The good: the week-long orientation session for incoming distance students, beginning their degree in library & information studies. I was the chief organizer, but this event was pulled off with a cast of thousands, er, uh, dozens at least, including the 29 students themselves. This was the first iteration of what will become an annual event, and some things worked better than others. We kept telling the students that they were our eldest children, a.k.a. experiments. Still, as I said on the last morning, even though things were not perfect, the good far outweighed the bad, overall, for the week. In the past, the distance students came for one day, then we met for class on TV for two semesters. Spending a whole week together was a far better way for us all to bond – they got to be with the entire class, rather than divided into 3 groups at the sites where the video conference was delivered, and I got to see their faces in living color, instead of blurry ovals on the screen.

And then as a kind of nice little coda to the symphony, as I was biking home after the last morning’s events, I met up with one of the students. She – understandably – hadn’t wanted to pay for parking on campus, so she left her car at a relative’s (I think it was a brother & sister in-law) and they gave her a bike and helmet. She was trying to figure out how to bike to their place to collect her car, and Google maps gave her a combo of bike path and city streets. I was able to give her better bike-path-following directions, and we biked partway together, and hugged on parting. She’s 2nd from the right in the upper picture, turned to the right and laughing in the second, and now I am sure, safely back in Minneapolis.

New students, fall 2010

Bootcamp set up polaroid - but the iPhone Polaroids are slower than regular digital pictures, so the set up function is thwarted.

The bad: the extremely disagreeable 14-year-old foster daughter, who’s been living with me since March. We are at the point now where I can’t say anything to this kid without getting an argument. Not fun at all.

Construction Detours

The ugly: the construction around my building and all over campus. This is the banner from the UW Physical Plant office construction page, but the project outside my building must be at least in part city of Madison streets, because it’s not even listed. I think the tipoff is that under the Park & Langdon intersection job, the city says UW will be installing underground utilities – and we in fact had no water in my building almost all day Wednesday of orientation …. I’ll add some more pictures, soon. I missed the money shot, Friday – a group of the new distance students, leaving after the close of the orientation, making their way on the narrow pedestrian path between the major excavations, fences, and dinosaur-size big diggers.

posted from my iPhone – at least partly.

Last night I tried to arrange such an occasion. One of my friends had a birthday May 31, and I invited her and a few others that didn’t make it. I had a little too much food per the number of people. Our enjoyment was also marred by the presence of a gang of middle school girls at their most sullen and unpleasant.

I made a Cafe Flora curried lentil spread – got a ton of that still – but I think it could enrich the sauce of any other curry I choose to make in the near future – and, farther term – I think I can freeze it. I grilled 3 pitas lurking in the back of the fridge, and the three of us ate all but a few wedges. I got out some cheeses & grapes, and bought a few olives – no problem dealing with any of these leftovers. Oh, and I made apricot chutney – guess I’ll have to use it inside a baked Brie sometime.

I took a bunch of pictures, but of course, John is way better with my fixed lens than am I. Still the outdoor ones look pretty good.

My mom used to say that the heat of summer made her exhausted. I think that’s how I’m feeling today. Except it’s been going on for longer than just today. I’m not feeling too creative, and I think the posts show it. My stuff to cook list is not all that deep right now – though I do have a pretty good stack of clipped recipes & new cookbooks to try out sitting next to the stove. And I’m trying to work up a set of summer suppers – only the first one’s posted so far.

One problem is I haven’t been able to figure out what the current foster kid likes to eat – Cheetos & soda are the only sure things. I’ve sure have thrown out a lot of food since she started living with us.

This morning I felt too tired to bike to the week-long seminar I’m in … to my credit, I had my computer and other heavy junk to carry, plus it was threatening rain & lightning & thunder.

Since I drove, I loaded up the washed tableclothes from Sunday’s brunch, and stopped by – during the hardest part of the rain – and unloaded the dishwasher. The clean monkey dishes & ramekins that I made the eggs in – that I had had to handwash – were looking pretty photogenic.

Stacked monkey dishes

Ramekins and stacked monkey dishes

Egg dishes and ramekins and glasses

An egg dish & glasses

Egg dishes

Egg dishes & glasses

Egg dishes

Now I’m trying out a gluten free version of a vegan cookie – the Vegan Cupcakes girls have a vegan cookies book out, with recipe for a gluten free flour blend – rice & millet flours & almond meal. So I’m making their cowboy cookies, but I didn’t have soy milk, so I used egg – so they’ll be gluten free cookies, not vegan. The dough was good, and the cookie that broke was good too – a little grainy in mouth at the end, probably the almond meal, but no off flavors like some other gluten free recipes I’ve tried. I used potato starch instead tapioca flour, as suggested by Gluten Free Goddess, and I think that’s the trick.

I splurged and ordered these two  cupcake books overnighted from Amazon: Hello, Cupcake &  What’s New Cupcake? (recommended by Dorrie Greenspan) – totally cute ideas, but almost all the decorations are candy, and I knew the kids would just eat it.

Hello, Cupcake has the cupcake garden idea – dip frosted cupcakes into crushed Oreo dirt and then decorate with lettuces, radishes, carrots and peas. Marzipan vegetables would be more traditional; instead, they use all kinds of candy ingeniously to make the veggies. Jolly Rancher, Starburst & Airhead fruit chews, M&Ms, green licorice laces (pea vines). I especially like the lettuce – cornflakes coated with green icing, arranged around a little ball of green Jolly Rancher on top of the dirt-covered cupcake. And of course, in the book, the cupcakes are arranged in neat rows. They even have plans for end of the row signs, the seed packs that say what vegetable is where – frosted graham crackers on pretzel sticks glued on with chocolate. Martha’s got a carrot cake with a marzipan vegetable garden on top – it was published back when my kids were about 8 & 9, and we were always going to make it – John and I both love marzipan – but we just never did. This candy version we might’ve accomplished.

I provided yogurt raisons, gummy worms, teddy grahams, dried papaya stick carrots, banana chips, coconut, and toasted pea crisps. I forgot to bring the mint I bought at the farmers’ market for leafs, but the birthday girl’s family brought a big bunch from home. The kids’ garden came out a little messier than the book – looking at the cupcakes the dad said, “That’s what I love about you kids – no holding back – whatever we’ve got goes on the cupcake”.

I was going to start by having us make Farm Cakes – they’d have baked while we decorated and the kids could’ve taken them home – but it seemed like too much for one party. We mixed up two flavors of icing: chocolate sour cream & strawberry drizzle – decorated, ate, and opened presents. There was maybe a 15 minutes span when we needed something to do, and the dad started a game of Twister. Oh, and the birthday girl was completely surprised!

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John at empty Miller Park, weeks before opening day

John went down to Iowa City last night to see Every Time I Die and I haven’t heard from him yet, though I did text him his birthday song.

I feel funny that I’m not making food – last year I over-nighted brownies to his school, because I knew he was in the studio printing up stuff for his senior show. Looks like last year I made salted caramel tart – but not till a bit after his birthday. Other years have featured pasta al’Arrabiata, or beef stew, and for a while there was always a mint chocolate chip ice cream pie – oreo cookie crust, ice cream and a fudgey topping. Maybe I’ll go to Milwaukee Saturday and take him out to dinner, but it’s supposed to snow. If he was here this morning, I’d make waffles and bacon.

Prof. Dave & Mimi with the tandem at FHR

To me, the picture – besides being a miracle because my niece is almost smiling – is a miracle of genetics. My brother looks like our dad – though much slimmer – my niece looks just like John, especially this really old picture of John I just found, sitting on the steps of his high school), and like her mom.

I put the picture in my iPhone, and I was just looking at it last night when I got email from the bro asking if I’d send power bars to his this-year’s birthday bike race, like I did 2 years ago … and of course I had to say yes – it’s in the genes.

Here’re some pictures of making breakfast for John while he was getting ready to go back to Milwaukee, and Megan was still asleep.

Unfortunately, instead of cooking for Al, I’m cleaning up puke after him – he seems to have gotten a stomach flu from his girlfriend – we all thought she was just hungover, and were pretty unsympathetic yesterday when she said she felt crappy, but maybe she was actually sick.