Big Brother's Birthday

Monday was my brother's birthday. In recent years, my birthday and Christmas presents to him have usually been 12-packs of beer. For his birthday, I have also taken him to dinner at a nice restaurant. This year, however, he asked me to either give him a present or take him to dinner, and I chose the restaurant dinner.

As my American readers (and maybe others) will know, it was a holiday weekend. My brother is usually here for dinner on Saturday. Sometimes he stays for dinner on Sunday, and sometimes he goes back to Boston on Sunday afternoon. This weekend, however, there was the Monday holiday. So the question was whether to have the restaurant dinner on Sunday or Monday.

Since we usually have steak or some other red meat for dinner on Saturday, I bought steak for Saturday. For the second dinner at home (Sunday or Monday), I bought pork chops. After those purchases were made, my brother told me that he was going to a party with one of the racing fleets on Saturday. That meant that  we'd have the steak on the non-restaurant evening, and I'd need to set the pork chops aside and figure out how to use them. Then we talked about when to go to the restaurant, and he indicated that he would like to return to Boston during the day on Monday — meaning that we'd go to the restaurant on Sunday, and there would be no occasion for him to have the steak. So I decided to have half of the steak on Saturday and the other half on Monday.

The dinner at the restaurant was very good. I had a "side salad," which was very generous, with a tasty ranch-style dressing, and a frutta (sic) di mare which was quite tasty — shrimp, scallops, lobster and pasta with a red sauce — and again a large portion. My brother started with a shrimp scampi appetizer and also chose the frutta di mare. I couldn't finish the salad, and neither of us could finish the main course. My brother ate all the seafood and left most of the pasta; but I ate both parts equally, so I had leftovers from both courses to take home.

With the leftovers for my dinner on Tuesday, and my sister-in-law arriving on Wednesday for a three day visit (which I hope to blog about), I see no chance to use the pork chops until Sunday at the earliest, so they are in the freezer for now.

I also found a nice birthday card. On the front it said "A long long long time ago …" in a Star Wars type of layout. Inside it continued "you were born." There was also a device that played the Star Wars theme when the card was opened. For the past 30 or more years, he's been giving me cards about my being old, and I've been returning the favor.

Despite my grousing about not being able to use the pork chops, it was an enjoyable celebration.