Did Parsley save Rosemary in time?*

The Goddess of Grigliata announces tonight’s menu:

Grigliata Gamberi e Pomodore con Riso Pilaf
("Portrait of Michael in Rice")

Runner Bev knows you’re getting a little bored with the endless blogging about tackling Italian cooking with olive-oil-soaked recipes printed from the Web site of La Cucina Italiana clutched in my fist, but until our anniversary on July 21st, Michael is getting dinner every night without my usual hostility. It’s a gift. It’s a stretch.

But it’s also novel in our household. And to be runnerish, these dinners are calculated to be part of our running programs. Low fat. High carb. Fresh. Healthy. Nutritionally, this new menu is superior to say … uh … almost anything else I might have come up with for dinner. This is good.

What’s NOT good is that Michael rushes home now after work. This is bad because he’s a Physician Assistant who operates with heart surgeons. I got the feeling tonight that there might be a guy alone, still on the table; Michael mumbled something about a working aorta being highly overrated and duct tape having many uses.

I couldn’t really understand him. His mouth was full.

And here’s what else is NOT good: I designed this project as a gift up to our anniversary on July 21st. What am I going to do on July 22nd? And can Michael come live with YOU?

But angst notwithstanding, here’s what I’ve discovered in the week that we’ve been all Tuscan Sun at night. A happy dinner hour makes for a happy runner family. And that, my friend, is worth peeling all the gazillion little leaves off the bitty twigs of thyme.

RUN STRONG!

*Apologies to Simon and Garfunkle. And many thanks to writer friend Darlyn Finch, who penned this question on a card during a Q&A at one of Paul Simon’s events and passed it to him. She guesses that because he deliberately skipped her card, he had heard the question before. I, on the other hand, had not. I found it HYSTERICAL!!!