All families as they grow older have secrets but for the Lamberts with Albert gradually losing his mind to Parkinson’s, mixed grill isn’t one of them.
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Funny and sad
Gary energetically sliced meats and skewered vegetables. Jonah set the table, spacing the flatware with the precision that he liked. The rain had stopped, but the deck was still slippery when Gary went outside.
It had started as a family joke: Dad always orders the mixed grill in restaurants, Dad only wants to go to restaurants with mixed grill on the menu. To Gary there was indeed something endlessly delicious, something irresistibly luxurious, about a bit of lamb, a bit of pork, a bit of veal, and a lean and tender modern-style sausage or two – a classic mixed grill, in short. It was such a treat that he began to his own mixed grills at home. Along with pizza and Chinese take-out and one-pot pasta meals, mixed grill became a family staple. Caroline helped out by bringing home multiple heavy blood-damp bags or meat and sausage every Saturday, and before long Gary was doing mixed grills two or even three times a week, braving all but the foulest weather on the deck, and loving it. He did partridge breasts, chicken livers, filet mignons, and Mexican flavoured turkey sausage. He did zucchini and red peppers. He did eggplant, yellow peppers, baby lamb chops, Italian sausage. He came up with a wonderful bratwurst-rib eye-bok choy combo. He loved it and loved it and loved it and then all at once he didn’t.
Epicurean Episodes 