Mark gallantly took his girls, me and Toni, out for dinner on Thursday (the night before Valentine’s Day). We went to the new(ish) Heritage Tavern, that’s gone in where Underground Kitchen used to be, before they burned the building down, in the classy apartment building where Mark used to live. It was efficiency apartments, with real plaster walls, and hard wood floors, built for legislators from smaller towns in WI, for when they had to be Madison because the legislature was in session. Really well built, but less space than people seem to want now. Despite the change of tastes, they seem to have restored the building very nicely.
I think Heritage would be a good place to go with a bunch of people and have cocktails and their upscale bar snacks – like assorted deviled eggs, tempura – cheese curds, shrimp in bacon, vegetables – stuff like that. It was all a little too rich for me for dinner. Too many ingredients, although I did like the beet salad, with two colors of beets, almost no greens, a little cheese, wine-poached figs, roasted pears, toasted hazelnuts, and chocolate grated over the whole thing – superfluous, to my taste, but fun, I guess.
On actual Valentine’s Day, Friday, I did the part-work-at-home, part-take-care-of-personal-errands gig. I had a work phone call, and did a bunch of stuff on my online courses. Then I went out to go grocery shopping for my two food events of the weekend: an auctioned dinner to be picked up, and the first Dinner at DebS on Sunday. To celebrate National Library Week in April, the library school library has a silent auction, and I usually do food. last April, I offered a brunch and a dinner, and the brunch went to the highest bidder in August during Rach’s 1st week back, the longest sleepover party of the summer. We tried to do the dinner in September but had to put it off till now because of travel. I also wanted to stop by E. Wash, because we got a citation for failure to remove snow. My renters and I think we’ll fight – we can’t figure out when there was too much snow on the sidewalk. The only times they can remember being late shoveling it was a Sunday and there were only about 2 inches. They can’t get their Mini Cooper out the driveway if they don’t shovel – that will be my defense at the court date in March. Mark thinks they’ll show us the picture and it’ll be the wrong house – but he is the optimist in the family. And I got the car washed.
Anyways, after all that running around, I came back home, and baked a tall chocolate cake for Valentine’s day and because Toni was going to have a bunch of girls over.
Went to pick up Rachael at work, and while I was on the way (and it’s like a 5 minute drive) I got a call from the American mom of one of the other AFS studnets, wanting to know more about our plans to get Toni to Chicago for her AFS/Belo/California trip. That include an overnight stay in Oak Park to get her to the plane on time, and probably taking the bus back from O’Hare. Very different parenting style than us, shall we say.
We had leftovers for dinner, and it was another wedge-shaped foods plus salad dinner: the last of the artichoke quiche from Sunday; taco meat from Monday, that I stacked with corn tortillas and heated with a cast iron pan pressing it down – greasy but good; two slices of pizza from Mark’s fridge – I think he and Toni ordered pizza on Wednesday because I was teaching an online class that evening. Then off to the Madison symphony for me and Mark, Toni waiting for her friends, and Rachael hanging out with her book, laptop, and hot pad.
The above AFS mom asked me to leave her a phone message with all Toni’s flight numbers and times, so I did that after dinner and before we left for the symphony. John lost his keys, or left them at school, so we were texting about that during dinner, so not only was I being impolite I forgot to tell Mark about the phone message to the other AFS mom. I mentioned it when we were hanging out in the lobby during symphony intermission – I read the wrong column, got the times wrong, and at first when Mark pointed it out, I was not very gracious about being corrected, shall we say. Which all lead to minor bickering the rest of intermission and on the ride home. It’s either Mercury in retrograde, or Mark and I are both turning into crochety old people. Oh, well, cleared the air, maybe.
Came home and had tall chocolate cake with the girls – and cool whip and cherries.
Tall choclit cake with cool whip & cherries
