Food and Theatre

Two of my favorite things, right there in the title...isn't that nice?

Saturday night my kid called (at 5:30 pm) and announced that she had an extra ticket for Twelfth Night at the Delacorte in Central Park. So I leaped up from where I was doing all this deeply important stuff at the computer (like playing solitaire) and into a shower and ran off.

It was a delight. Raul Esparza was doing Orsino and Anne Hathaway (who did extremely well, thus shattering some of my very snobbish prejudices about movie actors playing Shakespeare - which is pretty ungrateful of me, considering that movies are currently paying me) did Viola...and there were a whole bunch of absolutely wonderful people besides that. They played it very broadly, which is correct, and I was rolling in the aisles...where it was extremely wet, since it rained. We had a brief rain break in the first act when it started to REALLY pour, but other than that, we all happily laughed our way through the drizzle. I must say, it's fun to look out over an audience clad almost entirely in plastic garbage bags, although I don't think it'll ever catch on as chic wear for theatre going. One never knows, however - given that I have sat in hundred dollar seats next to entire families full of tourists wearing grubby t-shirts and flip flops. (Ugh.)

Last night I got around to cooking dinner for my pals Caesar and Joe - I was supposed to do this Thursday, but that casting director thing got in the way. I love my friends dearly, but they're not casting directors - business before pleasure.

Boy, I love feeding men. It reminds me of Benjamin Franklin's advice to his nephew (I think it was his nephew) on women. Ben told the boy to concentrate on widows, because "they are so grateful." The same holds true of cooking for men.

I made the boys huge bowls of good old fashioned steamed mussels (you know, white wine, garlic, parsley, onions) and a big salad, and lots of bread to sop up the sauce, and sliced sugared strawberries on lemon poundcake with whipped cream - which is a pretty dull dessert, but then I'm not a dessert cook of any kind - and it looks nice and tastes good. What more do you want?

Naturally, I drank too much wine, but I'm such a good little girl - I got up this morning and cleaned the kitchen and ran the dishwasher and am now feeling terribly virtuous about it. Not virtuous enough to get my ass to yoga, unfortunately, but I can do that tomorrow. Really. I mean it. Honest.

Love, Wendy