14 October 2005

My Best Friend Just Hijacked My Blender

So, Robin was scheduled to come over for dinner last night, and because of all the skook he's been through recently (and also because we're dirt-poor and the herb garden is out of control) I decided to make him pasta-pesto. Which, being the brilliant friend that I am, I happen to know is his favourite meal.

Robin comes over just after 7, and beholds me in the kitchen with a vat of water on the boil, the blender out, and a huge-ass pile of basil on a dishtowel. A couple of humps of garlic, some parm, some walnuts. (neither of us likes pine nuts. Ptui!) Says to me, "So, what's for din-din?" Um, guess.

He opens the (first) bottle of white wine (Fat Bastard sauv blanc, pretty yummy) and pours us each a glass, so we can "Get obliviated." Sounds good so far. I'm picking bugs and stuff off the basil and hucking it into the blender. It's at this point that Robin, who has been telling me all about his breakup with Teri and how she thought he was a control freak, goes, "Honey......let me do that," and gets up off where he's been leaning on the kitchen table. It makes sense, right? The man's Italian. Native speaker, and all that. For chrissakes, the name on his passport is Umberto. Also, he's a complete boss in the kitchen, much like a certain husband I have. I'm used to this. I've been relegated to salad duty and baked treats for the remainder of my existence.


Anyway, after a couple of swigs of olive oil into the blender (I cannot believe we actually ran out of olive oil in my house. That's like running out of air.) and some of the garlic, he looks at me and goes, "You know you can't really make pesto in a blender. Where's your food processor?"

What, you mean the one my husband wouldn't let me get because it's just as quick for him to chop the veg himself? Yeah. That one. It's working a double in the kitchen tonight. Besides which, I've always made pesto in the blender. (possibly for just this reason, actually)

Robin, of course, has a food processor 100 yards away through the Noah's Ark style downpour. It's now 7:20, dark as a donkey's arse, and we're two thirds of the way through the Fat Bastard. So we put on our rain slickers, grab our wine glasses, cork the wine, wrap the basil up in its dishtowel, untwist the blender from its base, and pack the whole mess into a string bag. And tromp up the steps over the hill.

There we are, in one of those cataclysmically blinding downpours (sans lightning, which would have made it so....I don't know....Forrest Gump), hunkered over our wine glasses, in the dark, on these slippery slate steps over the hill, Robin's got my blender under his arm, and he stops dead in his tracks, looks at me from under the brim of his ancient Columbia danger-yellow parka hood, and goes, "Is Teri right? Am I too controlling?"

I'm very proud of myself for not actually laughing out loud.