Birthday Week

And I haven’t even told you about Denver, or much beyond our first day there. When I backed up my pictures there were 51 – it’s been that long since I last did a backup.

To start, the following pics are our 1st day in Denver and our first post-birthday day back in Madison.

Our first full day in Denver was a week ago last Friday (writing this on Wednesday and Thursday) we got up and walked to our favorite coffee bar – see below. I think we went grocery shopping and then had boneless chicken breasts and salad for dinner. Rowan’s mom Megan left for her sister’s bridal shower around 5:00, so the rest of us made do in her absence. The other pic is Tuesday night, our first day with no house guests and no birthday celebrations going on. For dinner, we had leftover pizza – some home made and some brought back from my girls’ night out dinner birthday celebration with Susan on Monday at Lola’s – and corn on the cob from the Saturday farmers market. And peach & tart cherry pie/cobbler, cherries also from the farmers market. The filling is about three-fourths of this recipe (3 cups combined tart cherries and peaches) and has no bottom crust, only the top lattice which was a small piece of crust I’d had leftover from something and stuck in the freezer.  I wove the lattice on a piece of parchment and froze it while the filling cooked, and plunking it onto the top was very satisfying.    

So what else did we do in Denver … played with the grandson, took daily walks in 100° weather sticking to the shade, ate lots of carry out. The best of the carryout was Sonny’s Mediterranean. They had these pita sandwiches with harissa aioli and fries inside that were delicious, in fact mine was vegetarian so had not only fries but felafel inside the sandwich along with lots of veggies, and the food came in compostable containers.

And the bakery we went to Sunday morning before Megan came back. Although I picked an almond croissant and I’m afraid their frangipane mixture was off that day – it was too runny.

Saturday we went to the zoo and the science museum.

Travel coming back went smoothly and we were home on the early side and had breakfast for dinner, fried eggs and bacon and toast. And apricot white chocolate scones, so I could give some to the neighbors up the street who were taking care of our cats while we were gone. Which all meant taking care of Jasper the next day was not a problem. I took Jasper to the Wednesday farmers market in search of “boulebelly”; how he says blueberries, but no one had any, so we got a croissant and cheese curds and ran around on the Capitol lawn. Emma & Al are storing their bike trailer here, so after nap I thought we might bike someplace, but Jasper has kind of been waking up slow, so we just watched Elmo and played in the screen porch and the back yard.

I was feeling over scheduled for Thursday so I cancelled my volunteer shift at the food pantry, which meant I didn’t need to be anywhere until the library at 1:00. I was planning a morning of puttering around, making roasted tomato sauce from leftover tomatoes that were around, starting sourdough, doing a little laundry. The cleaners weren’t due until noon, but they texted asking if they could come at 10:00. Fortunately I was just finishing up making the sauce, so I washed the food processor and hid the bowl of being-fed sourdough starter in a closet where they wouldn’t knock it over, and grabbed one of the scones and went and ate it with coffee at the Collectivo on Monroe and still made the library by 1:00; I actually think I was there by 12:30. Which was good because of our Denver trip I hadn’t been there the prior Thursday and Monday. I also had a courier early voting shift right after the library, where I biked up to the Clerk’s at the city county building, got the official sealable red bag, picked up the ballots at Memorial Union, and took them back to the Clerk’s. And was home in time to make dinner, the roasted tomato sauce on some pasta and a kind of cheese garlic toast made on the last of some milk bread I’d made before going to Denver. 

I was feeling over scheduled because my brother was coming for my birthday, arriving Saturday AM, and I had some early voting shifts, like the courier shift Thursday and a longer one Friday. And I was planning a little pre-birthday dinner party on Saturday night. The menu was to be zucchini carbonara, focaccia, salad, and a peach melba Pavolova. And I sort of wanted to go to the Sessions on Friday, the Kiki’s Righteous Session. And Al & Emma & Jasper were coming over for cimmy buns on Sunday morning before we headed off to the Brewer game for my birthday where we were meeting John & Megan.

But people started cancelling for the dinner, which embarrassed me as a hostess, but in the end it worked out better. I called it off. I didn’t go to the Sessions Friday, I came home and made the focaccia and the Pavlova and the dough for Sunday’s cimmy buns, and we ate cheese & onion pizza with the last of the roasted sauce on some of the same dough as the focaccia for dinner. On Saturday I went to the market early and had time to shape the cimmy buns – one giant one actually – before my brother arrived on the bus from O’Hare. Then I baked the roll and made the custard sauce and raspberry sauce for the Pavlova while he was napping – he’d taken a red eye from Seattle to Chicago.

Since there was no dinner, Mark and my brother and I biked over to the Saturday night Sessions, a mix of blues and bluegrass. We looked at the food trucks onsite for dinner possibilities, and nothing really appealed so we had drinks and watched John Primer from Chicago and biked home and ate the Pavlova. My brother and I saw the general manager of the co-op sitting in the VIP seats and she invited us to join her, and after one or two songs of Primer’s set, I remembered to go get Mark from where he was sitting by himself reading a book on his phone & half listening to the show. I was on the co-op board from 2005-2012 and the GM encouraged me to run again now that I’m retired, and I’m thinking about it. The next day at the baseball game I saw my birthday buddy who does a Blues show on WORT, and he said he thought Primer’s set was geared for a white audience. He left after Mustang Sally; when I told him Primer closed with Rhinestone Cowboy, he said if Muddy was still alive (who Primer’d played with) Muddy would’ve slapped him.

Sunday Al & Emma & Jasper came over for the cimmy bun and so Unky Dave could meet his great nephew. Then we headed for the Brewer game where we met John & Megan. The Brew guys lost, but they still won 2 out of the 3 games with the Reds, and they’re still #1 in their division.

We went to DanDan in Milwaukee for dinner, lots of spicy vegetarian things, and of course an order of pork dandan noodles. I think I liked the kung pao cauliflower and the scallion pancakes the best.

No pics of the Pavlova; here’s an extra one of the cimmy bun.

And oh yea, a couple of last ones from Denver:

So altogether, a fun trip to Denver and despite the cancelled dinner party and lack of pics, a good birthday. I managed to get a lot of the family together and my brother got to see both nephews and their families. And I felt like everything I cooked was actually quite good. The cinnamon roll tasted a bit too salty to me, but that probably made everyone else love it (I did reduce the salt in the recipe from two teaspoons down to one). And at my encouragement my brother and Mark and I all took large slices of the Pavlova on Saturday night – I told them it would only melt – and it pretty much had by Sunday when I scraped off the peach slices and ate them for my birthday morning treat and rinsed the rest of the Pavlova down the kitchen sink when no one else was looking.