And shattered Corel.
This year the iSchool Graduation preempted Mother’s Day for me … again. Second year in a row. It’s nice to watch the students graduate, and the Distinguished Alumna speaker was very good this year, but I’d rather make brunch.
Although – I did get to make a little brunch, after the graduation. Giant omelette with creamed ramps inside, toast, and bacon (that Cedar Road bacon we tried last week; it’s still crazy good but although we had high hopes for their jerky, John & I decided it’s too dry and tough), and rhubarb muffins that I made before heading to the graduation, eaten with Hanne, Mark, and John & Megan. I forgot to put out the strawberries, so I took them to Al & Emma’s for the cookout that Emma had organized. John & Al’s dad and his wife were visiting so it was our Mother’s Day celebration.
After John & Megan left I went for a walk and took pictures of blooming trees – some kind of wet. A few of the pics are from Saturday when it was drier in the day time.
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For the cookout I made a salad from the Six Seasons cookbook Rach gave me for my birthday last summer. She’d cagily had me look at it when I visited her in June then got it for me when I allowed as how it looked like I’d use it. It’s a potato salad using little new potatoes in a pancetta vinaigrette, kind of like what we’d call German potato salad, on top of a big bed of butter lettuce and boiled egg and pickled onion. It was good but a bit soggy and I bet would’ve been way better with the Cedar Road bacon than the pancetta.
Monday night I made pizza: asparagus, fresh tomato (hoop house tomatoes from the week before’s farmers market), and the creamed ramps with shredded chicken. When we got home from the cookout Sunday, I had picked the potatoes, eggs, and pancetta out of the soggy salad. On Monday I made a dressing with the dregs of this green goddess that Hanne & Rach got at Whole Foods (that seemed more like a herb vinaigrette to me – it wasn’t very green, nor emulsified) and a spoonful of Hellman’s mayonnaise and tossed the last of the salad greens lurking in the vegetable drawer with it. Topped with the picked out potatoes it was almost a better salad than the original to go with our pizza.
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Tuesday morning it was still a bit chilly, though muggy and on the way up to almost 80° for the high, so I made a big pot of steel cut oats cooked in almond milk – bought for Rach, who feels she is becoming lactose-intolerant – with King Arthur dried fruitcake fruit. Cranberries, dried pineapple, currants, yellow raisins, and dates. I left it simmering and then resting off the heat in a covered pot while I worked on setting up my summer online class, and by the time I was ready to eat, I needed to microwave my bowlful to reheat. I put a little Corel plate I’ve had for years on top of my bowl to prevent splattering, and it promptly slid off and smashed. It was a breakfast disaster, but at least it was late enough in the morning that I’d had plenty of coffee before I had to sweep up. And I didn’t step on any sharp plate pieces either, although the cinnamon stick in the oatmeal flipped around and burned the second finger on my right hand, mid-stir. A completely unexpected way to hurt myself that I wouldn’t have thought possible, but it’s hardly even pink anymore, at almost 3:00 in the afternoon.