On Friday morning I woke up with a sinus headache, so I was glad when my walking partner had forgotten our date, and wasn’t really ready to go. I thought about going back home and getting back in bed, but instead I walked downtown through light snow, almost ice pellets, and got my work laptop, and walked home.
Before I got busy working at home, I treated myself to a bowl of Honeynut Cheerios with granola and a banana on top and a big Chai made with mostly whole milk & a little 2%, and a Game of Thrones episode – though watching those dark medieval scenes at 8:30 in the morning was a little not quite right. I guess I waiting for the guys in the little red truck to come to fix the windshield on John’s car (formerly Dad’s car – Mark’s father’s car that he gave Mark when he decided he should stop driving at the age of 89 or so). It’s a 2003 Toyota Camry, the type of car that Madison is full enough because people give them to their kids to take to college and then buy something new for themselves.
I guess I had a productive day – worked on one of my online classes, mostly. John came back and we had coffee and talked about his prospects as a someone with a 2-year-old BFA, living in Milwaukee – graduate school still looks like the best plan. School portraits – driving miles & miles and getting only paid for like 17 hour per week, supplemented by the occasional wedding – just isn’t enough to sustain him. Even if he has fun from time to time getting to shoot high school sports.
I made pizza for dinner, kind of the usual flavors – pepperoni & artichoke hearts & fresh tomato and tomato sauce, squash (using up that bit of cooked, roughly mashed, squash that had been in the fridge for so long) caramelized onions, and goat cheese, and mushroom, fresh garlic, and a sauce of pureed roasted peppers and tomatoes. Tomatoes & peppers that I’d thawed for this pie last Saturday. There’s a little bit of squash, onions, and pepper purèe left – they’ll be a good start for veggie broth, along with that old bunch of parsley in the veggie drawer – good thing, too because I decimated my freezer supply, because I donated 10 quarts of of broth to the slow food dinner. John didn’t make it back, he was off celebrating a friends’ birthday, so he gets pizza to take home.
I made a red velvet cake, too – I’d been wanting to all week, since I had cream cheese frosting left from slow food dinner, and another tub of it at the back of the fridge. I had gotten out the butter and eggs to come to room temperature, (can’t remember exactly which day – it’s been that kind of a week) and put them back after not making the cake, so I was glad to finally get to it. I used a recipe from this All Cakes Considered book, by a woman who works at NPR and take a weekly cake to the office. There are some good recipes in it, but some annoying aspects – it’s laid out so that the ingredients and the instructions are almost never on the same page, or even page spread, which I don’t like. The red velvet cake is pictured on the cover, and as well as inside the book, as a three-layer cake, but the recipe only calls for two 8- or 9-inch pans. And, considering it’s a recipe that also calls for 6 eggs, 2 sticks of butter, 2 1/2 cups of of 2 kinds of sugar, granulated and and & light brown, 3 cups of flour and a cup of sour cream, I think if you did try to bake it two 8-inch pans you’d have serious overflow (it might not even fit in two 9s). I used 3 8-inch, and it’s one tall sucker of a cake. I’m looking forward to photographing it sliced, for the white icing/red cake contrast.
