Dinner on the Fly

"Hello?" I said holding the phone to my ear while juggling four bags of groceries. 

"Let's do dinner at home tonight," the deep voice of Mr. Wonderful said. 

"Sounds great."

"Brian and Chad will be joining us."

"Sounds busy--"

"We'll be there in 20 minutes."

Sounds crazy!

After a long week of work, meetings and extra phone calls to plumbers who could--then could not--do the job in our backyard trench, I was looking forward to a quiet, stress-free Friday night. Clearly Mr. Wonderful had other plans and they included his ravenous 30-something friends, Brian and Chad eating, and yours truly cooking. 

In Los Angeles everyone says "I'll be there in 20 minutes" but everyone knows they're lying. Going from point A in the city to Point B in 20 minutes is--to be blunt--impossible. In fact, getting from the Santa Monica Pier to the adjacent Santa Monica Beach takes 45 minutes, give or take an hour for parking. 

The only exception to this 20-minute rule was Mr. Wonderful driving from the work studio back home. For that one journey, the man had a knack for doing it in 20 minutes. Which meant I had exactly 20 minutes to prepare a meal for the hungry hordes. 

I acted in steps:

1) First, I put the groceries away, aka I dumped the bags into the fridge.

2) Then I counted the mouths to feed. We would be just four adults but three men's mouths equals nine women's mouths. Suddenly I was cooking for 10.

3) What fed a lot of people? Pasta, of course! Luckily I keep a stash of pasta on hand at all times. Tonight was no exception. Congratulated myself on being so organized.

4) Put pot of water on stove top to boil said pasta.

5) Searched pantry for pasta sauce. Found none. Cursed pasta sauce hoping it would magically appear in pantry if I cursed enough. (It didn't.) Cursed myself for being so unorganized. Remembered seeing eight tomatoes growing in the backyard that morning. Ran to veggie patch only to discover The Squirrel had eaten all eight of my tomatoes. Cursed The Squirrel for making my life harder and for eating enough tomatoes for 20!

6) Remembered I had a lemon shrimp pasta recipe. 

7) Defrosted shrimp, cut parsley, squeezed lemons. Cut finger. Cursed The Squirrel because all this was his fault.

8) Checked clock. I had five minutes until their arrival! Set table, uncorked wine, set out two bowls of nuts to nibble on.

9) Sprinted to closet, changed clothes--six times.

10) Dumped everything into pots and pans while using my left left foot to put on lipstick.

11) Mr. Wonderful walked through the front door with two famished friends in tow.

12) I dished up the food and the 10, I mean four, of us sat down at the table outside, under the stars.

Watching the men eat and hearing them marvel over the flavor of the food, warmed my heart. They raised their glasses and toasted to the cook. I smiled and thanked them before adding:

"Twenty minutes ago when my husband said he was bringing two friends home for dinner, I told him: 'that sounds… perfect'."

And it was.

The Front Yard aka The Disaster Zone

“We’ll start at the top and go down.”

“But they’re 70 feet high,” I said.

“We’ll use spikes.”

I shook my head.  “No one’s nailing my stuff.” 

I was speaking to the third tree specialist of the week to get a quote to trim our yard’s overgrown palm trees.  Trimming palms is one of the most expensive and dangerous jobs in a California garden; dangerous for the trimmer and the tree.  Traditionally tree maintenance companies employ men who wear a harness and spiked shoes to literally scale up and down the tree using machetes to cut off the brown skirt of dead palm leaves or “fronds”.  The shoe spikes puncture the trunk to give the trimmer a foothold on the tree.  Unfortunately even with the harness the spiked shoes system is not foolproof for the man and accidents have happened.

Neither are spikes ideal for the tree.  Once a palm trunk is punctured by a spiked shoe, it never heals. The hole remains and every time spiked shoes are used to climb the tree, more holes are created making the tree look like it has a case of reverse chicken pox or worse, horrible acne scars.  Several years ago Los Angeles officials noticed palm trees citywide were dying en masse.  Eventually they traced the high arboreal death rate to several factors including spiked shoes.  Spikes that had been used to trim a diseased tree were then used on healthy palms, which spread the infection.  

That night over dinner I explained my palm findings to Mr. Wonderful. 

“It sounds expensive,” he said sliding into a chair.

“Safety is more important than money.  And it seems safer for everyone not to use spikes to trim our 11 palms.” 

“But then how do they trim a 70 foot palm tree?”

“With a bucket truck,” I said.  “Which they’ll drive onto the front yard.”

“What about our lawn?”

“It’s just for a couple hours,” I said handing him a plate of hot pasta. 

“Two hours?”

“Uh, ten.”

"That'll ruin it--" I set a bowl of steaming hot pasta on the table.  He turned his attention back to the palms.  "We're going to have to reseed the whole lawn--" I set a bowl of shrimp and lemon pasta sauce next to his plate and dished him up a helping.  "It'll be..."  I grabbed a wedge of hard Parmesan-Reggiano.

"Grated cheese?"

He nodded.  His palm tree questioning would have continued but he was hungry and he loves my shrimp and lemon pasta.  

"Delicious," he said spinning the pasta around his fork.  "So… what were we talking about?"

Unlike the palm trees, the way to work with Mr. Wonderful was to start with his belly and go up to his heart and head.