din­ner out, finally!

How long has it been, real­ly? Since we had din­ner out, the two of us? That’s a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion to which the unnec­es­sary answer is, “too long.” Almost as long as it’s been since I had a non-foody post. And so unex­pect­ed, which is almost the beau­ty of it. I feel as if all I’ve been doing late­ly is cook­ing, and writ­ing about cook­ing, so when Avery had an impromp­tu invi­ta­tion to play after skat­ing yes­ter­day, it was but the work of a moment to say yes, fling her into Beck­y’s arms and make plans for din­ner OUT.

But first, I must tell you about the may­hem at the skat­ing rink. There we were, two inno­cent mums with Beck­y’s three girls and my one, and sud­den­ly there’s a film crew on the ice. Avery was trans­fixed, cer­tain that this was her moment to shine and start the ball rolling on her film career. But it turns out they were film­ing a very lame cou­ple for a tele­vi­sion show called “Date My Mom,” a cul­tur­al (and I use the term loose­ly) phe­nom­e­non of which I had been hereto­fore unaware. The con­cept is that a series of young men date the moth­er of an eli­gi­ble girl, and then the moth­er choos­es the man she should end up with. I tried and failed to pic­ture my own moth­er tak­ing part in this merriment.

Around and around skat­ed this ordi­nary-look­ing woman of moth­er­ly pro­por­tions and a dif­fi­dent demeanor, with her escort whose teeth could light up a tube sta­tion, and some unsight­ly bling around his neck. Avery skat­ed strateget­i­cal­ly close to them, hop­ing to be includ­ed in some shot. Before long, how­ev­er, the woman had fall­en down, and in the time it took for us to pay atten­tion, it was clear that she was tru­ly injured. Ankle, some­thing down low. Becky said, “Is it just me, or would the first thing you’d do be to get her to stop sit­ting down on the ice, where her bum will short­ly lose all feel­ing?” Ful­ly eight or ten strap­ping young men came and went, hov­er­ing over her, offer­ing this sweater, that blan­ket, but no one offered to get her off the ice. At one point an offi­cial from Queensway Skat­ing Rink loomed over her, hold­ing a clip­board, onto which sur­face he took some notes. Prob­a­bly along the lines of, “Noth­ing that hap­pened here was any­one’s fault who can be named.” Young Lochin­var who was, pre­sum­ably, the “date,” spent a lot of time on his mobile phone, then bend­ing down to speak to the “mom”, and reveal­ing parts of his anato­my that no one want­ed to see. Won­der­ing if he’d still be able to shag the girl if her moth­er died on the ice, one presumes.

Final­ly the vic­tim was tak­en away on a stretch­er, but the pas­sage of time led both Becky and me to pon­der our girls’ chances should some­thing of a more, say, bloody nature hap­pen to one of them. They could eas­i­ly bleed to death while the rink offi­cials shut off the piz­za machine and found the clip­board. Ah, well, all end­ed hap­pi­ly. Or at least we left, which was hap­py for me.

Avery went off with Becky and her girls, and I walked in to find John who hap­pi­ly said, “The pork chops look great, so I thought we could cook togeth­er, and be real­ly cozy!” Pause. “Or not.” “Not,” I said, and we decid­ed instant­ly to go to Deya, the near­by and com­plete­ly deli­cious sort of fusion Indi­an. Except that all it’s fus­ing with is light­ness and good taste, so I guess it’s nou­velle Indi­an. An amuse-guele of coconut cream of mush­room soup, in a tiny espres­so cup, with a tem­pu­ra-ish morsel of cau­li­flower sus­pend­ed from a tooth­pick atop it. Com­plete­ly per­fect. Lis­ten, I must run watch the last bits of “Tom’s Mid­night Gar­den” with Avery before she curls up with her hot water bot­tle and a book, so more on the menu later…