On Saturday, I went up to Reedsburg to assist Terese Allen with a cooking class, demoing recipes from a couple of her books, for the fermentation fest. I made green tomato mincemeat bars – moist and hard to cut, but really yummy. Too bad it was such a rainy day, but I enjoyed the drive, despite the fair number of giant Mittens/Ryan signs (I keep wanting to say Regan/Romney) along the roadside. During the class, talking about foodways around the state, Terese mentioned that she was originally from Green Bay, which I knew, but made me decide to ask her if she knew the family of my first real Madison boyfriend. He was the middle brother in a family of three, pediatrician’s sons from the Green Bay suburb Allouez. If I ever needed more proof that I should be friends with Terese, on top of the fact that she shares my brother’s 3/27 birthday, but my year (1955) instead of his (1957); she said she knows someone who dated my old boyfriend in high school (when he wasn’t old at all).
One of the library school profs hired me to bake three dozen cupcakes and a couple of apple galettes, for a baby shower. I delivered those to her house before I drove up to Reedsburg.
On Sunday I had a really small brunch, only 7 of us, but I thought the food was perfect – poached eggs on spinach on English muffins with or without Mornay sauce; roasted vegetables; fall fruit platter that morphed into cranberry-apple-pear sauce – that I smoothed with the immersion blender – and rhubarb coffee cake with the last of the rhubarb puree from the freezer. Nice conversations, and some newbies to the supper club – always good to get a few new members.
