Salad bar and a buttered roll with cheese tortellini and roast potatoes

At last year’s annual meeting we had to walk ten minutes to the dining room for lunch, so got the good news this morning that lunch would be held right next door to the conference room, in Regency Ballroom B. Since morning breakouts were held in the same room, lunch was a slow reveal: bowls of iceberg lettuce followed by fixins (black olives, tomatoes, cucumber slices, a giant cup of ranch dressing), buttered rolls, and steam trays of roast potatoes, cheese tortellini, beef slices, and chicken. I filled up on salad, potatoes, and buttered rolls, and sampled but didn’t finish the tortellini. I sat with S. and C. and a jumble of librarians I hadn’t met yet–B. stayed at her breakout session table and was missed. The introduction of new board members started just as I got up for a slice of the three-layer white cake with raspberry jam and white frosting–oops!

 

Cold salads, cupcakes, and pieces of hot sausage

I met D. at Grand Army Plaza carrying a dill and white bean salad to her couple of watermelons. The lesbian picnic was just inside the park on the left side, and I was overwhelmed by the strangers, collapsing immediately into a lethal combination of shyness and grouchiness that had me sitting off to the side with my mind racing, trying to look relaxed. What could I do with my hands and face besides stuff down a plateful of potato salad, two kinds of bean salad, and furtive slices of this hot sausage that is just the sort of thing I would never buy for myself but would eat the whole of if it was on the table at a lesbian picnic? I grazed for a couple of hours, never really finding a social groove, and finished up with a white box-mix cupcake that made me so glad I came. I think everyone in New York may have been at the park today.

 

Chicken caesar salad and a glass of the cotes du rhone

Nothing says “decadent” to me like spending a whole lot of money on a salad, so I went to this Brooklyn restaurant I could never afford for dinner to enjoy an expensive salad lunch. I’ve got a raft of things to self-celebrate, but when I tried to share them with the bartender, I got your basic shrug. So I ordered the caesar salad with chicken. He asked if i wanted it “classic,” meaning “with anchovies,” and though that sounded disgusting to me, it also felt like a day that occasioned a trust in the chef, so I said yes. And in fact I did enjoy the briny, sea-like flavor! I had to ask for the drink menu–I guess none of us drinks at lunch anymore–and ordered a glass of the cotes du rhone. Along with the Pixies (I know, I know, I’m late on the uptake) and an understanding of the geography of Long Island, the pleasure of the cheap cotes du rhone was one of the many good things I learned from D. I ate with some haste but also with real pleasure: it’s so good sometimes to eat lunch at a restaurant.

 

Meat salads and buttered rolls, redux

If you’d told me this morning I’d be facing another table-full of meat salads, I’d have said you were crazy. This time we were subject to a shrimp-and-pasta number than I skipped entirely, a chicken salad that I thought was tuna (K. said he wouldn’t eat it if it was tuna, and he ate a whole scoopful, so I believe him), and a meat-free Greek salad that mostly had going for it the lack of meat. I also had a buttered roll, but only one: I was mysteriously seized with pleasure and excitement and couldn’t keep much down. (Sometimes I get too excited. See also: 300.02.) A., L., R., K., and R. shared our table, and R. talked to A. and I about putting a contract together. Full of good news, and another turtle cookie bar.

 

Meat salads and buttered rolls

If you’d told me this morning that I’d be going back for seconds on beef salad, I would have said you were crazy. But it was really, really good! Sesame beef with peppers and onions. Less well received: turkey salad. None of us could tell what it was until somebody went and asked. Mostly, it tasted squishy. I supplemented with two buttered rolls (heaven!), some broccoli/cauliflower salad (vinegar-y), and a turtle brownie (chocolate, caramel, and nuts!). I ate relaxed and happy, having read my paper this morning, while listening to the wonderful Hope Olson talk about deconstruction and postcolonial methodologies in information studies. Her discussion of the potential of tagging relationships rather than entities was the intellectual equivalent of the beef salad: I was left wanting more. K. and A. shared my table, and I had the seltzer.