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excited for shepherd's pie
Thursday, March 19 2015
Oscar the Cat reluctantly moved in with us over the summer and has gradually changed over time from a skittish cat who mostly stayed beneath the bed to a playful, well-adjusted cat who gets along with everyone in the household except for Julius (aka "Stripey"). He's not the brightest star in the Constellation Felis; it took him months to figure out how to come in through the pet door and it's possible he still hasn't figured out how to leave through it. But this is not to say his behavior isn't strangely nuanced. For example, in the morning when he is in the mood for aggressive snuggling (which mostly involves him standing on my chest and purring loudly in hopes of being petted), he often tried to bit my fingers, wrists, and even elbows. His bite can be quite nasty, occasionally even breaking the skin. Fortunately, he never tries to bite my face. And he never bites Gretchen when she pets him, unless, that is, we're both petting him and he gets momentarily confused about which hand belongs to whom.
This evening after work, Gretchen made a shepherd's pie using tempeh, asparagus, mushrooms, cauliflower, corn, and potatoes. Initially she'd expressed concern that I wouldn't like it because of my well-known lack of enthusiasm about potatoes (which I grew up thinking of as flavorless packets of unnecessary mealiness). My uneasiness about potatoes has been qualified over the years with exposure to them in Indian and other flavorful ethnic cuisines. But shepherd's pie is a comfort food, and I'm predisposed to think of potatoes as a drywall-like filler in that application. As Gretchen started cooking, though, I was encouraged by the fragrances coming from the kitchen. I started getting excited for shepherd's pie and even started singing a little purpose-built ditty about it.
The shepherd's pie was the dish we brought over to Susan & David's house this evening to celebrate Susan's receiving a clean bill-of-health from a breast biopsy. When we arrived, David was out at the beer store because he'd just realized that the refrigerator contained no IPAs. He came back with a four pack of Saranac Imperial IPA. Though it wasn't very IPAlike, it was decidedly better than the other mediocre stuff from the Saranac brewery. I thought it was pretty good; best of all, there are three more in Susan & David's refrigerator that will probably not be drunk by anyone but me.
Susan made a bland bean dip that Gretchen helped to jazz up with things like lemon juice and scallions. I further added hot sauce to the dip that I dipped into, though the particular hot sauce on hand (Cholula) was also bland (Gretchen later said it reminded her of the Taco Bell mild "hot sauce"). But when we finally sat down for that shepherd's pie, it was divine.
Susan & David always eat some sort of dessert later in the evening, and at first I wasn't interested in the little vegan icrecream cookie on offer. But then I tasted a tiny bit and decided I wanted one to eat all by myself. I used to love icecream sandwiches; they're better than other desserts because they are not so cloyingly sweet.
Before leaving with most of the leftover shepherd's pie, we all went out to Susan's studio to look at several gorgeous half-finished paintings, all of them less than a square foot in size. They were based on posed family portraits from the 1930s but featured Susan's trademark whimsy: instead of human heads, these well-dressed figures were rabbits, cows, dogs, and sheep. Our favorites were several in which figures posed in a row boat. All the paintings were for a big show that will be important for the advancement of Susan's career as a painter.
On the drive back home, I stopped at the Stewarts at the intersection of Route 28 and Zena Road to get a six pack of beer (as there was no beer at all in our house). I hadn't bought beer at that Stewarts in awhile and didn't remember how dismal their selection is. The only "good beer" on offer was Heineken (unless one counts Corona). Mostly all they stocked was bad American macrobrew, as if nothing about American beer culture had changed since 1986. I ended up buing a sixer of Stewarts' house beer: Mountain Brew Ice. It used to be my go-to summer beer, but for the past several years I have regarded it as cloyingly sweet. Tonight it was just the least of over a dozen evils.
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