Today was the annual grocery Co-op Board retreat. This must be the 5th or 6th of these that I’ve gone to, since I started on the Board 6+ years ago, it’ll be 7 in August. This one was a good one, though – we signed up for a board development program, that costs about $5,000 per year, but the program includes a facilitator – so, since we’d been spending a couple thou on this retreat, hiring a different facilitator every year, seems like a good deal to me. We met in the girl power room at a local community center – a room where they have programs for middle school girls – third year in a row for this room, so maybe we can go elsewhere next year.
We did a kind of working lunch – the community center has a cafe that employs high school kids, so the food can be iffy – but it was pretty good this time. I didn’t take a sandwich; just had soup (not shown) and salad. Last year I stabbed the corner of my mouth with the crust a one of the sandwiches and it bled for like an hour, so I was afraid of a repeat.
Last night I made some pumpkin custards, from a Smitten Kitchen recipe – Deb says it was the first thing she made after submitting her book manuscript (lucky her). Probably a good thing, because I was not able to replicate her instructions. I tried to spread the sour cream topping as she suggested, smoothing it over the not-over-baked-custards that were going back into the oven for another 5 minutes. But my topping just sank, un-smoothed, into the top of the custards – kind of like the dollop of sweetened cream cheese that I sometimes put on the top of carrot or pumpkin muffins. I also did not take her advice for creamier custards, by cooking the pumpkin/sugar/milk/cream mixture – I whizzed up everything in the food processor, and then strained it into a pitcher, and poured it into the baking cups. My cooked squash was dry, dry, dry – so I added 1/4 cup extra cream. The custards were nice & smooth – even though the topping was not. I wanted to eat one for breakfast, but I knew they’d feed us at the retreat – but I might have to eat one now.
