Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

First, WiLS OCLC Peer Council. The conference was Tuesday, but our friend and colleague Eric Childress came in on Monday, gave a little talk at the library school, and we took him out for dinner. The Old Fashioned was too crowded, so we went around the corner to Underground Kitchen. Eric, who lives in Columbus OH, kept saying he’d been hearing about the Madison protests all winter. He was hoping to grab a sign and use our time waiting for a table to protest. We got a meat board and cheese board – and a vegetable board by accident, because the waitress messed up. I followed with a salad. A nice meal, despite the reviews I’d heard that the Kitchen tends to be either wonderful or abysmal – we were somewhere in between.

Tuesday evening after the conference I biked out to the MACSAC office to have a meeting to talk about teaching some cooking classes on how to use your CSA box later this summer. By the time I got home, I was so cold and tired, I stuffed leftover asparagus salad into pita and wolfed that down. Then Al & I went out to REI to get him a leatherman knife/tool/thing for camp. I had a coupon, plus REI was having a sale, plus I used up my patronage rebate, so we got a $60 knife for $29 something. As Al said cheaper than Dick’s.

Wednesday & today were the Teaching and Learning Symposium. I stayed all day Wednesday, including facilitating a lunch table. Mark & Ethan and I had leftover pasta smorgasboard for dinner – the chicken and asparagus lasagna, and the Arrabbiata pasta that I made Sunday, from the Cuisine at Home recipe that I like, that I first made for John’s golden birthday, 18 on March 18th in 2005. It has salami in it rather than pancetta or Canadian bacon (what Mark uses).

Tonight I came home early from the conference, and made an asparagus frittata with a few strips of bacon, cold cooked asparagus, a dash of cream, 4 eggs, and a handful of cheese. I melted butter in the dish I cooked it in in the oven, and poured the egg mix in while it was hot, to give it a nice crust. I think I tossed a touch too generous a lump of butter in there to melt. Rich, but good. We ate it with challah, and I didn’t butter my slice, to try to average out the butterfat content – seemed to work OK.

Asparagus frittata

Mark’s feet under the coffee table

Posted from my iPhone

Resin Adirondack chairs

Today was a furlough day for us lazy, overpaid public employees. We spent it stimulating the economy. First, we went over to a cool vintage furniture and reupholstery place on the east side, and made plans to get the wood love seat reupholstered, and the cushions from the lightning bolt couch upstairs re-stuffed. About $1,000 – $1,200, though we didn’t actually spend any of it today.

Then we went to the restaurant supply place to get me a new half-cup scoop, #8. The scoop was only $11, but of course, once there, we got some other stuff – I got a stainless slotted spoon, and Mark got a couple of half sheet pans. Spent $30.03 altogether.

We came home and ate a little breakfast – I had a bagel with melted cheddar and this salsa I made yesterday from a Martha recipe – nicely spicey, a little too garlicy, a little too sweet. On our way back from the eastside, Mark picked up a couple of cupcakes to go from Daisy Cafe.

Thus fortified, we went out again, to Home Depot, to get a new mailbox for East Wash, $17.49. They had resin Adirondack chairs, so we got one of each of the primary colors – the yellow one didn’t fit into the picture above – plus a little tan resin table/drink stand. We already had the green one. Chairs, 3 at $16.96, table $8.96 – with tax and the mailbox, the bill at Home Depot was $81.58.

Proceeded on to Bed, Bath & Beyond, for a new shower curtain and curved rod, like we just put in the upstairs bathroom, for the downstairs bathroom. Sheets & a pillow for Al to take to camp. Plastic tray – can never have too many plastic trays – and a blue plastic drinks bucket, for $4.99, were the impulse buys there. $112.82 at Bed, Bath & Beyond – and used up all of our coupons. Whew.

So the big day has come and went. It was really fun, and as far as I could tell, everyone loved the food – lots of people came over to say so, and even more telling, not much came back on the plates. So worth rolling strudels till 1:30 a.m. and getting up to make pasta salad at 6:30 a.m. Although I was already OK with the early start on the pasta salad – first thing I ate Saturday morning was one of the little RP’s cheese tortellinis, grabbed out of my biggest stock pot full of boling water, to test it for doneness – yum, it was warm and pllowy and cheesey.

So many stories – the coffee place blew my order, and Megan and I knew from the look on the manager on duty’s face when I told him I was getting 2 5-gal cambros – we said, “OK we’ll come back in half an hour” – and they gave me the 2nd cambro for free.

A lot of people were dressed vintage/funky – the bride wore a pretty traditional white dress, scoopy, I think sweetheart neckline, off the shoulder, tight waist, full skirt, with cowboy boots. One of her brothers had on a regular black suit with flip flops. Lots of hats and veils and shawls. A couple of women guests wore white, which Megan was pretty sure was a no-no at a wedding. But several others wore black, which I was pretty sure was a no-no at a wedding.

We kept having to turn the jet-engine-in-the-corner-loud heater on & off – John & I hoped it would short out when somebody dropped a drink upstairs and it flowed through the floorboards onto the heater.

Here’re some selected photos of the food:

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Here’s the link to all of John’s photos.

Today I took my two 6-foot folding tables back to E. Wash, and I figure I spent all the money I made on the wedding, because I broke a little piece off one of the car taillights when the top table got away from me, and whacked it.

Two trapeze artists (aerial dancers, I think they prefer) are getting married this weekend, and I’m doing the food. It’s about 125 people, so I’m a little nervous, but I think it’ll be fine. John and Megan and Jake are coming to help. I’m only making some of the food – I’m not doing the cake, and they’re getting snack platters from Willy Street’s catering to tide everybody over from the the ceremony at 2:00 until dinner at 4:00.

I’m making:

I spent most the day today shopping and procuring. The water was out at my house – they’re digging up the next street over, and when I got back from my morning walk, a city utility guy was hanging an orange tag on my front door that said the water was going to be shut off at 9:45, for 2 – 4 hours. It must be because I walked home past the construction last night, the road down to dirt, and big trucks & equipment all over the place – and felt smug that they weren’t on my street – so of course I had to get affected, today, even a street away.

I didn’t start cooking until about 4:30. I made the filling for the strudels – I seem to have way too much of the spinach rice. And I think I overbought on broccoli and especially lettuce. I ordered bulk organic salad mix from the co-op, and that comes in 3-lb bags. I got three = 9 lbs. Then I read something online that said 15 pounds of lettuce for 100, so I bought 4 clamshells at Costco – the Costco imperative to overbuy – even though I knew, the last time I bought one of those Costco lettuce clamshells, it fed 30 people, with a few handfuls leftover. And, once I thawed all the bread ends I had in the freezer to make the 12 cups of bread crumbs I needed, I sure shouldn’t have bought that extra Costco baguette 2-pack (can’t be only ONE loaf in a pack from Costco; multi-pack is the only size they carry) – I just put it back into one of the bags from the bread I thawed, and stuck it in the freezer.