It was coming on noon today and I was thinking that I really should call my grand-mother to plan an outing when the phone rang. Of course, it was her. I think we’re psychically connected!

My grand-mother lives in a seniors’ complex where she has her own independent apartment, but there is also a dining hall, hair salon, chapel, games room, and more. She was calling to invite me to eat dinner with her at the dining hall tonight. She has 10 meals there a month. I’ve been curious to see what sort of food she gets there, so I agreed to meet her at her place at 5PM.

Well… we kind of got our wires crossed. I walked over and went up to her place at the stroke of 5:00 just as she was heading down to the lobby to meet me. It took almost a full half hour before we found each other! I hadn’t wanted to go down in fear that I would miss her and she had actually gone out on the street to see if I was coming. I told her everything was good at my end and that, hey, it made a funny story to blog about tonight. *petit clin d’oeil*/*winks*

We were late for dinner (boy, seniors eat early!), but there was still food. We started off with some nice salads, skipped the soup, and opted for the fish as main course. We were served a really nice rice with sole stuffed with minced shrimp and a side of a really yummy butter and wine sauce. We agreed that it was a shame that such a lovely meal was served with mushy asparagus. Grand-maman says the food is usually very ‘ordinaire’ (eg. they had hot chicken sandwiches last night), but that they know what to do with fish.

There was no choice left for dessert and we were served bagatelle, something I had never encountered before even though it is apparently a traditional French-Canadian trifle (bagatelle literally means trifle, as in a little something that’s nothing as well as the dessert). I can’t even describe the dessert it was so odd. There was a white part that looked like a custard, but was rather solid, closer to cranberry jelly than Jello-O but not quite, and the topping seemed to be a soft apple crumble. Grand-maman wasn’t impressed, but I liked it! The coffee was excellent. So a nice dinner and now I know my grand-mother isn’t being poisoned 10 times a month. 🙂

We went back to her place after, opened a bottle of white wine, and took out the dominoes. I beat her 99 to 256! 🙂

It’s lovely having her walking distance away and we look forward to catching up this summer since I will be here long enough for us to have a few more meals and maybe go out to a movie or museum at some point, too. Je t’aimes, grand-maman!