Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

It’s been an odd week, schedule-wise, and I haven’t posted anything since Monday a week ago, and now it’s Wednesday.

Rach is here for an unusual Wednesday to omigod in the morning Thursday stay. Last week, Mark stayed in Chicago until Thursday, and this week he’s staying until Friday, and when he comes back he’ll have Ethan with him, also unusual.

I’ve been trying to use up my last CSA box, and when Rach got here last Wednesday it was hot so we had a big salad supper: lettuce, beets, cheese, nuts. On Thursday,  it was cold, and we had pasta with escarole & spinach, and feta & goat cheese.

On Friday Mark and I had tickets for Bach Dancing & Dynamite. I had had a biggish lunch from the carts, tofu with peanut sauce on greens. I think I had some graham crackers with Nutella and we went to the show. 

On Saturday we went to the farmers market and came back with strawberries and sugar snap peas and eggs and a turkey steak for dinner. And pastries from L’Etoile, a chocolate croissant and a cinnamon twist, kind of like an elephant ear. And lots of herbs. We had soft boiled eggs and toast, with the pastries and strawberries for breakfast.

We had the turkey steak and cilantro rice and a big salad for dinner – then off to BDDS, again. 

Saturday it was rainy and misty, but Sunday was gorgeous and Rach and I got out for a walk. I made rhubarb ripple coffee cake, and didn’t burn it this time. 

We had poached eggs & toast & cheese & tomatoes & bacon – kind of like fancy egg sandwiches. And fruit and coffee cake. 

I biked over to the waterfront fest in the afternoon and saw a fun band, Birds of Chicago. 

Rach and I had ice cream and Game of Thrones for dinner. Season 5 finale – TV has caught up with the books but there’re some serious plot differences. You can have a super detailed list or an overview. 

On Monday after work I made a batch of the gluten free peanut butter cookies that I’ve made the last two years for Christmas – they’re sandwich cookies with chocolate filling. But I flattened them with a glass and instead of sandwiching I topped them with chocolate some milk and some dark and some left plain. 

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Here’re some pictures I took back in May and never posted, from that Occupy WID thing.

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I’m trying to remember what I ate for dinner my single girl nights this week. I know I was trying to just use what there was in my almost-empty fridge. Tuesday was the “Make-Hers“; Wednesday I think I had a big lunch – egg salad, a bagel, and then just some salad for dinner, with smoked Gouda, because there was some already grated, and walnuts, and I made some bright red french dressing, because I’d been craving it – chili sauce, cider vinegar, a shallot, honey, paprika, and vegetable oil. Yum. Wednesday I went to another food writing talk, and there was going to be cake. One of those nights I came home and made rice pudding. I bet that was Tuesday.

Thursday I cooked asparagus:

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Saturday it was rhubarb.

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A big batch of purée. I froze some, and used some to make parfaits, with the rice pudding and whipped cream. I also made a crumb cake with chopped rhubarb. Unfortunately, when I went upstairs to eat the parfaits with Mark, the first distraction was a fizzy water disaster – mine exploded all over the place. Then I got sleepy after eating the parfait. It was pretty rich – although I calculated the calories at about 500, so not so bad when were basically just having dessert for dinner – and I forgot to take the cake out. It over-baked by almost an hour. I guess it’s caramelized rhubarb cake.

And I made scallion pancakes to take to a block party the next street over – they messed up the stove, as did the rhubarb puree. No pictures, but they were really tasty – my best attempt ever at these. Fried up crispy in very little oil. The trick was brushing with a tiny bit of sesame oil as you rolled the dough. I had the sesame oil in a ramekin, for brushing, and then mixed the dipping sauce in that, for a little sesame oil taste. I skipped the grated ginger , because I didn’t have any, so the sauce was soy, black Chinese vinegar, a teaspoon of sugar, and the hint of sesame oil. Perfect.  I sprinkled the pancake with flaky salt, cut them in wedges, and arranged wedges on a platter around a little container of dipping sauce. I took the last of the asparagus pizza, too, two platefuls of wedges, and it all was eaten.

Hot, then Rain.

On Saturday morning, I got up and packed. Jenny took Petunia the pug dog for a walk, and came back with a pretzel croissant (I think it must’ve been from the Upper West Side Birdbath/City Bakery) for me to take on the train – thought about taking the other half of my giant Panuozzo sandwich from the day before, but opted for more breakfast-y things instead; the croissant and a banana. We discussed bakeries where I could grab a bite at Penn Station, but in the end I didn’t have time. I cabbed to the station and had to ask how to get to track 5 West, where my train was already boarding. I ended up on the away-from-the-Hudson-River side, but with a seat to myself.

We were about half an hour late into Rhinecliff, that Wikipedia calls a “hamlet” in upstate New York, but Amtrak kept us informed and I was able to text Rach. She went and had a coffee at the Rhinecliff Hotel.

We went and wandered in Woodstock, and I bought a dress at the Flax store. 40% off. It was really hot – in the 90s, and the car, Rachael’s new Subaru Forrester, said the temp was 103° when we got back in, but that must’ve been from being parked in the sun – it dropped to 86° when we got moving.

Flax linen dress, hanging in my closet back at home

We went to New World Home Cooking for dinner. We split the spicy green beans for a starter – they were good but a little too grilled for me – too much char, or not exactly char, more like grill gunk. I had a big hunk of BBQ salmon, that came with a yummy peanut slaw, and rice that looked really boring but actually was well-seasoned with lime and cilantro. Rach had the Thai salad, so I gave her a hunk of salmon to top it, and Iain had the Indian fish fry, that came with more of the slaw. We were way too full for dessert.

In the morning, Rach and I went for a walk with her neighbor, Helene. It was still hot and sticky, in the high 70s.

We drove into Rhinebeck for breakfast at one of the Bread Alone’s (we got coffee at the Woodstock one the other day – iced). Then we went to the farmers’ market. It started raining when we came out after eating, and by the time we got to the parking lot of the grocery store where we went to finish our shopping, it had dropped to 60°. We bought two pounds of rhubarb, and made a big batch of rhubarb sauce.

My egg sangwich

Rachael’s avocado toast

Rachael’s sister and brother-in-law and niece drove up from Albany in the late afternoon. It had settled into to steadily rain. We took umbrellas, and went into Saugerties to see an art show at Cross Contemporary Art, Portia Munson’s scanner pictures, and to buy fancy chocolates. Home, and BLT’s on Bread Alone bread, roasted potato and asparagus salad, and a big green salad, from Avi’s garden, lost of nice young greens and herbs. I used handfuls of the dressed greens as the lettuce in the BLTs. We had three kinds of bacon – some really thick, all natural honey bacon; thinner sliced and maple or brown sugar bacon; and tempeh bacon. This time we had room for dessert – Avi brought a rhubarb galette that we ate with vanilla ice cream, and some of us indulged in extra rhubarb sauce on top.

It went down to the 40s on Sunday night, but we just closed all the windows and Rach got me an extra blanket, so on Monday morning I woke up all cozy in the guest room.

Waking up all cozy in Rach’s guest bedroom

I got the train in Rhinecliff – a river-side seat this time. Even though I was on the correct side of the train, I still didn’t get a picture of the brick ruins, Bannerman’s Castle – but plenty of other people have.

Amtrak station in Rhinecliff NY

It rained the whole train ride, and was still raining when I got to the City, but I got a cab fairly easily, and told the driver I was going to LaGuardia. We had only made it about two blocks when I gt a text from Delta saying my direct flight to Madison, that was supposed to get me home by about 5:00, had cancelled. I quick called Jenny, to ask if I could sleep on her couch another night. She said sure, and they were going to lunch, so I should join them. I told the cab driver we were going to the Upper West Side instead of LaGuardia, and even he thought it was a good thing that delta had let me know the flight cancelled soon enough that i didn’t have to shlep out to the airport, and come back. Would’ve cost upwards of $100.

Jenny and Jared and I went to a place called Jacob’s Pickles – a little slice of Brooklyn on the Upper West Side. One of those places with really good food in a casual environment – the napkins were white kitchen towels with a blue stripe, and the drinks came in Mason jars. Ruth Reichl talked about the experience in those kinds of restaurants when I went to hear her Tuesday night; more on that in a minute. Then we went to see The Clouds of Sils Maria – I think I liked it better than Jenny and Jared did. We had avocado sandwiches and salad and tucked me into bed on the couch – Jenny hadn’t even had a chance to wash the sheets yet –  early so I could get up at 4:00 to make my 6:00 AM flight. And it was the easiest taxi ride ever, as Jenny had predicted; I was there in about 25 minutes even though the driver missed the exit for the D gates. He turned off the meter (made a show of it of course) and brought me back around.

I’m off for a little vacation all on my own – two nights in New York city staying with a friend, then two nights in the Hudson River Valley staying with another friend.

Pictures first, words later.

I guess it’s later – Saturday on the train going up the Hudson River. 

I got into the LaGuardia around noon on Thursday. I collected my bags and went looking for a taxi and got offered a way-too-expensive, but super easy, flat rate ride by a cell phone earpiece wearing guy wearing an Uber t-shirt. Which got me to Jenny’s apartment in something like 25 minutes. I checked in with her, and couldn’t get the apartment wifi to work, so walked to the closest Starbucks at Columbus & 86th and got an iced coffee and bought the tix for our Friday night adventure. 

For my Thursday adventure, I took the subway to the new Whitney, and then planned to walk back on the Highline. The Whitney’s current exhibition, in celebration of its new building, is “America Is Hard To See“, all from its permanent collection. 

It was a fun show – lots of works that I’d read about and heard about and seen in books or online but not in person. Like this Nam June Paik, that my friend & librarian colleague Howard Besser uses in public speaking as an example of a preservation problem. Paik’s dead, TV repairmen don’t exist anymore, and TVs are all flat screen, not cathode ray tubes anymore, so what happens when the TVs in the piece break?

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Here’s the other stuff I looked at; old faves like Andy & Thiebaud; a Joseph Cornell I’d never seen before; water colors of California landscapes by a Japanese artist; not just movie but all the little animals and figures from Calder’s Circus. Jenny says it was always in the lobby at the Whitney in the old building but I don’t remember it from the one other time I was there. 

I had my NYC celebrity sighting, too: Eric the vampire (actor Alexander Skarsgard). We looked at Hans Haacke’s Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, that I’d just seen in the City show at AIC, together. I pointed out that it was really a work of archival research, tracing who owns what, and he said, “that’s fantastic”. I suppose he could’ve been making fun of me. 

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I walked back on the Highline, and that was fun too. New York did a much better job of creating usable public spaces than we are in Madison. Lots of wooden benches and pleasant places to sit, and people were using them. I liked the part where you can watch cars driving up the street. Like Jenny said, “New Yorkers are using it!” I thought about stopping for a beer or a glass of wine, but just walked. You come out at the Javits Center, and I took the subway back. 

And the Whitney visit was free! While I was waiting in line a woman came up to me and gave me a free ticket that she couldn’t use. She said she wanted to give the ticket to an artist, and must’ve liked my look. She did a nice thing too, kind of walked me to the entrance and waited till the ticket scanned, confirming it was good. So maybe, like Rach said, Mr. Skarsgard thought he was getting inside information on those Haacke photos from a famous artist, and not making fun of me at all.  

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A long ass week, as John might say, or might’ve said when he was in high school.

Sunday: I went to Library School graduation, and Mark went up to the Twins to watch his son graduate. After the SLIS graduation, I biked to the Capitol Square for the WORT block party, and got rained on. I stayed pretty dry at the block party, in doorways and under tents, but I decided to bike home probably 15 minutes too soon – I was caught in a heavy downpour on State St., and by the time I got to my house, it was sunny.

I had taken an apple and a kind bar to eat in my office after the ceremony, so I wouldn’t end up eating sheet cake and black coffee for breakfast, but I still got home soaked and starving. I had a ham sandwich, and then I made chicken shwarma and rhubarb sauce, both for eating later.

I drove to Willy West and Target to get cat litter and lemons, then I went back down town to see an MFA show, and a performance – Clocks in Motion (who also performed at the block party, but they were on when I was sitting on the stage at the graduation), an original percussion piece that involved smashing a lot of dishes.

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I came home and watched the Mad Men season finale – finished the mocha macchiato ice cream – and picked up Rach at the airport.

On Monday we went for a walk before work. I finished the majority of grading, and we had chicken shwarma for supper – Rach had hers on greens, and I had mine  on rice. I also took cat pictures.

On Tuesday, I roasted the two pounds of asparagus I bought at the Saturday market, and we had pasta – Costco cheese tortellini – with herb butter and the asparagus and a big salad. Mark got home from Minneapolis in time for supper. I made lemon curd, and cookie dough, for lemon curd sandwich cookies to take to a meeting on Thursday – the high level administrator who was scheduled to visit is fond of lemon curd. Won’t fix the budget, but can’t hurt.

On Wednesday, I had to be at the Teaching & Learning Symposium by 8:00, and stay until 1:00 to facilitate the lunch, then dash back to the library school for another meeting reviewing student e-portfolios. But I was home by 4:00 and got the little cookies baked. I think the cutter I have must be for Easter – I think it’s supposed to be an egg. We went to see Iris at Sundance – what a great movie. It opens with the sound of her jewelery clinking – reminded me of my mom and Rach of her grandma. We ate at the dumpling place and wandered and looked at shoes at Cornblooms and Morgan’s and clothes at Title 9 till the movie started.

When we gt home I had time to sandwich up the cookies before the David Letterman grand finale – which I think I liked even better than the Mad Men finale – and I liked the Mad Men finale. I think Don wrote the Coke commercial – that makes it a kind of happy, kind of cynical, really pretty funny ending. Just right.

On Thursday, it was more meetings, including the one the cookies were for. I got my first CSA box of the season – picked up by bike, and I see I’m going to have to traverse construction zones to get to the pickup spot, in someone’s garage in the Vilas neighborhood. A nice spring box: rhubarb, asparagus, green garlic, bunches of arugula and spinach – the spinach has really long stems – a bunch of radishes with nice greens, and a big bunch of leaf lettuce, too. And a bag of wintered over potatoes. Rach had the brilliant idea to walk after work, so we went out after I put the box contents away – and it was just gorgeous. I made another batch of roasted vegetables, carrots and potatoes – not the ones from my box though, some nice little golden ones from the market last week, also last years – and asparagus. I made rice pudding, too, with rice leftover from Monday, which was delicious with the rhubarb sauce from Sunday. 

No Letterman, but I wanted to watch a recorded Ripper Street and the cats could not settle. Kahn kept whining and clawing at the door to the upstairs because he knows there’s another cat up there. I kept having to get up and squirt him to get him away from the door. Rach started calling me Debra Shapiro, MLS, CW – cat wrangler. Finally, Kahn perched on the back of the red couch like the Sphinx, Hammie was in my lap, and my cats had given up in disgust and retired to the bedroom.

Friday was a day of no-meetings-bliss, but I wanted to tame email and finish a syllabus and online course space.

Hammie decided to reorganize my t-shirt drawer while we were out walking.