I’ve even been eating breakfast at my computer, which I had pretty much stopped doing during this long work from home period. I stand at my computer so eating there seems pretty uncivilized. In the office, I would do it sometimes, and way back at the beginning of pandemic, I mirrored that behavior (pic below from 3/26/2020), but pretty quickly realized that it’s just generally better to sit down and eat, for my digestion, sense of well-being, and not to mention to avoid spilling food on my computer.
Bunker brekkie, or my Tuesday work at home day started with oranges & black coffee.
Anyways, in case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t written anything since the 6th, which is like 12 days, but who’s counting. Although not writing for my blog is another thing that detracts from my sense of well-being, and makes me regret all the years that I never wrote some other type of journal (like my brother does, in moleskin notebooks).
When Mark was working part of the week in Chicago, in the evenings I usually wrote after dinner and never started watching TV much earlier than 9:00 or 10:00 PM. I’d watch something for an hour or maybe two, and then go to bed at 11:00. Unlike now when I go up and watch TV with Mark starting about 8:00 PM, so I’m sitting for three hours on the couch. I often fall asleep during the shows which makes me feel even more guilty – not only am I being a couch potato, I’m missing the show.
I’ve just been way too busy, too much grading, too many meetings on the zoom, just too much. Plus I’m lonely and grumpy and convinced that every little ache & pain is something serious.
So here goes with catching up. Sorta food first, but there’re also flowers.
Last Sunday we were invited to an engagement party for Megan and Ethan, at Megan’s parents’ house in Port Washington. So, at the Saturday market we bought two big bunches of flowers and brought them home on my bike, and combined them to make some to take as a gift, and a vase full for us to leave at home.
The flowers from the hipster seller that we like, Sunborn Gardens, lasted better than the others – look in the background of the wholewheat sourdough below for droopy sunflowers from the the other vendor.
On Monday I took a bunch of lily pictures.
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Doesn’t look like dinners were too exciting this week. On Monday we had leftover broccoli quiche and [new] roasted vegetables – cauliflower & green beans and potatoes. Tuesday we had kind of throw everything in Spanish rice with leftover chicken, corn, cilantro, cabbage, garbanzo beans, all cooked in Tipi tomato juice. It was good, but much tastier on Saturday when I reheated it in a thin layer in a skillet to make a nice crust, as a side dish for one of the recipes that I wrote for this week’s CSA box, ham and broccoli rollups. The rollups were good; I made them without the layer of rice on the bottom because we had the Spanish rice on the side.
We’re on week 9 of CSA, and the recipe writing is going OK, better, I think. I’m putting my original recipes (well, I did put one linked-to someone else’s recipe in this week; Smitten Kitchen vegetable lasagna, because I was sorta charmed that I found it reprinted at Splendid Table with less ads) on my New & Improved Recipes site, in their own category, CSA box recipes – it’s not shown in the main menus as yet but you can select it from the categories drop down at the bottom of the main page.
One night, I think Tuesday, I made an upside down cake with nectarines and blueberries, using my pear cake recipe (subbing pumpkin pie spice for the crystallized ginger), and it was OK the first night, but got so soggy, I threw it out the next day.
I think the meal I liked the best all week was sugary cereal I had for breakfast on Thursday.
It’s home made Ashure cereal, and honey nut cheerios with banana and blueberries
But somehow that day got out of control – I didn’t even record dinner, I know I ate too much, and the couple of handfuls of chocolate chips after dinner that didn’t seem like too much made me wake up with a sour stomach on Friday.
Tuesday’s wholewheat sourdough toasted with home made strawberry jam was good too.
I baked it on Monday.
It rained a lot early in the week and thankfully the basement stayed dry. It’s cooled off and the sun came out I think Thursday, even though it’s been pretty humid. I opened all the windows downstairs, but Mark’s kept upstairs closed and air conditioned. Things are opening up again, the Farmers Market’s moved back to the Capitol Square a couple of week’s ago, and this week the nicer weather sure brought out the crowds.
Speaking of Saturday, it’s blueberry season. On Friday I went to my volunteer gig giving out groceries at Goodman Community Center, and I got to take home a pint of blueberries – we had extra local produce to hand out. Saturday we got more blueberries at the market – same grower actually, but the Market ones were bigger and sweeter, so I made the pint I’d taken home into some blueberry maple muffins I’ve made before, here they are in February, from a Cuisine at Home recipe. This batch is in the featured image, with this week’s flowers, and here’s a closeup. The muffins look the same – maybe the winter time light better, though.
Next Saturday I think I’ll go to my first live outdoor summer music since pandemic – Atwood Summerfest. And Sunday we might take the train to Chicago – one of the guests at Ethan & Megan’s party was one of Ethan’s former roommates from Minneapolis. He’s a teacher and lives in Woodstock IL, which is on the line we usually take to Chicago, and he said the train’s kinda OK as we come out of pandemic. Or we might drive.
I guess that’s it. I’ll try to write sooner next time.
And, Go Bucks!
