Valentines Day

Today I wanted to make a nice dinner. This is nothing so extraordinary, I know, especially for Valentines Day, but I haven't spent any significant time cooking since classes started more than a month ago. I bought a ridiculously expensive piece of Hawaiian fish at Gelsons... I forget the name of it now, one of those names with lots of vowels. It began with an O and I remember the common name of the fish when it's alive is "moonfish." (I remember now: it's Opah) And I marinated it for a few hours, then took a guess about the best way to cook it. I ended up broiling it, but it was so thick that it took a while to cook through. I wanted to take a picture of it because it was beautiful, opalescent inside, with a pink tinge in the middle, like a conch shell that has been vacated by its occupant. And the flesh was silky and delicious. But as usual, I didn't take a picture. I never do, not even when something significant is happening, a relative is visiting, someone is graduating, whatever. I don't take pictures. I like pictures, though when I do take them, they are less than inspiring. I end up with an off center look at a corner, with a bit of person hanging off the edge of the frame as if off the proverbial edge of the universe.
I should put photography lessons on the list with all the things I mean to learn, like Spanish, something that would make sense to know because I'll be happy to have pictures of all these things later on. My husband, R., could teach me because he is such a good photographer, though he gave it up years ago in favor of other hobbies (he has so many) such as golf--though truthfully, to call golf a hobby is a misnomer. It is more of like breathing for him. It's not just playing golf, which he actually doesn't do so often because it's expensive. He thinks about, reads about, watches golf all the time, and pretends to play it in the living room with little balls made out of paper. The cats run all over the place after them, and that's how we discovered their favorite game! And he's teaching himself to play the keyboard. He's already taught himself harmonica, and is very good at this point. J. also is a very good photographer, taking after my husband's family. He's good at laying out pages, all sorts of visual things--stuff I am awful at. I like to look, of course, but making those things seems to be beyond me at the moment. So I'm not going to put a picture of the lime meringue pie with a chocolate crust I made. I discovered that making meringue with raw sugar is dicey. Its texture is different from that of regular sugar, but it did whip up after a while, though not quite as high as regular meringue would. It's a nice shade of tan though, sort of like the cat's greyish brown splotches. Once it cooked up, it was considerably darker than usual. But I'm not going to taste it; I'll let others tell me how it is.