Saturday afternoon at the folks'. Today's fine fare is pastrami and sauerkraut sandwiches. For St. Patrick's Day. We know this isn't exactly on par with corned beef and cabbage, except that sauerkraut IS made from cabbage. So it counts. What happened was being unable to find Jenny O brand Corned Turkey (because we don't eat red meat), for the "corned turkey and shredded cabbage sandwiches." Closest I could find was turkey pastrami (though I considered getting regular turkey and trying to "corn" it myself, but I don't even know what that means). The pastrami looked nice and peppery and tasty, though, so I got my mom dialed into the decision process right there in the aisle.
me: "Where is pastrami from anyway?"
her: "I think it's Jewish."
me: "Hhhmmm...I don't know. Does it go with cabbage?"
her: "I'm not crazy about the cabbage part.
me: "But you like sauerkraut."
her: "Ooooo, let's have sauerkraut!"
me: "Okay, I guess so..."
(Something didn't seem right about that but it's hard to think with M. always and forever flapping her hand in front of my face)
her: "Sure! We CAN'T have St. Patrick's Day without sauerkraut."
me: "Um... (???) I think you're thinking of Octoberfest."
her: "Oh. Well, whatever. I want sauerkraut."
At that point M. became shrill in the cart with her "are you talking about me?" routine, then started pulling things off the shelves, so I was out of time.
me: "So then we just say 'screw the Irish' and have pastrami and sauerkraut?"
her: "Yep. Sounds good."
And that's how it came to be that we had pastrami and sauerkraut sandwiches on St. Patrick's Day today, with table discussion regarding where does pastrami come from, and of course, constant interruptions from M. demanding to know if we were talking about her.
M.: "Did you just talk about me?"
me: "Nope."
M.: "Do you say 'nope' lots of times?"
me: "Nope--hey! Look at the SHINY thing!"
M. looks at her shiny bracelet, as if for the first time, and leaves us alone for about one minute.
My dad says pastrami is italian, and my mom still insists it's jewish. But this is the woman with zero ethnic sensibilities when it comes to food. This is someone who stands in the soup aisle, and when most people might pick out one can of Tuscan White Bean with Pasta and another can of Southwestern Chicken Fiesta with Rice, thinking they will then have two separate meals of soup--she imagines how they might taste together! Then proudly serves the goulash to us as 'look at what good soup I made.' The original makers Progresso and Wolfgang Puck be damned!
Then later we were discussing our dreary weather here and how the end of winter, all of spring, and beginning of summer are really just one long season--of rain, cold, gray, etc. And I mentioned how the local weather forecasters must get bored and that is evidenced by the fact that one of our weather guys recently wrote an in depth analysis of the new Van Halen album on his weather blog, rather than discuss the weather. That led to the inevitable: my 81 year old dad asking, "Van-who?"
me: "Van Halen."
he shrugged
me: "You've never heard of Van Halen? From the 80s?"
him: "80s?"
me: "THE NINETEEN EIGHTIES."
he shrugged again
me: "Rock band? Big hair?"
(he can write LOL emails to me when he's making fun of my mom, he asks me how to post pictures to his fb page, relentlessly ask me "what is an app?", but he's never heard of Van Halen???)
him: "So what piece band is it?"
Of course I didn't know how many instruments are included in Van Halen's "ensemble" so I told him that I do not know the answer to that. (While of course at the same time reassuring M. we were not talking about her, and reminding her "LOOK AT THE SHINY THING.")
That's the highlights from St. Patrick's Day with the folks. Our next holiday meal will be the traditional Easter Egg Foo Young. Can't wait!
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