Whittingstall – so it starts with a “W”, just like What’s his face. Of River Cottage fame. I’ve always thought of him as a UK D.I.Y. hipster, but looks like River Cottage has actually evolved into an empire – they call it River Cottage H.Q. “the base of operations for a cookery/food training centre from chef […]
I’m trying to recreate the last week (since I haven’t written since last Tuesday). On Monday, I think I had a pretty normal work day, except that I went to hear one of my colleagues give a talk at the library about a conference she’d been invited to speak at, and didn’t eat anything until […]
Last fall, I decided to shut down the supper club. People are just not signing up, and my renters are interested in renting the whole house, which actually is a two-fold benefit: 1) I’ll be getting a little more money every month in rent, and 2) Getting the house to look more like a single […]
Mark gallantly took his girls, me and Toni, out for dinner on Thursday (the night before Valentine’s Day). We went to the new(ish) Heritage Tavern, that’s gone in where Underground Kitchen used to be, before they burned the building down, in the classy apartment building where Mark used to live. It was efficiency apartments, with […]
This morning I walked to work in -10° marveling at people’s preparedness and UN-preparedness for the weather, like the kid on a bike with nothing on his head, hat nor helmet; the guy running from the bus into the engineering building wearing a pea coat, and no hat or gloves; the 3 inches of […]
Saturday morning Mark and I walked downtown to go to the indoor farmers market. Because we were out before 9:00 AM on a Saturday, we got to see a wonderful example of our drinking culture here in WI – a pile of puke on a snow bank with the eyeglasses fallen off the face and […]
The annual Grillin’ for Peace was Feb 1, 2014. It was a bittersweet celebration this year, because the founder, Tom Barry, died last summer. Sadly, and too soon – he was almost 5 years younger than me. But the event went forward, in its usual weird WI way. Grillin for Peace 2014 from Debra Shapiro […]
Our last day in Philadelphia, we went to the new Barnes Museum. I know there is a faction who believe that the collection should never have been wrested from Dr. Barnes cold dead hands – there’s even a documentary about it – but honestly, Barnes was such a control freak. He wanted to utterly […]