Dearest Rachel –
I hate to have to admit that I had to claw my way back down to the two-forty mark in time to meet Lars for our weekly walk yesterday. And while I don’t wish to throw Daniel under the bus for the situation – after all, I made the offer to get him dinner both days leading up to that, so it’s definitely more on me than his – he’s wound up playing a part in a generational update to a bit of family lore that you were familiar with, even if you weren’t a part of.
Now, I could just mention the phrase, and things would click for you, but for the sake of those reading over your shoulder, I hope you’ll indulge me for going into the background of the expression. After all, you weren’t there when it happened, either, so a little refresher couldn’t hurt.
It all began with a friend of mine whose family decided to throw a party for my graduating from high school and heading off to college. Which would make more sense if Mark was doing the same at the time, but no; he was a year younger than I (and his brother James was another couple of years behind him), so this was a shindig that he and his parents were throwing for what now feels like a strange reason. After all, it’s one thing to celebrate for your own kid, but for someone else’s? I mean, we were pretty good friends, but from this distance of time, it seems like an odd choice. But maybe Mark just wanted to have one last blowout before I left town for university.
And it was quite an event, given that it was basically just the two families, his and mine. There were gifts, albeit of the humorous type – I can still remember a six-pack of Jolt cola, which had just come out and had a… reputation, due to its claims of “all the sugar and twice the caffeine”; perfect for pulling all-nighters studying (yeah, that’s the ticket!), which I never actually wound up doing during my university career. It’s strange to have to admit that that was the one present that left the most lasting impression… well, of the gifts.
What really left an impression, though, was the spread of food. Not so much of the meal itself, or even the desserts thereafter. No, it was the fact that once everyone was stuffed to excess, like at a Thanksgiving meal, Mark’s dad went into the kitchen to bring out a platter full of Italian beef sandwiches.
In other circumstances, they would have been welcomed and devoured, but considering that literally all of us (apart, presumably, from Mark’s parents, who must have planned this, but could really have stood to work on their timing) were full to very nearly the point of illness, none of us were the slightest bit interested in this one dish too many. I honestly don’t know what happened to those; whether they sent us home with a quantity of them to enjoy later, or if they kept them for themselves to do so, but we did not eat them at the time, that was for certain. And for decades to come, the phrase “Italian beef sandwiches” was synonymous for having an excess of culinary hospitality; whenever we were overfilled from a heavy meal, either Dad or myself would call for them to be brought out, to rueful chuckles.
But, of course, you weren’t there for that moment; you only were aware of it from the secondhand tale. You never experienced that sort of ridiculous excess personally (although now that I think about it, there was that one Easter dinner that my folks’ friend Clara prepared, with so many dishes that when she was about to bring out dessert, Lars’ brother Sam, who was also at the table, plaintively protested that “we [indicating his family] don’t eat dessert after lamb”), so you never had the same experience of a single dish becoming a family byword. Nor, by extension, did Daniel.
But over the course of the last couple of days, he and I got pretty close to it.
***
Monday saw me walking home from the ‘office,’ and as it was on my way without any need to deviate from my path, I could stop at Mariano’s to pick up… whatever. It feels like an occasional habit that I’ve had for ages, even though I’m pretty sure I never swung by there while you were still here (since I would have checked in with you about it, and you would almost always already have a different plan for dinner), but they have a reasonable selection of pre-prepared meals. Which is perfect for when I have something already planned for myself (i.e., leftovers), but not for Daniel. On top of that, they will often have several containers that must go now, and are marked down by half or even more; as bachelors, we hardly care about a handmade meal’s age, but the price gets our attention.
However, it doesn’t matter whether it’s got my attention, when I’m buying something for Daniel to eat; I had to take pictures, and send them to him for his approval.
So, once I got home, I stuck my leftover pizza in the air fryer, and called him down to go over everything I’d brought home for him, a debate how to prepare it. While the rice could be heated in the microwave – although, despite the label saying it was ready, I didn’t trust that the container would survive the ordeal, and poured it into a large bowl – the rest would have to wait until I’d taken my turn, and put through the frying rigor as well. As with the shopping trip itself, honey, this feels like something we’ve been doing forever, but you never saw the day.
Because everything was being done in stages, we were eating half our meal in the kitchen before ever moving over to the man cave to watch stuff while we ate. However, once everything was heated up except the Thai spring rolls (Daniel wanted to save ‘the better ones’ for last), we made our way over to enjoy the rest of our meal.
However, between the title of this letter and the size of the chicken container, you might be able to guess that Daniel’s eyes were bigger than his stomach while I was out shopping. He did manage to polish off the rice on his own, but couldn’t take down the last veggie spring roll, as well as about a half-dozen chicken nuggets, which it was incumbent upon me to polish off. So now you know how I wound up on the wrong side of the two-forty barrier.
***
I literally went the next twenty-four hours without eating – although when I’m occupied with going through emails, travel arrangements and portfolio management with Rowan, it was surprisingly easy to distract myself from my own hunger, for the most part. However, by the time I was done and ready to head home, I’d gotten in the mood for another meal, one that I’d discussed with Daniel as I’d been heading out to the ‘office’ that morning.
Now, you’ll remember the bagel place a mile or so west of our home, run by that friendly old Korean couple; it closed up at the start of the pandemic and never returned. Maybe they decided to use that as an excuse to retire; hopefully they’re still around and doing well, but I sometimes wonder. In any event, we’ve been bereft of such wares for some time – although in fairness, that’s not the sort of thing I should be seeking out on any regular basis; carbs are the last thing I need. But as an occasional treat, I’ve been missing them.
As it happens, a similar sort of place just arrived within the past year in our village’s downtown area. I’d checked it out – twice, although the one time was a failure, since they aren’t open on Mondays – and their baked goods are, indeed, just that. So I thought I’d ask Daniel if he would be interested in getting something from there that afternoon.
Not only was he interested, he wanted to check the place out for himself. Granted, he preferred that I would pick him up and bring him over, rather than meeting me there while I made my way back from the opposite side of town; I’d forgotten about the parking situation there, and in hindsight, he had the right idea. I think we were there for a good twenty minutes trying to decide what we wanted, as there was so much on their menu. Eventually, I settled on a sandwich, and he had two bagels and a pound(!) of cucumber salad.
This time around, he managed to finish it all, but just barely, but when I suggested that – if that wasn’t enough – we could could break out the Thai spring rolls and fry them up, he wouldn’t hear of it. It was at this point that I brought up the Italian beef sandwich story; he’d heard it before, of course, but he hadn’t realized that the phrase wasn’t a universal byword for overindulgence, but a particular family legend. Now he knew better… and suddenly, it looked as if “Thai spring rolls” might wind up in our joint lexicon as a similar situation.
For his sake, though, I hope not; he was saving “the best for last,” and it would be a pity if he couldn’t get to them before they went bad. I do hope he remembers them, either today or tomorrow.
