Not much cooking this week because it was getting ready to go to the library conference and using up leftovers.
I’ve used the big new mixer a few times, and I’m warming to it.
The on and speed switch has a lot more increments, so you can start the mixer super slowly and the flour doesn’t fly out. No need for draping with a dish towel. I have now made chocolate & heath bar chip cookies, pie crust (for Fathers Day cherry pie), and cimmy bun dough in it. And I think maybe a cake too.
And my electric kettle was seeming broken – it was shutting itself off before it was really boiling, and wouldn’t turn back on. It was pretty limed up, especially the heating element. The instructions say to clean by boiling a teaspoon of cream of tarter in a half full kettle – but you have to start when the kettle is cooled. I had tried it once before and it was too hot, and the cream of tarter just stuck. So it was quite satisfying when I tried it again that the scaling got soft and scrubbed right off, after only one boil. And it actually boils again. I thought I was going to have to go buy a new one, but fixed!
The original for this week’s CSA recipes was kale & orzo “risotto”, based on Hetty McKinnon.
We went out to Steve & Heike’s for Make Music Madison on Midsummer’s eve. We made a picnic – I bought sub buns and Mark had ham & cheese and, because I had a handful of kale left from the orzo, and some already mixed up cheater’s Caesar dressing in the fridge, I made myself a kale Caesar sub sandwich that was surprisingly good. Dressed kale and sharp white cheddar on the sub bun.
A lovely evening, but I finished up the CSA recipes right before we left to go over to Steve & Heike’s and I forgot to logout, which locked my post and my CSA farmer couldn’t get it published. She asked me to make a new post copy & paste the other one into the new post, and fortunately I was able to do all that on my phone on 5G from my lawn chair. So I could stay and listen to the music and didn’t have to drive back across town and logout out from my desktop computer. Whew.
The other thing I did was getting stuff straightened out for retirement. I found that I had filled in the application for my state benefits wrong. There’s a section where you are supposed to check off only one box, and I checked off two thinking one of them was how I want the benefits paid out to me, and the other part was how I want the benefits paid out to Mark if I die first. But you’re actually only supposed to choose one. So I called Employee Trust Funds (ETF) to get that figured out, and then as a kind of an oh by the way at the end of our conversation, the person helping me said, “now, you listed your termination date as June 30, so that means we will start paying your benefits around July 1.” I didn’t know this at the end of April when I sent in the form, but June 30 might be my last day of work, but it’s not my termination date. I have unused vacation, and that needs to pay out first; I will actually be on payroll for something like 6 weeks after June 30. So, I submitted the form too early and ETF kicked it back – it cannot be submitted more than 90 days before your termination date. HR told me I get my last paycheck August 24, but I didn’t know if that was my termination date or if it was August 12 when that payroll closes.
More emails and questions and turns out that August 12 is the termination date, and August 11 is my last day in UW employ. My birthday, which must be some kind of synergy.
And tales of the library conference will be the next post.