We got up like regular for a Saturday, and biked to to the Westside farmers market, the “new normal”, since the big downtown market on the square is cancelled for this summer, and the replacement is drive- or bike-through markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays. You have to pre-order, and I’m torn, because I really admire the app they’re using, and it’s kinda fun to do farmers market shopping via the phone app, from bed, or sitting on the couch. But pre-ordering takes all the fun out of going to the market and buying whatever looks especially good that day. There’s less selection at the Westside, but at least you can go wander and look at stuff. And buy just a few if that’s all you want instead of the 5# bag, in most cases. Today we bought 6 ears of pre-bagged corn, the first fresh corn at the market, and 3 Honey Bee fruit pies, where if we’d been downtown we would’ve picked out our own corn, and only one pie.
We came home and had some breakfast, and I skipped yoga. This is my free online yoga class, and now that I have bought the MSCR summer pass, I can take a bunch of other virtual classes from this same yoga teacher, and others. So I skipped.
After the market and breakfast I was going to bike over to an Italian deli on the east side, Alimentari, an offshoot of Pig in A Fur Coat, because Belinda gave me a gift certificate for there, when we got together before they moved to Louisville.
But all the weather apps said heavy rain starting soon, and it was getting darker and darker. So, I did some grading in my online class, and by 1:00, when I was finishing, the rain had passed over, and I got out for that second bike ride to the deli.
I was home by 2:45 and fairly pleased with my purchases. I made a glass of iced tea, and drank a big glass of water.
Hibiscus iced tea
I read through my two newest cookbooks, Bryant Terry’s Vegetable Kingdom, and Edna Lewis’ In Pursuit of Flavor. I ordered them both from Semicolon in Chicago.
Now the heat has jumped up – the thermometer in the kitchen says 103, but it’s in a hot spot above the driveway.
And I’m feeling headachey and dizzy, and even more than that, lonely and at loose ends. I miss my kids terribly, and I so want to just hang out with friends. Not doing anything creative, or even working, guilty despite my aim for the day to do nothing. Going to the farmers market helped, but I’ve been uninspired to cook, since it’s only me and Mark.
What a good time to catch up on a blog post, and actually I do feel a lot better than when I started, albeit that I’m listening to public radio, and All Things Considered started with a memorial to John Lewis, and a piece about the feds, or who the fuck knows, and that’s the problem, grabbing people off the street in Portland OR.
Speaking of catching up, here’s the blueberry cobbler we had for dessert dinner on Sunday.
Speaking of Bryant Terry, I read his recipe for pan-seared summer squash sandwiches on whole grain bread, and decided I needed some whole wheat bread because all we have in the house right now is white (well, except for a couple of slices of Madison Sourdough wheat bread in the freezer from the omnivore grocery box we got from the co-op in April), in case I get a chance to make one of his sandwiches. Tuesday I started a batch of long-rise bread going, and baked it Wednesday morning. I got it out of the oven while wolfing down a bowl of corn Chex & blueberries, before back-to-back online meetings from 9:30-1:00.
Speaking of online meetings, Thursday I blew one. With my students to go over the remaining assignments to wrap up the summer internship class. I polled them and scheduled the meeting for 6:00, and queued up a reminder to go out to them all on Thursday morning, but had in my head all day the meeting was at 7:00. I ate an early dinner of roasted broccoli salad and zucchini bread and went up and started getting ready at a little after 6:00, thinking, “Gee, I have lots of time to prepare for this for this thing” only to get email from a student at about 6:30, “was the meeting rescheduled?”. Sigh. I started the meeting at 6:37 and recorded it, and apologized profusely to all of them. More guilt.
Friday I had breakfast with the Chicks. They’re on the circuit this week: Last Sunday in New York Times Arts & Leisure; on Colbert Thursday night; NPR Morning Edition Friday, July 20th New Yorker – that I read on Friday morning.
and, oh hey, that’s some of my long rise ww bread toasted.
Friday I had an actually productive online meeting, working with two other iSchool staff on planning the icebeaker for an online event coming up next month. I turned off my work computer at about 3:30 and went with Mark on his second walk. It was not super enjoyable for me. I was too hot, and so sweaty my glasses wouldn’t stay up, and I felt like he was going way too fast for the temperature. But I took some nice pictures of tiger lilies. The second one is my iPhone wallpaper now.
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I’ve been making lots of salads – the roasted broccoli, and also this:
It’s a sugarsnap and chicken salad with red pepper and tahini lemon dressing, that I first made in the summer of 2004 when it was originally in Gourmet, the summer my mom was dying. I made this and dill dip and what became her favorite, vanilla pudding. We got a 2-pound bag of sugarsnaps in the last CSA box, and I’ve been trying everything to use them up.
I made Mark Bittman’s cucumber peanut noodles, too, because we got probably four pounds of cucumbers, same box.
I also made zucchini pie from the July 1 CSA newsletter (scroll down, it’s the last recipe), in popover pans greased with lard to make a nice crust.
Saturday morning there was a bloom on the volunteer vine growing out of the compost.
And I guess I now have purpose – it’s time to go make dinner. I’m planning pork stir fry – the meat cut off the bones of some pork chops we got at the drive-through farmers market, back when it was at Garver Feed Mill, in March, and some of those patty pans, and the last of the sugarsnaps, and the half red pepper left from the sugarsnap chicken salad.
