Samples from a notebook kept by Ann Daingerfield Zwicky (with my help) of dinners at 63 W. Beaumont Rd., Columbus OH, for 1969 through 1973 — dinners that were notable for their food, their occasion, or their company. We moved into the house in August 1969, after Ilse Lehiste engineered my move from UIUC to OSU, so she was our first guest. On a very yellowed page:
(#1) 8/14/69
(Interpreting prices: $1 then is about $6.62 now.)
(Spinach and lima bean soup is a fortuitous soup created to use up frozen vegetables before moving day. Delicious. On chicken verdicchio, see this 12/10/11 posting. Chocolate Chantilly is essentially sweetened whipped cream with dark chocolate folded into it.)
My OSU colleague Chuck Fillmore (and his then-wife Carolyn) came to dinner two days later:
(#2) 8/16/69
and then other OSU linguists David Stampe, Mike Geis, Cathy Callaghan, David Dowty, and Bob Jeffers (Brian Joseph and others arrived after 1973). There were many many graduate students, colleagues in other OSU departments, and friends and family (including Benita Bendon (now Campbell), who appears often in my postings here, Ann’s father and stepmother, and my cousin Wilma Severin).
And visiting linguists whose names you might recognize: Bob Wall, Jim McCawley, Paul Kiparsky, Carol Kiparsky, Bill Wang, John Goldsmith, Bob King, Jerry Sadock, Hans Hock, Wolfgang Dressler, Bill Dingwall, Fritz Newmeyer, Guy Carden, Haj Ross, Noriko Akatsuka (McCawley), Steve Anderson. That’s just in those four years.
Then three years of birthday dinners for me. 48 years ago, with a recipe:
(#2) 9/6/69
Your basic crown roast of lamb:
(#3)
From 47 years ago, no guests:
(#4) 9/7/70
(Chiffonade soup: finely shredded lettuce, finely chopped green onions, raw Frenched green beans, chopped chervil, mint leaves, chicken consommé, salt and pepper, simmered for about 10 minutes. On noisettes of lamb, from Michael Field’s Cooking School, p. 211: “boned loin lamb chops, timmed of all fat and gristle and tied into small compact rounds” — pan-fried in butter and oil for 10-12 minutes, served on crispy croutons with sauce béarnaise. Israeli rice has onions, pine nuts, curry powder, and beef stock.)
And 46 uears ago, for Harriet and Jacques Transue (ignore Ann’s spellings) and Larry Schourup (all were graduate students at the time: Jacques and Larry in linguistics, Harriet in English):
(#5) 9/6/71
By now you will have noticed the Lamb Theme for my birthday meals. I almost had lamb at a Greek restaurant on California Ave. in Palo Alto this year, but opted instead for sushi at a Japanese restaurant on Lytton Ave.
(The Lamb Theme goes back to my adolescence, when my standard special dinner was roast lamb at the West Reading Hotel, just my dad and me; my mother detested lamb, even its smell, so this was a chance for the guys to do the lamb thing and free her from cooking. It might have had something to do with the fact that we were both named Arnold and ‘lamb’ in Greek is αρνι (transliterated arni) or αρνάκι (transliterated arnáki), though it’s only accidentally similar in sound to the Germanic arn/ern– ‘eagle’ stem in the name Arnold.)
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