It’s Getting Better All The Time

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The cold is still holding on, but I continue to feel better. I am trying to be reasonable and to limit my activities. I did sneak out to the corner store to buy some water and I felt good enough to go out for lunch at a nearby restaurant. When we passed by Salatën, we liked the menu of the day and so we decided to stop in.

The restaurant was packed and we were asked if we had a reservation. We did not, so we ended up at a table that was close to the door that leads to the kitchen. Since we were not in a trendy LA restaurant where that table is the nobody table, I was not distressed. The menu of the day offered four different appetizers and four different entrees. Susan chose the German salad that looked like a traditional salad with the addition of julienne strips of veal. I had a feixoada, which is a Brazilian dish made with black beans and small pieces of sausage. For the main course Susan opted for a breaded pork chop and I chose the meatballs. Both dishes were very tasty and reflected the restaurant’s commitment to the use of quality products. For dessert Susan chose the pear that had been poached in a sugar syrup with cinnamon and clove, topped with liquid chocolate and served with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. I went traditional and chose the brownie.

We both opted for red wine and the house pour was Enate, which is a very nice Spanish red and of a quality that is far beyond what most restaurants will pour as their house wine. When I asked for a second glass, the waiter came by and poured me the remainder of the bottle saying that it did not constitute a full glass and so he was not going to charge me for what was essentially a half glass of wine. We finished the meal with a coffee and took advantage of the presence of the waiter to ask him about the restaurant’s odd name. It turns out the Salatën is a combination of the two last names of the owners. Question answered.

The rest of the day was uneventful. We read and watched some TV. I had purchased the DVD’s of the first season of a series called “Cuéntame cómo pasó”, which follows a family beginning in the year 1968 and gives us an idea of what life was like for a middle class family of that era when Franco was still in power. The series is now in its 13^th year so we have a lot of catching up to do. We chatted with Rachel for a bit and discovered that she is still very much overloaded with conference calls as a deadline approaches for one of the projects in which she is involved. I went to bed soon thereafter. Susan stayed up for a while and read some more of a new book she has started.