Culminating in my mother’s and Eustace Tilley’s 90th birthdays. Eustace, the fictional dandy who was on the first New Yorker magazine cover, and my mom both arrived around February 22, 1925. It used to be George Washington’s birthday, too, but now we have President’s Day.
The nine New Yorker covers for my mom & Eustace Tilley’s 90th – I got the bottom row on my print mag
I left off with pumpkin stuff and soup, last Saturday. On Sunday I made the Portuguese Stone Soup from Asparagus to Zucchini – it’s a vegetable soup with sausage and Cannellini beans – white kidney beans. But we didn’t eat it Sunday night. I made cheesecake. I used the very last of the Christmas cookies that had been in a bucket in the basement fridge ground up for the crust; a bunch of the Moravian ginger thins and a few of the gember koekjes to make the crumb crust, which meant that there was ground candied ginger in the crust. I had a piece for dinner on Tuesday, and there’s one piece left that looks a little shopworn, but also kind of looks like lunch, to me.
Mark got to stay in Madison Sunday night, instead of returning to Chicago as usual, because the ALA gave him President’s day off. We watched the Saturday Night Live 40 years shenanigans, with a break for Downton Abbey.
Monday I worked at home, because I had this Medical Expenditures interview in the afternoon. The interview took an hour and a half, and I went back to work afterwards. Then out to dinner at Greenbush – salad and thin crust pizza with argula & bacon. My dinner companion was having a fancy cocktail, so I joined in with a Manhattan. Megan was studying in front of the downstairs TV, and Rach and a friend were having soup and cheesecake and knitting upstairs, making Mark’s cat go nuts over the yarn, when I got back.
On Tuesday, I had big plans for dinner, but came home and snacked and worked, and, as mentioned above, ate cheesecake in front of TV, instead.
On Wednesday, I made vegetable curry, with squash and potatoes and carrots and kale and peas. Served over short grain rice, with chutney. Mark wasn’t interested when he got home from Chicago, but all us girls ate curry; Rach took it for work lunch on Thursday and I finished it off for work lunch on Friday. I am starting to get a bigger collection of glass containers with plastic lids, that I can microwave food in at work.
Vegetable curry
Thursday I think was the coldest day – Rachael and I drove in. A bunch of people at work decided it was too cold to go out for lunch, and so they ordered in Chinese, but I had peanut butter and jelly and an apple. And lots of meetings. Even though I drove, I walked around campus from my parking spot – almost 15 minutes – and from meeting to meeting, and you could literally see people hit the wall on their tolerance of the cold. They’d suddenly speed up, start walking as fast as they could or jogging, like saying, “I just can’t take this anymore”, got to get inside.
For dinner on Thursday, we ate the black bean & butternut squash chili that I had lugged to Chicago for our doomed – or blizzarded, I guess – Super Bowl party, and Mark lugged back. I had online class, and, during the obligatory talk about the weather wherever you are portion at the beginning of the meeting, one of my students was talking about eating ice cream after class. That sounded like such a good idea to me, that indulged, too. I made butterscotch sauce – since I atypically, had heavy cream in the house from the [cancelled] dessert buffet, and ate vanilla ice cream with diced candied ginger and butterscotch sauce in front of the Sopranos.
On Friday we finished the soup, with turkey salad (frozen Thanksgiving turkey, shredded) and bean salad (extras of the Cannellini beans).
Saturday seemed well-paced for a Saturday. I made scones, and I stayed in pajamas until 10:00. I had time to go grocery shopping, and still had time to go for a walk before our neighbors with two little kids and a new baby came for dinner. The older kids are about five and three, and the baby is just 2 months. Mom’s not eating soy, dairy, tomato, or egg. So, I made pot roast – Costco chuck roast that I browned and then braised in the oven with red pepper puree, garlic, and veggie broth. Roasted vegetables – carrots, potatoes, onion, with sage. Big salad – with the cheese on the side, and an oil & vinegar slaw with carrots, cabbage and kale. I made coconut milk rice pudding with the last of the cooked rice that had been served with the curry. Nothing but coconut milk, the rice, 1/4 cup sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla – yum. I also made white chocolate lime blondies for those of us that could indulge in butter and egg. I think those topped with ice cream (and maybe caramel sauce) will be our Oscar-watching treat tonight.
The neighbors brought flowers, and Rach brought out the tulips she’d had in her room. We enjoyed them on the sideboard during dinner, but I had to shut them up in the sunroom after to keep the cats from munching them.
Cat proof flowers
For an in-honor of Ruth brunch, I made Marion Cunningham yeasted waffles, lots of bacon, and a few sausages. I cut up one of the new variety of apples that I got at the co-op yesterday – Lady Alice. They’re a little like Pink Lady – firm – but juicier and they don’t turn brown very fast, which Mark tells me is a new holy grail for apple breeders.
Stack of waffles – note glimpse of Feb. 23 New Yorker
Waffles wrapped around bacon – the way I like to eat them – using fingers rather than fork, dunked in syrup
I think I don’t have to cook much the rest of the week – there’s at least one bowl of chili, leftover pot roast & turkey salad, scones, waffles that I’ll freeze to become toaster waffles, a big bag of salad greens, slaw … riches.
Guess I better go finish cleaning up, and go for a walk while the sun’s out.
