After a long week, that I’m now straining to remember. Pudding, lentils, and pig, were the food themes as I recall.
I know I woke up in Chicago last Sunday morning – I drove down Friday to deliver John’s new laptop. Didn’t do much that evening – stopped at John’s apartment, found a parking spot in the snow not too far away, and dropped off the laptop. Then I took LSD down to the apartment on S. State – got to see the Palmolive Building with Lindbergh Beacon at dusk (not lit, but I could imagine), so that was good Chicago architectural history for me – after all, when I lived in Chicago, I was an architectural photograph cataloger at the Historical Society, and worked on the Hedrich-Blessing Collection.
In the morning, I did a little work, and John and I texted arrangements to meet to go see The City at AIC. Which got a little mixed up – I thought he was going to park first and then come in and meet me at Intelligensia, and we’d walk to the Museum. Instead, when he said “I’m here”, and when I replied “No, I don’t see you”, it was because he was in car waiting for me out front.
John was a little grumpy with me, but I think that’s normal for 27-year-olds. I was usually pretty grumpy with my (interfering, know it all) mom when I was the same age. The show was good, and we went and got coffee at the member lounge after, then John went to Milwaukee to watch the Packers and I went south to wait for Mark, with a short detour to check out the Mariano’s on S. Clark. I think I’ve decided it’s the best commercial grocery near the apartment. I like the deli and the bakery. I forgot to check if they have Organic Valley milk, but their website seems to indicate that they do.
Mark and I went to see an early show of Into the Woods – I liked it a lot – Stephen Sondheim, Johnn Depp, Emily Blunt – and oh yea, Meryl Streep, too. Rach says she has always liked James Corden in Gavin & Stacey – could be another series to binge watch. We got dinner at Xoco – Mark has a bad addiction to their Cubano sandwiches. I didn’t finish my soup, and when we left, they came running after us, proffering gifts, to make sure we were really satisfied with the meal – we took a slice of the carrot cake we’d seen at the table next to us.
We had pancakes for breakfast on Sunday, at 11 City Diner, and I drove back to Madison.
I can’t remember what I had for my dessert treat for eating while watching Girls and Downton Abbey, but I believe it involved rice pudding and maybe a leftover cookie or six. There are still Moravian Ginger Thins and gember koekjes in a bucket in the basement fridge, awaiting being made into a crumb crust for a pie or tart. Rach got in about 10:30 and I picked her up at the airport.
I didn’t cook a lot the rest of the week, because I had all these work events with lunches, and a dinner out with a friend. And Rach had 2 dinners out, too. Except I did do some experiments in rice pudding, for my new, other blog. I made this chestnut and lentil soup on Monday night, but, of course, by the time it was ready I had filled up on rice pudding & granola. Rachael, Megan and I did finally eat soup on Thursday. And I made pork chops and roasted vegetables and a big salad with lentils on Wednesday – Anna found a place to sell her half a pig, and we split it three ways. An amazing amount of meat for $89 – 3 packs of bacon, + another of bacon ends for cooking; a ham; a ham steak; link sausage; 2 roasts; a small rack of ribs; 8 chops. I need to make fried rice with the leftover pork. This morning, I cooked a pot of rice to chill for the fried rice, and the smell reminded me of the rice pudding. Maybe I’ll have too much rice for fried rice and will have to make more rice pudding. On Friday, I had a long day with a breakfast event, an afternoon event, and a retirement party. I left the house at 7:45 a.m., and got back at 6:00 p.m. I had half a bagel with cream cheese at the breakfast, bought a spinach salad for lunch, ate the two clementines I had with me, got a piece of carrot cake at the afternoon thing, and drank a beer at the retirement. I was on my own for dinner, so I had hot chocolate and peppermint patties for dinner. There’s still a brown paper bag of leftover Halloween & Christmas candy in my closet – fun size Snickers and Twix, and there were two bags of Christmas-wrapped peppermint patties – I’ve just about finished one, but the other is enough to make brownies.
Yesterday, Saturday, we went to the indoor farmers’ market, and I made vegetable enchiladas for dinner, that I left cooking in the oven on timer while we went to see Wild. Today we had French toast & winter fruit salad for breakfast – hence the pics at the top – and I want to candy the grapefruit rind, as my next cooking experiment for the other blog.
I’m making puff pastry apple tart and custard sauce – crème anglaise – for Downton Abbey. So I won’t forget this week.
So I guess the biggest difference is that last Sunday, the Packers won. And this one, they lost. Rats.
Puff paste apple tarts with creme anglaise in bad light
