Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

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It was a weekend of graduations.

On Saturday, I made a dinner for my upstairs renter at the supper club house, who got her PhD in a convocation Friday evening. The menu was:

• light apps – goat cheese, red pepper, olive & pesto torta, with long rise baguettes, and crackers and peppadews; salami; nuts – Costco cashews and salt and pepper pistachios in the shell
• Ovens of Brittany salad – greens with creamy curry dressing, and a sprinkle of Parmesan and toasted almonds. I got (hydroponic) cherry tomatoes at the Framers Market and added two to each salad for an extra garnish.
• Asparagus custard tart from the 2005 March Gourmet, the London issue, that has a kind of Abbey Road cover – that I make almost as written – I put a little cheese in the bottom instead of painting the crust with egg, and don’t cook the tart at all before adding the asparagus. Oh, and of course I use my crust recipe, not theirs.
• Roast pork – part one of the last pieces of “our” pigs, and part Costco – with lost of garlic and rosemary – and a rhubarb compote
• mushy peas – chunky puréed peas with lots of herb butter, with mint and parsley (also from that London Gourmet)
• roasted potatoes – since the meat was herb-y, I made the potatoes with a Penzy’s spice blend that Al gave me for mom’s day
• Cake with jam filling and real butter cream, and a big bowl of strawberries

On Sunday morning, I got up and went to campus to sit on the stage and watch library school students graduate. (Well first, I put in the white tablecloths & napkins from the night before, as a bleach load, so I could get them done & folded before anyone else wanted to do laundry.) It was a nice ceremony. Good speakers – the alumna of the year on free speech and libraries, and one of my fellow instructors who used Joss Wheedon’s Firefly serenity browncoat “Aim to Misbehave” as the framing device for her talk. We try to play a kind of graduation bingo, who gets the most thank-yous, which student bursts into tears, who thanks their mom or God – but it didn’t work that well because all the students were so polite, and thanked everyone, rather than individuals. Three distance students graduated but did not thank me individually. Probably either one of the faculty who specializes in kids and their use of digital stuff, or the instructor who gave the browncoat talk, got the most thank-yous. There was a reception after, cake and coffee and punch in the library school library, and you could get yourself photographed alongside our new Bucky Badger roller-blind style standup.

I came home, and drove down to Milwaukee to go see Color Rush with John, since it was closing that day. I drove Mark’s car, and I had this underlying apprehension that somehow I wouldn’t be able to drive that tiny little stick shift car all the way there – but it was fine. I even parallel parked it twice. The only real mishap was my Alterra honey latte in my own cup for driving home wouldn’t fit in the cup holder, so I had to kind of juggle it from hand to hand, and balance it between my knees, in the getting out of town phase when I had to shift more. I finished it while I was on 43, before I-94, anyways. Oh, and John called to see where I was when I was coming up the hill from war memorial drive past the pumping station Alterra, and I wasn’t sure how to talk on the iPhone and shift, but I managed.

I thought I had all these pithy observations from the trip, that I wanted to blog, but I can’t remember them now. I must have more to say about the photography show – maybe later. We ate barbecue at the  Smoke Shack, and I got home in time to watch Game of Thrones the 2nd time around.

I did a brunch at E. Wash, for about 11 adults + 3 little kids + me, Mark & Kanari. The baked goods turned out to be pumpkin-date scones and cherry muffins, and a loaf of long-rise, no-knead bread made special for the occasion, and a loaf of ww bread that I had in the freezer, for toast.

The butter for the cherry muffins was cursed. For two dozen muffins, you were supposed to melt two sticks of butter. OK, no problem. I did this in a small saucepan on the stove, that’s not quite the right size for my stove grids, and it spilled a little bit. And of course, two tablespoons of melted butter spilled on the stove required washing off the [hot] cast iron grid in the sink with lots of hot soapy water, and much sponging of the stovetop, first with a soapy sponge, then with a rinsed one to get the soap off. I decided that I was too tired to bake the muffins Saturday night, so I poured the butter into a glass 1-cup measure and put a saucer on top, figuring I’d let it sit overnight, it’d get a little hard, and I could soften it up in the microwave before baking on Sunday morning. Before I had had any coffee – maybe that was the problem? – I stuck the butter in the micro for like 35 seconds, and as soon as I turned my back on it – to make the coffee –  there was a loud Whump! and the butter exploded. Much more sponging with hot soapy, and rinsed sponges ensued.

Everything else went OK, except the baked eggs – on creamed spinach, some with ham and some with just cream, and a dollop of pesto on top – took a little too long to cook. But I managed to get them out of the oven with runny yolks, yum. I just ate a toast and egg sandwich with one of the leftover egg rounds, and there was still runny yolk.

The hash browns were especially good, too – I made them my regular way, which is parboiled potatoes, chilled overnight, then grated. Melt salted butter with vegetable oil in a large non-stick skillet. Make a big pancake of potatoes, the size of the pan. Brown the first side, shaking the skillet to keep the potatoes loose. Then flip the pancake onto a cookie sheet, pour in a touch more oil, and slide the potatoes back in to brown on the other side.

I made a big green salad with greens, vinaigrette, toasted walnuts, goat cheese and dried cranberries, with a bowl of roasted asparagus drizzled with balsamic & a plate of alternating slices of roasted gold and red beets on the side.

But probably the biggest hit was the Eton Mess – strawberries, cream, and smashed store bought meringues. I used the UK National Gallery/Oliver Peyton/Peyton & Byrne, recipe – it’s their picture down below, from the National Cookbook. Mine was pinker, probably because I didn’t sieve the strawberry sauce. And US cream isn’t as rich and yellow as our UK counterpart – they have more weights of cream. We have heavy cream that’s 36 – 40% butterfat and half & half, that’s about 20%; they have half cream, and whipping cream, and the double cream that the recipe calls for is like 48% butterfat.

I came home and finished grading as assignment in one of my online courses, washed the dishes, including the egg cups, such a pain, and then biked to the liquor store, seeking champagne or Prosecco. The liquor store was closed, so I went to the grocery store and got a bottle of Prosecco, for the elder flower cocktail I am drinking as my mother’s day treat, right now. Oh, and I saw both kids, and got a few nice gifts from Mark and Al, earrings and a beaded coin purse, and a box of Penzy spice blends. Darn good mother’s day and there’s still game of thrones to come … and probably another cocktail. Even though there are still a few more dishes to wash.

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We’re spending a [slightly shifted] weekend in Chicago, Saturday to Tuesday. Like last year, we’ve got a visiting student on tow.

This time, our excuse for visiting is to see Patti Smith at the Vic tonight. (last year it was spring break)

We arrived on Saturday, doing the half car, half train thing on Metra from Harvard. We went and did a little grocery shopping, then we met John at Carmine’s on Rush for dinner. I had seafood linguine, but I liked John’s cavatelli with spicy sauce – with fresh jalapeños and dried red pepper flakes, in a kind of creamy tomato sauce – better. Mark thought everything was good, but the canoli was the best. We thought we were full, but four people pretty much demolished two fat canolis. John’s here to hang out with friends and just generally explore, since he’ll be moving to Chicago for grad school in August.

real strawberries & banana along with fake fruit at airbnb

Seafood linguini at Carmine’s

After dinner we went to see Ironman 3, in 3D. And came back to our airbnb apartment to discover there’s no soundproofing whatsoever between it and the place next door. Where there was not a wild party, but simply 3-4 people talking – drunkenly, but still just talking – on the couch, until 6:30 a.m. Sunday night was a little quieter. Mark went over and asked them to keep it down. Monday he went and complained to the doorman. Tuesday morning we concluded that they’re running an after hours club in that apartment. Monday night, all was quiet when we got back from Patti Smith, but the talking started up around 2:00 AM – when the bars closed.

Sunday we had a little trouble getting the kid moving; she slept until almost 12:30. We got bagels and coffee, and then went and sat in the Lincoln bowl while she got dressed.  Then we went to the Art Institute. We mostly saw Picasso, and Irving Penn’s photos of the junk on Manhattan sidewalks. I wanted to see this one, Robert Taub’s collection – but we just didn’t get there. I had a little trouble with the Picasso – felt like the AIC was just taking the opportunity to haul out any Picasso’s they had, no matter how minor (like the set of 4 mistakes, shown with 2 good prints) but things got interesting when I got to the room of books. There was a flat case of unbound prints, Picasso’s illustrations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and, the more interesting collaboration, Picasso’s prints for Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece), 1931, printed by Vollard. We visited the museum store and I got my tote bag for re-upping my membership, and a pair of earrings.

We had an early dinner at Bistrot Margot – the restaurant owned by the sister and brother-in-law of one of my Chicago Historical Society (now the Chicago History Museum) Prints & Photographs cronies, Eileen. Her sis was there, and I think her niece, Margot, who the restaurant is named after, was hosting. I wanted to say that I used to work with her Aunt Eileen, but didn’t have the nerve. Nice meal, though – Mark had steak frites, Kanari got chicken and frites, and I had a Brie tart. The Brie was melted onto puff paste, with honey and balsamic vinegar drizzled over, toasted walnuts, and a few skinny asparaguses. Mark and I both had the house salad – with bacon and a soft egg – biggest bacon lardons ever seen, Mark said.

Went back to the apartment, dressed for the theater, and went to see Book of Mormon.

Monday morning we did a really quick trip up the Sears/Willis Tower.

Deb hiding behind Kanari at Sears Tower

Then lunch with a bunch of my Chicago archivist, librarian, and architectural historian friends, at a place called Grahamwich. In Tree Studios so a fun building. I got the pressed Cubano – good but the prosciutto (probably really good prosciutto) was too gamey for me – I liked Mark’s Rueben better. Probably should’ve had the grilled cheese. After lunch, we walked to Navy Pier and went on the Ferris wheel. Then wandered back up to Old Town. I’m going to tell you about the rest of the day, and Patti Smith, in a separate post.

Chicago skyline from up in the Ferris wheel

Deb on the Ferris Wheel

Man, I miss apples. Seems like forever since I’ve had a good one. During our weird hot snap in March 2012, the trees bloomed and then they never set fruit. The 2012 apple crop was down about 50%.

Hardly any apples in the fall, and now that it’s spring, when the apples aren’t supposed to be any good, anyways, there’re no good apples to buy. I’ve tried the bagged and the bigger, loose ones from the co-op, organic apples grown in Washington, mostly – disappointing. I thought maybe the IN-organic ones from the commercial grocery’d be a touch better, because they turn (sell) faster – and, no. Have to resort to peeling them to make them edible at all, for my taste buds anyhow – the skins taste old and overwintered. I sure hope this year’s cool late spring is good for the trees.

From Clotilde, of Chocolate and Zucchini, I’ve learned that the French phrase for, “Well, it’s not the end of the world”, meant ironically, is “It’s the end of the beans”, la fin des haricots. I guess here in WI, it’s the end of the apples. Literally.

partly peeled grocery store apple

Thai red curry

For a lazy Tuesday evening, I made Thai red curry with tofu, sweet potato, and spinach, and ate it on the couch in front of TV with a big glass of lime water, and the repeat of Game of Thrones. The Trader Joe’s Texas-grown Basmati was all long grains that almost stood up in the cooking pot.

This week’s YouTube vids of GoT tunes:

Main theme played on UW’s carillon bells

Hold Steady – The bear & maiden fair

Rains of Castamere, sung by the Matt Berninger, lead singer in the National