Spring to summer and back to spring

Or, one step forward, two steps back. Like the Grateful Dead song, “Nine mile skid on a ten mile ride”.

Just like everything, the weather is up and down, back and forth. A week ago Friday the high was 90°, today it’s 60°. For every positive thing, seems like there’re at least two negatives. And let’s not even talk about the upcoming elections.

I finished grading last Saturday and took Monday off for my Bake for Ukraine cooking class. Had a nice start to the day, stayed in PJs as long as possible drinking coffee with the cat. The class went fine, only four people – instead of eight – due to last minute cancellations. Donations have been slow, BTW – feel free to make one!

All of which meant that this Friday I made Mark go to Chicago for the symphony on his own, because I had to get a syllabus and online course ready. Which I did accomplish, by about 4:00pm., and then went for a bike ride. Curbside Bikes was doing a pop up at a fancy cocktail place, and since one of their employees left their coat in my garage when they did the popup here back on April, I figured I’d bike it over to return. Nice ride, and I got to pet their dog, and drink a fancy cocktail.

But mostly it was a week of few pictures of food, low creativity, and lots of falling asleep on the couch in front of TV.

I’m trying to remember my weeknight cooking; Monday because of the cooking class, I didn’t make dinner, but while I was prepping for the class, I made some potato salad, as a cleaning out effort. It used parsley and the last of some salty dill garlic pickles that Terese gave me last year, that she told me to use for seasoning, not eating, and some tarter sauce I’d made  a week to two ago to go with salmon cakes, with the last of some sweet pickle relish I made last summer. The last couple of times I made potato salad we didn’t finish it fast enough and it had to get composted. This time everybody liked it, and kids ate it for lunch and Mark and Maja ate it for dinner while I was at class, I had some when I got home from class, and I ate the last of it for breakfast on Thursday. No pics, but it was pretty much this recipe.

I think Tuesday dinner was pasta with leftover home made ricotta from the cooking class, shiitake mushrooms, and asparagus, with challah-roll garlic toast.

Wednesday there was a track meet, and after Mark got back from watching Maja run in it, we had sandwiches and salad for dinner.

Thursday I thawed out some turkey meatballs in curry sauce I made a few weeks ago – I must’ve not put in enough crumbs because they were a little tough, and freezing did not help unfortunately. I think I will try heating them with added liquid when we eat them again tomorrow. And rice, and curried cauliflower, and bought naan.

Which brings us back to Friday, when Susan came over and we ate stir-fry noodles with Napa cabbage and pork belly – we got bacon-sliced pork belly with the last pig. And drank Prosecco. I was worried that the cabbage had been in the veg drawer for a bit too long, and it was brown on the inside, but I cut that part out and it was fine.

Saturday I made asparagus tart on puff pastry. I over-bought frozen puff pastry during cookie season, and thawed one of the four boxes I had in the freezer a bit ago, thinking I’d make something with it with spinach. So again, another thing sitting in the fridge I was afraid for too long. I’m planning on trying two puff pastry asparagus tarts – one with ricotta (or cottage cheese) and herbs in the filling, and another with hard cheese. Potential CSA box recipes when the season starts in not quite two weeks.

And oh, yeah I’d been wanting to make Ashure cereal again, and I did that on Saturday too – I had it for desk brekkie on Monday. I’ve made it several times, like this jar from 2019; with apples in 2020; with blueberries and honeynut Cheerios in 2021. The recipe is from Samin Nosrat in NYT, so here’s a copy for those who are not subscribers.

Sunday we had avocado toast with fried eggs and roasted potatoes for brunch. I made a rhubarb cake that smelled really good when I was mixing it up, but – I think because I used part yogurt because I didn’t have enough sour cream – it sort of blew up and went over the top of the pan. But it tastes OK.

Since we had that string of hot days week before last, even though it’s cooler now, over the weekend, I took some pics of flowers and flowering trees that hit their peak too soon.

Even the tulips we got at the Farmers Market Saturday seem to be dropping their petals fast.

Sunday morning seemed like everything was broken. In addition to the overflowing cake, I forgot to put the compost out, and the ceiling fan in the kids’ bathroom is just humming and not actually starting. The house still needs painted.

I finally got around to calling Charter/Spectrum to see what I could do about my bill which has gotten way too high, and of course, the problem is that you get no rewards for being a continuing customer, and we’ve been with them for 5 years. All my promotions have run out, we have a premium package that doesn’t exist anymore that includes hundreds of channels plus the premiums like HBO, and the best deal they could offer me was to do this thing where I have to pick 15 channels, then add the premiums on after that. I think we’re going to cut the cord, ditch everything except Internet, and try YouTube TV.

Ah, well, enough griping – it was a pretty good weekend. I think I only answered maybe one work email. Saturday I washed all the rugs, and Sunday I washed all the sheets – kitty allowed as how  I could make the bed around her.

I biked over to Meredith’s and cut about four pounds of rhubarb in about 10 minutes; would have cost me about $16, maybe $20 at the market. I left a container of some bars I made that taste good but they’re kind crumbly. I reduced the butter by half – of course some of the commenters on the online recipe said “don’t do that!” and other said, “Do It!” and I didn’t have enough jarred caramel sauce so I melted some butter and brown sugar together and used that. I made fudge sauce and we ate some of our share (I didn’t take all the bars over to Meredith’s <grin>) with ice cream for our Sunday night dessert.