Twenty years later

The details of my 20th year high school reunion are up. Mid-October, at a place I’ve never heard of, in the town where my high school is located.

It doesn’t really seem like it’s been that long. I don’t feel 20 years older. I don’t look 20 years older. I don’t have 20 years worth of emotional baggage. And I’m quite happy about all of that. I’m going to skip the reunion, as I’ve not really kept up with anyone from high school and I’ve not stepped foot in Maryland since 1988. Besides, I’m going to San Antonio in early October for a week, and I’ll be recovering from that trip.

I wouldn’t mind going up for a visit, though, perhaps to see the Inner Harbor again and take a trip to the Eastern Shore. It would have to be when the crabs are running, though, and when the silver queen corn is coming in. It’s great dumping out a bushel – or two – of steamed (not boiled!) blue crab on a long newspaper-covered table in the backyard, then dumping a pile of boiled silver queen corn down next to those crabs, then having several platters of Eastern Shore tomatoes next to that, and then chowing down while talking with friends and family and drinking some icy beer. And then after eating all that, cracking open an ice cold watermelon and eating it, letting the juices run down your chin, spitting seeds as far as you can as the sun sinks and the fireflies start appearing.

That would be quite a day, and well worth a visit.

Let there be pizza

And there was pizza, courtesy of a dear friend who fed us tonight.

And boy, was it good.

Not as good as homemade pizza, of course. Nothing beats that. Still, pizza from Pizza Palace runs a close second. It’s been quite a long time since I had pizza – quite awhile before surgery, as it happens. The issue with pizza throughout the months following treatment was of course the crust. Too much bread. Not enough spit.

Tonight, though, I managed half a slice before my jaws gave out. Not a bad return. As a bonus, it forced me to drink a ton of water to get it down.

This afternoon, when we were debating what everyone wanted to eat tonight, my mom said, right off the bat: pizza. Actually, what she said in full was that she wanted me to make some homemade dough, another batch of the sauce I’d made for the pasta, and then make a pizza from those items with fresh veggies and meat. This will have to wait until after she recovers from her surgery, something we thought would be an in and out deal but which will have her in the hospital overnight. None of us is happy about that, but what can you do?

Since it’s month end these next few days, and since we’re going full out on business-related things prior to mom’s date with the surgeon, there probably won’t be a lot of involved cooking as we wind down July. Next Saturday, we are supposed to head out to a beach house owned by some friends, where yours truly will cook something in their kitchen. Seafood, most likely, as they say they have crab legs and shrimp in the freezer. It will be rather adventurous to cook whatever happens to be on hand in a strange kitchen. Somewhere between now and then, there will be more meals, including helping my sister prep the dinner she’s cooking for a group of her friends at the house of one of those friends. A mini-catering gig, if you will. Next week, I’ll also go buy a bin of tomatoes to make a large batch of sauce, suitable for canning. That should be fun, as it will be the first actual use of the canner. It’s also time to start examining this beer brewing thing…