The past week has been a blur of meetings, job candidates and yet another fucking cold. And oh yea, it’s fucking hot, too – 88° as I write this, on Sunday afternoon. Sitting on the bed next to Mark as we try to decide if we need to take him to urgent care – he feels like he might have a kidney stone.
Some things have gone as planned – but even more have not.
We went to see the Black Keys in Milwaukee in Wednesday. Good show, especially the lights, but I was too tired and sick to really appreciate it. We had tacos at Belair Cafe with John beforehand. Mine were a little disappointing – vegetarian rajas – that I thought were supposed to be strips of roasted poblanos & onions. These were merely sliced and barely even sautéed. The margarita was really good but they forgot to bring it to me till after the food came.
I got my first CSA box Thursday – I was going to bike to get it but my throat was too sore. Purple asparagus, rhubarb, some really gorgeous spinach, green garlic, baby turnips with greens, lettuce, bok choy, even though I asked on my farmer’s end of season survey last fall for less Asian greens, please, more kale & spinach. I’ve been told the Asian varieties grow really well here in WI, though.
One of the things not going at all as planned is exercise, but Friday I managed a bike over to school woods to set up the tables and meet Mel, who was dropping off the liquor for his daughter’s grad dinner, scheduled for Saturday.
I made a high school graduation dinner for this girl 5 years ago (same year as Al) – this was her college graduation.
They had drinks & apps in the “garden”; really the back yard: asparagus rolled in puff pastry with cream cheese & Gouda cheese, and a couple of hunks of good local cheese (Willi’s raw milk cheddar, Marieka Gouda with fenugreek, and Hook’s aged Swiss) and crackers and nuts. Then moved indoors for the salad, that I plated – balsamic vinaigrette, toasted walnuts, Parm shavings. Then served family style, Lemon chicken (my version of this Ina Garten recipe; no dried oregano and I used bone-in chicken), really easy and good, and salmon that I just roasted brushed with olive oil, then poured parsley butter over, although I had considered several other more complicated preparations. This green rice by Heidi, that I also adapted a bit – cilantro instead of mint, green garlic instead of shallots. I think the rice was my favorite part of the supper. The desserts were pretty great too – and the only thing I photographed. Strawberry cake with a Victoria sponge cake base and mascarpone cream and Italian almond crostate. We turned on the air con because it was just too hot.
Sunday morning was library school graduation – quite nice, 11 of my distance students, two good speakers (more on that presently). Came home and tried to get motivated to bike to E. Wash and unload & reload the dishwasher and ended up taking Mark to the immediate care instead. At least the wifi was good there – I graded 3 or 4 students while I waited. And Mark seemed quite cheered up just by knowing he does indeed have a kidney stone.
After all that, I drove over to E. Wash to unload & reload the dishwasher – and see Stephen upstairs’s bandaged fingers – while the Saturday night guests were on the dessert course, Belinda came down to consult on where to go to get him stitched up – he broke a glass while doing the dishes and cut himself. We needed buns to go with our brats for dinner – we were sticking to our plan of grilling for dinner. I stopped by Jenny Market, and of course at 6:00 p.m. on a Sunday, only the most Wonder white bread crappy buns were left.
I opened 3 beers – 2 to boil the brats in and one for me to drink. Poured the beer into the pot with the brats, picked up the 2 bottles to drop into recycle, and came back to find an empty – I had just dropped a full bottle of beer into the recycle bin. So I had to crawl into the bin, clean it all out and turn it over on the grass to drain. Oh well, guess I needed something to do while the coals got ready.
I uploaded the grad dinner dessert pix thinking I’d work on this post in front of Sunday night TV – but I got dozy and here I am doing it now on my iPhone on Monday morning. Grabbing time because I must finish grading today. We never got the promised thunderstorms; instead the cold front blew in and now it’s almost too chilly.
I get almond tart & leftover salad with grilled potatoes & egg for lunch though – making the best of the weekends mishaps.
