The year that somebody else baked Mark’s birthday pie

I started writing this last week, when it was still September, the 28th to be precise, Wednesday, and that was the Wednesday after the Tuesday when the exercises & stretches the PT gave me for my bum knee and calf cramps started to feel like they were working instead of just making me cry. And now I still can’t do all of them, but it’s getting better. And the less pain I have the lower my blood pressure is too.

And yea, Mark’s birthday was Sunday the 25th, and I made pumpkin scones for breakfast and I was going to make a pot roast for dinner. The scones for him, the pot roast, recipe testing. He’d bought his birthday pie from Honey Bee (he got cherry) because they came to the downtown market the day before – so I didn’t make that this year. A change. I also made sprinkle cookies for Al’s Emma’s shower on Sunday, the parents edition – her sister is throwing on for sibs and friends this coming weekend. Mark used birthday oblige to not come to the shower. It was kinda fun though. But I was too tired to make the pot roast after, or really just didn’t have time to get it into the oven before I had to leave for the shower, so we ordered a pizza instead, which I think was actually more Mark’s idea of a birthday dinner anyways.

Here are my cookies in bad light, and Emma’s pic of the other cookies – I must not have been there in time to get my cookies into the money shot. The color scheme was obviously blue & green.

And here’s the pumpkin scones. Made with the squash I baked up on Friday the 23rd when I had to stay home and rest my knee.

I used the bum knee as an excuse to work from home all week, instead of going in Mon., Tues., and Weds. and only home Thursday and Friday. I think it helped.

I made the pot roast and a big round sourdough on Monday for Rosh Hashanah – see the overleaf for the sourdough. And sourdough dinner rolls, that were really good with the roast, and also made great sandwiches with the shredded barbecue beef I made with the leftovers. There’s an extra pan of par-baked rolls in the freezer. It’s a King Arthur recipe, and I wasn’t thinking and just dumped in the potato flour instead of mixing it with the other flour and it lumped up, and even though I could see them when I was kneading the dough, when we were eating the rolls somehow there were no little potato flour lumps in evidence.

Some night in there – Tuesday I think – we had ham sandwiches on the sourdough and cheese soup I’d made for recipe testing. Although I think I had the last two slices of deli turkey on wheat and left the ham for Mark.

The most interesting cooking I did though, was dinner on Saturday for a group of women who all lived at the co-op dorm I cooked at in the 1980s. Zoe Bayliss – it’s getting torn down to make way for the L&S academic building, so they came back for the football game and a tour. I wasn’t that much older than the residents when I worked there – most of them were in their early 20s, because people didn’t normally live in this dorm their first year on campus, it was often more like sophomore or junior year. When I started working there in the fall of 1980, I had just turned 25. Which means that they’re all in their late 50s, many with grown kids, and one even had grandkids – I think she married someone older with kids from a previous marriage. An interesting bunch. I didn’t get what they all did. One who’s here in Madison is an ESL teacher and ceramicist – I see her from time to time. The one who masterminded it all works in health care in some capacity. I’d re-met her because she is friends with some of my librarian friends, and they brought her to one of Debbie Cardinal’s pie parties. The one who came in from Maine is a realtor. I never got the last name of the one I knew from volunteering at REAP – she loved the dearly departed Pie Palooza as much as me & Terese did.

The menu was kind of riff on School Woods first dinner

• a salad, this one with balsamic vinaigrette, goat cheese, toasted pecans, and dried cranberries – School Woods had the balsamic vinaigrette and goat cheese but also roast pear.
• Lasagne with roasted squash and tomato sauce and a layer of ricotta and Gruyere. It was very sweet from the squash and tomatoes, and very cheesy.
• Ciabatta with oil poached garlic
• A plum galette and an apple one and I brought down the ice cream from upstairs.

It was also really nice to hear them talk about how they remembered my cooking and menu planning. Oh, and I guess the realtor took the pic because she’s not in it.

They all said they’d recognize me anywhere because I look exactly the same. Which other people have said too and I was always sort of flattered, thinking I guess I’m not looking old. But this time looking at myself in the mirror I’ve been thinking, “Jeez I thought I was prettier back then. Was I this unattractive when I was young?” Maybe I’m extra haggard now due to the leg pain.

On Sunday (the next day) I didn’t want to be challenged, so instead of turning the leftover leek confit that I’d put put with the crackers the night before into leek quiche, I made scrambled eggs with cheese (leftover from the cheese board; a mixture of dill Havarti and Swiss and cheddar scraps) and smashed potatoes and toast for Sunday breakfast. And cinnamon scones that were just a teeny bit too dark, symbolic of my Sunday – nothing went terribly wrong but nothing seemed to be just exactly perfect, either.

Friday my leg was OK enough to go to Chicago for the symphony. To keep under my no walks longer than 15 mins. limit, I Lyfted from the station to the coffee place while Mark picked up our Gotham bagels sandwiches, then we walked to the park outside the Art Institure to eat – less than 10 minutes – and from there it was only across the street to the Symphony. I took the L back to Ogilvie after.

And the view out the train was lovely on the way home. Golden fall sunset Wisconsin fields.

And somewhere in there – the date stamp on the picture is last Tuesday (9/27) I made granola.