Literary Thyme

Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.
~Fran Lebowitz

A good portion of my time last week was given to preparing for the Annual WCF Winter Ball ~ which almost wasn’t due to, well, winter weather! In the end, the Nor’easter only dusted the ground, making driving relatively painless ~ at least until midnight. Then Sunday morning we woke up to about 5-8 inches ~ finally! I was getting the winter blues - 50 degree weather in February is just wrong!

Amidst all the preparation, Sullivan and I did manage to meet for lunch to discuss our latest brainstorm (outside of MacBeth) ~ an American Inklings group. It had occurred to me that in essence, he and I were already doing what the original Inklings did: meet and critique each other’s writings. All that was missing was meeting over a superb European dinner (i.e. late and infinite) and a single malt Scotch ~ or a Brandy Alexander, girlie girl that I am! ;-)

Perhaps such a group already exists, but if it does, we have yet to find it. We’re not sure how we want the group to look, though we do know we want to keep it intimate enough to allow bonds of friendship to form and trust to develop in each other’s opinions. So last week, we met for lunch at one of several places I had researched to be our American “Bird and Baby.”

As Sullivan observed about Rosemary’s Thyme Bistro: “adding "bistro" to your name automatically entitles you to charge $15 for lunch!" We both had the Adana Kabob ~ a mixture of lamb and beef over jasmine rice, served with roasted vegetables and tzatziki sauce. It was delightfully spicy ~ just enough for the tzatziki sauce to refresh the palette between bites. For dessert, I ordered crème brulee (big shocker there!) while Sullivan decided to try the cappuccino flan. The crème brulee wasn’t bad ~ but I think they must have been talking while holding the torch over the sugar ~ it tasted a tad sooty. The cappuccino flan however was decadent and well worth the wait.

All told, we spent about $50 on lunch for two. Given the high price tag (call me thrifty), and the lack of a private space in which to read aloud and pontificate on all things literary, the American Inklings will continue searching for our version of a dark English pub for after dinner Scotch that would make Tolkien, Lewis, Williams and the other Inklings proud.

By the way, if you are a writer living in the general area of Northern Virginia and have at least some knowledge of Lewis and Tolkien and would love to have other amateur writers rip your masterpieces to shreds, drop Sullivan or I a line. ;-)

Oremus pro invicem,
Mikaela