On Thursday night I ate the leftover Thai food. It was better the second time, although I realized that the Pad Thai didn’t have peanuts. Isn’t it supposed to have peanuts? Toasticles said he thought the Thai food had upset his tummy, so he microwaved something from the freezer. One thing about Toasty is he doesn’t really care what he eats. A gourmet meal or a frozen burrito – all the same to him. That makes it easy when I don’t feel like cooking, but when I do spend time on something special, he rarely says anything – just shovels it in like canned chili. And you know what else? He doesn’t make yummy noises when he eats, You know – “mmmmm, this is delicious.” I know my girlfriends do it, so maybe it’s a guy thing.

We use paper plates for microwaving. And, I’m ashamed to admit, sometimes for fresh food as well. A couple of years ago Toasty came home from Costco with a giant pack of paper plates. “No more dishwashing,” he said. I do try and get him to do the dishes – I mean, if I’m doing the planning, shopping, and cooking, isn’t it only fair that he do the dishes? But he tries to get out of it, and all of his attempts are passive-aggressive. For example, he’ll do such a lousy job that I’ll have to do them over. Or he’ll say, “I’ll do them in the morning,” knowing that I won’t allow dirty dishes to sit in the sink all night and I’ll just do them myself. So the paper plates were one more passive-aggressive attempt. (I don’t know how he thought the pots and pans would get clean.)

I started using them for microwaving, but then the day came when I was making tuna sandwiches for lunch and I thought, well why not? It won’t hurt just this once, and before I knew it I was a stone cold junkie strung out on paper plates. You can’t use them for really runny food, and nobody wants to cut into a juicy steak on a paper plate, but they work for a lot of meals. I feel so guilty. The plates are made from recycled material, but I feel guilty that I don’t re-recycle them. But you can’t put plates soggy with marinara sauce into the recycling bin. Just don’t tell my mother. She’ll say, “I didn’t raise you to do that.”

Speaking of my mother, on Friday I got a call that she had fallen and my brother had taken her to the ER because she hit her head. She’s 96. So I spent the night at her place because we didn’t want her to be alone. She’s doing OK, thanks. The big bump on her head went down, but she ripped the skin on her arm, and when you’re 96 it can take weeks for wounds to heal.

Mom lives in a senior residence. She has her own apartment, but the place also has assisted living which she refuses to go into, and I can’t blame her. Assisted living is for people who can’t dress themselves or get into bed by themselves. Mom can still do that, and as she says, “How will assisted living keep me from falling down?” Anyway, she has dinner every night in the communal dining room, and up to now the food has been pretty awful, to the point of being inedible. Recently they got a new chef and he has been trying to improve things, but the food is still mediocre. She and I ate there Friday night. We had clam chowder, which was good, salad, Cornish game hens with mushroom ragout (one mushroom visible), citrus mashed potatoes and collard greens. Everything needed salt and pepper. It was passable, however, and the chocolate chip cookies for dessert were homemade. Still, I don’t know why they can’t do better. I know they are cooking for elderly people with dietary restrictions, but for what she pays the food should be outstanding. By the way, she likes to call Cornish game hens “Gornisht game hens,” which is only funny if you know a little Yiddish.

I stayed with Mom all day Saturday, which happened to be my birthday, so on Sunday Toasty wanted to do something nice for me. He made me get up at 7:30AM, which wasn’t so nice, but he wanted to get an early start because he wanted to go to the coast, and since it was a nice day there would be traffic. We went to Duarte’s Tavern in Pescadero. Duarte’s is famous for their seafood and artichokes, but we had never had breakfast there. It was great. I made yummy noises over my artichoke, Swiss cheese, and linguica omelet. (Pescadero was founded by Portuguese fishermen.) Duarte’s is also famous for pie, and we took home a strawberry-rhubarb pie, which was my father’s favorite. Then we went down the street to the Arcangeli Market for their garlic & artichoke bread. Toasty drove us home on back roads through La Honda up to Highway 35 and then home, and there was lots of traffic going the opposite way, so I had to admit that his early-bird tactic worked. It was foggy and cold in Pescadero, but the fog lifted on the way home, and we could smell the eucalyptus and redwood trees. Toasty could also smell the many creeks we crossed. He’s the only person I know who can smell water.

Duarte's Tavern
202 Stage Rd.
Pescadero, CA 94060
650-879-0464
www.duartestavern.com