Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

It’s good Friday and the first night of Passover. The last time I remember this coincidence, I was living in Chicago, and it was also a full moon and Friday the 13th, in 1992. That was the year of the underground flood.  Thank God we didn’t have so many coincidences this year – who knows what would have happened. As it is, I knocked over a bottle of Passover wine onto my iPhone, and smashed the screen. A little earlier, I discovered, in my land line phone messages, a message from the furnace guy left last Tuesday, that the E. Wash house is going to need a new furnace. Since Tuesday was election day, the furnace message was lurking amidst the robo-calls reminding me to go vote for Rick Santorum – good thing I’m a registered Democrat, so I can’t do that in the WI primary – and it did make me slightly happy to know that the Republican party’s records are bad enough that they were wasting their calls on me.

Passover dinner was delicious – although I made the meringues in state of fear and worry, right after I smashed the iPhone. I broke a wine glass while I was cleaning up after dinner, and a platter and a bowl also broke when the platter slipped out of my hands and landed on the bowl in the sink. And even after washing there’s a big red wine splotch on the stripey kitchen rug – or maybe it’s more like a red-wine shadow. I did a meat meal, so we had hummus and matzoh crackers and vegetables and olives to start, then briskit and roasted potatoes that Joëlle made, and farfel stuffing and asparagus salad that Molly brought. And of course matzoh ball soup, with a vegetarian broth. I made an almond cake – it had more ground nuts than matzoh meal and that’s what makes a good Passover cake, I think. I frosted it with seven-minute frosting – whipped egg whites. Jane brought the matzoh butter crunch. The only thing that got completely eaten was Joëlle’s potatoes – but the only leftover that I don’t think we’ll finish is the stuffing.

And, I guess – it’s just going to be about money – and time. $200 later, I have a new iPhone 4s in my pocket, and I spent another $90 ordering a faceplate fix-it kit, and a new sim card and phone service, so we can re-condition the smashed phone. It took me along time to get everything moved over to the new iPhone – and it was pretty terrifying in that computer upgrade way – you know, when you’re wondering, “Am I doing the right thing or am I actually wiping out all my stuff?” The new furnace is going to be in the $3,000 – $3,500 range – but the bills were pretty high, even during our weird mild winter, and maybe I’ll get some energy tax credits – so I’ll end up saving a little bit.

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Everybody’s doing their annual April Fool jokes, but we are in Chicago enjoying ourselves, no foolin’, and my over-earnest style doesn’t really lend itself too handily to April Fool pranks. Google’s got Nascar, the first time I went there this a.m. it even said “I’m steering Lucky“; I expect TidBits will do something tomorrow when my newsletter from them arrives in my email, and even the library catalogers division of the ALA sent around an April Fool “spring update”. Of course being catalogers, their April Fool came out on March 30th. 327Words of course did its annual April Fool. And I just found the Timbuk 2 Clifford Canine Carrier.

We arrived in Chi-town Saturday and checked in at the Hotel Burnham. Dinner at XOCO, and then off to see Dan Hicks at Old Town School of Folk.

Sunday – April Fool – was brunch at Nightwood – I had poached eggs and rye toast that came with blueberry jam and bacon, and Nightwood’s tots – deep fried balls of shredded potato. The potato was good and the outsides were properly crunchy, but I’m not sure I quite agree with Nightwood’s vision of the breakfast potato – I prefer something more like the American fries I had next day at 11 City Diner. Maybe I just don’t feel right about eating deep fried food for breakfast. Later we went to the flower show at Macy’s, and wandered Michigan Ave. Macy’s was depressing – the flower show was up in the deserted 9th floor – I told Joëlle it looked like where they used to have the employee lunchroom – and when we went down the escalator, where you stepped off, the floor was being held together with duct tape. Store seemed understocked, too. How the mighty have fallen.

We went to an early show Second City show – Sex, Love and Second City, and stopped for six tapas at Cafe Iberico: the potatoes in spicy tomato sauce; grilled prawns; a really good soup of pureed garbanzos & chorizo – I don’t usually like chorizo, but chopped up in this soup was perfect. Like my childhood favorite, Campbell’s beans with bacon – but way better; a braised beef; tortilla; and jambon on tomato bread.  I have been crap at getting pictures – only iPhoneoids on Tumbler. Came back to the hotel and no Game of Thrones – so I went to the bar and had a gin martini mixed by a bartender who’d been on his feet waaay too long, who told me the story of the the rise of vodka’s popularity, and chatted with a young guy about friends and relations dying of cancer and health insurance – I left just before it got too political. And I was down at the bar for just long enough for Game of Thrones to get over its cable TV debut, and appear on HBOgo, so I set it up on my laptop and Mark & I watched in bed, like the kids.

And a coconut cake that crumbled, and a green salad with little tomatoes, that Jean brought. That’s what we ate with the neighbors tonight.

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The lasagna had that pureed tomato sauce, that I make with my home-frozen tomatoes. Tuesday, I made a big batch with the last 4 bags of tomatoes from last summer (after I had ascertained that they did not taste like plastic). I left the tomatoes out to thaw all day, but it was still like making tomato slushee in the Cuisinart when I pureed them. And kind of fun to see them melt and turn a deeper red as they cooked – I’m sure the addition of a can of tomato paste helped, too.

For the bread I used the King Arthur Flour long rise almost no knead baguette recipe, with part whole wheat. The last time I made this bread, the dough was a little too wet, and the bread wasn’t as crusty as I would have liked. I weighed the flour, both times, but I tried to be more careful with the water for this whole wheat batch. but the wheat flour threw things off I think, though – the dough was really heavy and stiff. And I didn’t let it rise as long as I should have – only an hour. So we got a pretty good crust, and a fine, tight, crumb – not much in the way of holes.

I don’t know what happened with the cake – it’s annoying me. I thought I was making this cake that I made last fall for a luau party – but it didn’t crumble like this in September. So I must’ve used a different recipe, but damned if I can remember which. Another thing to worry about – memory loss. I think it must be hormones.

On Friday night I tried to make pasta sauce – bacon, celery, onions, and tomatoes frozen from last summer. And a splash of wine left from the party last week. After I put in the wine, the sauce got a funny smell – like plastic. I think it was the wine – Mark thought it was the tomatoes. So on Saturday, I had to thaw out some more tomatoes and make another sauce, to check. This one was made by a method I got years ago from the Chicago Tribune for a simple fat free tomato sauce – puree the tomatoes, add garlic, a pinch of sugar, red pepper flakes and dried oregano. You can also puree roasted red peppers and add them, too. Then boil it down for about 45 minutes.The second sauce smells OK, and I am going to make it into a lasagna with spinach. So, I guess I can stop worrying about my hoard of frozen tomatoes – in plastic bags – are they all getting a plasticky taste? I’m down to only 4 – 5 bags and 2 containers, anyways. So I can turn my attention back to worrying about other stuff, like:

• the drippy sprayer on the kitchen sink
• money
• my kids
• the ringing noise in the basement
• the furnace that needs to be cleaned at the other house
• the peeling paint on the back of this house
• the pain in my right shin – is it cancer? and all the other aches & pains of my 56-year-old body
• do I really need to buy an extended license for CS5?
• Which car, computer, major appliance, [alternate calamity name here] will break next?**

I had goat cheese on a raison bagel for Saturday breakfast and Bubbe prunes – the prunes in a dish with brown sugar and half a sliced lemon, then you pour boiling water over and put them in the fridge overnight.

And the girls – our Dutch exchange student, plus two from Italy, one from Finland, and a Muslim girl they’re friends with at school – ate the bacon sauce on fettuccine before they went to see the Hunger Games. Although I think the non-pork-eating Muslim brought along a can of her own tomato soup.

**The dishwasher wins – the moulding around the front door has been loose for awhile – I tuck it back in after every wash load. But it came all the way out on Saturday. With help, I got it mostly stuffed back in, and ran the dishwasher last night, and it only dripped a little – but I think I have to add the repair guy to my list of Monday morning calls.