Wedding, Part One
Now
that Minerva has had her say, I’ll tell you what really happened:
Dr. Timothy Harlan (Dr. Gourmet) is married. The wedding was outdoors, in the countryside and it was frigid cold. I just happened to be wearing a knee-length dress and evening sandals. I was cold. Not just cold, my toes were numb from the glacial weather. I was so glad that the outside part --the service -- didn’t last too long, and I was really looking forward to the dinner to come inside the big stone Inn.
My sister (let’s call her Nephthys, the sister of Isis in ancient Egyptian mythology) and I went inside, with Minerva trailing behind us. We sat at the closest empty table, right next to the bar. We sat down, and complained about the cold while drinking cold soda (I know, we’re intelligent, aren’t we?) and trying to thaw out our fingers over the little votive candle.
The freezing minutes ticked by and out came the first course, something that looked like smooth mashed potatoes, white, creamy, with that mashed potato texture, and served in delicate little teacups without any spoons. I desperately wanted it to be warm soup. I tried a sip first, and much to my dismay it was cold. But tasty. I told the others to try some and they liked it a bit. Minerva was the first to get close to the bottom, and the first to get to the “strange brown stuff” as she called it, because at the time we didn’t know what we were eating. I could tell Minerva didn’t like the “brown stuff” so I figured since she wrote about food, she must have good taste. So I decided not to get all the way to the “brown stuff”. Nephthys got to the brown stuff and grimaced.
“What is this stuff?” she asked, sounding disgusted.
“No clue, but I can tell neither of you like it, so I don’t think I’ll have any.” I stated, stubborn.
“Come on, Isis, I dare you,” Minerva chimed in while a sly smirk washed across her face.
I just wanted to prove her wrong, so I said, “Fine. I will try some.” I braced myself for something unexpected and perhaps slightly disgusting.
It wasn’t that bad; I sort of liked it. It tasted something like balsamic vinegar. After we all tried it, Minerva got a waitress and asked her what it was. It turned out to be creamed cauliflower soup with a vinaigrette reduction on the bottom.
Next came something that looked like a chunky tapenade. It was served in an Asian soupspoon with a cracker on top. The tapenade on top of the toasted crunchy cracker was incredibly good (and olives aren’t even my favorite food!!).
Next thing we know the waitress is taking away our empty soup spoons and replacing them with pizza and a simple salad, obviously kid’s meal type food at a fancy restaurant.
“Is this some kind of bad joke?” I said to Nephthys once the waitress was out of earshot.
“I don’t know but it is definitely not what everybody else is getting,” she replied.
“Well I’m going to eat it, at least for the time being, until we can get something better; I’m hungry,” Minerva said, bluntly.
So we munched on the pizza until Chef Pearson, the head chef, and Dr. Gourmet came in.
Dr. Gourmet picked up a knife from the nearest table and started clinking on his glass. He told us that Chef Pearson was going to tell us what we had eaten and what was to come. We learned that there were four courses left, and none of the courses included pizza. We were told that the things left were shrimp and grits, rabbit stew in a pumpkin shell, and steak.
“I want bunny stew,” I complained to the population of my table.
“Why don’t you go ask for the fancy stuff, you’re the food lovers,” Nephthys suggested (she isn’t the biggest foodie in the world…).
So Minerva called over her mom, and we complained about the pizza and requested some real food.
Unfortunately, the shrimp and grits took a while to emerge out of the kitchen, and we were frustrated that we didn’t eat a little more pizza before they took it away, we were still cold and the pizza was the only warm food that we had had.
The shrimp and grits arrived eventually and I started eating gratefully. Minerva tried to explain to us her reasons for not liking grits, but being G.R.I.T.S. ourselves (Girls Raised In The South), we wouldn’t hear of it. Minerva ate her steak sauce soaked shrimp, but refused to eat the grits. She pushed them around on her plate so it looked like she had eaten some, she mashed every last drop of steak sauce into them to see if they would taste better, she even “accidentally” spilled a single drop of root beer on the plate and called that disgusting and wouldn’t eat them. She tried everything to make it look like she ate them, but eventually she just made me eat them. I resisted a lot, but she all but forced them down my throat to get me to eat them. I have to say, that was one nasty concoction of root beer, grits, and steak sauce.
Next came the rabbit stew in the pumpkin shell. On the plate was a small pumpkin shell with the top cut off, the insides scooped out, with rabbit stew inside it. The top of the pumpkin was also sitting on the plate. I thought the rabbit stew was delicious, and the flavor of the pumpkin really accented the flavor of the stew. I really enjoyed the pumpkin; I scooped out the thin layer of pumpkin from the shell, and off of the top.
After everyone finished the bunny stew, the waitress took a while to clear our plates and empty pumpkin shells, and then a few minutes later she came back with plates of steak. Now, these portions weren’t very big, after all this was a tasting menu and there were a lot of different plates. This was Minerva’s biggest issue with the evening: there wasn’t enough steak to fill her appetite. But as for me, I had a lot of everything else served, so I couldn’t eat the piece of steak and the salad. I left a bit of steak sitting on my plate and Minerva kept eyeing it hungrily, so I offered it to her, and she accepted the offer gladly.
Look out for the next story, part two of the wedding meal, to see what Dr. Gourmet serves for wedding cake!
January 22, 2007
Isis (not her real name) is sixteen years old and is really interested in food
because her dad is a good cook. She was practically raised in a Vietnamese
restaurant, and as a baby ate her first solid foods there, which were rice
noodles. She tries most foods that are offered to her and her parents urge her
to also. For example, when she was 7 years old, she was at a French restaurant
and her parents were having snails and they easily talked her into trying them.
They ended up being pretty good!
Isis takes ballet, plays soccer, sings in a choir, and loves to travel. She thinks that if you are going to eat, why not eat well if you can? There seems to be no reason not to.
Email questions or comments for these two young women to webmaster@drgourmet.com.