Yesterday… and tomorrow

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, April 5, 2009

TO LAYTONVILLE YESTERDAY, there to see grandson Henry play the role of Oscar (the Walter Matthau role) in The Odd Couple (which he did very well, of course, as he does everything): but first to have a bite to eat. He lives with his parents in a straw-bale house our son built on a high pasture south of Laytonville. Meadow, Henry's mother, had made a nice potato salad: boiled potatoes, slipped out of their skins and quartered; hard-boiled eggs (probably from her own hens), ditto; a little vinaigrette, some very thin-sliced white onions, a few capers. A loaf of bread from Downtown Bakery & Creamery. Pickled peppers; fresh tiny tomatoes (God only knows where they came from).

Local Zinfandel, 2005; private party

Outside the cattle and sheep waited for their own supper; Billie Jean the Jersey cow, twelve years old, snuffled up blades of grass at the doorstep; I went out into the pasture to try to find the kildeers' nest, but they lured me away as they always do.

TOMORROW WE FLY to Washington, D.C., there to be tourists for a week. We'll eat Tuesday night at one of my favorite restaurants: and I haven't been there in years. But tomorrow we'll be eating at the airport and in the air, and I don't look forward to it.

And tonight? Tortellini, broccolini, green salad, a little red wine…