I’m trying to have a four-day weekend. 
After I left off Friday, I biked over to E. Wash and hung the blinds. I’m kind of glad, as out of shape as I have been feeling, with that new spare tire around my waist (an extra 5-6 pounds, that’s a lot for my 5′ barely 3″ body) that seems to have appeared at the tail end of our brutal winter, between late February, when I was still cookie-season-thin, and the end of April, thatĀ after two hours of drilling holes and screwing in the blind brackets, my right arm wasn’t sore. I drilled the first set of holes too small; as soon as I got the right drill bit, things progressed nicely. Even though I am still kind of pissed off at myself – I measured wrong, and the blinds were a little too wide to be inside hung. Oh well, the wood of the old window frames is so bad – I was screwing the brackets into better wood with the outside hung, above the window mounting.
I came home and ate the last of the asparagus tart and some salad for lunch. Then I biked down to work, and picked up my laptop – that I still have not, as of Sunday morning, turned on yet. I did a little work stuff, but after I sent an email with a bad subject line including a smiley face š emoticon, around 3:30, I decided I clearly should NOT be working. Rach was still here for dinner Friday, and the plan was to have salad-y stuff: greens, as much as I could get out of the bunch of leaf Mark had in his fridge and a bunch of argula I got at Whole Foods on Thursday which was not nearly as nice as it should have been for being so new; the black bean and corn salad; some slightly mushy tabouli I had in the fridge – put too much water on the bulghur; boiled eggs; roasted cauliflower, walnut & parsley salad; some of the rhubarb-filled muffins from last Sunday, reheated (a little too much); cheese. We ate and then Mark and I went to see Chef, which was really sweet and funny, and Rachael stayed home to pack.Ā Chef didn’t over-romanticize the restaurant biz – the film made it clear that even if you’re a great cook, you’re not going to make it in the restaurant biz without deep pocketed backers and promotion. I bought a limonada, but decided to save the 150 calories for ice cream after the movie, and brought it home un-opened. I cleaned up the dishes that I’d left in the sink after dinner so we could make the 6:50 movie, and made myself a custard cup of raspberries and BabcockĀ Hall mocha macchiato that I ate while working on my last post. I watched Big Love – I don’t think it’s going to become my 10:00 PM weeknights TV, replacing the Sopranos and Deadwood – I’m just not that into it. I’ve been pretending that I need to watch a certain show at a certain time, watching re-runs of old series on an HBO channel from 10 – 11:00 weeknights, then I go to bed. I watched an episode of Ripper Street on Netflix – it may do.
On Saturday, we got up and biked to the farmers market, arriving a bit too late for a holiday weekend, so it was ridiculously crowded. We helped a blind lady around one side and I think I spent $75. Green onions & asparagus & rhubarb, $7; cheese, $17; potatoes, $5; tomatoes, $9; jerkey $6; cheesey bread, $10; trout $14; cheese curds, $5. Came home, had a little breakfast – raspberries & yogurt & one of last week’s rhubarb-filled muffins. Then I biked to co-op, came home, put that stuff away and drove to Sentry. After I got back from that trip it was 3:08 and all I’d done all day was shop for food. And 2 nice rides – so I guess that’s ok.
John and Megan arrived at like 4:ooish. They went to Brat Fest for dinner, so I only pan fried half the pound of trout I got at the market for me and Mark. We ate it with spicey potatoes out on the deck. I mixed up my first Tom Collins of the summer – and spilled it. So I mixed another and sat outside reading my sort of trashy book, until it was too dark to see. Only sort of trashy because I’m re-reading Mary Stewart’s This Rough Magic, that I read for the first time in 1968, when I was 13 and we were living in the Netherlands, in Den Dolder, a suburb of Utrecht, because my dad was on sabbatical from the University of Pittsburgh. Our little local public library (that I’m not finding on Google Maps at the moment) had a good collection of Mary Stewart when we biked there and raided for anything in English. I saw her obit in the Sunday Times and wanted to read her again.
On Sunday morning I made my upside down rhubarb muffins, and that turned out to be an adventure in recipe testing. I think I made them the first time for a commissioned brunch at School Woods, so a bigish group. Anyways, long story short, the amount of rhubarb given was enough for 24 muffins, and the batter was only 12 – 14. I thought I was going to have to adjust the batter – I tried to make lots more batter, with three cups of flour and three eggs,Ā and ended up with 18 muffins – and, after a few WTF moments, realized if I just cut the rhubarb in half, it’d match. So it’s fixed now.
I started the day processing rhubarb – for the muffins, and puree, because I also wanted to make a version of Smitten Kitchen rhubarb-cream cheese hand pies. I used mascarpone in place of the cream cheese, because I had half a carton in the fridge, and my own pie crust, instead of Smitten’s. Then I went for a walk, and did some work. Now, in addition to about 14 muffins, I have last year’s strained rhubarb puree, the new batch I made for the hand pies, and rhubarb syrup in the fridge. I liked the little pies – I only made a bakers’ dozen – 13 – because we had a smallish group forĀ our grill out, 8 people, but I think what I’ll do is roll out and fill the 2nd half of the crust, and freeze the little pies UN-baked. I bet I can bake them straight from the freezer for future fresh-baked goodness.
From the grill we had little sliders and brats and grilled asparagus. For sides, baked beans with ham broth and shredded ham from the Easter ham I bought – my regular honey baked bean recipe. They came out really good. And I made peanut noodles, another of my old standbys. I did make the trying to use stuff up mistake – an 8 oz. package of Soba noodles and the last half of a pound pack of brown rice spaghetti – which was thicker and cooked slower than the Soba. And I had the pasta water boil over that’s so bad it drowns the gas burner. Once it was all mixed with the dressing and fried tofu, the two noodle kinds were fine, though, and I didn’t tell anyone. Like Julia says, “never apologize”. The stove stop cleaned up pretty easy, too.
Everyone took off and I cleaned up the kitchen and we watched Penny Dreadful and the half-season finale of Mad Men. I didn’t want to drink more beer, so I had some bourbon on ice – which put me right to sleep until the kids came in at 4:00.
