Sunday, May 21, 2017

sunday night

we frequently go out for dinner on Sunday night - often we meet friends who, like us, don't work regular hours either because they are retired or they are in a business where they work "odd" hours...

tonight we had dinner with John and Barb - they are in process with selling their condo in the Chicago burbs and planning to live full time in Florida (where we met them and they are roughly a mile from our Florida place)  We decided to have dinner at Anteprima (which has just celebrated their tenth anniversary) in Andersonville (our old 'hood)


both John and Barb had the soup as a starter and I had the octopus and Phil the salumi platter-






then in the mains John had the gnocchi and Phil the chicken and Barb the chicken livers and I had the tagliatelle...








for dessert (sorry no photos LOL)




a relaxing Sunday night - I guess when I think of it, the tradition is long standing.  As a child, we would always have Sunday dinner at my grandparents' house.  My grandmother was an excellent cook and we went early enough that we could walk up to the corner drug store with my grandfather (Visconti's on Hamilton Avenue in Cincinnati) and buy a comic book (Betty and Veronica for my sister and me- Superman for my brother) before dinner time.  The littlest kid had to sit on the phone book because there was no booster chair at my grandparents' house...LOL

After dinner if it was a summer Sunday, my dad would drive home in the convertible with the top down and my sister and I would sit on the floor of the back seat with the windows up trying to stay warm.  Back then my brother always sat in the front seat between my parents (when he was little in a "car seat" of the era which was hung over the back of the front seat and had its own "steering wheel.")
Sometimes my dad would let us "drive" home and we would sit on his lap and "steer" the car... Sunday night dinner out.... a lot of good times... when we got older my grandfather would pick an argument with my sister and me, just so he could be the devil's advocate.  We always said it was our grandfather that got us through law school because he would make us defend our positions...


above- at my grandparents' house on a Sunday- Pop Pop, Janna (my sister) and me (L to R)
below- with Pop Pop in front of our house (his car- my Dad always drove convertibles)


the whole family in front of my granparents' house at 1502 Elkton Place-


below- probably on our way to grandparents on a winter Sunday with hats my grandmother knit - LOL


even in Junior High school we went there for dinner- below in the living room of my grandparents' house - in  1967 we moved away from Cincinnati and that was the end of our weekly Sunday dinners at our granparents' house - I was 13 and Janna 12 and Jeff was 8...


and this was the house we came home to for virtually all of those Sunday evenings -
5693 Woodhaven Drive  (we lived here from 1959- 1965)


that was a blast from the past -  all because tonight we went out for Sunday dinner....