An Easter meal in the States, and then the playoffs....

I’ve been cooking for the last two days to keep my brother happy. He’s putting together his first real dinner party at his new house, so I thought I’d give it my best. He’s a good man, but he’s wound pretty tight, and he hates baseball. Sometimes the truth hurts.

In going through my cook books, I started to wonder: how long has French been the language of cooking? I mean, I get the Julia Child thing, but can’t we just use normal talk now that we run the world? Even the Italians (whose food kicks the derriere off of any of the frog stuff) only get stuff like “mezzaluna,” which is a gadget that chops onions, or something. From the surrender monkeys we get “mise en place,” which means putting all your taco fillings in little bowls, “cuisine,” which means Mexican food in general, and “restaurant,” yes, I said “restaurant.” The Jerry Lewis lovers gave us the word “restaurant.”

All this Frenchie talk reminds me that the Stanley Cup playoffs start on April 15. I love that the Hawks don’t deal with Frenchies. There’s no DesJardins and no Brisbois. We don’t have to cheer every one of Dion Phaneuf’s goals. The Hawks are just honest-to-goodness Americans (wink, wink) – working with Russians, Czechs, Swedes, Canadians (the good kind,) and an ACTUAL FRENCHMAN whose name sounds like bird food. It turns out that our first round opponent will be Calgary, so “O, Canada” will be sung in English. After 9/11, when we went to war with the French, I was tearing up when our elected officials changed French fries to “freedom fries.” The power of rhetoric wasn’t lost on Washington, and it shouldn’t be lost on us.

Tonight, I gave my wife a freedom kiss goodnight and slipped off into dreamworld. I saw visions of Brian Campbell actually playing defense, Patrick Sharp with working body parts, and a bunch of teenagers figuring out how to win a playoff round. When I woke up, my wife rewarded me with a heaping plate of freedom toast which I washed down with a bottle of California sparkling wine mixed with Florida orange juice. Nothing “mise en placed” about that. And that's the word of Sand.

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