Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

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The Pittsburgh Steelers are playing the Green Bay Packers in the Superbowl. As something of a non-football-fan, those are my two favorite NFL teams. I like the Steelers because I’m from Pittsburgh, my Dad was a fan, and my mom grew to be a fan in her old age. My brother is a devoted Steelers fan in his own highly particular superstitious way (he even wrote an unpublished novel, “The Tenth Guy” about how what the watchers do affects the outcome of the game). Dave’s football rituals include vacuuming and laying out his terrible towel with our parents’ rings and watches on it. In fact his superstitions about football mirror many of my superstitions – like how you should never fly in an airplane without taking a library book along with you, because that means you’ll get home safely to return the book. Dave is on sabbatical in India, studying yoga and Indian flute, and riding a rented bike on the wrong side of the road, and managed to listen to the Steeler game on the radio.

I like the Packers because I’ve lived in Wisconsin now for longer than I lived in Pittsburgh – I left there when I was 22, and not counting four years in Chicago, I’ve been in Wisconsin ever since, and I’ll be 56 this year. And my older son is a big Packer fan, so I like the Packers because he does. At the last librarians’ conference, one of my colleagues, who is a very professional, upper level academic librarian, told me that her teenage son lets her sit next to him on the couch if football is on, and that’s in a nutshell how middle aged moms become football fans.

But most of all, I think this Superbowl is great for football fans. They get to look forward to a good game between two really good teams. I was listening to the commentary on Sunday and this morning, and everybody seems happy. As my younger son wisely put it, “Nobody hates the Steelers OR the Packers, except maybe a few Bears fans or Cincinnati Bengals fans.”  Or, as I’d like to say, everybody just likes both teams.

I don’t charge for kids under 12, but last Thursday we had ten kids at dinner – and the platters of food were almost licked clean. There was a little dessert leftover, brownies & blondies, and I *think* everyone went home full – at least I hope so. There were 14 adults. I made chicken potpie with puff pastry on top, enough for about 12, and cheese and onion pie, enough for about 16. There was plenty of lettuce for salad, but the creamy garlic dressing got a little low; I had a vinaigrette for back up, fortunately. The roasted brussels sprout slaw all went, and I packed the last couple slices of poached pears into a jar for one diner to take home. The pears were from a Tory Miller recipe, that was in Food & Wine – they’re supposed to be Riesling-poached, but I had an opened bottle of champagne from the Hospice workers brunch, so I used that. And I don’t know if I undercooked them, or just used a more-tending-to-brown variety of pear – but they got all brown in the fridge overnight. They ate OK, though, despite the color – they weren’t too sweet so I put them on my salad. Next week I’m determined to be more ample – it’s nice to have just enough food, but my Jewish mother heart rests easier when there’re more leftovers.

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Sunday I made brunch for a group of Hospice Care workers – it was their holiday party. I’d put on a baby shower for this group in the spring, and they’re really fun – completely unflappable. This time, they ate spinach quiche and ham quiche – the base of the filling for the spinach was the hot spinach dip frozen after the cookie party. With a tossed salad – greens, and Mollie Katzen’s creamy vinaigrette – rosemary roasted potatoes and applesauce on the side, and cimmy buns.

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I had walked up to Balboa Park using the Google directions, and that sent me past a community college AND a big high school, at about 3:30 in the afternoon. Just as I was starting to hate all teenagers, and thinking that we should really do as the Brits do (the ones that can afford it anyway), and send all our kids away for most of adolescence (to boarding school), I had to cross a driveway and the kid who was driving out it stopped and backed up to let me pass, and even smiled at me.

Wall I went past - ghosts of grafitti - or paint ball?

On the way back, I went closer to the Harbor, down 5th St., closer to where we’d stayed in Little Italy the last time we were in San Diego in 2003, and I liked that a lot better. I think generally, I like San Diego better farther up the hill, away from the tourist-y, New Orleans Bourbon St.-like Gaslamp district.

I managed to make it to the 4:30 showing of The Fighter – the acting is great, they’ll all get academy awards, but I’m not a boxing fan, so the fight scenes were hard to watch, plus it’s really about how awful people are in families, and that was even harder to watch.

I met Martin & Suzanne for dinner at Operacaffe. We shared bread & balsamic vinegar and oil, and a mushroom salad and some bruschetta. I had these Asiago gnocchi that were really fluffy.

On Tuesday I had time before my flight, so I decided to try to find what I had thought was a bigger Starbucks when I saw it on the walk down the hill the day before. More power to Starbucks for creating all these spaces where people can hang out, but the Starbucks closest to our hotel, in the Gaslamp, had a slightly smelly clientele, who obviously spent long hours there. The up-the-hill Starbucks turned out not to be bigger, in fact, it had no seating at all. The customers were all on their way to work, and the staff had definitely been taking happy pills – the guy who waited on me almost cheered when he saw me haul out my own to-go mug. I ordered a chocolate croissant, and he said, “oh do you want that heated? They’re really good that way!” I walked a little further down the hill, and came across the hotel where Suzanne was staying, in a converted bank. I sat in their lobby – a nice lobby indeed, with high ceilings and columns because it used to be a bank – and ate my croissant and drank my coffee and read my vampire book on my iPhone. So I guess I did find that more upscale experience I was seeking.