And I’m not sure the one after’s starting any better.
Last week started on Tuesday because of the Labor Day holiday, but even though it was a short week I feel like more bad things happened than good. And, I started writing this Saturday and am just now finishing the following Tuesday.
It was the second week of classes at UW, and at 8:00PM on that first day back after Labor Day, the University announced that we were going to all online instruction, and two of the dorms and a bunch of frats & sororities are on lockdown, because Covid-19 positive rates are spiking.
All of which has lead to lots of confusion and ugliness, administration blaming students for their bad behavior, students blaming administration for the abrupt change of course, confining them to dorms without thinking enough about how they’d get food, all the way up to the ugly meeting I was in yesterday where we maxed out the software with 500 people and no one could get in, and some faculty were clearly needling administration to come right out and say they just made students come back so they could collect the tuition. One of my librarian friends called that reductive, and I agree – I do not see or feel that much malice aforethought on the part of the University administration. But I do think we need a decision as soon as possible on if we’re going to stay all online for the rest of the semester. I think we should.
It was cold. And rainy. I had to run a space heater so my fingers didn’t get too cold to type.
We had leftovers almost every night: taco casserole and coleslaw on Tuesday, tomato pie on Wednesday, and on Thursday, pasta with arugula pesto (Mark didn’t like it) and our leftover Turkish meatballs.
We went to the co-op and to the pet supply place by car late Wednesday, and Friday I made beef barley soup with some of one of my impulse buys – a pound of organic beef stew meat. It also had corn cob and tomato skin broth in it. I kept processing tomatoes, made roasted salsa and pizza sauce, and some tomatoes went into the soup.
I made plum cake too –
Last of the plum cake that went into the fridge Monday morning
The featured image is my first piece of the cake, eaten Friday night.
On Thursday in the middle of a meeting I foolishly checked email and what the actual fuck??!! A suit to get a Green Party candidate on the ballot made it to the WI Supreme Court, and was halting mailing – and printing – ballots. Turned out to be blatant Republican voter suppression, but somehow, happily, by Monday one of the conservative judges on the Supreme Court sided with the liberals and by Tuesday ballots were going out again.
The West is either on fire or smoky.
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Fire burns on the remains of fire damaged trees as smoke billows in the aftermath of the Beachie Creek fire near Detroit, Ore., Sept. 14, 2020.
Saturday it seemed too rainy to bike to the west market, so I did my virtual yoga class (I thought for a few minutes that I was going to get a solo class because it seemed like everyone else besides me and the teacher had the wrong zoom link), then we drove to the walk through market at Willow Island at the Alliant Center, which is like going to the farmers market with the vendor booths set on the blasted gravel surface of the moon. We got the first winter squash, some red peppers, a dollar bag of broccoli, a really good melon, cipollini onions, and some lettuce, and not enough potatoes.
I decided to bike to Metcalfe’s to get more potatoes and that’s when it really rained on me. When it started dripping off my helmet I turned around and got the car. And went back out and got a sack of potatoes, more onions, chocolate milk that Mark requested, and a 6-pack of the Ale Asylum F*ck Covid Beer I’d been wanting to try.
We needed potatoes. I made Cafe Flora Oaxaca tacos for dinner Saturday night, with black bean and corn stew, and lemon-dressed kale, and those are stuffed with potatoes, and on Sunday we had a breakfast casserole from a recipe that came in my CSA news letter, with grated potatoes, and roasted peppers and poblanos, and egg and cheese.
We ate it with 2 kinds of salsa, and the last of a heirloom tomato salad. That really good melon, not shown
Sunday night we ate baked apples with custard sauce and watched the cast reunion/reading to benefit the Wisconsin Democratic Party, of the Princess Bride.
And I made a few new masks. Wet collards, coffee cups and bread, and a blue print.
So I guess Sunday was a pretty OK day.
Bringing us back around to Monday when the mail keeps NOT bringing me my cooking magazines or credit card bills. I’m trying to get them all switched to paperless billing, or at least emailed notification when the bill is due soon, even if I have to call to get my balance.
That tough meeting Monday was followed by leftover soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. When I opened up the dollar bag of broccoli to cut it up to eat with dip, a lot of the florets were starting to turn, the red pepper was black inside, and the cucumber I dug out of the bin was slimy.
It’s better now that it’s Tuesday. We had the leftover tacos with the black beans for dinner, and I cooked a pot of added rice, and sautéed the broccoli and red pepper along with a handful of corn that didn’t go in the black beans on Saturday. So all, or mostly, consumed before further rotting and spoilage can happen. We can only hope more things in life will go the same way.
And, PS another what the actual Fuck??!! – we’re playing football? How can we be playing football when the campus is on lockdown??!!