Showstopper

My parents stopped by and we sat out on the deck overlooking our unfinished stone fence project. I served them warm slices of the tortilla espanola that Peggi had just finished making. I helped peel the potatoes. We made two batches. One was destined for Jeff and Margaret Spevak’s post jazz fest party last night. The Spevaks served Sangria and tapas and our tortilla was a hit. Jeff played cds from the artists who appeared at the festival.

We use Gerry Brinkman’s (from the old Rochester Club and now chef at Hotel Wellesley, on the. St. Lawrence Seaway) tortilla espanola recipe. It’s really a simple recipe but it is sort of tricky to make. Ideally you need a hinged frying pan because it is made on a stove top and you have to turn it over and cook the other side before the potatoes, onions and egg have set up. We have such a frying pan. We bought ours online at La Tienda just before Peggi stopped eating eggs to combat her high cholesterol.

My parents had just been to an Historic Brighton luncheon where a speaker talked about the lost city of Tryon, an old Indian settlement on the mouth of Irondequoit Bay near where we live. Early settlers met the Indians here and traded guns for furs and that sort of thing. We sere sitting right under the wasp nest and I kept a watch on it without making parents aware of the thing. That would have been a showstopper. When they left I brought the hose in the front door, opened the back door to the deck and blew the nest away. Peggi videoed it. It was pretty anticlimactic.

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