It’s early afternoon on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend – meaning we still have another day off. I woke up at 6:30, (well, after waking at 2:00 and at 5:10 or so to feed the cats) and went back to sleep until 7:12, instead of lying awake worrying like I have the last few days. And delicious sleep it was, too. Heaven – Heaven, by Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians.
Rach and I went for a leisurely walk. I came back and baked a banana chocolate chip coffee cake. I’ve been getting kind of sick of banana bread, (while liking the Orangette recipe I’ve using, leaving out the chocolate & ginger; last time I made it with walnuts & coconut. Seems like the bananas get overripe quick this summer) and this recipe sounded good. I finally had time to take a long shower and wash my hair – instead of the quick rinse, keep the hair dry kind of shower, while the cake was in the oven. And I did my poor woman’s pedicure: shave the legs, wash the feet with this mint & walnut shell exfoliating soap, clip the toenails, lotion. I was thinking about painting my toenails, too, and had let them get a little long, but clipping seemed the better choice.
The banana cake was from an Epicurious recipe – the kind where people were fighting bitterly; comments ranging from “our favorite cake” to “Yuck, waaay too sweet”. I did think it had a lot of sugar – 2/3 cup brown in the topping, and 3/4 cup white in the cake – I cut it to 1/3 brown for the topping, and 1/2 granulated in the cake itself. I used less chocolate chips too – and if I make it again, I am going use even less chocolate – to let the banana take over more.
Yesterday I had time to go take pictures of this wild orange fungus growing on a hillside next to a street in the neighborhood – proof positive that Wisconsin has been a rain forest this summer. Earlier one of the farmers at the market, who had two small baskets of artichokes at his stand, said they’d been a crop failure this year. It’s been too hot and wet in Wisconsin for artichokes, which are thistles after all, used to growing on stony mountainsides in Italy.
Now I am sitting at my computer listening to my cats snore behind me. This is probably the last post from the old iMac – another 3-day weekend task is to set up the new one, that’s sitting in the box a few feet away, and package up the old one to ship off to be recycled. Also, pesto-ify the 2 bunches of basil that are sitting in the basement fridge, roast peppers, and turn the bulghur wheat marinating in olive & lemon into tabouli. If I don’t just curl up on the couch with cats myself, and my current library book, which is getting interesting, BTW. But, hey 3-day weekend – I just might have time for all of that.
