A Romantic Dinner Critique - Essay Example

The screen door screeched, its pitch rising until it was fully open. Lisa peered outside, smiling, and feeling slightly chilled by the pleasantly cool air of the early evening. She pulled the rough, scarlet-colored wool shawl around her tighter, and hefted the heavy, wicker basket on one hip. Her cheeks were flushed and her face was flustered and happy. Her heart pounded with excitement, and her thick, dark hair was loosely pulled up and pinned. A few tendrils had rebelliously undone themselves, and blew in the breeze. The scent of burning leaves hung heavy in the air, like the incense of autumn. Outside, the landscape had changed. Where once there were the brash, insistent reds and greens of late summer now were the glamorous, rich shades of ochre, crimson and orange. Lisa stepped into her thin shoes and let the door slam shut behind her, leaving behind the cheer and light of her kitchen for the valley that was topped by the glorious shades of a sun setting behind the mountains. Her worn, cotton dress, whose colors had mellowed from being hung to dry in the sun, swished around her ankles. Twigs snapped like matchsticks beneath her feet as she walked towards the silvery sheen of the lake. From within the basket could be heard the faint clink of glass and silverware. Lisa paused and smiled even brighter at the figure sitting on a blanket by the lake. She hadn't seen Colin for over three months while she had been away for the summer, visiting her grandparents in Louisiana before school started up again. The days had seemed like years, the weeks had seemed like aeons and the months like an eternity. Lisa had met Colin when the two of them were fifteen. They both hated the same people in high school, which had led to them loving each other, although Lisa had suspected that Colin was gay at first. She liked the way he always had the edgiest jokes, the most intellectual references, the most sincere kindness and the most tasteful pants. He was head and shoulders above the other boys in her class. She knew that her heartstrings were permanently soldered to this boy when, at their upper-crust private school, Colin confessed that as soon as he was eighteen, he wanted to run away from home, join Greenpeace, and "fight eco-terrorism," as he put it. And when Colin was asked by the school basketball coach, "Why don't you want to join the team" and answered with, "Because I don't like you," she nearly proposed. Colin was on his back, staring at the sky. When he heard Lisa's footsteps, he tilted his head backwards, looked at her and smiled brightly, then casually walked over to her and squeezed her as tight as she could. The two of them laid down on the grass, embracing. Colin went back to his sky-gazing, while tapping his black, Converse-clad foot gently to some tune heard only within his head. Between his fingers he twirled a single blade of grass, then rolled it between the square palms of his hands. "I missed you, baby," Lisa said, inhaling the scent of his blond hair. He smelled like Suave shampoo and soy milk. "I missed you, too," he said. "What do you have for me to eat Did you make tasty treats for me" "I thought you would never ask," Lisa smiled. She sat up and pulled the heavy wicker basket towards them and started sifting through its contents. Lisa was fairly young-just shy of twenty-two-but in spite of that, she had marvelous skills within the kitchen, probably as a result of having an almost unhealthy interest in the domestic arts. She adored quilting, baking, sewing and knitting; her room was always spotless and beautiful, with finely crocheted ecru lace curtains on the windows and a homemade apron hanging on her door. Her dream was to one day own a giant farmhouse with lots of children (six, to be exact) and raise sheep, goats and bees. She envisioned herself making cheese and candles and liked the idea of teaching her children to spin and die skeins of yarn into all the colors of the rainbow-burgundy, cobalt, sage and blonde, all lined up on a shelf. The warm, yeasty aroma of freshly-baked bread wafted towards their nostrils, and Lisa unwrapped her dark green towel to reveal several small brioches. "Something special for today, my love, because I missed you," she smiled at Colin. She pulled out her mother's antique bone china. It was almost impossible thin, and the color of cream. Its pattern of pale, mint-colored leaves and vines with delicate blue flowers wound dizzyingly around the plates. Lisa ran her hands across its smooth, cool surface. "Um, excuse me, I'm eating off of that," said Colin. "Oh, hush, I'll use this one for me." "Wait a minute, you're making food for me, that means you don't get any. This is my gift." Lisa reached over and smacked his bare forearm. "Hey, that stings!" Colin had always admired French culture (which is one reason why Lisa questioned his sexual preferences as a teenager) and food was no exception. The summer of their junior year, he had accompanied a gaggle of girls on a school trip to Paris. Although they only spent two weeks there, the happy twinkle of its city lights, the surprisingly cheap but good wine (he was old enough to drink there!) and the seedy, bohemian parts of the old city were enough to charm him permanently. He was very excited to see that Lisa had remembered this, as she unwrapped the bread and then pulled out a bottle of Bourdeaux, along with beautiful, crystal Brandy snifters, their curved edges glinting in the fading sun. "Why the heck did you choose Brandy snifters if we're drinking wine These are so wide. Barbarian," said Colin, playfully. Unbeknownst to Colin, Lisa had spent that summer taking what she called "fancy-schmancy French cooking lessons which taught me how to make artsy-fartsy designs with sauces and stuff," and today had been the true test of her knowledge. Feeling a bit shy, she produced a small platter with various cheeses-camambert, Roquefort, brie and cheddar (she was willing to sacrifice authenticity for variety) arranged beautifully in a symmetric, round design. She placed it upon the soft, worn blanket and watched for a reaction. "This is our cheese plate," she said, quietly, "it's our appetizer, and we need to eat it first. The rest is a surprise." Colin and Lisa each took a separate brioche and then broke it to release the faintest amount of steam and an unmistakably beautiful aroma. "Oh, we can't forget this," Colin said, uncorking the wine with a surprisingly practiced hand, considering that he almost never indulged in alcoholic beverages (although while in France, all bets were off.) He poured a stream of the gorgeous, ruby-colored elixir into Lisa's goblet first, out of courtesy, and then proceeded to fill his own. A practiced hand didn't necessarily mean a whole lot of knowledge, so foregoing any sort of expertise involving sniffing, twirling or making funny noises with his mouth, Colin pleasantly smiled and clinked his goblet with Lisa's. Placing a square of Roquefort on his bread, he took a big bite, filling his mouth with the rich, unctuous, piquant flavor and then took a drink of wine, blending its tart, sweet flavor with that of the delicious cheese. "NO MORE!" Lisa shouted, grabbing the remainder of his appetizer. "No more, no more, no more," she said, then waved her hands about in a jittery fashion. "Okay, now, baby, we have to eat something else because I worked very, very hard on it and I need to know if I did it right or not and I want to make you very, very happy and pleased and proud of me and my cooking skills, so NOW we have to eat it. NOW! Okay, okay," she said, anxiously, as she lifted a heavy casserole dish out of the very bottom of the picnic basket and pulled back the foil to reveal a colorful cassoulet. "Ooo, that's pretty," said Colin appreciatively. The aroma was mouth-watering. Lisa expertly pulled out a cake-slicer and began cutting a plump square for Colin. As she broke its browned top and lifted it up, viscous strings of melted cheese stretched out into ethereal threads. "Our chemistry professor would call that cheese 'ductile,'" he said. Lisa looked at him and blinked. "You're goofy." "No, I'm hungry. My blood sugar has dropped dangerously. I am not responsible for my speech." Lisa rolled her eyes. "So you drink a sweet, alcoholic beverage And all this time I thought you were smart." After helping herself to a decent-sized piece of the crumbly, gooey cassoulet, rich with cheese and butter and flecked with red peppers and golden squash, she sighed and took a bite. "Oo, hot!" she said, her face expressing alarm while a raw sensation spread across her tongue. "Oh, wow." Lisa glanced at Colin. By now he had drained his snifter and was peering at the bottom. His eyes were big. WILL YOU MARRY ME Lisa quietly looked at him, her heart in her throat. "Well" she said. "Okay," he said, "but only if next week it's Italian." Read More