An indulgent weekend

At least in terms of eating & drinking, and NOT doing any work.

On Thursday, I left my book sale volunteer job early, and went and got CSA box #2 of the season (box 2 for me, because I get an every other week box; it’s actually week 3 of CSA season). Heavy on greens: bok choy, spinach, Komatsuna greens, turnips with greens, and a head of Romaine lettuce. Then we went to meet some friends for dinner at Lombardinos. They have been wanting to treat us to a dinner in gratefulness for years of cookie parties. I mean, I don’t really feel like they owe us anything – I am delighted to have their company at the party! I had a Negroni to start and a beer to go with my roasted ramps pizza. Mark got the pasta primavera special and we split the house salad that I always like because it has shaved fennel in the salad and fennel seed in the dressing.

I didn’t take a pic of Lombardinos’ ramp pizza but here’s Spinning J’s.

On Friday I made ramen salad to try to address some of the greens in the box. The salad has bok choy, turnip greens, and slivered turnips in it, and scallions from the box, too.

Before assembling the ramen salad, I biked over to the east side to have lunch with Anna, at East Johnson Family Restaurant. I had their cauliflower and seitan burger. It was good but the main flavors were the thousand island dressing and caramelized onion topping. And the American cheese and shredded iceberg lettuce and pickles, all of which definitely gave it that big mac feeling.

We had the ramen salad for dinner, along with various other leftovers – as I recall Mark had the ramp pizza and I had some of the noodle & tofu dish I made for last week’s CSA orginal, then we shared the last of the cream cheese pie I’d made on Sunday. With berries. It was the thin, no bake kind, cream cheese & sweetened condensed milk and lemon juice on a graham cracker & cookie crumb crust.

In between lunch and the ramen salad, I had to go in to the clinic for a blood pressure check and blood test to make sure my thyroid replacement drug is still working. They kind of pulled a nice nurse/mean nurse thing on me with the blood pressure check. The one who took my blood pressure was nice; I told them I was worried it’d be high, and we might have to do it again after I relaxed more – I mean they tell you to get there 15 minutes early and I did but they were playing Van Halen in the waiting room, and I needed Adagio for Strings. Anyways the nice nurse said I was in an OK range after the first try so we left it at that. Then when I got home there was a message from the mean nurse saying the systolic should be 6 points less and the diastolic should be 3 less, and they want me to come back in two months.  I replied that I am still dealing with chronic pain and the knee injury and can’t exercise as much as I would like and not sure that two months is long enough. They replied they hoped I was feeling better soon, and they’d schedule me when the time came, but did not indicate it would be more than two months.

Then more pizza – we finally watched Licorice Pizza since it’s free to stream now. Paul Thomas Anderson’s kind of messy 70’s coming-of-age romance (and Valley girls love letter) with Alana Haim playing a 20-something dating Gary, a 15 year old precocious high school kid, played by Cooper Hoffman who is Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s kid. I guess Anderson is a Haim family friend and also directed a bunch of their music videos. Since the movie is set in 1973, I guess I am in between the movie Gary and Alana because that’s the year I turned 18. I think I’ll buy the soundtrack – the staff of the WI Library Association sent me an Amazon gift card for a retirement present, and the soundtrack starts with Nina Simone and the last song is Taj Mahal. I dozed off a bunch though – I am going to have to watch it again.

Megan in Chicago went to Taylor Swift Friday.

On Saturday we biked to the Farmers Market for cows on the concourse.  I biked over to pick up my Madison Farmers Unite order, more on that in a minute. Then I was still feeling kinda crummy from my cold so I took myself to the urgent care to see if it was turning into a sinus infection or maybe strep. The determination was sinus, and I got antibiotics. And mean nurse shoulda been there because my systolic was like 15 points less and diastolic was 17 less.

My Madison Farmers Unite order was some salmon because my former boss and her husband were coming for dinner Saturday evening. They moved to Oregon in 2019 to help out their daughter who was having twins on her own. Then they were kind of stuck out there for pandemic, and now the twins will be 4 in August. They have a house in Oregon, and decided it was finally time to sell the Madison condo that they’d kept because they still have family here. So they’d come back for a last trip to clean out. Because they’d been renting it out, Jane brought me an odd assortment of kitchen/pantry things that people had left.

I made the salmon with rhubarb sauce from this recipe that was one of my searched recipes for the first CSA box. My rhubarb fell apart and didn’t stay as red, though. And I served it with a Caesar salad and roasted asparagus with shiitakes sauteed in hoisin. All featuring CSA veggies. And Victoria sponge, that was a little dry, and pastry cream that was a little too thick, and lots of berries, that were just right.

Jasper went to the pool on Saturday.

On Saturday night I think there was some kind of summer nights Insta tag, because both my daughters-in-law participated.

I made sourdough and did laundry on Saturday so maybe it was not all fun & games this weekend – a few chores thrown in there, too.

Sunday I sorted the stuff Jane bought and kept some and composted and threw out and ran down the disposal and recycled containers of the rest. Like out of date AND opened jar of hoisin sauce – when  I’d just made a batch of homemade sauce, pitch; bag of unbleached white flour only slightly out of date, keep – but I put it into a plastic container on the counter instead of into the cabinet with the other baking ingredients in case bugs; half a plastic shaker jar of artificially flavored maple sugar, pitch, and recycled the jar.

On Sunday we opted for a lighter breakfast than out usual self indulgent brunch, scrambled eggs with cheese and tomatoes and toast. Because we went to see Alejandro Escovedo at the back room at Colectivo, and we had slices of pizza at Ian’s before the show. It was great. Because it was Sunday we got rock star free street parking on Prospect Ave. like inches away from Colectivo, and we walked around the corner and had our pizza at Ian’s. The downside was it was a standing show so actually no need to get there early at all. Trapper Schoepp opened – I’d seen him a few years ago at Waterfront fest – and Alejandro came out in Trapper’s “This isn’t fun anymore” t-shirt. I also over served myself a bit I think and I think I left my cloth purse on the bar. No ID in it only cash, probably $30. I emailed their lost & found and they replied they’d look but haven’t heard anything. I can make myself another, but still.

Here’s my Alejandro pics, starting with pizza at Ian’s.

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The main thing of note happening Monday was I started cleaning out my office and filled up the big “brute” recycle trashcan they’d gotten for me and the smaller recycle and trash cans in both my inner office and the currently unoccupied outer office. And I really only did one set of shelves. It made me sad – all sorts of information, books and conference program folders and binders from continuing education trainings that cost a lot of money in the early aughts and 20-teens and now isn’t worth shit. And documentation of lots of stuff that I did, events I planned and courses I taught, also completely out of date. I wasn’t sure what to do with the can once I filled it so I just left it hoping t would get dumped; I was going to be with Jasper on Tuesday anyhow. And sure enough when I got back Wednesday it was empty. I didn’t do much cleaning then, or today, Thursday, but I’ll get back to it Friday.

Like I said, Tuesday was a Jasper day and he is really rolling over, sometimes getting stuck on his belly, but he really wants to move. We played outside.

 

Wednesday was CSA recipe day. I made an adaptation of Mark Bittman’s Kale or Chard Pie on Tuesday night for my original recipe and Kiera, the friend of several of our exchange students, came over for dinner. She’s moving to Minneapolis and we wanted to have her over before she left.

And at some point in there – Monday maybe? (Actually I’m sure it was Monday), I made some pastry cream – creme pat in Great British Bake Off lingo – short for Crème Pâtissière – and rhubarb puff pastries. Using up the last of my rhubarb & that too-thick creme pat from Saturday. The puff pastry is from a box but they were still good. Mark and I split one, must’ve been  Monday when they were fresh; I took Al & Emma 2 on Tuesday and Kiera took a couple; I had one for breakfast Wednesday. Sadly we were down to one on Thursday night and I thought Mark has lost interested. They were getting a little hard and the puff pasty wasn’t crisp anymore. So I sliced off a nice piece with plenty of cream & rhubarb, and composted the rest but then Mark  looked for one to eat after dinner (salmon cakes made with the leftover salmon from Saturday and mashed potatoes). Shucks.

Friday morning I was going to thaw out the last six of the rhubarb muffins that’re in the banner right now. I thought I should supply a replacement baked good for Mark since he was disappointed at no pastries the night before. But I found these cimmy buns, frozen since my make ahead class at Orange Tree in the winter,  and iced them and they’ll be good in a couple hours when they fully thaw & come to room temp.

And the really big news is Ethan and Megan in Denver had their baby Wednesday morning. Rowan James Beatty. But I think that’s going to have to be another story. Need to get some better pics from them, that I am sure they want to share!