Easy Mac Daddy

Every once in awhile, when my head is clouded by doubt, I turn to Lenny as a barometer o' reason. Is it overkill to add toffee to chocolate cake? Yes, but worth trying. I turn to Lenny because she too, embodies the high and low brow. She'd happily eating stale pretzels for dinner because, like Everest, it's there and free, but she's also hard core enough to make tortillas from scratch. And yet I cannot bring myself to tell even Lenny what I had for dinner last night.

I had dinner chez Mac & Van's. I may have invited myself once my plans for the night fell through. We had Mac's "Sunday night dinner," a tradition he started before Van moved in. We'd talked about having it together for at least 18 months and every time I brought it up, Van would shoot me dirty looks. It apparently took a lot of coaxing and adroit menu planning for them to stop having Sunday night dinners. But it'd been so long since the last one, and we're always so busy on weekends, that they were more than happy to share this Sunday night on a Thursday, if only we could pull it off.

Van, you see, had left her cell at home. And I had left my wallet. This made coordinating rather difficult. And meant that I couldn't bring dessert. That made me feel like a rotten guest. Especially when I had to borrow $2 just to get home. How, you may ask, could I invite myself over for a lavish meal on such short notice? How did they have time to shop, to plan, to cook? I could because Mac & Van are that kind of friends. And I could because Sunday night dinner? Is mac n' cheese with franks n' beans. None of it homemade. Van offered to make mac n' cheese from scratch, but we wouldn't have it. That's not in the spirit of Sunday night. I'd joked a few weeks that I sometimes craved Velveeta but was always too ashamed to buy it-- Mac not only concurred but actually deviated from his Easy Mac routine to purchase Velveeta. That's courage. Of course, we ate on the couch. In front of the TV. Watching re-runs. Because that's what you do when you have Sunday night dinner. (We felt like Coke would be the appropriate drink for such an occasion, but none of us could bring ourselves to drink it. Even we have standards.)