Remind Me Tomorrow

It wasn't a lost weekend exactly, but somehow there wasn't so much as a spare minute to blog it.

Friday's adventure with Pru and Beau was to begin at Longoven and end at Swift Creek Mill to see "Cyrano."

As in "Take it and turn to facts my fantasies," that Cyrano. But it didn't happen that way.

Since it had been a while since our trio had been together, I began by thanking them for agreeing to our night out. "I knew I better say yes or you'll stop asking," Pru observed dryly. The woman knows me so well.

As did whomever had programmed the music because any playlist that begins with Sharon van Etten's new album and moves on to one of my all-time favorite L.A. bands, Small Black, must have me in mind.

As is our habit on play nights, we arrived early and ate all around the menu. That meant ordering sweet dumpling squash with Comte, cauliflower variations under a soft egg, roasted sunchokes with Pecorino cream and a Tuscan kale salad with fig miso and Manchego just to give us something to enjoy with a bottle of La Grange Tiphaine Clef de Sol White (after the requisite toast to the Loire, of course).

We're not savages, after all.

Over a discussion Pru began of how to celebrate my birthday (would it be wrong to go to a restaurant, leave it for another and return to the first, all in the name of a progressive dinner?) and whether it should be in or out of town, we moved on to main courses.

While I was forking up bites of luminous soy-glazed grilled cod with maitake mushrooms, spinach and cauliflowers, Pru was regaling us with tales from her Mexico jaunts. Seems the best dinners came from places where fishermen brought their catch and cooks with card tables set up waterside cooked the fish to the customer's order on the spot. She should know, having had many a tasty piece of fish that way.

By that time we were drinking Julienas Cuvee Tradition, a velvety Gamay ideal for the Church Hillians, who were devouring rosettes of smoked duck topped with horseradish cream and pickled turnip under grilled radicchio leaves, a dish that looked like a collection of purple seashells on the plate.

It wasn't long after we ordered dessert - black sesame and pear for beau, chestnut mousse with milk chocolate and persimmon sorbet for me and eggnog for Pru - that we decided that our play tickets needed to be moved to another night and Beau was put in charge of delivering that news. Fortunately, it wasn't a problem for the theater.

Let me put it this way, once discussion begins of being a sucker for coffee grounds - not to mention making love to one's coffee-maker ("Well, sure, it's warm," our server interjected) - or about having Shakespearean quotes inside a medicine cabinet, you can pretty much assume that no one's looking to follow Act I, much less Act 2.

To wit: "So she orders a gin and blood orange juice and I remind her that it's noon, she's ordering a gin drink and she doesn't drink alcohol." Must have been a helluva brunch for Queen B.

That we made another stop, this one at nearby Perch, for the bourbon fans to have tamarind-infused Rust and Stardust cocktails (I kept to Treveri Blanc de Blanc) solidified the wisdom of foregoing a linear story in the name of drama for meandering conversation ("Bring back the swoop!").

Saturday was given over to more restauranting, when I landed at a crowded Social 52 for brunch, where the wait was only 35 minutes, as opposed to our first attempt at the new Brunch (sibling to Lunch and Supper), which promised a wait of an hour and a half. All that for a cacophonous room and a white cheddar waffle with syrup and bacon, but at least the company was stellar.

Remind me again why Richmonders love brunch so much?

Things finally calmed down when Mr. Wright and I showed up at Branch and Vine that evening, grabbed a bottle of Verdejo off the shelves, ordered creamy tomato soup and sandwiches and stayed put until they closed, the owner walking out with us after locking up.

Superbowl Sunday dawned early because I had food to make for the big game which we were watching with my parents on the Northern Neck. Actually, Mr. Wright had mentioned going to watch it with my Dad, which left me looking like a bad daughter if I wasn't there, so all of a sudden it was a Superbowl party.

With zero interest in the game, I volunteered to be on KP, deciding on a thematic bent. Lobster rolls for the Patriots, Tex-Mex hummus and Pacific crab-stuffed cherry tomatoes for the Rams and enough other things - yes, there was Ukrop's cole slaw because cole slaw - to fill in the cracks. Kind of clever, right?

Mom surprised us all by pulling out a bottle of Paul Laurent Rose Champagne and who's going to say no to that? She also cracked wise, explaining to Mr. Wright that I was the daughter who'd always left the room when the Superbowl was on, so not to expect too much.

Pshaw, I was raised by sports-loving parents, have been to plenty of Washington home games and am well-versed in the rules of football, meaning he was gobsmacked when he realized I could not only understand that was happening, but even mock the cheesy graphics explaining yardage and downs.

You just never know when you can impress someone important with knowledge you've had laying around in your brain for decades, even if you do rarely need to access it. And, yes, I did pass my Dad's quiz on the first half, just moments before being underwhelmed by Adam Levine's half-time performance.

Quit taking your shirt off, son.

Then at breakfast this morning, the three of them got into an in-depth conversation of baseball. They covered uniforms (I'd liked that the Rams were wearing the throwback uniforms) and long-gone players, but it was the subject of parks that caught fire, with my all-knowing Mom's complaint about their varying sizes.

Needless to say, I had little to contribute there, although it appears I'll be adding Yankee stadium to my roster of one (Wrigley Field) before long.

All I can say is, yesterday's match proved that defense is key in the big games. Brady is Brady and Goff is Goff, 'nuff said. Pats were definitely the best team (must be all that water Brady drinks).

And now, back to my regularly scheduled life, already in progress...