Dinner: three stories.

1. On Sunday, I made pad thai, three ways. I texted my son:

I like to run all my dinner plans past my sleeping son
by passive-agressively (?) waking him up with a text,
shortly after noon.

So noodles it would be. I bought limes and tofu and peppers. I used the grand proportions of Natasha's pad thai sauce:

maybe 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/2 tsp stevia, juice of two limes, and tsp of curry pastealso sriracha a good squeezesometimes i use tamarind paste for sournessthere was the eqivalent of 4 cloves of garlic and 2 tbs of ginger in the saute, too

Soak the rice noodles and baste the tofu (and chicken. and shrimp.--these are the three ways.) in the sauce while the proteins all cook in the oven. Saute onions, garlic, ginger, peppers, and carrots in peanut oil. Add the noodles. Add the sauce. 

Finish one portion at a time: first the chicken, then the tofu, last the shrimp. Extra sriracha for people who liked it extra hot. 

"Want it extra hot, John?" my son asked the historian. He declined. For me also, it was hot enough already. And that was the first dinner, and it was pretty darn good.

2. On Monday, I made vegetables. My son came in the door, the smell of things cooking in the air. 

"Tonight, it's all vegetables," I said. 

"No, thanks," he said. Earlier in the day, he had asked if I would read his paper draft and give him comments. I agreed, if he would help me take down the Christmas tree. I figured: it's February, it's time.

"When do you guys think you'll be done?" he asked. Meaning, when will you be ready to help me with my paper?

"Twenty minutes?" I said. The little yellow potatoes were still roasting with olive oil, garlic, and salt. There were also green beans. Steamed, good but kind of plain green beans. And a lovely salad if I do say so myself: leaves picked over from the last of the Power Greens packet; sliced Napa cabbage; sliced purple carrot; an orange sliced into bites. Olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt and pepper. Also toast, sourdough toast, on the side.

We ate this--I had two potatoes smashed with some goat cheese and a healthy helping of the unassuming green beans and an even healthier one of salad. It was good. It tasted like the food of our forefathers, if our forefathers had had sherry vinegar and baby kale and a purple carrot. Also, and let us not forget, if our forefathers had had oranges in the wintertime, which they very well might not have.

Then we took down the Christmas tree, and I gave expert advice on a visual rhetoric analysis paper. And had an ice cream cone, because this is America.

3. On Tuesday, I considered my options all afternoon, up until the time I finally, finally got home:

• it was 6 p.m.
• it had been long-ass day already.
• the day's ass was going to get even longer, since I had evening consultations with students online ahead of me.
• leftover potatoes and green beans and goat cheese + eggs = frittata?
• be a pioneer! use it up, etc.!

I pulled up to the house. The historian got there just a moment after I did. 

"Let's go get burritos!" I said. And so we did.