1. Or at least, thing by thing. For our Dutch exchange student, this was the weekend of the senior prom. For me it was mother’s day, and a brunch at School Woods.
2. On Saturday, I got up and went to the Farmers’ Market on my own for serious shopping – potatoes, cheese, green onions, asparagus, eggs, meat – I think I spent $60. Then to Willy Street Co-op, to spend another $70 or so. I intended to stop by the house, drop off the fragile stuff, like bananas and strawberries, not have to transport them again, OJ to thaw, that kind of thing. My renters were home, so we got to talking – the furnace install seems to have gone OK, but we’ll all have to learn how to program the new thermostat. I have one electric mower and one push – I loaned them the power one to get over that very first mow of the season, but they were finished with it, so I brought it back home.
3. I had started out at 7:30, and by now it was almost 10 and I still needed to go to the regular grocery store. One of my library students was visiting from IL and I knew she was going to call me between 11 & noon, to meet back downtown for coffee. I’d get to hold her baby, so I didn’t want to miss her call. So I headed off to Sentry with my iPhone UN-silenced, and got through there pretty darn quick, and even had enough time to get my knives sharpened. On Wednesday (the night I made two dinners, salmon with asparagus and smashed potatoes that showed up again for breakfast on Friday, and beef enchiladas) my too dull knife bounced off the parsley I was chopping and scraped a thin bit of skin off the second finger of my right hand.
4. Home, put stuff away, ate a bowl of honey nut cheerios and home made granola with an apple cut up in it.
5. Biked downtown to meet my student, her husband, and baby Hannah. Went back to the market to get tomatoes from Mark’s favorite place, Canopy Gardens – on my first trip I’d been mostly buying for the brunch, not for us for the week.
6. Then I had to go to my office to send some emails and make copies of the invoice for the new furnace for the application for the energy efficient rebate. I guess I’ll get $275 back (out of the $3000 spent on the furnace) eventually – 6 to 8 weeks.
7. Home again in time to drive Joëlle to another girl’s house where they were all doing each other’s hair & makeup for the prom – they were so intent, no one even noticed when I walked in – they only noticed Joëlle, who had already done her hair – made her naturally curley straight – and eyes, and was in her sparkley dress.
8. Home again, started making the crusts for the mom’s day quiches – I inadvertently made sweet dough the fist time – 3 TBLS sugar to the 3 cups of flour, instead of the 1 TBLS I cut back to for savory pie. But that means there’s pie dough in the freezer now, for a future sweet pie
9. And the tree guy came to give us the quote on trimming several of our trees including the shrub by the back door that’s been hitting us in the face when it’s wetted down after a thunderstorm in the night, and the birch that hits the house and you can hear while you’re watching TV up at Mark’s.
10. Then I biked to Allen Centenniel Gardens on the UW campus – it used to be the home of E.B. Fred, Professor of bacteriology and president of the University from 1945 – 1958. In the early 1980s, my first few years in Madison, Mrs. Fred still lived in the house, and my friend Mary Terese Volkman, MTV, lived there with her as a kind of caretaker/amanuensis. We had a few picnics in the back yard where the gardens are now; somewhere I have a picture of me and my bike by a tree back there. And I remember taking a pile of records over, and dancing in the front hall to the Grateful Dead. The attic was scarey and full of bats. And bat shit.
11. We decided to go see Dark Shadows, the 7:05 show, so I had just enough time to bake the blueberry muffins, and eat a tomato sandwich. Dark Shadows was cheesey, but I liked it, just like I thought I would.
12. Home again, baked the cranberry corn muffins and the rhubarb upside down ones – a new invention, with chopped, sugared, and drained rhubarb in the bottom of each muffin cup, with a plain brown sugar muffin batter on top. Recipe real soon now, pictures below. Asparagus and bacon quiches. Took me till about 1:00 a.m., then I crashed on the couch with the cats until 3:00.
13. Sunday morning, roasted the potatoes. Cleaned greens and made vinaigrette. And took an extra bag of potatoes, baking pan, olive oil and garlic, with me. Good thing, too – I did end up making more spuds – I had to ask my own family to hold off on eating potatoes until the paying customers got enough, and til the extras were close enough to being done. Somehow, though, despite almost running out of potatoes, I felt like I had plenty of time for everything, and it was a leisurely brunch. Lots of little kids, and I got to sit down and eat with John & Mark & Ethan.
14. Home again, put the pans in to soak, and drank a beer on the back deck and read. John & Al were actually both here in the kitchen for about 10 minutes, and didn’t fight – pretty good for mother’s day.
15. Joëlle cooked Dutch food for us for dinner – meatballs and cheesy cauliflower. Watched game of thrones, resisted having another beer, and was really really sleepy by 10:30, so I crashed on the couch again till 12:30. My throat started getting sore.
16. Woke up at 5:30 a.m. on Monday with a full-blown sore throat, and that “what just happened feeling?” Got up at 6:30 for several hours of intense puttering around the house – unloaded and reloaded the dish washer, fished out 2 dough scrapers that had gone missing since cookie season from behind the big drawer full of plastic containers, put seldom used bowls & trays that’d been gotten out for weekend cooking away into the most overstuffed cabinets where stuff falls out when you open them, cat litter, coffee, bring in the newspapers, logged in to my online course and answered a few student emails, took out the compost, sorted newspapers for recycle, rinsed and cut up strawberries, got dressed & brushed my teeth, packed lunch. And still got to work before 9:00.
17. Whew

Upside down rhubarb muffins

Raw potatoes with thyme, to be roasted

Raw potatoes with thyme, to be roasted

Raw potatoes with thyme, to be roasted

Roasted potatoes with thyme

Roasted potatoes with thyme

We had potatoes for breakfast again today. Then we went to see Rossini’s Cinderella, staged in 1930s Hollywood – so Cinderella and the ugly stepsisters were trying to parts in a movie. Snacked on some party leftovers, and now it’s time for dessert – maybe trifle, or I still really want rhubarb bars and vanilla ice cream – and game of thrones.

Sprouty, alien invader potatoes

And made them look like this:

Saved potatoes, roasted

And then we ate them with this:

Scrambled eggs with asparagus

Quite satisfying, really. Al did ask if I’d bought like 45 pounds of asparagus, because “you’ve been putting it in everything, mom”. He’s right – we had shrimp & asparagus pasta last Sunday, asparagus pizza on Friday, and eggs with asparagus today.  But I didn’t buy like 45 pounds of asparagus; Molly & David brought us like 45 pounds of asparagus as a hostess gift on Passover.

And, mmm, at about 3:30, I ate the last two pieces of potato, room temp, with the last little hunk of bacon – the potatoes had gotten this lovely flour-y texture on the insides, almost creamy.

Daddy Long Legs poster

We went to see a musical production of Daddy Long Legs, the one by Jean Webster, the title notes in the library catalog say:

An orphaned girl named Judy Abbott and an unknown, unseen benefactor who sends her to college and whom she refers to as “Daddy-Long-Legs” are the two principals in this immensely popular modern-day fairy tale. Told through Judy’s letters and illustrated by her own quaint drawings, DADDY-LONG-LEGS is a profound and tender homage to the power of awakening love.

It was the kind of musical with only two cast members, who were both on stage basically the entire time. I thought it was a little too long – Mark, more familiar with the intricacies of the genre, pointed out that the first act of almost every musical play is stronger. Characters and melodies and plot are introduced in the first act, while in the second act they have to move it all forward, tie it all up, and reprise.

We got to Milwaukee in time to go to Comet for brunch, before the 2:00 show. We met John there. I drove to Milwaukee, and asked Mark to drive back, so I got to indulge in a Comet Bloody Mary for the first time – bacon garnish, pickled Brussels sprout, and 7-oz. Miller pony bottle chaser & all. The rest of breakfast was good – I had eggs, more bacon, hash browns (that were really greasy, but somehow properly so) and a giant pancake – but the Bloody Mary was the best. Especially because I got them to make mine with gin.

I don’t think I ever really read the book, although it was much talked about when I was a young teenager. So, just like that, I now have the Project Gutenberg e-book in my iPhone – with a copyright date of 1912, Daddy-Long-Legs is public domain. Looks like the Fred Astaire & Leslie Caron movie version came out the year I was born. I’m so enamored of Downton Abbey now – I think I liked that the play was the same time period. And the type of small production with lots of clever tricks – like, since it’s all told through letters, writing in light across the top of the sets to give the dates and locations, or a scene where Jerusha and Master Jervey are hiking in the country, the actor playing Jervis rolls up his trousers and puts on a cap, and voila, is wearing the same knickers and driving cap that Matthew Crawley wears to walk the grounds with the Earl of Grantham.

It was the winter dance at the high school last night, and, since we live so close to school, our exchange student had made plans to cook dinner with 3 of the other girls – two from Italy, ours from the Netherlands, and another from Finland. We left them picking nail polish and getting ready to cook, and Mark drove me to the urgent care, where I got fitted for  a lovely stiff-soled shoe. I’m supposed to wear the thing for 4 – 6 weeks!?? Keep the foot elevated, no ibuprofen, no long walks, etc. Hard to adhere to for someone like me, walking is my main form of exercise, and I work at my computer standing up, mostly, and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, standing up. I stayed off my foot a lot last night, though, and it feels much better today.

I’m thinking I will follow the rules for about a week – bus and drive to work, work sitting down more, etc. The doctor at urgent care also talked a lot about “buddy-taping” – taping my broke toe to the one next to it -  and I think I will shift to that, and regular shoes, as soon as I can. I think the main thing is it’s going to hurt if I’m doing the wrong things, so as long as I make sure not to make the toe hurt, I’ll heal OK.

And, I kind of liked lying on the couch and ordering everyone around last night. I only got up to eat and clean up – they did everything else.

The kids made roasted rosemary potatoes, spinach salad, and chicken. We ate the leftover potatoes with blueberry pancakes for breakfast and I think tonight we’ll get a really good soup from the chicken leftovers – and I’ll do as much as I can from the couch.

Lora Brody rugelach, mini carrot cupcakes, and hazelnut truffles for dessert – I mis-cut the truffles, somehow … I used a half batch of my standard carrot cake recipe, but I didn’t cook the grated carrot – didn’t seem worth it for 3/4 cup carrot, but I think it threw the carrot to cake ratio off. Personally, I didn’t like the cupcakes all that much, but the kids, as I anticipated, liked them a lot.

The grapes all fell off their stems so I had to serve them in a bowl, instead of artful little bunches arranged around the satsumas and clementines. So, I took some bananas to augment the fruit selection, and no one ate them – and I dropped one, and I think I got that particular one as my breakfast banana today, because it was squishy inside.

I made one long rise almost no knead whole wheat loaf with beer, and a white loaf with white wine – figuring that since one of my favorite focaccia recipes, from Carol Field, focaccia from Liguria, has white wine, it’d be good in the bread. The white loaf came out kind of dense, while the ww one rose much better. People still ate up the white faster, though.

I shouldn’t have brewed the last pot of coffee, nor mixed the last can of orange juice – we’re still drinking both of them today.

The shirred eggs, on the other hand, we just about perfect – I put a piece of butter into the bottom of each ramekin and heated them – and then broke in the eggs and poured in the cream and topped them with the grated Parm. So the eggs didn’t stick and ramekins were easy to clean. John, Megan, Mark and I had egg & bacon breakfast sammiches today, and there was even a half left for a Al, that he snarfed within 5 minutes of coming home.

2012, a little clumpy

2011 hoppin' John, properly pilaf-ed

Carrotcake mini-cupcakes

Rugelach

Rugelach

Leftover Rugelach in a freezer container; be a good surprise dessert at a one-dish dinner

Unevenly cut truffles

Seasonal decor – Pumpkin surrounded by concord and seedless grapes

Lots of pumpkin and orange fall-y foods – Autumn vegetable hash with eggs baked on top, squash challah – but the hits of the day were the bacon & cheese pull-apart bread, and the pumpkin sticky pudding. I got the bacon bread recipe from all recipes – but instead of using purchased bread dough, I used my own standard pizza dough – 3/4 cup water, 1/2 – 3/4 tsp. active dry yeast, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp sugar, (optional 1 TBLS olive oil – I left it out here because I figured there’d be plenty of oil in the bacon & cheese) , 1 1/2 cups flour, mix and knead in the mixer for 3 mins. or by hand until smooth and elastic (about 8 minutes …) and let rise in the fridge for 4 – 8 hours. I also omitted the packet of ranch dressing mix. Next time I make it, I think I’ll add some red pepper flakes, so it’ll be even more like the famous Stella’s Hot Spicy Cheese Bread, but with bacon. I thought I got the pumpkin sticky pudding from Epicurious, but it doesn’t seem to be there, so seems to me I’ll have to post it myself.

And speaking of how time flies ….

Yesterday was the going-away party for one of my librarian friends. He’s moving back east – he’s also from Pittsburgh – to work at Longwood Gardens, a botanical park in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, built with DuPont money. I’m starting to worry that it’s the beginning of an exodus; it’s looking like he’s not going to be the only one of my friends moving to that part of the world. My BFF, Rach, just got engaged to her out of town boyfriend. He’s the head of the art department SUNY Ulster. They haven’t set a date, but I don’t think they’re going to continue the long-distance thing till he retires, which won’t be for at least 10 years. Meanwhile, Rachael’s sister’s in Albany, her little brother’s in Pittsburgh, and mom has retired to Vermont.

The going-away party was at this fabulous country house. I’d been there only once before, for the 50th birthday party for the guy who’s leaving’s now ex. I made a big platter of deviled eggs, arranged in a nest of sprouts and micro greens. I also made the appetizer where you spread creamy cheese on foucaccia, and top it with pesto & roasted red peppers. I used bought pizza crusts, a mix of mascarpone, goat & cream cheese, and the last of jar of last summer’s pesto from the freezer. The guest of honor wanted a strawberry cake. I considered two recipes – one from a soul food restaurant, published in Saveur, with strawberry jam and extract – not a fresh strawberry in sight; and this one from Gourmet, a yogurt cake with a white glaze, and a raspberry current sauce. The sauce was supposed to be cooked and sieved; I skipped the cooking, and mashed strawberries with sugar and a squish of lime juice and decorated the top of the cake with strawberry halves.

Today, I made a brunch: Blueberry pancakes, Bacon & sausage & vegetarian sausage, that asparagus salad I’ve been obsessing over, cooked asparagus salad with a mayonaise-y dressing, grated hard boiled egg, toasty, garlic-y breadcrumbs. This time I even had chives to sprinkle over, because I got a nice bunch in my first CSA box, along with soem of the asparagus. And rhubarb – I made rhubarb sauce, as an additional pancake topping and/or Greek yogurt with rhubarb sauce – yum.

Pictures? no pictures, they all got away except for the funeral home sign.

• Broccoli & cheddar quiche – remember I did over buy on broccoli, and the nice 2-lb blocks of Tillamook cheddar that you can get at Costco are really the best reason to go there. I bought two although I probably only needed most of one.
• Fried potatoes, with some of our last indoor Rosemary, before it goes back out for the summer, and some garlic cloves I had peeled for pasta salad but did not use.
• Salad of course, with balsamic vinaigrette – remember I over bought even more on lettuce than on broccoli.
• Bacon.

Since John and Megan came to help with the wedding, they were here, and Ethan was here because it was Sunday. Megan said it was the third in a row mother’s day she’d been in Madison – her mom’s in Iowa. I thanked her a bunch. And Al finally called at a little after 5 p.m. He’ll be home next weekend and we’ll go out for belated mother’s day dinner then. We did that last year and if we do it again this year, I guess it’ll be a tradition.

Mother's day 2011