Friday

I woke up a little earlier than normal today, planning to clean the house before the arrival of my mother sometime in the evening. Housekeeping day was yesterday, as it is always on Thursdays in this country, and I have no excuse why I had so much to clean the very next day. Last week,* there was a good excuse. Part of today's cleaning was devoted to clearing away the very last little potatoes and things from the in-laws' garden, which I chopped up very fine and added to the dregs of Monday's soup. I don't ever, by the way, remember eating that soup. I just had spoonfuls of it here and there. But today, when I looked into the pot, the soup was over two-thirds gone. Now the pot's full again, ready for another week of surreptitious refrigerator-side dining. Mom arrived while we were at the grocery store picking up last minute this and that; we raced her back to our unit because we had ice-cream melting in the trunk. Then we hung around for a while before eating at Lebanese Taverna where I ordered way too much food considering both my ability to consume as well as the tiny four-tops they have in that place. The highlights of the dinner included the shrimp arak: boiled decapod crustaceans lounging in fennel liquor chutney; and fool m’damas: a mélange of hummus and lemon- and garlic-simmered whole fava beans. Somehow, on our little table, this last got trapped behind the bread basket, and by the time I'd eaten my way to it I was mostly full. So I now have one of my favorite dishes in a leftover carton beside the refrigerator soup, a space usually reserved for middling entrees regulated to the end of a too-large dinner. Nice. [Cavin]