🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit for the first of November — and, since this is the Day of the Dead, those are the carnivorous mutant rabbits from Night of the Lepus (see my 7/5/14 posting “Bunnies run amok”, about the (laughably inept) 1972 science fiction horror movie), not your sweet bunnies:
Today’s topic has nothing to do with the Day of the Dead, or rabbits (mutant or otherwise), but is about food, and my life, and is transparently a device for escaping current events and my bodily miseries. I am not cut off from the world — I get the New York Times every morning, and the Economist and the New Yorker every week — but I have entirely stopped following the news and commentary on the news on tv. The background for my days is re-runs (on dvd) of all six years of the tv series Major Crimes (details in my 10/29 posting with that title); I’m partway through season 3 at the moment, hoping that this will carry me through what is still to come. I no longer have persecution dreams, and I’m not constantly frozen in panic, so the therapy seems to be working.
Now I leave all this, to return to my Grubhub food delivery order of 10/14, from the Amazing Wok in San Carlos CA, and how it ended up providing me with 16 excellent meals over a 13-day period.
The background. Going back only in Palo Alto, a meal for some special occasions, especially Thanksgiving: Singapore-style rice noodles (“angel-hair rice noodles tossed with BBQ pork, shrimp, onion in a light hint of curry sauce”, as the Green Elephant Gourmet restaurant describes it), usually with dry stir-fried green beans (Sichuan style, with an aromatic ground-pork sauce). At first, at or picked up from the Hong Kong-style restaurant Tai Pan in downtown Palo Alto; and then delivered by Grubhub from Green Elephant in southern Palo Alto.
Act 1: the order (in four numbered parts). This brings us to 10/14, when I had a random yen for (1) Singapore rice noodles, found Green Elephant unavailable and discovered a restaurant new to Grubhub, Amazing Wok in San Carlos. They had the rice noodles, and I thought I’d try a different green vegetable: (2) sauteed bok choy with black mushrooms. Plus an order of (3) brown rice to put it over. Then I thought some meat would round out the meal, looked for lamb dishes, especially spicy ones, and, bingo, (4) Mongolian lamb! (and I had the rice for it).
Three dishes is a lot for one person, but I always expect to have left-overs for further meals, either just as they were before, re-heated, or made into soups (I make a lot of soups). So I looked forward to several days of meals from this order.
Act 2: the vanishing. I put the order in on-line around 3, expecting it to be delivered between 4 and 4:30. Grubhub tracks the progress of the delivery car as it goes to the restaurant, picks up the order, and brings it to your house. All this in an on-line display.
So I watched the little car icon move along a map of the local streets, until it came to the marker for my house, and the program announced that my order had been delivered.
Now, by then I was waiting by the front door with my walker and its handy tray, so I could assure the Grubhub investigator that no one had come to my door, nor had an order been left at the condos immediately to the north and south of mine. The courier had not made a confirmatory photo of the delivery, so there was no record of it. After all this had been settled, Grubhub offered to put a new order in, on rush, no charge of course, to replace the vanished one. That meant more than an hour more until my dinner came, but I’d made the first order early, so what the hell. The day ticked on.
Act 3, scene 1: the restoration. The re-order arrived without incident. I sat down to dinner around 6.
The order was gigantic, containers nearly half again as large as Green Elephant’s. Clearly enough food for that day and at least five more. It was also wonderful, all of it: the Singapore rice noodles fragrant and substantial, the mushrooms with the bok choy rich in flavor and texture, the brown rice plump and delicious, and the lamb just stunning (perfect texture, nicely spiced, and no hint of rank mutton).
To re-cap: I ordered three dishes instead of two, from a company whose orders turned out to be about 50% larger than the ones I was used to. So I had a monstrous amount of food. (Not that that was a problem, but it was quite a surprise.) Hold that thought.
Act 3, scene 2: the resurrection. While I was enjoying this meal, the doorbell rang. And there was a young couple, from a condo well up the street from mine, bearing a huge bag of food. My original Amazing Wok order, delivered to them hours before, while they were out getting dinner. They weren’t willing to keep it for themselves, and there was no way to undo the order, so I now had twice my monstrous amount of food. A whole refrigerator full of Chinese takeout.
Which provided 16 meals over the 13 days from 10/14 through 10/26, inclusive. A collection of varied meals, eventually bearing little resemblance to the original dishes. The lamb and rice made a spectacular soup (with a bit of sriracha for pizzazz), for one thing.
Meanwhile, in my Major Crimes marathon, I’m well into the fourth season. Noticing more things to post about, if I ever have the time to.
Life lurches on.
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