We just wanted some tortellini
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- May 31, 2018
- 1721
When you know what you want for dinner almost from the time your feet hit the floor in the morning, the anticipation can stick that meal in your head like a Kenny Rogers' song. You know, like when you say, “Man, I’ve been craving Mexican lately,” and you know this is the day you’re going to give in and get a big ol’ burrito and eat a couple baskets of chips.
So it went last week. The object of our desire was a plate of cheese tortellini in a wing-it-as-you-go cream sauce thickened up with a pungent Asiago, maybe throw in some spinach leaves. Oh, also garlic toast to use up the uneaten baguette, which had gone too crispy to be of much use and was about to become croutons.
We looked forward to this far too rich to be sensible tortellini dish from about 7:30 a.m. that morning onward. The text debate about specifics stretched through the morning, peaked at lunch, and then the serious ingredient inventory of mid-afternoon got underway.
All was gathered and ready by 5 p.m., and it was time to pause for something to drink and exchange stories from the day with the previous night’s Steven Colbert on in the background. We didn’t even notice that the room was getting ominously gloomy.
Then at about 5:45 p.m. came a message from my sister: “Well, here comes the storm!”
Becoming aware of our surroundings for the first time and looking out the window, the rain had indeed begun. Within a few minutes, the downpour was so heavy the view of the backyard was completely obscured. The hail began pecking at the house soon after, and I went to the porch to have a look. Satisfied that the hailstones were probably not big enough to destroy the car, I came back inside in time to hear Colbert cut off in mid sentence. The power was out.
Our first reaction, after the expletives, was “oh no, the tortellini plan.”
Let me stop to sing the praises of Dover Light & Power for a moment. Power outages, at least in my part of town, just don’t happen. When they do, it’s never more than two or three minutes, tops. Often, the only way you know the power has flickered is when the microwave clock starts flashing to be reset. Those men and women are very good at keeping the juice flowing.
So when the electricity remained off after 15 minutes, the seriousness of the situation became obvious. Online, people all over town were reporting their own lack of power.
We picked a point on the clock after which we’d give up and go get a burger someplace, though heaven only knew what place might be able to make a burger anywhere nearby.
The minutes ticked by. We broke out the cards and played a few hands of Blackjack, then Go Fish, then Slapjack, just for kicks.
Still no power. We were getting downright surly and were beginning to debate with heavy hearts what sorry stand-in fast food we might forage for. We ruled out staying in for PB&J. For goodness' sake, we hadn’t fallen that far into olden times just yet.
Sitting on the porch, watching the increased traffic out to rubberneck at fallen trees, her disappointment flashed red: “For [bleep!] sake, I just wanted some [bleep!] tortellini.”
With that, the power came back on. It took no more than 10 minutes for music to be started, butter melted, and the tortellini to finally be prodded onstage for the evening dinner performance.
Whether or not the house was flattened was of no matter, as long as there was tortellini.