the old-wife's-tale
that a marinara sauce should contain anchovies -- the name does come from
the Italian word for sailor (marinaro) but it is because its origins in Naples was to feed sailors upon their
return from their sea voyages, not because it contained pieces of seafood,
such as anchovies.
So we gathered in our kitchen -- Jill and Nancy and me and Kevin (a friend
of Jeremy's since 9th grade) and we were later joined by Eli.
Jeremy started us off with a huge salad (Romaine lettuce with red onions,
brocolli, slides of red pepper, cut up snow peas, pepperoncini, and thin
slices of mozzarella with a light Italian dressing.)
(On the right, pizza # 1, spicey, with cut up pepperoncini, peppers, onions)
Pizza # 2 -- with lots of cut up spiedie chicken and onions)
Pizza #4 --those are slices of Kielbasa made from turkey (because Jill
does not eat beef or pork)
Pizza #4 -- this one included slices of pineapple...
Pizza #5 -- with slices of mozzeralla and pepperoncini (and I think a little
bit of the spiedie chicken)
Need I say that the meal went on for a long time, each pizza being put
together with everyone gathered in the kitchen, enjoying good conversation
along with the good food. Jeremy would bring each pizza out of the oven,
slice it, and place it on the counter for people to enjoy and then he would
put together the next pie and put it in the oven. (We have two pizza stones,
both of which he had in the oven, although he ended up only using one at
a time. The aluminum foil makes it easy to put the pie on the stone and
to take it off when it is done. That also keeps the stone clean.)
That was our Friday night. On Saturday Nancy and I went up to Providence to see
Trinity Rep's presentation of
Raisin in the Sun. (Excellent!) Sunday night we had dinner at Nancy's mother's house
along with Sister Kathryn (Nancy's aunt) and Sister Ruth. (Those of you who have been visiting mysite
for a while may recall my "This Old House"
entry from a few years ago where various members of Nancy's family worked on some of the rooms at
CREA House (Center for Reflection,
Education and Action).
A recent entry at Kate and Jim's site (it's a password protected site so
there's no point in providing a hyperlink) included a photograph of the
full moon which made me burst out laughing because I had taken a very similar
photograph early Sunday evening...
Amusements
Maybe I should label this Stimulus Math? An old Abbott and Costello movie clip where
Costello proves that 7 times 13 equals 28.
