So many dinners, and meals, and cleaning up – that I’m not taking pictures of – so many walks – that I’m not taking pictures of – so many online meetings – that I do have a few pictures of.
Collections of (mostly) old people on zoom.
UW Libraries friends Board meeting
First Thursday – librarians’ drinking group – many retired
I left off last Saturday when I baked oat scones – with sourdough discard – and peanut butter cookies, and I can’t remember what I made for dinner.
Sunday brunch we had leftover broccoli quiche and roasted potatoes and biscuit cimmy buns – with sourdough discard in them. I didn’t take pictures of that, but I did take a picture of our evening TV snack/dessert:
Home made vanilla ice cream with strawberries and raspberry sauce
Monday morning it was cold and there weren’t many people out walking.
But I saw this inflatable unicorn in someone’s yard – it was gone on Friday, the next time I went by.
And bleeding hearts – this was going to be a banner, but I need to crop the height more.
I tried my hand at sourdough, using this King Arthur recipe that calls for fed starter and a little bit of yeast (of which I have plenty in the freezer, actually), and, while I thought about baking it in a crock, I followed the instructions and made two round loaves on a parchment lined baking sheet. That looked flat as a pancake after their rise during my last meeting of the day – depressing – but actually rose OK when I baked them.
I was generally depressed on Monday night, I’m so sick of the politicians arguing about reopening, so I decided that drinking my Janethan (dark coffee porter) before it went flat would be a good thing to do. Double the stimulants in one drink, why not? So I did.
Janethan beer and sourdough that didn’t come out too bad after all
We had slaw dogs on home made hot dog buns (buns seen in the upper right corner of this picture, served with turkey meatballs & spaghetti, dinner way back on the last Saturday in April) that night, but no other pictures besides the beer and bread.
Tuesday the plan was for our cleaners to come back, and we’d clear out while they worked. I’ve been paying them about 3/4 of their regular salary to NOT come, ever since late March up to May 5, so three times. I had meetings till 1:00 and the cleaners were right on time at 1:15 and we headed out. It was kind of cold and rainy so even though we talked about doing stuff by bike, we went by car. We drove out to Cambridge and got herb plants, then drove to Middleton, planning to shop at Willy St. Co-op. It was too early when we got there, so we got coffee using the pandemic style order online and call when you get there curbside pick up that we’re all getting used to. Mark was cursing their website coffee ordering system while we drove around on the beltline from southeast to northwest. We drank our coffee in the car parked by Capitol Brewery, then drove over to Willy Street.
Mark waited and read in the car while I shopped, and since there were a few things Willy St. didn’t have, we stopped at Metcalfe’s too. Which I thought was supposed to be a pandemic no-no, but what the heck. I got basically everything on my list, including toilet paper and flour, except cornstarch – that’s what all the stores are out of now. Weird. It was still too early to go back so we parked on our street and waited. And waited. I had to pee so bad we started driving out to Al & Emma’s on the far west side, but of course as soon as we got halfway there the cleaners texted they were done. I had been kind of dreading the day, but we survived.
Herb plants waiting patiently to go into their big pots
For dinner we had leftover spinach & feta pasta (maybe that’s what I made for dinner on Saturday May 2 …) with honey-roasted tomato crostini because I bought some cherry tomatoes at the co-op, on the sourdough from Monday.
Monday was the May the fourth be with you, and Tuesday Cinco de Mayo, and we did not celebrate either (somewhat fabricated) holiday.
On Wednesday the main thing of note – besides it being day 2 of an online library conference I signed up for, and they switched to zoom after starting in Adobe Connect (why are we not surprised?) – was I biked over to the order in advance and pick up Farmers Market. It was a lovely night for a bike ride. I’m still only wearing a mask in enclosed spaces – let ’em glare. I made the Rajma beans from the NYT and we ate them with buttered sourdough toast. Tuesday night I had soaked some Christmas limas and some yellow woman beans, both Rancho Gordo, because I couldn’t decide which would be better in the rajma. After I cooked them on Wednesday, the limas went into the rajma, and we’ll have the yellow ones refried.
We’ll have the last half of the beans with fresh naan, and Madhur Jaffrey’s cabbage with fennel seed, tonight. I forgot I had a cabbage coming in one of my Farmers Market orders Wednesday, and grabbed one at the co-op Tuesday = I have A LOT of cabbage
Thursday we had BLTs and hashbrowns for dinner, after the librarians drinking group pictured above.
Friday I was going to make this General Tso’s chicken – I even got the green beans at the co-op – but I filled up the ovens with chocolate chip meringues, and couldn’t roast the green beans, so we had whole wheat pasta with cauliflower. A Smitten Kitchen recipe, based on Chez Panisse, and she says she’s not a whole wheat pasta fan, so I thought Mark would be OK with it. It was pretty good. I used pecans instead of walnuts because that’s what I have more of, and put in a bit of the (un-photogenic) ramp pesto (that the toasted pecans were from) I made Thursday, that was really good on BLTs. Somebody in one of the coronavirus facebook cooking group I’m in said a BLT with ramp pesto was the best they’d ever had.
Whole Wheat Pasta with Cauliflower
And some of the meringues smashed up with ice cream on top – the last of the home made – while watching The Goldfinch, which didn’t get very good reviews, but I liked it. Oh, and last week, Saturday I think – we finally watched The Irishman, speaking of mixed reviews. I liked that less than The Goldfinch. I think my favorite part was Steve Van Zandt as the singer at a Teamster awards banquet – he was supposed to be Jerry Vale, singing Spanish Eyes. I didn’t stay up to watch Robert DeNiro on Colbert – but here it is.
I went for a walk in the morning, and took lots of pictures of blooms.
It was both bloomy and threatening when I went out Friday – it got sunnier later.
Friday morning on N. Allen St., that would normally be jammed with high school kids who are usually not the best drivers, looking for parking spots.
I ate a nice breakfast and watched the keynote of that conference, then finished grading – yay!
Friday WFH breakfast, pt. 1
Friday WFH breakfast, pt. 2 – one slice of bacon and one slice of bread leftover from Thursday’s BLT dinner, so bacon butty
I dunno – when I write it all down it seems an OK week, but in addition to the ever-present pandemic worry and fear, I feel like I’m watching too much TV and not doing enough creative work. A bunch of fabric that I ordered a few weeks ago, printed with my photos, finally arrived, and I washed it today – so maybe tomorrow I’ll start planning some patchworks with it.
But now I guess I’ll go make naan. Mark says the Downton Abbey movie is on tonight, so I guess tonight will not be the start of less TV.
PS. the naan came out too hard, but I think it will be good pizza crust. Here’s Saturday’s food:
Cinnamon raisin bagel, extra raisons, and some fruit for Saturday brekkie
Rajma beans Indian spiced sauteed cabbage, too-hard naan
And John made some nice-looking sourdough, so there creativity going on in the family even if not by me