I wouldn't live there if you paid me...or would I?

We just got done cleaning off the dinner dishes, and the Tom Waits that my youngest played at dinner is over (Alice and Blood Money). Out of nowhere, MizBubs, sentimental fool, puts on More Songs About Buildings and Food by Talking Heads. I was listening to the song "Big Country", something of an anthem of anti-suburban anger when I was a kid:

I see the shapes, I remember from maps.
I see the shoreline. I see the whitecaps.
A baseball diamond, nice weather down there.
I see the school and the houses where the kids are.
Places to park by the factories and buildings.
Restaurants and bars for later in the evening.
Then we come to the farmlands, and the undeveloped areas. And I have learned how these things work together.
I see the parkway that passes through them all.
And I have learned how to look at these things and I say,
I wouldn't live there if you paid me.
I couldn't live there, well no siree!
I couldn't do the things that, that those people do.
I wouldn't live there if you paid me to.

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks: but I do live there! I've been living there for years! How the hell did that happen?

______________________

I got this bright idea today to cook this big dinner. MizBubs had to work at the library today, and I decided to cook a couple recipes out of a cookbook I bought her for Valentine's Day--Food of Love, from Rosemary's Restaurant, where we had possibly the best meal of our lives when we were in Las Vegas last December. I was going to make Hugo's BBQ shrimp with blue cheese slaw, and pan-seared scallops with parsnip creamed potatoes. There were sauces involved, and I started out great. Then somewhere along the way my apple cider reduction turned into a caramelized crust, and my blue cheese mayonnaise was a disaster, a soupy mess. Next thing I know, I was standing there with a bourbon in hand, not doing anything, and wondering how it all went south.

MizBubs got home a little later. I tried to act as adorable as possible, and in no time at all she made a new, perfect mayonnaise, and she rescued my apple cider reduction too, making a beautiful apple cider butter sauce for the scallops. I got out the fry daddy and made some deep-fried parsnips and crispy prosciutto to garnish the scallops. Here is the end result:

Now, closeups.

Here's the crispy fried parsnips and prosciutto

And here's how they looked on top of some pan seared scallops, served on a mound of parsnip creamed potatoes and an apple cider butter sauce


There was no cocktail, but there was beer: we paired the meal with some tasty Belgian ales:

And there you have it.

I have a wicked case of procrastination, and haven't been able to finish the project I'm supposed to do for the side job I landed, and I go back to work tomorrow. Shit, I didn't even get all the laundry and housecleaning I planned on done, and now it's Sunday night, with Monday morning looming ahead. Oh well. I may be a lazy slacker, but I'm a well-fed slacker with a woman who loves me and a couple of great kids. So screw everything else, right? Right.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. See you later, alligators.