Correction. Louie didn’t make carne asada for 4th of July after all. We already had ground turkey in the fridge, so his magic fingers went to work making his version of chile beans. He pulled out a bag of 16-bean soup mix that included large lima beans, baby lima beans, speckled lima beans, and green baby lima beans (so I learned while reading the empty package this morning). And I told Louie last night that the big bean in his bowl wasn’t a lima bean. Heck, the only lima beans I ever ate were small and green and came frozen in a box.
With just the right amount of jalapeno chiles, our holiday dinner was ready. Jacqueline toasted slices of olive bread topping them with slivers of raw butter, and I chopped away making our Greek salads. Louie regretted not having sour cream for the chile beans. Then I remembered (this morning) that we could have used Greek yogurt. Oh well, we’ll do it with the leftovers.
But what I thought would be a quiet shelter-at-home holiday turned out to be more social than expected with a three-person “garden party” before dinner when our neighbor Derek sauntered by with a (full) glass of wine as Louie lingered on the front lawn. They were talking for a while, so I went outside to wish Happy 4th to Derek. Before long, Louie went inside and brought two glasses of wine and we schmoozed and social-distanced for the next hour and half – us on the inside of the fence and Derek on the sidewalk outside the fence.
The finale to July 4th was after our chile bean dinner when we hustled over for a last-minute invite to movie night at our next-door neighbor’s home. We social-distanced setting up our own chairs on the sidewalk and watched “Independence Day” projected on a white bedsheet on the front porch. The setting could not have been more perfect as fireworks sounded off all over the valley.