Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

Or maybe week & a half. We’re talking about last week – March 3 – but this week – March 10 is also in the running. Everything is wasn’t, didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t, can’t. I think everyone – or at least John and I – are stuck in the end-of-winter, time change, feel like it’s all getting away from me blues.

Rach was here last week – we got back from Chicago in time to pick her up Sunday, because we didn’t linger for brunch in Chicago, just a quick breakfast, so got back home sooner. Our cat sitters didn’t come on Saturday – but came by Sunday morning, a few hours before we did, so the kitties were all happy.

Mark and I shoveled snow, and I went grocery shopping, and then got Rach, and made apple crisp for us and tortilla casserole and ice cream pie for the dinner on Wisconsin kids who were coming Monday night. The apple crisp was good but could’ve had a higher ratio of apples to crisp.

Monday Rach & I walked to work together, and she went to dinner with friends while we ate with the students. Tuesday morning there was another 3-4 inches to shovel, and off to work again, but then Rach was too sick to go to work for the rest of the week. Tuesday night I had class, so didn’t make dinner – everyone was kind of on their own. Wednesday I worked at home – trying to stave off me getting the cold that everyone else had – drank two whole pots of tea. I forgot a work phone meeting that was supposed to be at 10:00 on Weds. morning. That night again, I think everyone just sorta scrounged their own dinners. Thursday I had some plan for leftovers that I can’t even recall – while I was walking home I decided that I wanted Chinese take-away, and hot & sour soup appealed to all the sickies. On Friday we had symphony tickets, so we all snacked beforehand. I finished what I could of the Hugh What’s His Face curry, and the Szechuan green beans from the night before. It was a shortish symphony with Yefim Bronfman. I came home and made a hot toddy and watched the Sopranos.

Saturday morning I got up and took a walk – yay, finally did something. It was a little slipperier than I would’ve liked, but not too terrible. Took Rach to the airport and came home and got my tax stuff together – another achievement. I made pizza with arugula salad on top, and we thought we’d go see Captain Phillips at the Marquee Room at Union South – we can walk there, and it was an 8:30 movie, and we didn’t think Toni’s bus would be in till 11:00. But she caught an earlier bus, that got her back to Madison by 10:00 – so we didn’t do that either.

I didn’t make a King Cake on Monday night – we didn’t celebrate Mardi Gras. I thought I’d make something yeasted and filled on Sunday morning, but I didn’t. Oh, and all week I was planning to make this creamy potato-poblano gratin, and had bought the cream, and had the poblanos leftover from Monday. But I didn’t. Instead, we had potatoes with what Rick Bayliss calls “essential rajas”, strips of fried onion with strips of roasted poblano.

And in keeping with the theme – over the weekend, I didn’t take any pictures of our meals, although I did post about Linzer tart.

On Monday I carried on the didn’t theme by skipping my monthly academic staff assembly meeting – to go meet with the organizer of the phone called I’d missed on Wednesday. Then I went home and made the “essential rajas” into enchiladas.

King Cake from 2007

… to O’Hare. Our AFS student signed up for a trip to California, and was required by the travel service to fly out of O’Hare, so rather than getting up at 3:00 AM to get her to the airport in time for an 8:10 Saturday morning flight, we drove down on Friday night, and got rooms at the Carleton Oak Park, a.k.a. where my parents always stayed when I lived here, and where Mark always stays for Lollapalooza. Two other girls, one from Spain and the other from Switzerland, who are living in Beaver Dam and Juneau for their exchange years, are going on the trip too, so we were five. We walked over to Gepetto’s on Oak Park Ave. (a.k.a. our favorite pizza place when we lived here 20 years ago) and had pizza for a late dinner when we got in, at about 8:30. The space is looking a little in need of a refurb, but the pizza was still good.  And tho the restaurant was pretty empty, there was a steady stream of folks picking up pizza to go.

We were back from taking the girls to the airport before 9:00. It went quick because, since we had two adults, Mark went in with them, and I waited in the cell phone lot. We parked the car back at the Carleton, and switched the rooms around – somehow, the room with two double beds, where we put the girls for Friday night, was the room we had for two nights, and  the room with one king bed was only one night. So we needed to switch that, and headed off to the Starbucks, that’s in between Oak Park and River Forest.

Big dog waiting for its owner outside the Starbucks on Harlem Ave.

Then we took the L into town, and went to Hot Tix, and got the last two half price seats for Gypsy.

We headed towards the Art Institute, but I decided I might perish of hunger walking around, so we quick stopped at a Pret a Manger and split a  yogurt and a scone and a bottle of water. Thus fortified, we crossed Michigan Avenue again, and entered the Museum. We saw two Christophers – Williams and Wool. I have always loved this dishwasher shot of Wiiliams’ –

Dishwasher – Mark has these plates.

But I found the show to be annoyingly pretentious. Many of the images were visually appealing – but you had to read the labels to know what was going on. I spent a ton of time trying to figure out one of the sets of photos, Angola to Vietnam. We had been through one of the galleries, and turned a corner, and there was a row of b&w shots of what seemed to be botanical models of plants and flowers. I thought it was something else at first, not part of the Williams show at all. I located the overall label for the gallery, and the title Angola to Vietnam seemed to go with that row of shots. I looked at the labels of the individual photos, and finally realized that it was images of these botanical specimens from different countries, arranged in alpha-fucking-betical order. The overall arrangement of the show was annoying too – in three different galleries; the main photography gallery on the lower level of the old part of the museum, and two galleries in the new modern wing, and the only place where the entire introductory label was presented was at 2nd floor level on a wall in the new Piano wing where you couldn’t really read it.

Wool was more fun – more purely visual gags. His word art, and his stencil & silk screen art, dribbled and smeared over.

Mark liked these two:

And I think this one was my favorite:

We met John & Al at Little Goat for lunch. That was even more fun. At first they told us an hour and a half wait, but after 20 minutes, it was down to 30, and we actually got seated about ten minutes after they told us the 30.

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I’m trying to recreate the last week (since I haven’t written since last Tuesday). On Monday, I think I had a pretty normal work day, except that I went to hear one of my colleagues give a talk at the library about a conference she’d been invited to speak at, and didn’t eat anything until almost noon. It was good to hear what she had to say, though. Oh yea, and it snowed on Monday.

Came home, and made a pasta, penne with mustard greens, half & half and sausage. Kind of like the traditional pasta, orecchiette with broccoli rabe and sausages – Lombardino’s down the street puts cream in it, and I usually do, too. Had the last of the salad greens with roasted vegetables from the Valentine’s dinner, on the side.

On Tuesday, it started warming up – it was the first day to get above freezing since January 26. I think the high was almost 40°. I  wimped out on yoga class, and we ate leftover crepes & rice for dinner, and then I wimped out on going to see a friend’s band, Onadare.

On Wednesday I had class, on the early side at 4:00, so I taught at work instead of at home like I usually do. I can’t remember what I made for dinner – did I make dinner? Maybe we had the crepes on Weds., and something else on Tuesday? I know there was one night when we finished the last of the valentines desserts – the too dry linzer tart, that had softened up by then & the biscuit tortoni. Did you know that if you do a Google search on biscuit tortoni, one of my pictures is in the Google info box? Try it, just for fun. The two desserts were really good together – almond-y and raspberry and creamy. And watched the Olympics. That could’ve been Tuesday. Or Monday. I know there was a night when I thawed out some Ovens of Brittany turkey almond soup that had been in freezer so long I was starting to worry if it was still good (it was) and we ate it with the leftover rolls from the valentine dinner. A light meal so we deserved dessert. Maybe that was Monday, pasta Tuesday, crepes Weds.

By Thursday morning, it was all slushy outside, and rain was predicted. In fact there was thunder hail. After work there was a WiLS reunion at a bar downtown. I met Mark there and we ate spicey tater tots and I had a couple of beers. The basement only leaked a little bit – but the fluffy cat found the rivulets and tracked muddy paws everywhere.

On Friday, Mark and Toni went to see Dropkick Murphy’s. They went out and had pizza for dinner, and I stayed home and ate crackers and cheese and olives, and started watching season 2 of House of Cards. I drove them to the show. Al was arriving on the bus from Chicago, and the timing was just about perfect – dropped Mark & Toni, then went and bought some ice cream, and drove around the block, and, as I was waiting at the traffic light on Frances Street to turn onto University Ave., the bus went by. Pulled in right behind it to collect Al, came home and continued my House of Cards binge – completed the first two episodes. It got cold and windy and everything froze back up. John seemed to have had about his best crit class of the semester – he said at least they learned how NOT to give an artist’s talk from Todd Hido, whose photos sell for big bucks. Spike Jonez says one of Hido’s pictures inspired the movie Her.

Saturday was Mom’s 89th birthday, and we went to a musical in Milwaukee, In the Heights. Before the musical, I got out for a walk, and then helped Al do his taxes, which was surprisingly fun, watching him yell at the computer when TaxAct asked him overly nosy questions. “Did you buy a home in 2013?” If not why not?” “Because I’m only 25 years old – can’t afford it – didn’t want to – none of your business.”

After the play we ate at Braise – met John & Megan there. We got a bunch of stuff to share – Assorted Charcuterie, Olive Oil Jam (olive oil whipped into honey), & Crostini, Roasted Squash Tart – that was kind of a deconstructed tart with crackers, the squash and creme fraiche, Steamed Pork Buns, Pork shoulder, that came breaded with hunks of roasted rutabaga on the side, and two orders of duck breast on more squash, this time pureed, smoothly. We were too full to even look at dessert.

Too full continued into Sunday. We decided to have brunch a little early – at 10:00, so Toni could be taken to the mall at 11:00, leaving a little time to shop before being collected to go ice skating by the AFS liaison. I made stuffed French toast and sausages. I walked after, and did pretty good at staying away from food – nibbled on a bit of the leftover French toast, had an English muffin with peanut butter – but we had store cookies and ice cream for the Downton Abbey finale, and I went to bed still feeling way too full.

When Monday rolled around again, I made cream of what’s in the vegetable drawer soup – carrots, fennel, cabbage, and broccoli stems (instead of the cauliflower, broccoli and mushrooms the recipe calls for). We ate it with crackers and cheese, and after dinner, I drank tea, and stayed out of my fancy chocolate stash. Finished my book, and woke up Tuesday morning feeling hungry for the first time since Saturday.

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.

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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

Latte from Aldo’s transported in fancy schmancy stainless steel coffee dealie

This morning I walked to work in -10° marveling at people’s preparedness and UN-preparedness for the weather, like the kid on a bike with nothing on his head, hat nor helmet; the guy running from the bus into the engineering building wearing a pea coat, and no hat or gloves; the 3 inches of exposed ankle on the left leg of the skinny student riding the  skinny tire bike.

The coffee place at WID makes better lattes than the coffee place closer to my office, but when it’s this cold stopping there seems stupid because my hot drink won’t be hot by the time I get to my office. Today I planned ahead and brought this mini-thermos that Mark gave me for Christmas (re-gifting a public radio premium). It’s too heavy, but it did keep my latte warm.

Because I was stopping, I crossed the street at a crosswalk without a traffic light, timing myself to get across after this approaching little red car …. that stopped, and when I made a face, the driver – seeming to really want to make things worse, rolled her window down to ask me what was wrong. And revealed that the driver was second fiddle, assistant concert master in Madison Symphony Orchestra, a violinist who I have seen perform many times in chamber music ensembles in Madison. As soon as I said, “I was timing” she said, “oh, sorry”, rolled up her window and sped off. Unexpectedly nice.