Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

On Sunday morning, I got up and made cimmy buns, and then drove to Milwaukee to help John move to Chicago for grad school.

After we got the truck unloaded, we went to Al & Emma’s – barely 2 blocks away – and got cleaned up and then had dinner – at 9:30 PM, at a diner. We went back and all kind of collapsed – me, Al & Emma on the couch, John & Megan on the floor  – watched “Our Idiot Brother” on Netflix from Al’s laptop hooked up to his TV, John nagging Al that “really, you can make that go full screen you know, want me to show you?” I had watched the movie not too long ago on cable, and I think I fell asleep in the almost the same spots.

I actually slept pretty well on Al & Emma’s couch, and woke up and cuddled with their kitty. And took selfies. And Al wouldn’t let me go to Starbucks for coffee, he brewed the coffee and I took 2 cups over to John’s, and said goodbye to him and Megan, and drove back to Madison.

Where we picked our TIFF tix – Mark says he thinks it went better than last year, and I think we’re both pretty happy with our movies.

And had a potluck for AFS kids and families – and I think we had upwards of 30 people here. I made veggies & herb dip – kind of like a dill dip I like, but with cream cheese & sour cream instead of mayo & sour cream – using up the basil I got in my CSA box; crostini with oven-dried tomatoes and “white cheese” – goat, a bit of feta, & cream cheese; a pinto bean, edamame & corn salad; banana cream pie; and 13 hamburgers. People brought lots of good stuff – there were some brownies that were very popular, rice krispie treats with M&Ms on top, all manner of salads, and meats for the grill. The big blue grill worked great. One of the guests, Gurdip, butlered platters of meats out into the crowd.

Then that Tuesday that’s like  Monday, the day after Labor Day – lots of student questions, and administrivia. I even had to go to UW transportation services to try to straighten out my permit. Somehow I got two offers. I accepted an offer for my second choice lot, and then I got a second offer for my first choice lot. Got the 2nd choice cancelled and then went to work and accepted the first choice. Parking said come back tomorrow for the hang tag. And I did manage to get one lecture recorded.

Wednesday was a lot more of the same, with the addition of trying to get ready to leave for TIFF. Also stood in line at the parking permit place, and couldn’t get my permit – it will be mailed to me though. We agreed there’ll be time to pack in the morning, but I still need to go fold laundry. Maybe I can have a drink while I fold.

So it’s kind of the last weekend of summer, at least for us academic types. At work today everyone looked totally stressed. Frantically working on syllabi and uploading stuff to course websites. Updating the School’s website in time for the new semester, new students, orientation.

To complement all of the above, I had a huge spate of questions, many of them the kind where the person has tried to figure things out themselves and it’s just more work to untangle …

Plus, “we’re havin’ a heat wave” and it’s kinda miserable outside.

As shown, still 90º at 7:00 PM.

We went down to my office, with the German student, to get John’s new giant computer for starting his MFA. There must be an Apple white box under there someplace. It was all made a little more exciting because of the heat, and because they’ve changed the lot under my building into gated – I wasn’t sure how much it would cost to just pull in for a few minutes, and we couldn’t get the attention of the attendant who was sealed up in their air conditioned kiosk. I think it would only have been $1. But I left Mark with the car and headed up to my office, of course forgetting my keys the first time, and I had to come back down, and go up again. I wanted to get a cart or a hand truck, but then, as Mark said, I woulda had to take it back up. So I pushed the big box down the hall to the elevator, and then kind of brute strength-ed it across the parking lot to the car.

Then we had the great “do we stop at the Terrace for ice cream?” debate – and as the only drinker in or party of three, I really wanted a beer – after a stressful day at work, with the added stress of carrying $2000 worth of computer in a big box that was a little too heavy for me, wearing flip flops. So we stopped. Turned out to be bearable right by the lake, if you stayed still and let the breeze blow over you. And we did make sure we were behind the speakers, so we didn’t have to listen to open mic night. The girl who was on when we got there was pretty bad; the duo who came on next marginally better.

Now I am further self-medicating, listening to an iTunes playlist, titled Falling, that I initially had no memory of making, but now that I listen, it’s coming back to me.

My excuse is sleep. Sunday was a really bad night – no sleep stretches longer than 2 hours, and then awake at some hideous time between 4:00 & 5:00 Monday AM and no sleep after. Last night was a little better, went to bed at 10:30, and dozed/slept until Mark joined me at almost midnight. Slept until 2:00 and then 4:00 and then 5:23. Aiming for one of those blissful four-hour stretches tonight. Yup.

Beer on my desk

And Wednesday dawned hazy, and I didn’t get out of bed till 7:00. I woke every two hours all night on schedule, but at least I was pretty dozy from 5:00AM till getting up.

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Or maybe it’s as satisfied as pie. I’ve been feeling kind of over-tired and over-worked here at the end of my vacation week. It sure made me a lot happier to bake pie. It doesn’t really matter that the blueberry pie dripped and burned on the bottom of the oven – I can always run the oven cleaner later. Or that I pulled a little skin off the inside of my upper lip with the frozen spoon that I was using to test to see if the blueberry juices had thicked up sufficiently.

These pies are going to Bruce Renwick’s memorial in Burrows Park this afternoon – when we moved to Chicago in 1991, we had our going away party at Burrows. It was the closest park to the John & Al’s daycare, Magic Penny – so they had spent lots of time in that park. Bruce’s memorial is there because it’s near the Mendota Yacht Club, and they’re having a regatta in his honor. I’m just going for the lunch, after. And I’m sure that I won’t be pleased with how I look when I get dressed to go to the memorial, but it’ll be OK, because the pies will look better than I do <grin>.

Where I left off was Tuesday after the vegans – It was my first day back at work after Bootcamp. Catch up in the AM, then a planning retreat for a campus organization of which I am part in the PM. The lunch was boxed from Panera – I thought I was going to be getting a chicken Caesar salad wrap – but it turned out to be a sandwich on some bread that had that texture my mom always called “cottony” – why she eschewed most fast food; couldn’t face “those buns”. The chicken was the kind that comes precooked in little plastic bags containing God knows what seasoning and preserving fluids – I took it off the sandwich and had a soggy mayo-lettuce-tomato-Parmesan-cheese sandwich of which I ate about 1/3, biting as close as possible to the crustiest parts of the bread. There was a little bag of chips and a cookie in the box too. The cookie was a not too terrible butter cookie, so I ate about 3/4 of that.

I was supposed to have dinner with a friend, but she forgot, so I came home and made kidney bean and corn enchiladas – my standard recipe, based on this Martha (I use flour tortillas, warmed in the micro, don’t add extra water to the sauce, and use my own home made chicken or veggie broth) – and they looked a lot like the below black bean ones from almost the exact same date, August 14, last year, but of course, no pix.

Black Bean Enchiladas

Wednesday we went for burgers at Dottie’s, with Ethan and Abby; Thursday we ate some leftovers and went to see a movie (Remember the Titans, selected by crowd sourcing) on the new jumbotron scoreboard at Camp Randall.

Friday I came home and cooked for two hours and produced Thai chicken curry, that we ate at almost 8:00, a banana cake, and … oh … damn, can’t even remember what the other thing was – it was to save some vegetable or other that was languishing in the fridge, that’s for sure. Oh that’s right – Cafe Flora mushroom pate! To use up the leftover mushrooms from the vegans.

Saturday we went to Chris’s party out in the country, and I made focaccia sandwiches, 2 13 x 9 focaccias, split, one filled with goat cheese, pesto and tomatoes, and the other with the above mushroom pate and mayonnaise and lettuce.

Sunday I went and biked four hours at Ride the Drive. We grilled for dinner, brats and a nice little potato salad and grilled corn, then watched the vampires and Newsroom. I still can’t believe they killed off Eric.

Now it’s Monday of my stay at home, vacation/slash work at home week.  So far, I folded the two baskets of laundry I’ve been storing in the basement for two weeks – had to go down and fish out underwear every morning because none in my dresser; washed a bedspread; have tomatoes and vegetables roasting for the roasted vegetable tomato sauce I’ve discovered and like so well; and made veggie broth with all the dregs of the veggie bin – corn cobs, pepper insides, carrot peels and the last couple of CA organic carrots – the local ones will be here soon, parsley stems, and, after taking enough leaves to put into the roasted vegetable sauce, the fresh thyme I bought for the Cafe Flora mushroom pate, and the fresh oregano I got in my CSA box. I made some corn muffins with kernels cut off the cobs we grilled last night.

So altogether doing a great job not working, but there’s no avoiding it now. If I get the rest of my students’ final papers read today, I can save posting the final grades for tomorrow. Everything’s due at midnight on Wednesday… I think … better go look that up right now.

Dave, the organizer for the Madison Vegetarian Meetup Group, proposed that we do some homey vegan dinners. The group had a dinner for 27 at School Woods like 6 years ago, and has been over for lunches and cupcakes and games & snacks more recently, but I can only seat about 30, and they are averaging 100 for their dinners currently. So the plan was to do three in a row, 30 per night. Since we are in the deeps of summer, prime vacation time, we ended up with 28 30 the first night (Saturday), cancelling the Sunday for low enrollment, and 14 17 on Monday. So I’m cooking for 42 47 instead of 90 – and I’m kind of happy about that. Plus, because I now have Sunday off, I get to go to the State Fair.

So anyways, they are having:

• Roasted cherry tomato tartines to start; roasted tomatoes & their juices over a slice of bread (I wanted to make this – but I learned that vegans do not eat honey; it is an animal product – so I am making the tomatoes with agave). I sprinkled fancy salt on each tartine, and granished with a basil leaf. For my own dinner when I got home, I had a tartine with just the juices from the tomatoes, drizzled over toasted bread smeared with goat cheese.
• Salad with raspberry-shallot vinaigrette
• This crazy vegan lasagna – I tried out the roasted vegetable sauce at the beginning of July, and it’s delish. I made vats of the vegan bechamel – with cashews, almond milk, and brewers’ yeast. Not sure why 6X the bechamel is so much more than 6X the tomato sauce, but go figure …
• Mexican chocolate cookies – like a chocolate snickerdoodle with a little cayenne. I made a double batch, about 60 cookies, and only 3 were  left
• Heidi’s chocolate mousse, with whipped coconut milk topping. The coconut milk didn’t whip as easily as I thought it should’ve but it tasted great – especially scooped up with half a cookie.

All went well – Belinda helped and I paid her $25 plus dinner for Stephen. I put out a bucket for extra gratuity, but, since when the guests register via the meetup group, they’re told that the price includes the food, tax, tip and the fees for the meetup group itself, there was only $2 in the bucket at the end of the night. IMHO, I’ve had plenty of group meals at restaurants where we’re informed that the bill for our large party has a 15% gratuity built in, and I’ve still added a little extra on for the servers and the kitchen. But obviously not many in this crowd shared my opinion. Maybe on Monday I’ll have to add “additional” in front of the tips word.

I only took pictures of the cookies – maybe I’ll be able to shoot more of the dishes when I cook the same menu for the Monday dinner.

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