Van Horn Family Dinner

I have been adopted by a family named the Van Horns. Hugh and Jeni are a fabulous couple with three kids: the ever-efflourescent Ryan, the mysterious Regann, and the not even a year old charmer Lincoln. They are the kind of friends that I always enjoy seeing all-together, especially at the tail end of long weekends spent coordinating parties or fundraising events that I am too busy mingling to eat at. On Sundays, hungry, I sometimes tend to just show up at their home, tired and spent, no make-up and crazy-haired looking for some time rolling around on the floor with the kids while some sports game plays on the t.v. Usually, Hugh pours me a glass of wine and fires up the outdoor grill while Lincoln teethes on my IPhone and Ryan begs me to chase her around and play "tickle monster." But today I am spent having thrown a Halloween party the night before, so I tell my faux-fam that I am only around for a few minutes to get a dose of the sweet innocence and pure joyousness of their household which is like Vitamin B to my soul.

Hugh manages to prolong me long enough by saying that it's these moments in life when you just pop in with friends that are the best, long enough to finish cooking up a fine tri-tip and to send me off with my own Van Horn plate of meat, corn on the cob and a buttery potato. Nothing like walking into my home on a Sunday evening to veg on the couch with a ready made meal crafted with love by members of my adopted tribe. If only we all made a plate on Sunday for someone we loved, the world might be a better place!

Indio Sushi

My friend Hugh is like the male version of me. He likes show tunes, is often mistaken for gay because of his knowledge of swing dancing and non-top 40 cultural icons, (which I am occasionally mistaken for because of my knowledge of 70’s disco classics), he enjoys coming to the opera with me, as does his goddess of a wife Jeni and his little less-than-a-year-old son Lincoln who is my current boyfriend of choice, and he enjoys a good drag show. But we also share a love of food. One of the best gorgonzola chicken salads ever was served to me at one of his weekly family dinners where I, by proxy of adoption, am permanently granted entry. We also share a love of a Palm Desert dive lounge lizard bar called Casey’s which serves up piano-bar style soul nearing twelve midnight on any given good night where an aged b-actress or two waits her turn to belt out the blues.

In any case, I don’t have regularly scheduled hours with Hugh. No formal meetings or occasions on the calendar set months in advance like everything else, with him it’s more impromptu. His wife knows I am one of the guys, so when we slip out for a glass of some fine liquid or decide that we are going to train for the Palm Springs marathon next year together, she just sighs her sigh, and thinks, “thank god he’s got someone to play with him who I love too.”

Today, it was sushi in Indio at Frankie’s. Now to any other person reading this blog, they might think sushi at Frankie’s sounds not so out of the ordinary but to those of us who live in the Coachella Valley (an area far enough away from the sea that most people don’t trust sushi unless it’s No Da Te on El Paseo which serves up a $25 all you can eat sushi deal every summer to loyal locals), we know that you can not find good sushi most places.

Then, there are what I call the low down places like Joe’s Sushi in Palm Desert near the 1-10 freeway—always packed, always fresh, always cheap and the coolest chefs ever and when you are in the mood for ghetto strip mall kind of Sunday afternoon deal-down-round-the corner -meal, with hot sake of course, it’s perfection.

But if you think of the simplicity of good Mexican food and the only caveat being fresh implementation, it’s not that far away of a hop, skip and jump to sushi—simply done in the standard and true-blue styles of spider roll, spicy tuna hand wrap and of course, hot salted edamame.

We discussed the upcoming social season, the silly things we buy with money, the downsizing of our generation to build a kinder, gentler (and more show-tuned filled kind of culture) bi-partisan human race, and ate until we were too full to finish…