The rest of September after TIFF

I started writing this last Wednesday (it’s Saturday now, actually continued on this Sunday, and it’s Monday now) and it was going to be titled “a week (or so) back from TIFF”. But as usual time has escaped me, so I’m going to work on the last 10 days or so that have gone by since we got back, and see if I can remember at least one event – or something I cooked! – for each day.

That means starting with Tuesday September 19th. (although this will overlap with my last post, somewhat, since I never got around to completing writing about TIFF until Sept. 22) It was supposed to be a catch-up day, and I did a good bit of running around, including a Costco run and a stop at the co-op, so that I could come up with something for my CSA original recipe, which turned out to be a roasted squash and tomato quiche.

The Costco run was a bit frustrating – I obviously thought we were out of everything after being gone at TIFF for 11 days, but I bought some things we did not need – like a 2 pack of Skippy for Mark when he already had 2 in his kitchen cabinet – and I got regular instead of organic olive oil. That I actually returned on Friday – more on that in a minute. I bought a big bag of ginger that I didn’t look at carefully enough; it’s NOT crystallized, kind of just dried. I mean it’s not that much different than the crystallized kind – it still has some sugar in it. It should be good for grating and putting into anything where I’d use fresh ginger.

It was also Jasper’s 10 month birthday – I did mention that in the last post, but here’s another view.

Wednesday September 20 was a Jasper day, and I took a lot of pictures.

I bought ingredients at the co-op and made the quiche on Tuesday based on my CSA farmer’s preliminary list from Monday, and that list changed a bit by Wednesday. Like I bought plum tomatoes because at first the prediction was we’d get a bag of mixed plum and slicers that was all slicers in the end. I was able to get some work done on the recipes while Jasper was napping, and when I got home I quick put the finishing touches on, adding instructions to use chunks of slicer tomatoes in place of wedges of plum, and we had sandwiches for dinner. There was a little bit of sandwich meat that I had stuck in the freezer while we were gone that thawed by the time I was done with the recipes and I think I made egg salad.

Thursday September 21, it was back to my two volunteer jobs in one day schedule, food pantry in the AM and book sale in the afternoon. Where I worked by myself because my volunteer couldn’t make it. I picked up my CSA box and I thought I might make a roasted pepper pasta for dinner, but that would’ve taken too long so we had a pepper & egg frittata along with toast and leftover breakfast sausages I had frozen after our Labor Day brunch with Al & Emma & Jasper. Oh yea, and one of the first nights we were back I made a big salad with chopped up bacon frozen from that Labor Day meal and the romaine we brought back from Toronto and grated carrot and shredded red cabbage dredged up from the bottom of the veggie drawer. It was remarkably nice for a “foraged” salad.

 

I used Friday September 22 as my day to remedy my shopping errors and return stuff. But before I did all that I made blueberry muffins. I had bought giant boxes of organic blueberries and strawberries at Costco and it seemed unlikely we could eat them all before they went bad so seemed like a good idea to make muffins. No muffin pics but they were this recipe with a little lemon zest grated in. OK – so shopping – It was colder in Toronto while we were at TIFF than I had expected it to be and I envied Mark his nice long sleeved cotton t-shirts. So I ordered two from Lands End that arrived after we got back, but I didn’t like them. The material was too slippery. So I started off returning those at Lands End, actually partially exchanging them for a better one that was more cotton-y – and a nice kind of light brown color. I was going to head on to Costco and return the non-organic olive oil, but first I stopped at Steve’s Liquor. One of my Tuesday Costco purchases was a bottle of Veuve Clicquot for our only-slightly-planned-so-far porch warming festivities. Remember we saw the movie at TIFF. Costco was selling the champagne for about $59 bottle, which seemed like a good price but I wanted to compare at Steve’s. Theirs was a little more but I bought a bottle anyhow, and then went to Costco. Where I returned the olive oil and got a third bottle. We do want these festivities to be festive, after all. I think I also went to Target but can’t remember what for. Maybe marshmallows because I made a batch of rice krispie treats and they got eaten so fast, I thought I should get more marshmallows to go with the 2nd half of the box of cereal I still had. Tho I do seem to remember getting the marshmallows off the shelf at Metcalfe’s …

I had to be done with my shopping stuff in time for a blood pressure check at 2:00 that I’d been dreading but in the end it was fine. Remember they pulled a nice nurse/mean nurse thing on me in June, where the person who took my BP at the office said it wasn’t so bad and then as soon as I got home there was a MyChart message to schedule to come back in two months which I thought was too soon, because I still have knee pain, and can’t walk as much as I want, and don’t sleep that great. I’d been ignoring their requests to come in for a check until finally somebody called me right before TIFF, so I broke down & scheduled. I got there in time to relax for the required 15 minutes beforehand, and unlike last time when they’d been playing Van Halen, they were playing Nirvana in the waiting room. They didn’t want me to walk up the stairs before my relaxation minutes, so I took the elevator and did not tell them I’d biked there. Nonetheless I was 128/66 and they were happy with that, though of course they said come back in 6 months. After, I got my knives sharpened and had a coffee to celebrate.

Saturday the 23rd Mark and I biked to the Farmers Market and I had him take home our perishable purchases while I went to do a later shift selling the cookbook. Mark drove our exchange student to their AFS overnighter at the bible camp near McFarland. We had bacon sandwiches with the last of the pepper & egg frittata tucked in for a quick  dinner and went to the Madison symphony.

I drove over to Susan’s in the morning on Sunday, 24 September for our trip to the Y for the e-gym, because I would not have had time for us to have coffee & chat after and still make it to pick up our student at camp. Which is really the point – we can’t really talk when we’re on the machines. When we got back I made brunch.

Last year somebody else baked Mark’s birthday pie. This year I made it on Sunday afternoon, before his Monday birthday, and we ate it with ice cream that night, but I didn’t take any pictures.

Monday, 9/25, Mark’s birthday, and it was raining so I was going to take the bus to my morning volunteering at the library. I switched our cleaners from Wednesdays to Mondays because when Jasper starts coming to our house, it’s going to be Wednesdays. I thought they’d arrive at the same time they’d been coming Mondays, 9:00 or a little after, but it was just after 9:30 when they arrived. Google maps told me I’d missed all the buses, but I headed for the stop and could see a lot of people waiting and was crossing the street to join them when my volunteer for the morning beeped at me and asked if I wanted a ride. So that all worked out.

I took a banana and an apple and my toothbrush with me because I had a dentist appointment at 1:00 and was afraid I’d be starving if I had nothing before it. I ate and brushed my teeth at the library then walked up to Capitol Square for the worst dental experience I’d had on some time. Turned out my dentist, who is very non-interventionist, what I like in a dentist, had left. I had some substitute dentist who didn’t really read my chart and the hygienist insisted on using the ultrasonic scaler. You couldn’t see the clock from the chair, and they moved offices so I didn’t get to look out at the roof of the kids museum anymore. The piped in music was heavy metal/hair bands, the first cut was AC/DC, for those about to rock, and Whitesnake (bleech). Van Halen, Beautiful Girls, offensive (though slightly self aware; maybe humorous) even in the 1980s. The most innocuous stuff was a Cars song and the only song I even liked was Tom Petty, Running Down A Dream, “me and Del was singin”. As you can probably tell, the main problem is that I remember all these songs from the ’80s and didn’t like them back then (except Petty) and Whitesnake was stuck in my head the rest of the day, tho I tried to drown them with Petty. When I left I didn’t make my six month appointment at that office, and when I got home, and told Mark about how awful my dental visit had been, he told me how much he liked his dentist, who’s also in our same network and the grim experience has a happy ending because I got my next check up with Mark’s dentist. And I only had to wait eight months instead of six.

We went out for sushi for Mark’s birthday dinner, and had a nice meal except my tap Moon Man was warm and flat so I sent it back and Mark teased me about becoming a picky diner because I sent back my toast in Toronto.

Tuesday the 26th was also supposed to be an easy day, and this time it mostly was. I baked an apple cake from the DCFM cookbook for an event that night at Room of One’s Own, then I walked to the bagel store but they were out of egg bagels, Pia’s kind. So I went to Whole Foods and got sliced white bread instead. Then Mark and I went out to REI for two reasons: 1) I wanted to return these running shoes I’d ordered that were deeply discounted but I didn’t really like them – the tongue was a thin piece of some kind of synthetic leather substance and they were stiff; and 2) I wanted to try on a large Thousand bike helmet. We got me a medium after trying one on in the giant REI in Denver in July, and Mark ordered it for me for my birthday, but I always felt like it only covered the tippy top of my head and I should be wearing a large. It flopped down every time I hit a bump when riding. And Mark just bought himself a new helmet but only seemed so so about it. So I figured I could get myself a large and give him the medium and do it all on my REI patronage rebate which was a nice amount because I put our expensive TIFF AirBNB on my REI credit card. And that all worked just fine, I even got home in time to go ahead and order my new helmet before I left for the book store event. The only downside is that since I gave Mark the helmet he bought for me, it means that I ended up paying for my own birthday present helmet, albeit with patronage rebate.

I took care of Jasper on Wednesday the 27th, not so many pictures this time.

After Jasper care, Pia and I went to Designer Shoe Warehouse to get her shoes for the homecoming dance. She had come back from the bible camp overnighter with a dress – kind of a gauzey green thing with glitter that actually looks great on her. And I bought a pair of Asics shoes there. But I still think I’ll go to Movin’ Shoes and get some better ones.

I made green beans with ground turkey and the last of some Hoisin and peanut sauces I’d made and stuck in the fridge at the beginning of the summer. The Hoisin was fine; I scraped a few mold spots off the peanut sauce. The green beans needed to be cooked as well – they were from the prior week’s CSA box.

Thursday the 28th after the food pantry I met a friend for coffee. When I got home I treated myself to a tomato sandwich with one of the yellow heirlooms. Tracey (the project manager for our porch construction project who I’ve been trading prepared food for homegrown tomatoes) brought more over Tuesday, I think it was. I had a few cookies to give him in exchange but I think I am into the owe column now.

We had a late dinner after I picked up my CSA box; squash and kimchi mac and cheese, a Hetty McKinnon recipe that I’ve been wanting to try. She said she came up with it due to being hungry and having an excess of kimchi, and I was right there with her. No pics but it was really good – the sweetness of the squash and the kimchi heat and funk and the cheese all come together just right.  I didn’t have any scallions but I think that was OK.

Friday the 29th we went to Chicago for the day and had lunch with some of our retired librarian and archivist friends, and saw the Chicago Symphony. It was a good day.

Saturday the 30th I went to meet some kittens and looks like I will adopt two. And that’s going to be a long story, so another time. I’m sure I’ll take a million pictures of them after I bring them home. It was the homecoming dance at the high school and our student went out for dinner with a group, wearng her pretty green dress and new shoes. We ferried kids to the restaurant and then back to the high school for the dance. After all the driving Mark and I had chicken quesadillas and corn with peppers and green beans braised with two of the yellow heirlooms. I was determined not to let this week’s CSA green beans get as far gone as the week before.

And that gets us to the end of September. Yay! Oh, and the overleaf pic is biking in Chicago at twilight by Megan Gundelfinger.