Finishing off the 22nd
Jun. 24th, 2007 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasWe came home from the farm, and had a couple of hours until our dinner reservations at a relatively-nearby restaurant (at which Fabio's son-in-law worked). Some of us took a dip in the pool, or a quick nap, or chatted, or whatever, and then, eventually, we all changed for dinner and came down.
Nobody particularly came UP with the idea of changing for dinner -- it's just that ONE person started putting together an outfit, and then someone else thought that changing was a good idea, and we all dressed up just a little -- not much, but enough that Nonnie noticed, and said, "You all look nice," and looked pleased that we all had demonstrated that we thought that spending a night out with our family was important enough that we'd do a little something to mark it.
In any case, it was the last night that Meghan and her if-he's-not-scared-off-by-this-he's-gotta-be-a-fiancee Patrick were going to be around, as they were going home the morning of the 23rd, so that was another reason to just, y'know, look a LITTLE nicer than usual.
It was a traditional Italian meal, and we ordered it as such -- antipasti, primi piatti, secondi piatti. The place was known also for its pizzas, which, I guess, you could get served either as primi or secondi.
Nonnie was convinced that we'd ordered FAR too much food when she realized that the antipasti plates that were being brought out were brought one per PERSON, rather than one per every three or four people.
And yet. . . we pretty much cleaned every one of those plates. I mean, Mom and Dad keep kosher, so are effectively vegetarians when they travel, so they didn't eat the salami or the chopped liver bruschetta. But I don't like mushrooms, so we traded. There was a bit of swapping about as people dumped the things they didn't like on the plates of people who did like them, and all the food vanished in good order.
The jugs of house wine kept coming, too.
After a bit, after people had polished of the antipasti and were feeling just about like maybe it would be about time for another little something, pastas and pizzas started descending. There was a lot of, "Oh my God you have to try this," and things got passed around, and ocassionally a search-and-rescue mission had to be sent out to rescue the remains of a poor plate that got stuck at the end of the table where my cousins were sitting (remember: 18 to 28 -- they are all growing girls. Um, except for Stephen, but he eats as much as any of the rest of them. To the best of my knowlege, anorexia is not a problem that is common in my family -- the Soules do tend to be on the skinny side, but not badly).
And, when it was reasonable to do so, plates of meat and other secondi started appearing.
I can tell you a bit about what Lis and I ordered: she got rissoto with truffles, I got a pasta with pumpkin flowers. (Hmm. I KNOW I had a pasta with pumpkin flowers earlier in this trip, and I haven't blogged about it. I don't remember which meal that was, or which day. I've clearly skipped over things in my blogging. I'll have to ask Lis where I had that dish, what day, what restaurant, and what context.) For secondi, we got a steak with juniper berries.
Lis and I managed to make decent dents on both of those, but eventually gave up and passed them around. We also got tastes of things like the steak with gorgonzola.
I got to sit next to Nonnie and Papa, and I therefore got to see how to get them to do things. See, my sister and cousins would send stuff down for Nonnie and Papa to eat, but, of course, they weren't hungry enough to eat these things, so they'd send them back. And the grandkids would send the plates back up, because they were really good, and Nonnie and Papa would like them. And Nonnie and Papa would give them to Lis and me, who would each have a taste, and agree that they were good, and then sort of casually move the plates from in front of us to in front of them, and, somehow, after everyone has tasted it and agreed that it was good, the half-a-steak that was in front of Nonnie and/or Papa would be gone. . .
The cousins, for instance, knew that Papa loves chocolate desserts. But he'll never order them for himself. So, they just happened to "accidentally" order an extra one which they sent down, and of course, Papa gave it to Lis and me, and we tasted it and said it was good and that Papa had to taste it too, so he did, and we just happened to forget to ever take it back, and, oddly, after a while, it wasn't there, either.
Neither Nonnie or Papa is willing to take food out of the mouths of their children or grandchildren. So we have to sort of make it clear that they're not doing so. Besides, my cousins know what Nonnie and Papa like, maybe better than they do themselves.
Eventually, we looked down the table, at the only very small scraps of food that had not been finished, the empty coffee cups, the empty dessert plates, and the, maybe, ONE piece of pizza that hadn't been eaten, and Nonnie admitted that we maybe had ordered the right amount of food, and the antipasti plates hadn't been excessive.
We finished off the meal with a digestif, and I had to explain to Lis that limoncello doesn't actually taste as good as that in the United States. So she informed me that we are buying a bottle here and taking it home. And I informed her that it doesn't work that way -- we CAN get precisely the same bottles at Kappy's in Boston that we could get in Italy, but that it fails to taste as good once it is home.
I'm not sure how we're going to resolve this question.
And, if I remember correctly, that was June 22.
Nobody particularly came UP with the idea of changing for dinner -- it's just that ONE person started putting together an outfit, and then someone else thought that changing was a good idea, and we all dressed up just a little -- not much, but enough that Nonnie noticed, and said, "You all look nice," and looked pleased that we all had demonstrated that we thought that spending a night out with our family was important enough that we'd do a little something to mark it.
In any case, it was the last night that Meghan and her if-he's-not-scared-off-by-this-he's-gotta-be-a-fiancee Patrick were going to be around, as they were going home the morning of the 23rd, so that was another reason to just, y'know, look a LITTLE nicer than usual.
It was a traditional Italian meal, and we ordered it as such -- antipasti, primi piatti, secondi piatti. The place was known also for its pizzas, which, I guess, you could get served either as primi or secondi.
Nonnie was convinced that we'd ordered FAR too much food when she realized that the antipasti plates that were being brought out were brought one per PERSON, rather than one per every three or four people.
And yet. . . we pretty much cleaned every one of those plates. I mean, Mom and Dad keep kosher, so are effectively vegetarians when they travel, so they didn't eat the salami or the chopped liver bruschetta. But I don't like mushrooms, so we traded. There was a bit of swapping about as people dumped the things they didn't like on the plates of people who did like them, and all the food vanished in good order.
The jugs of house wine kept coming, too.
After a bit, after people had polished of the antipasti and were feeling just about like maybe it would be about time for another little something, pastas and pizzas started descending. There was a lot of, "Oh my God you have to try this," and things got passed around, and ocassionally a search-and-rescue mission had to be sent out to rescue the remains of a poor plate that got stuck at the end of the table where my cousins were sitting (remember: 18 to 28 -- they are all growing girls. Um, except for Stephen, but he eats as much as any of the rest of them. To the best of my knowlege, anorexia is not a problem that is common in my family -- the Soules do tend to be on the skinny side, but not badly).
And, when it was reasonable to do so, plates of meat and other secondi started appearing.
I can tell you a bit about what Lis and I ordered: she got rissoto with truffles, I got a pasta with pumpkin flowers. (Hmm. I KNOW I had a pasta with pumpkin flowers earlier in this trip, and I haven't blogged about it. I don't remember which meal that was, or which day. I've clearly skipped over things in my blogging. I'll have to ask Lis where I had that dish, what day, what restaurant, and what context.) For secondi, we got a steak with juniper berries.
Lis and I managed to make decent dents on both of those, but eventually gave up and passed them around. We also got tastes of things like the steak with gorgonzola.
I got to sit next to Nonnie and Papa, and I therefore got to see how to get them to do things. See, my sister and cousins would send stuff down for Nonnie and Papa to eat, but, of course, they weren't hungry enough to eat these things, so they'd send them back. And the grandkids would send the plates back up, because they were really good, and Nonnie and Papa would like them. And Nonnie and Papa would give them to Lis and me, who would each have a taste, and agree that they were good, and then sort of casually move the plates from in front of us to in front of them, and, somehow, after everyone has tasted it and agreed that it was good, the half-a-steak that was in front of Nonnie and/or Papa would be gone. . .
The cousins, for instance, knew that Papa loves chocolate desserts. But he'll never order them for himself. So, they just happened to "accidentally" order an extra one which they sent down, and of course, Papa gave it to Lis and me, and we tasted it and said it was good and that Papa had to taste it too, so he did, and we just happened to forget to ever take it back, and, oddly, after a while, it wasn't there, either.
Neither Nonnie or Papa is willing to take food out of the mouths of their children or grandchildren. So we have to sort of make it clear that they're not doing so. Besides, my cousins know what Nonnie and Papa like, maybe better than they do themselves.
Eventually, we looked down the table, at the only very small scraps of food that had not been finished, the empty coffee cups, the empty dessert plates, and the, maybe, ONE piece of pizza that hadn't been eaten, and Nonnie admitted that we maybe had ordered the right amount of food, and the antipasti plates hadn't been excessive.
We finished off the meal with a digestif, and I had to explain to Lis that limoncello doesn't actually taste as good as that in the United States. So she informed me that we are buying a bottle here and taking it home. And I informed her that it doesn't work that way -- we CAN get precisely the same bottles at Kappy's in Boston that we could get in Italy, but that it fails to taste as good once it is home.
I'm not sure how we're going to resolve this question.
And, if I remember correctly, that was June 22.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-24 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-24 10:00 pm (UTC)But only one kind. There are plenty of other good kinds of lives, too.
I can't help but think that, in all of its essential qualities, your day was much like mine.