jelibeenz à Montréal 2006

"The sweetest thing..."

Hm. Aaron, if you're reading this, I have another story now to answer your "sweetest thing" question! Haha. For those of you who don't know, Aaron, the master of random yet often profound questions, once asked about the sweetest thing a guy has ever done...and so now I will tell you all about last Friday's dinner. And note the use of the present historic tense!

The story actually begins from dinner on Monday...well my part of it anyway--I suppose the guys' part begins a few weeks earlier. So on Monday, after a wonderful dinner prepared for our Food Group by Danae and James, we were trying to figure out who will cook for Friday's dinner. Immediately Jeremy volunteered, "I'll cook with James on Friday!" Seeing that James had just cooked that night I wondered suspiciously for a short while, but since James was okay with it I decided to let it go.
Fast forward to Friday morning after prayer when we discover that Andy and Jon are cooking for their Food Group and Brad and John are cooking for their Food Group. Heather makes the comment that all the guys are cooking, and we wonder and marvel at the fact...but in the end I think nothing more than that it's just a coincidence. Afterwards Brad, Hannah, Jenny, and I go to Chinatown, originally planning to have dim sum since neither of them have any experience in that area, but we end up going to Niu Kee (牛記), a restaurant opened by a former Beijing opera star that Andy was raving about earlier that morning. Raving about the restaurant, not the opera star. During lunch, Brad asks us about Mexican food, this being the day for ethnic food experiences...but evidently we know nothing about it. Other than the fact that it has cilantro...and I only know about that because it's in Chinese food too.
Anyways, after having finished our 但但麵, 魚香肉絲, 腰果雞丁, 小籠包, 蔥油餅, 蒜茸豆苗 (spicy noodles, "fish flavour" spicy pork, cashew chicken, small steamed buns, green onion pancake, and minced garlic pea plants...it's hard to translate food names), orange slices, and fortune cookies (Brad ate his whole, paper and all...) with minimal leftovers that Jenny wants to bring home for 下午茶 (afternoon tea), Brad proceeds to fiddle with his phone and mumble something about meeting John and calling him and batteries being low. I assume they were supposed to meet for discipleship or something because it's still way too early to make dinner, and although Brad is somewhat preoccupied with his phone, we wander around Chinatown for a bit and he buys a Chinese/English Bible, with counsel from Jenny and myself, that he can give to Fan, one of the guys he led to Christ a few weeks earlier. Somewhere along the line, Jenny disappears to somewhere, and while we wait for her to come back Brad recommences fiddling with his phone and muttering about calling John and low batteries. Both Hannah and I offer our phones for him to use, but he refuses. I think that it's a bit odd...because if he's supposed to meet John, they should contact each other to decide on where and when...but I figure that Brad's just being super-polite and unobtrusive that day and think nothing more.
After Jenny returns, we basically split off; Brad going back to Solin and Hannah, Jenny, and I continuing on to Old Montreal where we were planning on doing some random evangelism. The funny thing is that while we are on the way to Old Montreal, Julie calls Hannah because they supposedly had an appointment for discipleship in the morning. Our plans are cut short because of this, but we do manage to have adventures with triangular grippy pencils, an amphi-bus, fluorescent pink cherry-ginger flavoured Perrier, and the Hugger Busker before we return.
The rest of the afternoon is pretty quiet and uneventful...I read some Modern Canadian Plays and Jenny comes up to use the computer...Lydia comes in to get Jenny to teach her some Chinese...and that's basically it. Until Chara comes home from work and announces that her Food Group is cooking and eating in our apartment. It's quite odd though because they usually eat at Andy's house, and what makes it even more odd is that Andy is cooking.... Wouldn't it make more sense for Andy to cook at Andy's house and eat at Andy's house? Anyways, Chara cleans the apartment, which is good because it needed cleaning, and we wait for the Food Group to appear. 5:45 (meeting time for Food Group) comes and goes and so we wonder where everyone is...especially the boys who are cooking...and we begin to suspect that something is up. By the way, my Food Group meets at 6:00, so I wasn't late.
Finally just before 6, Andy comes up and announces that there has been a big problem and that everybody has to meet in the basement. Andy, by the way, is one the Project Directors and has this kind of authority to make these announcements. We all make our way to our meeting room in the basement, and as Julie tries to open the door, it gets pushed shut again by someone whose laugh sounds like Jeremy's. By then, we have all figured out that the guys have prepared dinner for us...haha. And sure enough, the menu states that one of the choices for the plat principal is "crêpes mexicaines" stuffed with many yummy things including "poulet mariné avec cilantro." Haha! The other dishes on the menu are also crêpes, the other choice for the main course being "crêpes bénédict" and the dessert being crêpes with fruit, ice cream, and other sweet stuff. Despite orders getting mixed up, missing ingredients, and random bits of egg shell, it was a really really good meal! Hooray for Brad the Super Chef and the team of Super Kitchen Help and Super Servers! Jeremy also wrote and performed a song for us...something about appreciating the girls for encouragement and support, etc. Rainbow is now in posession of the lyrics and I think she's going to post them on her blog at some point.
Oh, and hooray for Chara and Jenny for cleaning up the kitchen afterwards! Just in time for us to dirty it again with our dumpling adventures the next two nights, haha! But that is a different story that may or may not be recounted at a later date.

fluorescent pink Perrier and triangular grippy pencils amphi-bus Hannah and Jenny with the Hugger Busker the Hugger Busker Selene and Jenny enjoying their crêpes bénédict my crêpes mexicaines Rachelle and her crêpes bénédict Jeremy and James Jenny attacking the Project Director with the rolling pin we used for the next night's dumpling-making party the sugar that's pretending to be milk my dessert: crêpes with ice cream, bananas, and maple syrup...and they were bigger than the main course Jonathan emerges from the kitchen covered in icing sugar and eating out of a pot lid Jeremy serenades us as Brad the Super Chef does a stint as a human music stand (like in Les Choristes)

posted by jelibeenz @ 9:42 a.m.