The package thing, however, works a lot better if you’re actually home.  Last week I was in Chicago visiting my parents – by myself – and on the phone from home, Greg mentioned that a box had arrived. For me.

Really?  A package, hmm, nothing I had ordered, a box out of the blue, a box with my name on it!  So sad – forty years old and I’m aflutter for mail.

“So where’s it from?” I was talking in my parents’ living room, my mother in a big stuffed chair, perusing the fourth Restoration Hardware that week.  Now her ears perked up.

“It’s from Teller’s,” he said.

“Tellers.” The restaurant?

I should say that Teller’s is two blocks from our house.  What were they sending me, my favorite antipasto, to go?  Greg went on.

“Should we open it?”

“Oh, well…okay…oh fine, open it…”

Grrr.  Is there anything worse than someone else opening a package intended for you?

Well, of course there is.  But it’s up there – like Santa came and you weren’t home.  Not that Santa visits our home, not unless he is hankering for latkes on Christmas Eve – but you know, if I did fry latkes for Santa and then someone else ate them, that too would be bad.  In the same way. Whatever.

Josie chimed in – I could hear her ripping tape.  “It’s a board!”

“A board.”

“Yeah!”  she got excited, “it’s a breadboard, you know the breadboard, and the card says from Mom and Dad.”

the original breadboard of my dreams, at Teller’s

The breadboard, I repeated.  Across the room my mom was laughing.  Oh, that breadboard!

After I’d blogged about my crush on a simple piece of wood, they found it – hello, she just called the restaurant – and had it sent to me, which is lovely, but…now I was standing there. In Chicago.  And my surprise package opened by not-me back in Lawrence.  What do mothers, airplanes, the web and the US mail have in common?  They all work in mysterious ways.

look…right in my kitchen!

In review, the board is great.  My mom apparently had a nice little chat with the manager and learned the boards are made from reclaimed walnut, made by a buddy of his, right here in Lawrence.  Could they get me one?  Well, they don’t normally sell them, but sure, no problem.

Sheesh.  Perhaps I should post my wish list on the blog more often?

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Dipping Oil from Baguette Heaven

1/2 cup olive oil
sea salt
fresh-ground black pepper
oregano and dried red pepper flakes, crushed together
grated parmesan or pecorino romano cheese

Whisk oil with salt and spices, seasoning to your taste. Top with a sprinkling of parmesan or romano, add sliced baguette or Italian bread, and dip away!

The wood is so tactile, so rustic and pretty that I’m quite sure it makes the bread taste better. Dip, salt, dip, pepper, dip, dip…hmm…can we get some more bread over here? It makes for chewy crust nirvana, and after looking everywhere for my own salt-and-pepper indented board, I’ve decided they probably have theirs made.

What…ask them? Please! Enough with that sensible talk. I just want them to keep bringing more, so I can turn that board over and over as if I’ve never seen the wonder that is bread and wood before. If you have seen one like it, know how to make it or where to get it, I’d be eternally grateful, and that usually involves cookies. Many thanks.

This is Cleo, our passive but noisy lab. Greg – said husband – and I spend a lot of time saying things to each other like “…what’s Cleo barking at?” or “why is she barking now?”

We spend a lot of time saying things like “what’s for dinner?”

“Are the painters coming today?”

“Did we hang Platform One yet?”

But once in a blue Lawrence moon, we go somewhere different…

…and say other things.

Somewhere that is not very well lit.

Somewhere where we did not have to order the fixtures…

…just bread and olives, pizza and red wine.

Somewhere that is not a question. We smile and don’t say much of anything.

Happy Birthday, Greg.