On Monday night I walked up the hill to dinner at the Chancellor’s house, and a butterfly landed on the sidewalk near me. It reminded me of an image I’d gotten from the website I’d just reviewed for the Scout Report – digitized covers of the Queenslander, a weekly magazine supplement to the Brisbane Courier – that I’m using for iPhone wallpaper.
On Wednesday there was a work lunch and instead of the more usual taco bar, they’d ordered a baked potato bar from Hy-Vee, along with some generic Asian chicken and broccoli and vegetables and plain rice. I had half a potato with cheese and bacon bits and butter, and some broccoli over rice – quite a satisfying lunch. The food came in real metal chafers that I assume Hy-Vee came back and picked up, with plastic plates that looked like the kind made from yogurt cups, and compostable silverware. The condiments were all in plastic packets, so it was a mixed bag of trying to be good and not so good. I brought over my real dishes & silverware that I keep in my desk drawer. The dessert was a kind of cherry-topped cheesecake fluff thing, sorta good but you could taste the soy margarine in the possibly gluten free graham cracker crust.
The conversation was about how 53726, where I and two other iSchool faculty and staff live, is the least obese zip code in Wisconsin. There was a story in the local paper about it Monday. I had seen the headline, and simply thought “least obese = damning with faint praise”, but missed the pic of my neighbors.
Andy Willett, left, walks his English springer spaniels Ruby, 6, left, and Twiggy, 1, on Monday in Madison’s Regent neighborhood. It includes the 53726 ZIP code, which has the lowest prevalence of obesity in Wisconsin, according to a new map. Willett encountered Mary Lou Krase, with her dog, Brody, a 1-year-old red heeler.
AMBER ARNOLD, STATE JOURNAL June 4, 2018
Before the lunch, I turned on https on all my personal websites. I feel stupid not having done it sooner – it wasn’t that hard. Now I guess I should change all my passwords – but that’s harder.
Tuesday night, I baked this chocolate cake for Hanne. Her first host family kind of forgot her 18th birthday back in September, so we’d decided to have a little celebration for her birthday and graduation. Annoyingly the cake stuck to the pans a little, because I followed the directions, to butter the cake pans and dust them with cocoa, rather than trusting my instincts to butter and line with parchment. I knew I’d be able to conceal with frosting though.
After the big work lunch Wednesday, I didn’t feel too hungry for dinner. I came home and frosted the cake – this time trusting my instincts to only use 2 1/2 sticks of butter – and made a batch of guacamole. I ate my share in tastes – frosting AND guac. I put the cake in the fridge to firm up, left the guacamole out on the counter with a bag chips for everyone else to pick at, and went off on a quest for a toilet seat. When I got back from Chicago on Sunday the one in my bathroom was broken – not sure how it happened – but old age leading to brittle plastic hinges seems the best explanation.
We had a nice little celebration at about 8:30, when Mark got home. And by then the new toilet seat was installed and trash taken out for the next morning.
I dunno – it was a funny week. Upsie down-y weather – too hot, too cold, too rainy, occasionally gorgeous. Last week of classes & exams for high school, but the University campus seemed oddly deserted. People seemed edgy. There was this guy who yelled at me about bicycle hand signals, yelling “wrong hand” when I signaled to go right with my right, and who persisted in grumpily not getting the joke. When I, mildly, I thought, said, “that’s for cars”, he angrily made the bent-arm right turn using your left hand signal, and asserted, “THIS is how it’s done”.
Then there were all the famous people’s suicides, Kate Spade on Tuesday and Anthony Bourdain on Friday. I find myself oddly affected by Bourdain’s death, me and a lot of others it seems. He was such an appreciator of food and how it’s so much more then simply food; so outspoken for the underdogs; a chef but never a star chef. I think anyone who ever worked in a busy restaurant and has any memory of what that felt like, recognizes the truth in Bourdain’s voice.
Long as we were talking about Tony, let’s end with food:
Tuesday for dinner I made this pasta cake. Like the birthday cake, from the NYT mag. As usual I didn’t completely follow directions – less oil, bigger pan, maybe not cooked quite as long as I was supposed to – but it was quite good nevertheless. And Bourdain-style, I hope, it got all of us who were around, me, Hanne, Rach, and our newly arrived houseguest, Draye, here to do a summer film studies internship, sitting around a dining table, eating and talking.
Saturday morning, after the market and before the 88th West High School graduation, I made asparagus tart, using up the small bunch of asparagus that came in my first CSA box, and some green garlic from the box, and the last scallion. I had carefully resisted buying more asparagus at that morning’s market. This year we have a Facebook group for CSA members, where we’re sharing what we do with our box contents. It’s really pretty fun, and maybe it’ll get a few more people looking at all my online recipes, classic and new & improved.
