Thursday, November 13, 2003
Catching up, and a primer on antipasto salads
Has it already been two weeks already? The silence, the beautiful silence is to be shattered by the arrival of The Kids? Yes, alas.
Sigh.
Not much to really catch up on. Two weeks of silence, sleep and relentless procrastination on the National Novel Writing Month novel ruled the past two weeks. The highlight was a nearly perfect antipasto salad I made a few days after the Kids left.
Ah, antipasto salad.
It's pretty much a given that on D&D night if we order from a pizza place, I will get
the antipasto salad, not being a real fan of pizza in general. The reason I
order antipasto salad is, what I'm coming to believe, a misguided attempt to
find the perfect antipasto salad. And what is the perfect
antipasto salad you ask? (Okay, you probably didn't ask, but I'll answer
anyway) Perfection of antipasto salads, thy name is Buddy's Rendezvous and
Pizzeria (6
Mile and Conant—driving directions from Lower Sheol: I-95 N to Ft. Pierce, one
mile west to the Florida Turnpike Ronald Reagan Turnpike North to
I-75 North to the Davidson Freeday East, turn left on Conant, two blocks,
north west corner, and try not to pay too much attention to the
neighborhood). And what makes the antipasto salad so great that I'm almost
willing to drive 1,200 miles to get one?
They finely chop up the ingredients.
You may think I'm joking, but I have yet to find, outside of Buddy's, an antipasto salad that can be eaten without a knife—huge slabs of lettuce, cheese and meats that would serve better laying flat between two slices of bread as a sandwich than as a “salad.”
Finally fed up, I bought the lettuce, ham, salami, pepparoni, cheese, oil (olive) and vinegar (red wine), chopped everything up into small pieces (smaller than bite sized—nothing larger than a quarter inch cube), placed in a large bowl, added the oil and vinegar and made my own damn antipasto salad. I only reached near perfection due to a lack of lettuce than anything else (we're talking about a pound and a half of meat, a pound of cheese, and only one single head of lettuce).
Like I said, the highlight of the two weeks.
Well, the highlight that I'm willing to publically talk about. We were, after all, sans kids for two weeks.
Ahem.
Anyway, the Kids are back, silence running away screaming.
Ah well …
Resistance is futile
I walk into the Computer Room with a few Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies (thinking ahead last January, I bought a gross and froze them). Spring had the look of a predator sizing up some unfamiliar prey; she's been following the Atkins Diet and I could see her trying to calculate the carbohydrates.
“Do you want some?” I asked, munching on a Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookie.
“That's a trick question,” she said. She wanted some, but didn't know if she could have them.
“Hold on,” I said. I went back to the freezer, pulled out a box. Serving size: 4 cookies. Total carbohydrates: 20g. “Five grams per cookie,” I said, putting the box back in the freezer.
“I'll take four!”
Heh. No one can resist Girl Scout cookies.
