Finally, It's Friday Night!

What a lucky girl you are to have made it through a bothersome week!

The week starts out with two days of what can only be described as an old-time-religion kind of a deluge. You can’t look away from the window as water submerges the garden and forms a river coursing down the street.

Wednesday brings the annual medical checkup during which you expected the usual banter with your funny doctor. Instead, he frowns at your vitals and issues two new prescriptions.

Thursday ends with a rare spat with your spouse. He fails to notice you are mad, further infuriating you. The next day you patiently explain what the altercation was all about. He apologizes, then you kiss.

Friday brings the earthquake.

Throughout the week, there is a great deal of excitement about the coming Monday’s total eclipse. No one seems to much care that, throughout history, the event was not especially welcomed, considering it meant angry gods, dying sun, devastating plagues, poisonous rain. Do we really need one presidential candidate predicting fire and brimstone? He’s even hawking his very own bible to prove it, thus joining a particular type of American demagogue. Has no one seen All the King’s Men and/or A Face in the Crowd?!

(Firing up the public.)

(New kind of American politics is born.)

Yet, Saints Be Praised! Friday afternoon finds you more or less in one piece. You lucky girl! And Saturday promises to be marvelous because you will have a long lunch with your very dear friends! She is a very fine cook and has devised a menu to delight all the delicate stomachs that will gather around her table: chicken infused with a handful of our favorite herbs, acorn squash, and sauté spinach. You promise to whip up a pavlova for dessert. A big shimmering bowl of love will wrap up this annoying week.

You just have to get through Friday’s dinner and the pavlova which you have never made before. Unfortunately, the cupboards and refrigerator are bare. An excursion, then, to the large fruit and vegetable stand for eggs and berries where you also find firm white leeks piled up near pints of ripe yellow cherry tomatoes. For no particular reason, basil seems imperative so you cross the park to the large Chinese market that always offers the freshest basil outside a garden. It also happens that the pharmacy is next door for you to pick up your new medicines. Your heavy market bag must be adjusted several time on the walk home.

It may be reasonable to think that, after such a successful outing, you’d be excited to sit down and figure out dinner and begin the pavlova. Instead, you take a two hour nap that lands you firmly in the time reserved for tea and reading. Before you know it, your husband is wondering what’s up with dinner. It’s 7:37 after all. You haven’t even mixed your nightly minuscule martini!

By the time you arrive in the kitchen and start wondering yourself what’s up for dinner, your husband has settled in his chair with his nightly beer and toggles between Pulp Fiction and Double Indemnity. You could make a quiche or omelet from what you bought at the market—they’re perfect for a casual Friday meal. Then again, they can be complicated and there’s the delicate matter of attempting the pavlova. Fortunately, a box of pasta miraculously appears in the back of the cupboard. There you have it, a simple dinner.

You are, indeed, a lucky girl!

The leeks are thinly sliced and sautéed in a little olive oil. At the point where they begin to almost melt, you stir in the tomatoes and bring the mixture to a gentle simmer. Be sure to carefully stir every now and then. At the same time, you start the pavlova, cutting a piece of parchment paper about the size of your cookie sheet and tracing a circle on it. Next, the mixer is dragged out and the egg whites are beaten. Pay attention to how the whites are stiffening while adding the sugar. Lightly fold cornstarch and vinegar into the egg whites then spoon the mass out within the confines of the circle you drew on the parchment. Create peaks and swirls across the top and sides of the meringue with the back of your spatula. Slide the cookie sheet into the oven. Put a pot of water on the stove for the pasta. Stir the sauce.

You have a minute now to finish your martini and catch up on Pulp Fiction and Double Indemnity: Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta are in the diner, Fred MacMurray shoots Barbara Stanwyck.

The pavlova has 38 minutes left to cook when the pasta is added to the boiling water. By the time the sauce reaches the superb state the pasta is done. Dinner is served.

The oven timer dings and you turn off the heat. But you can’t open the oven door to check if it’s truly done because the meringue will crack. In fact, it must remain undisturbed in there for the whole night. You struggle to find long lost faith to believe all is well in there.

You want nothing more than to go to bed and sleep off this week.

The next morning you pull out a fairly acceptable pavlova and wrap it up for the long ride to your dear friends’ house for lunch.

What a wonderful week it was, now that you’ve crossed over to the otherside! How exciting it is that Monday begins with a solar eclipse passing somewhat over your house!

Also….how about doing one or the other or both of these!