Blogger Block

I’ve been trying to write something  since last weekend, or I guess that’s actually weekend before last since I started writing this Tuesday, and now it’s Wednesday, Thursday and I’m falling further behind all the time.

Let’s see if I can at least remember the food. This is going to be a looong post, Blogger Block leading to Blogger Spew.

On Monday we mostly ate leftovers from Sunday’s perfect brunch. Mark and I had bacon sandwiches for lunch at home since I worked at home in the afternoon waiting for the washing machine repair. Which turned out to be a new pump, a $35 part, $171 installed. Cheaper than a new washer, although the Kenmore I have is getting ancient and is probably not terribly energy efficient. It’s at least as old as John, washed diapers for both him and Al, and has moved from Madison to IL and back and two houses since in Madison.

I got a haircut Monday evening – that was nice, although I kind of felt like what am I doing out this time of night. Amy made my bangs look great, tho by the end of the week, they were as sticky-up and grey, as my brother’s. Who, along with his wife, just celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary. Omigosh.

Tuesday I had dinner at the Chancellor’s by virtue of my serving on a whole crapload of shared governance committees, notably ASEC, or the academic staff executive committee. A few years ago they figured out that it was easier to do the meal as a buffet, instead of trying to collect all the dietary needs and serve seated. There was this one really weird meal where they tried to make food that everyone could eat resulting in kind of lukewarm gluten free pasta. This time, there was salad on the table when we sat down – greens, strawberries, too many onions, that I picked out and so did one of my table mates, and rolls and butter. On the buffet, there was fish, that I didn’t have, and roasted asparagus, and some kind risotto cake with roasted peppers on top, and flourless chocolate cake for dessert. I got home just in time to kiss Rach goodnight, before she turned in to get as much sleep as possible before her omigod in the morning flight home. Where she was hosting a retirement party of her husband Iain. Hundreds of mini gluten-free cupcakes. She said they were approaching Debby Shapiro production levels.

Wednesday I made a trio of salads, and then left it all out for Anna to choose from and went upstairs to set up for round one of our online advising, for the new online students, and eat my salad selections. Ramen salad (with kale), heirloom tomato salad with a lemon, honey, and green garlic dressing, and macaroni salad.

Thursday I made pizza. One with leftover tomato salad on it, with honey goat cheese and pepper jack, and one with bottled tomato sauce and Parmesan for Anna. And fruit salad. Blueberries, nectarines, and a couple of slightly beat up apples that I dosed with lime juice & honey to perk up. Mark ate the fruit salad out of the serving bowl with his pizza, and it was annoying me so much seeing his fork going into his mouth and then in and kind of batting around the fruit, that I couldn’t put it away after that treatment and had to finish it myself. There wasn’t much anyways.

I made the pizza dough in the morning before I went to work, roughly like the Big Sur Bakery recipe, where you divide the dough into balls and flour it and put it on a sheet pan to rise in the fridge all day. As I was shaping the dough, I thought, “is there anything I do at work that’s as satisfying as this dough?” I didn’t have an immediate answer for myself, though.

Friday we had tickets for a WI Public Radio (WPR) concert – Mary Gauthier and Dom Flemons, and, a nice surprise to me, local guitar heroes Chris Plata & Extra Hot, with Dan (Ernie) Connor on guitar. He’s a ’55 baby, like me, too. I think he has better hair. It was a special celebration of the 40th anniversary of WPR’s folk show, Simply Folk. It’s on Sunday evenings at 5:00, and to be honest, for awhile there I used to be poised to snap it off as soon as it came on, because the music choices seemed to run to really sappy folk music. Earnest warbling on “save mother earth”, music designed to evoke some misty past, that kind of thing. The current host, Dan Robinson, plays a better selection, to my ears, at any rate. And he was the MC of the evening. We thought we’d grab a brat on the Terrace, but the lines were too long, so we went to Ian’s Pizza. I had a ravioli in vodka sauce-topped slice, and Mark & I split a slice with BBQ beef and tater tots. He picked up plastic disposable silverware for me before I could stop him, but at least the slices were on paper plates and I had my drink in a recyclable can.

Saturday was gorgeous. We biked to the Farmer’s Market where I tried to be especially careful about purchases since I had just gotten a greens-heavy CSA box – spinach, turnips with greens, giant escarole. After market, I went over to Natasha’s to help with handing out materials for Make Music sites, which turned out to be not so much a volunteer gig as a nice opportunity to hang out, reconnect, talk about our past associations and muse about what we could do together now. She’s the perfect person to run Make Music Madison.

I ran various bike and car errands, and changed my room back into the cat’s room/my sewing room with a couch instead of a guest room with a bed. When I was paying for groceries at the co-op I couldn’t find one of my credit cards. I came home and logged into my account online and realized the last time I’d used it was at the sushi place where we had dinner when Rach’s half sister was in town. I called and they had it so I got another little bike ride, going back downtown to pick it up. I had a coffee at the place across the street, then biked home and made asparagus & shiitake pasta for dinner.

I also made that rhubarb coffee cake I’d made wrong at pantry breakfast the week before.

Turned out the recipe is NOT in that From the Farmer’s Market book, it was just the pull quote next to the recipe that was from that book. The cake’s good but I get the feeling that it’s not going to get eaten, unless I take it to work, and there’re not too many people around right now. Hmm, maybe my late afternoon meeting on Thursday …. PS they loved it, and I’ll write it up for my New & Improved Recipes.

Sunday we had blueberry pancakes and Hell’s Kitchen style hashbrowns – grated potatoes with bacon, scallions, and green garlic. The pancakes were Krusteaz mix, camping trip staple, because I bought a box so Anna could make herself pancakes, but she didn’t use it, so I thought I would. The cakes seemed kind of tough, though, maybe I mixed them too much.

After breakfast, I biked over to the east side to pour beer at the Waterfront Fest. I found an IPA that I kinda like, it’s that hazy style that John told me about when we went to brunch for his birthday. Ale Asylum Plush Crush. Looks like they serve it at Memorial Union where I’m going to a happy hour tomorrow, so maybe I can get some. After my shift I listened to this young singer songwriter from Milwaukee and his band, Trapper Schoepp and the Shades. Rockin’ John from WORT was right up by the stage the whole time, so I take that as a good review. Oh, and looks like his current album was produced by Pat Sansone. I liked a song called The Scat, about being on a roller coaster at Bay Beach behind a kid who kept saying, “this isn’t fun anymore, can I get off the ride now” and they had t-shirts that said “this isn’t fun anymore”.

I made grilled cheese for dinner when I got home.

Monday I got up early and went to Goodman to scope what could be made for the Tuesday brunch. I decided to make chicken and noodles, so I grabbed some bags of noodles and thawed some chicken, and carrot raison walnut slaw, because there were these giant bags of shredded multicolored carrots. I took muffin pans and scoops and muffin liners, planning to make dried fruit granola muffins. I also found a pan of beef goulash sauce that Terese made and froze, so I thawed that out, too, thinking it’d be good with the noodles.  Then I quick changed and went to work, where I had an 11:00 and a 2:00 meeting. My plan had been to drive to Goodman, drive to work, then after the first meeting, go home and swap the car for my bike, and go back to Goodman that way. But it didn’t work out quite like that – it was too windy to bike easily. I drove home, picked up the stuff I’d left for myself there, and then drove back downtown, made my 2:00 meeting 5 minutes late, and then headed back to Goodman after that, where my helper cook, David was making the carrot slaw according to the recipe I’d emailed him. The meal got a little different too. We made the muffins, but there was enough goulash sauce so that I will have to make something with the chicken next week.

I didn’t really feel like making dinner when I got home, but Anna wanted food, so I made a sausage-escarole-tomato pasta, on whole wheat penne. I didn’t have Italian sausage so I used brats and added extra fennel and garlic.

Tuesday after I served the breakfast and went into work for an 11:30 meeting – the kickoff for a big marketing campaign for our online masters degree – we drove to the Harvard train. Mark and I had CSO tickets for that night, and Anna wanted a last Chicago trip. Of course it started thundering and raining just as we were leaving, and there’s construction on I-90 AND Hwy. 14. The detour Google maps took us on was kind of fun, but when we were on 90, Ms. Google was driving me nuts trying to re-route because the road wasn’t in the right place, east- and west-bound lanes both on the same side, so she kept telling me to get off at the next exit and go back, and I kept telling her to fuck off. I had seen that I was supposed to stay on I-90 until exit 3, right over the IL line, that turned out to be Rockton Road, the last exit before tolls. So I just did that no matter how many reroutes she wanted me to do. And started this post on the train.

Wednesday I caught the 7:30 AM train back to WI, and still didn’t finish this post. This time dropping the car at home worked OK – I fed the kitties, and brought in the mail, and walked in to work. It was cold and grey and drizzly all day, and I got a fair amount of work stuff done. I made a farro salad kind of like this, though I didn’t get into the putting the roasting pan over two burners and sauteing the turnips and greens – that sounded like a pain. I just did it in the oven. I added dried fruit and some truffle oil, but I’m afraid I will end up chucking it, like that soup I made with wheat berries and greens back in March. Since I’d had the oven on, I made s’mores in the oven for my dinner (instead of the microwave) and then took it upstairs to eat in front of Handmaid’s Tale.  I’m up to episode 4 of season 3. And I still didn’t finish this post.

So the things that are bugging me the most now are:
1) feeling like I’m making June end too soon,
and 2) my Doctor is nagging me to get a colonoscopy.

Too many events coming up, the library conference, concerts in Chicago, and I keep having that “oh God better take care of that now” feeling because we’re leaving, but we’re really not. I have a whole weekend this weekend to get it together.

On the colonoscopy front, I went for a check up the beginning of June, and because the insurers only want me to go to the OB GYN I had always used as primary care, every other year because I’m no longer of child-bearing age, the GP I’ve been shunted off to is wailing on me to schedule the f’ing colonoscopy. I last had one in 2012 and they whacked off three little thingies, so they wanted me to come back in 5 years but I’ve been resisting. The GP insists on calling the thingies “pre-cancerous”, but as Mark says “pre-cancerous” means it’s NOT cancer. I asked for the home test, but the clinic called me back and even the nurse on the message used the “pre-cancerous” phrase, as in the home test is not recommended for you because you had “pre-cancerous” polyps before. I’m more afraid of the procedure than colon cancer, actually. They just wanna get in there with their knives and cut stuff off while I’m out. That’s what freaks me out about it. I mean, the clean out is way too severe unless you eat McDonalds everyday – if you eat a reasonable amount of fiber like I do, drinking a half gallon of laxative is overkill. Then they blow c02 into your colon to puff it up so they can look and oh, by the way, chop away at you. I have a friend who got nicked and had to spend the night in the ER. Not to mention that you’re sedated, which has never agreed with me – usually the first thing I do when I come to is throw up.

ugh, ugh, ugh

I still have not called back to schedule.

And now it’s Thursday and I will finally finish this blog post, wash the dishes, shower, and I think go watch more Handmaid’s Tale. Whew.