Birthday weekend & new student week one

I am trying to figure out this retired thing, schedule-wise. I seem to never have time to do the things I thought I’d have more time for, like blog posts and art and food photography and reorganizing the basement. Cooking in general. Exercise. Fixing up the house. Oh, and I want to get another cat. It’s time. Katie cat, a.k.a. queen of the house is 10 years old and I think if I get her a kitten she can boss around, all will be well.

But, maybe I’m just being too impatient. Some progress is being made. There was that one time where I wrote up two recipes, Pasta Melanzane and Green Bean & Corn Salad in one day, I think a Tuesday. And not too long before that I did blueberry cornmeal muffins. Oh yea, and broccoli hand pies.

But when Mark wanted to go to IKEA to look at furniture for the new porch I had to think too long about when a good day to go would be.

For now Wednesday is my nothing scheduled day. Fridays should be too, but for this week and two weeks after I’m doing extra Jasper days on Fridays because daycare is closed. So Wednesday becomes the day of getting everything done. And then in September Wednesdays will be Jasper and Tuesdays should be free.

Meanwhile what about cooking …

I made us birthday pie, peach and apple, on my birthday last Friday. That took long enough that instead of making a main course as well, I got to pick the takeout. We got woodfired pizza and a salad. When I checked the pie on Tuesday night, the last two slices had a couple of big mold spots, so that was that for pie. I think it’s because peaches are wetter than most of the other fruits I make into pie.

Also for birthday dinner, I had intended to make pasta with a roasted tomato and cream sauce, kind of like this. I peeled the garlics and left out the basil, and boiled down the cream a bit before adding the sauce when I got around to making it Monday, on bucatini. It was really good but no pics. And Monday where my time ran out was I intended to make Italian sausage meatballs to go in the pasta, but instead I made a double batch of corn salsa. No pics of this year’s (except the bit below); here’s 2021. Nine ears of corn, onions, poblanos, tomatoes (fresh, peeled seeded and diced, but I didn’t have quite enough so threw in some canned too), jalapeños, sugar, vinegar, cilantro. I thought I’d have four jars but I had six, although one wasn’t quite full and we’ve almost finished that one because we had quesadillas for dinner last night. And I think I will finish it tonight actually because I brought the last three quesadilla wedges and the jar of corn salsa with me for my babysitter snack. I’m taking care of Jasper while Al & Emma go to see Menzingers a band I know little about, but they look kinda cool. Now I do have a pound of Italian sausage thawed out and trying to figure out what to do with that. Brunch strata or pie? Another pasta? We shall see.

I made peanut butter cookies last Wednesday. We got an AFS student for this school year and they arrived Wednesday. I made Mark go to O’Hare without me so I could have a day to finish getting the room ready and everything else. And bake cookies.

Our porch isn’t done enough to celebrate in, so I had a birthday beer at the kitchen counter while we waited for the pizza.

I did take a video in the porch when it got stormy on my birthday night.

 

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See the overleaf for birthday flowers. We got those Saturday morning at the market.

Saturday I went to the Central Park Sessions to see the ghost particles, a band with members of Spooner, the Rousers, Firetown, and etc. Firetown’s MTV video hit was “I’ll Carry the Torch for You” and John & Al’s dad used to sing “I’ll Paint the Porch for You”. The video is the height of ‘80s music video cliches; black leather clad musicians lipsynching in a corn field and in an empty house, girl wearing cloche hat looking moodily out the window with the wind stirring her hair, and more. And serious ear worm alert – “you may leave but I believe” I’ll paint the porch for you. Gotta hand it to Phil Davis – he can write a hook.

The Sessions was ghost particles first time playing out. They were supposed to debut at the Crystal about 2 weeks ago, but some of them came down with Covid. This picture is the two-minute encore, Mr. Tamborine Man, more Byrds than Dylan and played on a 6-string because the Rickenbacker was not cooperating that day. I liked the encore, and also the song they dedicated to the late Jamie Cowles. I liked a lot of it actually.

Sunday morning Robyn Hitchcock posted that his daughter Maisie had died. She was 47 and had cancer for three years, and stopped treatment at the beginning of this summer. She worked as a tour guide, and I followed her on Instagram to see photos of the places she went. And her brother too, who leads bike tours in rural England – also beautiful to follow on Insta.

I got some of the tomatoes I swapped challah for with our porch construction project manager. They’re big yellow ones. Made a really good sandwich for lunch.

And Jasper got a new giant playpen.