Now, briefly, the trip to Italy was a huge success. I learned a few key things:
1) people who live in colorado tend to be quite proficient at riding bikes fast up huge hills
2) tuscan towns with names beginning in MONT (montepuliciano, more than just wine), montalcino (possessing one of the few shops accepting american express in tuscany) and MONTiciello are so named because they are perched on the top of a big hill so as to be able to see approaching armies and/or so as to induce leg cramping and exhaustion in semi out of shape bikers tying to be macho and avoid the "slow" group on a bike tour
3) even when cycling 5 hours and burning approximately 3,000-4,000 calories at a clip, it is possible to eat so much bruschetta, hazlenut pecorino cheese with truffle honey, picci pasta with mushroom ragu and chocolate tart (all washed down with plenty of wine) so as to return home having gained weight.
As with anyone in a dual earning, child rearing, dog walking life, returning home from a blissful vacation is always hard. One of the worst aspects is the return to figuring out what to eat for dinner. A return from europe, where labels like "slow food" and "local" don't even need to be applied as there is no alternative, is a special shock to the system.
Last week, as I dug in the freezer to unearth a bag of trader joe's quinoa vegetable mix to spoon into baked acorn squash leaving the family to inquire if there was anything else on the way, I was reminded of a blissful but brief lived chapter in our lives when my sweet husband endeavored to take over the planning, shopping and preparation of the daily meals.
This chapter was precipitated by a visit with his identical twin brother and family. The subject matter of another post, being married to someone who has a dna doppelganger can provide interesting dimension to one's life.
In this instance, the effect was quite positive. We were welcomed in to the suburban alter ego of our own life with a meal that was, in short, delicious. slow roasted fragrant pork tacos on fresh warm tortillas with a side dish of delicious vegetables that had everyone in our family asking for more (my big girl had yet to side with the animals and swear off eating "anything with eyes"). As the oohs and aahs rose over the table, we learned that this meal was 100% conceived, planned and created by my sweet husband's twin; after some gentle prompting by his better half so as to achieve a more balanced division of labor in the household. The story as told to me was a conversation that went something like:
You need to take over a) the management of our household finances or b) all of the meal planning and shopping, i've been doing both for the past 17 years
Umm, both of those are HUGE
For my money, the results of the b) choice were nothing but good. And as the delicious food and craft brewed beer seeped in, it was decided that my sweet husband would take on the same role in our household. We did, in the heat of the moment, also decide that it would be an interest topic for a memoir of sorts: two brothers, cooking their way through a year of family life, in mid life . . .
And this is how far it got:
Day #1:
I did it, I've placed an order on fresh direct and we are all set for the week.
Day #2, circa 6PM.
As the children melt down into the it's too late for dinner spiral, my sweet husband turns moderately sour and barks I am working on a nice dinner for us, how about a little patience and appreciation Moments later he presents a mound of beef stew with mushrooms (nothing like a simple diner for a tuesday night with the kids!) to a plea of I don't like this from the tiny girl. How about buttered egg noodles?
Now, an important foot note to this is that my husband is actually quite gifted when it comes to cooking and entertaining in the adult realm. He possesses the ability to figure out menus that are interesting but not weird. And as with all his pursuits, he takes no half measures (for example in Italy, having ridden his bike a maximum of 50 miles in the relative flatlands of NYC, the guy rode 100+ miles across tuscany over five mountain ranges and was on his bike again the very next day). Once, I gave him a old school hand cranked pasta maker as a gift and he managed, somehow, to draw blood from a knuckle such was the intensity he applied to making sheets of pasta for homemade ravioli. I am not even sure you could do that if you tried.
During the daddy cooks every night era, I managed as I have never before in my life as a control freak, to keep my mouth shut. Trust me, I wanted this to work out. We are avid users of Fresh Direct. Somewhere around this time, or just before, they had developed the pure genius functionality of pre-loaded recipes . . . find something you want to make, click and all of the required ingredients show up in your cart in roughly the right amount. Now, in an ideal world one might control for pre-existing inventory so as to avoid build up of certain foods (to give Fresh Direct credit, they do put the ingredients in two categories: you need and you might need.) But this does not take into account the enthusiasm of someone who has decided that he is going to revolutionize the eating habits of his family by cooking gourmet meals every weeknight. And, while Fresh Direct, Amazon and itunes genius are so very good at telling you what you might like or want, or what your "favorites" are, they haven't yet projected the algorithm of you know, you purchased shallots and sea salt the last four times you shopped with us, do you really need more?
So, sadly, this chapter in our lives was short lived. I think we made it two weeks, maybe three. Daddy in Charge of Food came to a screeching halt one afternoon when, looking for celery or something to make a healthy snack on a weekend afternoon, I opened the produce drawer in the fridge to find about 30-40 shallots and not much else. In his zeal to create winning dinners, he had lost sight of breakfast, snacks and household cleaning supplies. So while we dined on chicken a l'orange everything else in the way of food and basic household supplies went by the wayside.
Now, nearly 18 months later, it's been a long time since I have paid a bill or managed anything to do with money in our life other that to try to make some. Conveniently, when looking for sea salt to add here or there to a salad I am serving alongside hamburgers/veggie burgers on a tuesday night, I can still draw from the massive supply that we built up during those two weeks long ago. And just the other day, when my neighbor came to borrow a clove of garlic, I noticed a few shallots in the jar.
And I smiled, thinking about beef stew on a cold winter night.
