Family Dinner

"What are we having for dinner?"

I'm running on fumes. Eight hours nonstop of screen time does that to you. Programming, combing through spreadsheets, troubleshooting our invoicing bot yet again, all interspersed with phone calls and powered by a single bowl of cereal and a sandwich. I spent the last hour mindlessly clicking around the internet, not because there was anything interesting to see but because pure inertia was keeping in my chair.

My wife is at her desk still, working on a last-minute project. Her office is cold; she's got a heated blanket around her legs. She doesn't look up. "We were going to do pesto tonight. We can do something else though."

"No, that's fine. Just pesto?"

"We were going to use up the broccoli." She stops, thinking about it for a moment. "We said we were going to do salmon tomorrow, but it might make more sense to do that tonight. And we can do the peas with pasta and ricotta tomorrow."

The list is ringing a bell, there's some event on tomorrow she's attending. Plus it looks like work is going to be even busier for me. The plan makes sense. "I'll go get it started," I say.

The kitchen is cold, the sink catching the chilled air flowing through the leaky window above the faucet. The oven comes on, the ingredients come out. My head is full of cotton balls, but chopping potatoes and vegetables doesn't require deep thought. With a bit more focus I would have remembered to dry rub the fish first; as it goes the salt in my seasoning misses out on ten minutes of tenderizing.

[END OF TWELVE MINUTES]

The stove comes on, the skillet starts to sizzle. Frozen fish isn't worthy of the long, slow bake the fresh stuff gets. The kitchen is warm now, Spanish guitar from the speaker harmonizing with the sounds of cooking fish. I've got company now; my wife finished her project in time to assemble the rub and is sitting at the counter, telling me about her day.

When it's done, the fish goes straight to each plate. I can still hear the siren song of my screens but it's a quiet murmur now. My computers and PlayStation are ever-present. They cannot be banished but they can be ignored. Potatoes and vegetables come out of the oven. Roast garlic wafts through house, a final ward against the digital vampires.

The broccoli is a bit darker than I like. Even going in after the potatoes the greens just roast faster. We serve sides ourselves and sit at the counter. Sometimes we talk, or we have books we're stuck in. Tonight it's the remnants of the crossword we are pouring over. The only conversation concerns clues and answers. One of us wields the pen (never pencil for crosswords). We might finish it, we might not. It doesn't matter. The fog has been lifted. The house is warm. My head is clear again.

Prompt taken from Michael Ruhlman's Newsletter (originally created by his wife Ann)